Lateral Cooking: Foreword by Yotam Ottolenghi

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Most of the times, you miss one ingredients and need to replace it with something, you are short on time and need to cut a corner etc. After working through this book, even just some of it, you will never read and use another cookbook the same way.

At over 600 pages long, its a brick of a book, with densely packed pages illustrated only by simple red ink line drawings. The starting point recipes are designed to be simple, but the idea of the book is not just to master those simple recipes, but to become an all round instinctive cook who understands ingredients and cooking methods so well that you won’t need recipes or cookery books anymore. You will realise that recipes that you had thought were outside of your experience are reassuringly similar to things you've made a dozen times before.It will give you the confidence to experiment with flavour, and the variations that follow are a springboard of inspiration to the contents of your fridge and kitchen cupboards. Op een vermakelijke manier laat Segnit je zien hoe gerechten ‘werken’ en hoe je zelf kunt gaan experimenteren, bedenken en ontdekken.

My new favourite and I would recommend it to anyone who is comfortable enough cooking to break away from the traditional recipe layout and bend the rules. But as she tested the combinations that informed The Flavor Thesaurus , she detected the basic rubrics that underpinned most recipes. 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. Entertaining, opinionated and inspirational, Lateral Cooking will have you torn between donning your apron and settling back in a comfortable chair.Otherwise, I’m not sure this book would be the first I’d reach for when planning a weekly household menu for example. 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. If you already have a decent cookbook collection and are an accomplished cook, you may want to carefully consider how likely you are to cook through the book in the manner intended.

Once you've got the hang of flatbreads, for instance, then its neighboring dishes (crackers, soda bread, scones) will involve the easiest and most intuitive adjustments. Lateral Cooking is essentially a practical book, but like The Flavour Thesaurus it’s also a highly enjoyable read. You will find yourself inventing novel dishes, just by applying the logic from this book, with surprising results. Entertaining, opinionated, and inspirational, with a handsome three-color design, Lateral Cooking will have you torn between donning your apron and settling back in a comfortable chair.

Each chapter opens with an illustrated double page spread which introduces the reader to that chapter’s recipes. There are some fully written recipes with all kinds of great substitutions or variations but most of the book is like an encyclopedia with embedded recipes in food entries. So, under 'Bread', we learn that flatbreads, oatcakes, buckwheat noodles, chapattis and tortillas are all variations on one theme. Which is to say, one dish leads to another: once you’ve got the hang of flatbreads, for instance, then its neighbouring dishes on the continuum (crackers, soda bread, scones) will involve the easiest and most intuitive adjustment. We created over 400 original illustrations for the book to bring the words and ideas within its extensive text to life, reflecting Segnit’s desire for suggestive rather than prescriptive imagery to accompany her writing.

The recipes in each chapter are arranged on a continuum, passing from one to another with just a tweak or two to the method or ingredients. I got it on Kindle because it would have taken too long to get a physical copy shipped - and it isn't cheap in hardback! 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.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). 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. Niki Segnit had not so much as peeled a potato until her early twenties, when, almost by accident, she discovered that she loved cooking. 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. Lateral Cooking is a comprehensive work and notable academic achievement, taking a fresh perspective on a well worn subject that will have you thinking about cooking in a new way.