Delia's How To Cook: Book Three: Book 3 - Tapa dura

What is there to say? Guaranteed idiot-proof recipes from the Queen of TV cooking. Invite people round for a "Delia" and you're ensured a successful dinner party and friends who will want to come again and again. But just because the title lends itself to beginners, the more confident cook ignores the book at their peril. Fresh slants on recipes such as brulees, sorbets, beef stews and cheesecakes remove their dated image and bring them to the forefront of food fashion. Traditional recipes are re-examined and explained with clear instructions thus ensuring perfect lemon meringue pies, potted crabs and smoked collars of bacon. For those with a more exotic taste, pulses are examined and recipes such as hummus, Mexican chicken chilli with yellow tomato salsa, spiced lamb curry with chickpeas and sesame blancmange are included. Covering the latest cooking gadgets, Delia explains the pros and cons of expensive investments such as bread-making machines, ice-cream makers and food processors, offering recipes which would once have taken hours but now take minutes to produce. Also covered, after consultation with her fans via her website, is a section on "Waist Watchers" - ideal for those with a guilty conscience... Gloriously illustrated and engagingly written, this is ideal as either the final addition to her "How to Cook" trilogy or as an introduction to her inimitable style. Budding chef or veteran gourmet, this book should appeal to all and brings an updated twist to today's cuisine.

In part three of How to Cook, Delia continues and completes her journey through the fundamentals of cooking, revising traditional areas that are all too often overlooked, as well as exploring more contemporary concerns for the modern cook. As ever, the principles remain the same: to rediscover the simple pleasure of food, to take beginners through many of the basic cooking techniques, and to offer inspiration to even the most accomplished cook.

With stunning photographs to accompany each one of them, the recipes range from neglected classics like Old English Apple Hat and Smoked Collar of Bacon with Pease Pudding to exciting new flavours such as Teriyaki Grilled Marinated Salmon and Sea Bass with Puy Lentil Salsa. In Book Three, the reader can learn the techniques of pickling and preserving, how to equip their kitchen from scratch, and how to get the most out of food processors, bread machines and ice-cream makers. Here, Delia also focuses on first courses (starters) and last courses (hot puddings), and introduces us to the wonderful world of pulses, from adzuki beans to pintos by way of many more familiar ones.

How to Cook Book Three contains over 120 great easy recipes, written, as always, to inspire confidence in nervous cooks and to extend the repertoire of more experienced ones. Those who already have Books One and Two cannot afford to be without this one, and those who do not can start right here.