Is it good bedtime reading? Oh yes. There are (very) approximately 300,000 words to keep you occupied, or around three airport novels worth. A groundbreaking handbook--the "method" companion to its critically acclaimed predecessor, The Flavor Thesaurus-- with a foreword by Yotam Ottolenghi. Clingfilm makes a great emergency belt for your too-loose chef trousers or apron with missing string. Taste, taste and taste some more; adapt your ingredients

The book focuses on providing readers with the methods and the understanding to develop their own approach to cookery, so photography felt too prescriptive in this context. However, Segnit’s text introduces an enormously broad range of dishes from different culinary traditions around the world and from throughout history, many of which would be unfamiliar, and which would benefit from illustration of some kind. We all felt that the inclusion of imagery would enrich the reading experience, and that it still had an important communicative part to play.” Who’s the author? Niki Segnit is probably best known as the author of The Flavour Thesaurus, the culinary version of Roget’s Thesaurus, which listed 99 ingredients and suggested flavour matches for each of them. Lateral Cooking is designed as a companion volume to The Flavour Thesaurus.In that moment, I learned how important it is to celebrate simplicity, to concentrate on the quality of ingredients and diligence of cooking. It’s so easy to add just another ingredient – it’s a sign of skill to leave your ingredients to sing. Cook with wine you want to drink

Want to graduate from a rigid recipe-follower to an instinctive, ingredient-led cook? Niki Segnit shows you how * Waitrose Food * leads to another . . . In the end, the cookbooks that teach you the most are the rare ones, experimental or not, that are so well written that you find yourself reading them greedily on a perpetual loop. Lateral Cooking is one of them." -- Times Literary Supplement What makes this book really special, just like The Flavour Thesaurus, aside from Niki's impressive expertise, is her humour and personality. It's a joy to read -- Olive magazineWhat’s the USP? Segnit says that Lateral Cooking is ‘a practical handbook, designed to help creative cooks develop their own recipes’. So, not your everyday cookbook then. In Greece and the Middle East we have a lot of syrupy cakes: it’s a way of keeping things moist and fresh in hot climates. My gran always taught me to add cold syrup to hot cakes, and vice versa, so that it absorbs properly. If both were hot, the syrup would sink to the bottom, and if both were cold, the syrup would just sit on top. I always make my sugar syrup in advance and let it cool so that it’s ready to pour over the hot cake or bake, straight out of the oven. The best way to keep a cake moist is by putting a syrup on it, so regardless of where you’re from or what kind of baking you’re doing, I think it’s good advice. How to fix a creme anglaise that has split Never boring, always illuminating, Segnit calls her approach 'learning to cook sideways.' If you can make soda bread, then try biscuits. Once you’ve mastered biscuits, go on to cobblers, then yeast bread, and brioche is just around the corner" - MarthaStewart.com