2008-04-14 Practical, original and beautiful recipes from a Master Craftsman.

The recipes in this book are beautiful, and there are some great ideas that will inspire you to get into the kitchen.

As you can gather from the title, the book is grouped around ingredients, not grouped in the usual way i.e. Starters, Soups, Salads, Main Courses, Desserts etc. etc.

I often don't find this type of format very inspiring, but it works very well here, as the ingredients are all easy to get hold of, and the recipes are very intelligently chosen for the home cook.

For a couple of the ingredients, like Aubergines, the recipes he's chosen to illustrate them with are a bit obvious. For the vast majority though, the recipes are original and definitely ones that you will want to try out. The photos are gorgeous, and this always helps to make you want to cook them.

Like his previous book, this contains a lot of useful cooking tips, that will help you to become a better cook, and possibly get better results than normal. It's not a huge book, but it is jam packed with recipes and information.

It's hard for top chef's to pitch their book correctly. If they produce a book with sensible recipes that you can actually cook, then people complain that they're not the recipes that this chef cooks in their Michelin starred restaurant.

If the chef gives you the actual recipes from their Michelin starred restaurant, then people complain that they are too complex, take too long, that the ingredients cost too much, and are impossible to get hold of.

I do like to try out more complex recipes, if I have the time, and I'm in the mood. I am finding though, that more and more, I tend to cook the simpler recipes where I can prepare them in a reasonable amount of time, and still get a great result.

Tom Aikens took this approach in his book, preferring to give you a mix of easy and challenging recipes to suit your mood, but nothing that was totally impractical for the home cook.

Marcus Wareing has also taken this approach in both his books, and I'm personally very glad that he did. I would rather have these ones to try out, than recipes from Petrus, requiring an army of chefs to execute, and requiring ingredients that a professional restaurant would have on hand, but I would have to prepare from scratch, just for that recipe.

This is a practical book, that you will actually use. The recipes are clearly explained, and of the standard that you would expect from Marcus Wareing.

Your friends and family will really enjoy trying them, and you will enjoy cooking them.