How to Feed Your Friends with Relish - Tapa dura

'This is a book about food and friendship, and cooking and love. It is meant for anyone who loves food and loves people, and believes that where the two meet, a kind of alchemy occurs.' Joanna Weinberg's love affair with cooking began when she was away at college. While she subsisted on pasta...and more pasta, her sister would call from London with salacious stories of extra virgin olive oil, smoky pancetta and hunks of fresh Parmesan. Inspired, she started cooking for her friends, and realised early on that a great meal wasn't really about the food - it was about feeling at ease among good company. The problem was that so many cookbooks focused on fancy dishes and didn't take friends, that most basic of ingredients, into account. Which is how this book came about."Relish" is full of recipes, of course - 175 of them, arranged in 47 menus for every occasion, from an impromptu kitchen supper to a massive birthday party; from a cosy afternoon tea to a summer barbecue with a gaggle of children. But much more importantly, it is a timely reminder of how to nourish friends and friendship, and will delight anyone who, like Joanna, believes that in the end, food is love.

Joanna Weinberg has always been a passionate cook, tasting the flavours in her head before they get as far as the plate, but it wasn't until she spent a few years in New York without a kitchen that she realised how important it was to have friends round. Having returned to live in London, she now has a kitchen big enough to fit a table in it, and she cooks for friends all the time. Jo writes for a broad range of publications including Vogue, ES, Tatler and Easy Living, and about food in particular for The Times and Waitrose Food Illustrated.