So the faff is not necessarily in the complexity of the recipes, but the amount of reading you will need to do before you get into the kitchen. So, for example, in the potato gnocchi entry Segnit tells you about the flour potato weight and add flour in patient increments but there is no explicit recipe. Entertaining, opinionated and inspirational, Lateral Cooking will have you torn between donning your apron and settling back in a comfortable chair. The recipes in each chapter are then arranged on a continuum, the transition from one recipe to another generally amounting to a tweak or two in the method or ingredients. It’s a great book for reading about food and Segnit does a great job of taking cooks through a basic approach to a food and showing how other foods relate to it.

The book looks at a core recipe and takes you along a continuum, so that you can tweak a bread recipe, for example, by replacing some of the liquid with another form (egg for water) and it will still work (probably! You will find yourself inventing novel dishes, just by applying the logic from this book, with surprising results.So, in addition to the flavouring suggestions, each starting point recipe comes with a list of ‘leeway’ bullet points that illustrate the different ways the basic recipe can be prepared and variations in ingredients (and this is before you get on to the more major variations of the flavouring suggestions). Our bold but simple approach to the design evolved out of the unique structure and extensive content of Lateral Cooking, making it enjoyable and accessible for the reader.

The result is greater creativity in the Lateral Cooking encourages improvisation, resourcefulness, and, ultimately, the knowledge and confidence to cook by heart. Segnit says that Lateral Cooking is ‘a practical handbook, designed to help creative cooks develop their own recipes’.Her background is in marketing, specialising in food and drink, and she has worked with many famous brands of confectionary, snacks, baby foods, condiments, dairy products, hard liquors and soft drinks. Ultimately, Signet wants her readers to develop their own recipes based on the starting points and flavouring options, so your imagination is your only limit to what you include in a recipe, which means you might have trouble finding ingredients if your ideas are really out there.

Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. It's goal is to teach the reader method and technique and then skills to riff on that with whatever is available. Once you have the hang of each starting point, a wealth of new flavour combinations awaits, each related in Niki's signature combination of culinary science, history, chefs' wisdom and personal anecdote.Lateral Cooking by Niki Segnit, bestselling author of The Flavour Thesaurus, provides a detailed examination of the key techniques and culinary categories that underpin contemporary cookery. As the scope of the book is not Eurocentric at all, and is actually very straight forward, I would recommend this as top 3 cookbook for any cook who wants to become better, more educated and inspired in the kitchen. This book close to fundamentally changed my way of cooking and is still one of the books I regularly use.