FIRST, CATCH: Study of A Spring Meal

Named 'Best Food Book of the Year' by BBC Radio 4, the Times and the Financial Times and winner of the Fortnum & Mason's debut Food Book Award. 'The thing to do is just begin. The question, of course, is where?' So opens this cookbook without recipes, a journey into the digressive mind of a chef at work, and a hymn exalting a festive nine-dish spring lunch. A return to a lost tradition of food writing, it is a mouth-watering celebration of cooking. In 24 wonderfully esoteric chapters, Eagle extols the virtues of salting food liberally, waxes lyrical about lost spices and forgotten ingredients, explains the 17 different stages of boiling water and ponders philosophical questions about the ethics and aesthetics of cooking. It is a thoughtful meditation on the craft, chemistry and cultural history of cooking, gorgeously written and with an indulgent compilation of culinary meditations to thrill food lovers. Chapters include Boiling and Pickling with Water, Cooking Fish, Boiling or Not Boiling Vegetables, Dressing Greens with Anchovy, The Cooking of Onions, Almost Frying, Cooking with Wine and Vinegar, Boiling Feet and Bones, On the Lives and Deaths of Rabbits, A Version of Rabbit Ragu, Cooking with Blood and Cooking with Eggs and more. 229pp, attractive line art.