Flavour

Walk into your kitchen and open the cupboard doors, chances are you will find bottles of moss green olive oil nestling alongside dark, salty soy sauce; pungent vanilla essence next to scarlet incendiary pots of chilli powder; flaky dried oregano next to piquant malt vinegar.

Borders have been drawn and redrawn throughout history. Perhaps with cooking there are now no borders at all: we can enjoy the tastes of many parts of the world in our own homes very easily, whenever we like.

In FLAVOUR: A World of Beautiful Food, Vicky Bhogal takes an array of delicious ingredients and shows how to combine them according to their flavour in simple and imaginative ways, to create exciting new dishes. As she says, 'I am delighted by the fact that, in the little corner of the metropolis I have made my own, I am able to draw from a rich, sprawling heritage of centuries of ingredients traversing their way across the globe. That with a flick of a lid or stir of a spoon, I can add the perfumed whisper of a Persian court, an echo of cool pine forests at twilight or the faint tap of a tango on cobbled alleyways to my daily urban life, while the cars roar by outside.'

Containing over 100 mouth-watering and inspiring recipes, including Wafer-sliced Duck Risotto with Spiced Plums and Star Anise, Tiger Prawn and Mandarin Soup, Turkish Delight Chocolate Ice-Cream Drops and White Pears on Black Ice, FLAVOUR is an enchanting book for cooks of all abilities who want to try something truly different.