Diana Henry

Chicken is one of the most popular foods we love to cook and eat: comforting, quick, celebratory and casual. Plundering the globe, there is no shortage of brilliant ways to cook it, whether you need a quick supper on the table after work, something f or a lazy summer barbecue or a feast to nourish family and friends. From quick Vietnamese lemon grass and chilli chicken thighs and a smoky chicken salad with roast peppers and almonds, through to a complete feast with pomegranate, barley and feta stuffed roast chicken with Georgian aubergines, there is no eating or entertaining occasion that isn't covered in this book. In A Bird in the Hand, Diana Henry o-ffers a host of new, easy and not-so-very-well-known dishes, starring the bird we all love .

'This is an extraordinary piece of food writing, pitch perfect in every way. I couldn't love anyone who didn't love this book.' - Nigella Lawson When Diana Henry was sixteen she started a menu notebook (an exercise book carefully covered in wrapping paper) in which she wrote up the meals she wanted to cook. She kept this book for years. Putting a menu together is still her favourite part of cooking. Menus aren't just groups of dishes that have to work on a practical level (meals that cooks can manage), they also have to work as a succession of flavours. But what is perhaps most special about them is the way they can create very different moods - menus can take you places, from an afternoon at the seaside in Brittany to a sultry evening eating mezze in Istanbul. They are a way of visiting places you've never seen, revisiting places you love and celebrating particular seasons. How to Eat a Peach contains many of Diana's favourite dishes in menus that will take you through the year and to different parts of the world.

What happened when one of today's best-loved food writers had a change of appetite? Here are the dishes that Diana Henry created when she started to crave a different kind of diet - less meat and heavy food, more vegetable-, fish- and grain-based dishes - often inspired by the food of the Middle East and Far East, but also drawing on cuisines from Georgia to Scandinavia. Curious about what 'healthy eating' really means, and increasingly bombarded by both readers and friends for recipes that are 'good for you', Diana disocovered a lighter, fresher way of eating. From a Cambodian salad of prawns, grapefruit, toasted coconut and mint or North African mackerel with cumin to blood orange and cardamom sorbet, the magical dishes in this book are bursting with flavour, goodness and colour. Peppering the recipes is Diana's inimitable writing on everything from the miracle of broth to the great carbohydrate debate. Above all, this is about opening up our palates to new possibilities. There is no austerity here, simply fabulous food which nourishes body and soul.