Ella Risbridger

A deliciously moreish collection of the 100 finest pieces of writing on food, glorious food. In this big, beautiful anthology, award-winning writers Kate Young and Ella Risbridger present you with their ultimate fantasy dinner party. Here you'll find authors, cooks and poets from Laurie Colwin, Salman Rushdie and Jack Underwood, to Rachel Roddy, Audre Lorde and Nigella Lawson. The individual pieces in this book each have something to say to their neighbours on either side; just like a real-life dinner party, the collection is designed to flow from one topic to the next. You'll find old friends as well as new, discussing eggs, bread, fridge-raid suppers, wedding feasts and much, much more. With pieces taken from newsletters, food magazines, cookbooks and novels, you can dip in and out of The Dinner Table, read one piece or twenty, start where you like and end where you like - though you might not be able to put it down...

`A manual for living and a declaration of hope' Nigella Lawson 'A moving testimonial to the redemptive power of cooking. Generous, honest and uplifting' Diana Henry There are lots of ways to start a story, but this one begins with a chicken... There was a time when, for Ella Risbridger, the world had become overwhelming. Sounds were too loud, colours were too bright, everyone moved too fast. One night she found herself lying on her kitchen floor, wondering if she would ever get up - and it was the thought of a chicken, of roasting it, and of eating it, that got her to her feet and made her want to be alive. Midnight Chicken is a cookbook. Or, at least, you'll flick through these pages and find recipes so inviting that you will head straight for the kitchen: roast garlic and tomato soup, uplifting chilli-lemon spaghetti, charred leek lasagne, squash skillet pie, spicy fish finger sandwiches and burnt-butter brownies. It's the kind of cooking you can do a little bit drunk, that is probably better if you've got a bottle of wine open and a hunk of bread to mop up the sauce. But if you settle down and read it with a cup of tea (or a glass of that wine), you'll also discover that it's an annotated list of things worth living for - a manifesto of moments worth living for. This is a cookbook to make you fall in love with the world again. 'A big old massive heart exploding love story' The Times