It reminds me of how often food photography features excess: sprinkles and crumbs all over the plate and table, chunks next to the recipe they are in, sauce dripping down the outside of the jar. Within these chapters are recipes for all seasons and tastes: Burnt Onion and Aubergine Dip; Butternut with Chilli, Ginger and Beetroot Yoghurt Sauce; Brown Butter Colcannon; Spaghetti with Chard and Anchovies; Chicken with Garlic Cream Sauce; Beef Cheeks with Port and Chestnuts; and Wide Noodles with Lamb in Aromatic Broth, to name a few. Her section on rhubarb is to die for — so many ways to simply cook and serve a bunch of deliciousness. I'm a vegetarian, and I was happy to see her tackling vegetarian and vegan cooking with gusto, and commenting on augmenting non-vegan recipes where possible (she is also realistic, saying she can't make every recipe vegetarian/vegan). I enter into the exuberance, but a continuous diet (true of any stylistic author, including Wodehouse, Trollope, Dickens, Karon, and others) of Nigella drains the sparkplugs.

No, it’s not your regular recipe/cookery book of recipe, photo, recipe , photo repeat which has a place and we all enjoy them. And above and beyond the recipes, this is a profound and consoling defence of the pleasures of the kitchen. Those with a sweet tooth will delight in desserts including Rhubarb and Custard Trifle; Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake; and Cherry and Almond Crumble.

I like cooking and over many decades, I’ve tried to understand ingredients and food from numerous different cultures.

Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall).

If, when friends come over for dinner, the best thing to be said about the evening was that the food was great, consider it a failure. And on why she doesn’t have “guilty pleasures”: “Taking pleasure in the food we eat is an act of gratitude.