While I admire her ability to produce a perfect iced bun under pressure, I can’t get excited about Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased for her - she has battled racism, Islamophobia and her own chronic anxiety to become a national treasure, with bestselling cookbooks and homeware lines.

She’s just a bit too earnest and sensible - lacking that maverick edge that marks the most successful TV chefs, such as Keith Floyd or Gordon Ramsay.

Nevertheless, her latest show (BBC One, 9pm) about discovering her roots appealed, not least because it offered the chance to escape to warm Cambodia for an hour at the start of a wet week.

Previously, Hussain has been on a British food adventure, finding out about what she feeds her family at home in Milton Keynes. Now she is discovering where she is from on a sort of gap- year trip (she even wears the harem pants uniform of the traveller).

Hussain recently did a DNA test and discovered that although her family is from Bangladesh, she has Thai, Nepalese and Cambodian ancestry. She wants to know more about her roots. Travelling alone (albeit with a film crew) is a brave step for Hussain, who never usually goes abroad without her husband and three children.

The younger Hussains are the stars of the show - we meet them at the start, bundled up in coats in the back seat of the car.

Her son has a dramatic turn of phrase, saying he is “mainly sad, tearful, upset and just more words that mean sad” about his mother leaving. Still, he brings her sweets for her trip and giggles at the thought of people from Thailand and Cambodia getting together and having children.

Packing comfortable shoes and hijabs that match her outfits, Hussain sets off. Her focus is on people like her, who are interested in food.

She goes to some interesting places - there’s a cookery school for women near Angkor Wat where women are taught how to make patisserie, giving them a way out of poverty. It’s run by a French woman called Charlotte who says French patisserie is the best in the world.

Hussain can’t resist getting involved and teaches the students her twist on Paris Brest - will Charlotte be a tougher judge than the Bake Off team? It’s pretty tense.

Hussain also cooks in a floating kitchen in Thailand and we meet a few engaging figures - from a man who climbs 30 trees a day to collect palm sugar, to an insect-smoothie maker who calls himself Doomsday Mike.

Hussain talks the viewer through her recipes, so if you’re inspired you could make the dishes at home. She’s tireless in her pursuit of the perfect pad thai.

She’s moved by seeing how difficult her life could have been if her parents hadn’t emigrated from Bangladesh. Yet the premise doesn’t work - it’s too light on history and fact, and doesn’t push the food angle hard enough either. Hussain is desperate to go off on a Who Do You Think You Are?-style voyage of discovery but there just isn’t the material.

Instead, she has to justify the personal aspect of the show by finding parallels with the people she meets - there’s a woman who wrinkles her eyes just like Nadiya’s Bangladeshi grandmother, and they use the same fish paste in Thailand as her family. It all feels tenuous.

If you’re a Hussain fan, there’s plenty here to enjoy. Otherwise it’s just like having a look at the tame holiday snaps of somebody you don’t know very well.