Good Tempered Food, by Tamasin Day-Lewis

There are some great recipes in this book but the whole thing is let down by the immensely irritating TDL. Surely there has never been a writer so smug? She's incredibly bossy about where you should shop and sneering about most of the products you are likely to already have on your shelves. Shame, because otherwise it might have been a good book. The Piedmontese Pepper recipe is a dream, as is Solgar (a sort of egg tartar), but the passion fruit ice cream recipe didn't work out for me.

Someone needs to re-write this book in a more engaging way, leaving out the anecdotes about how her child's cooking is 'almost as good as mother's' - bleurgh.

I can't recommend this book highly enough if you want family-type dinners that are a little different.

It really is good tempered food - slow cooking or slow to prepare, and there are around 20 recipes in this book that I use constantly and are highly adaptable.

Possibly not for the first-time truly amateur cook, but I this book is well-thumbed and grease-stained and very worth a try.