Something for the Weekend: With Eight Around the Table - Tapa dura

In today's hectic society, it is often only on the weekends that we really have time to 'cook', rather than just assembling meals to keep our energy levels up. In this brilliant new book, best-selling author Ruth Watson has created a fantastic collection of delicious yet stress-free recipes that enable us to enjoy the process of cooking and creating mouth-watering dishes with which to delight and impress family and friends. Ensuring that the cook will not spend endless hours trapped in the kitchen, all the recipes can be prepared in advance or cooked to a stage where they need only minimal attention at the last minute. All the components of the meal are covered from simple, no-cook starters such as deli-griddled vegetables with hummus, or prawn cocktail; straightforward, yet delicious, one-pot dishes including Catalan beef stew and lamb with haricot beans, or traditional big roast dinners from the classic sirloin of beef to pancetta-wrapped pork fillet; 'footless' food with sensational fish and vegetarian dishes such as mozzarella, ricotta and spinach lasagne and red gunard bourride; mouth-watering desserts such as bitter chocolate tart, and hazelnut meringues; and blackberry cake. "Something for the Weekend" takes the hassle out of cooking for a crowd so start sending out the invitations today!

Ruth Watson is a well-known food writer and two times winner of the prestigious Glenfiddich award. With Nigel Slater, she was one of the two original contributing food editors on Sainsbury's Magazine and then food editor of the Daily Mail's Weekend magazine for two years. In between running her successful hotel, the Crown and Castle at Orford on the Suffolk coast, she continues to write the occasional piece for sundry food magazines, and has also just embarked on filming a second six part series of The Hotel Inspectors for Channel Five. Ruth's previous cookery books are The Really Helpful Cookbook and Fat Girl Slim.