Jane Hornby - The Good Food Cook Book: Over 650 triple-tested recipes for every occasion

In this authoritative cook book from Britains favourite cookery magazine, you will discover over 650 recipes divided by ingredient and occasion to help you find the perfect recipe with ease. But this is more than just a recipe collection. The book also includes Good Foods expert knowledge of ingredients and cooking hints and tips, to make this an invaluable source of inspiration and advice.

For the novice cook, this is an essential reference guide, including easy-to-follow instructions on:

How to cook different cuts of meat

Knife skills

How to entertain without stress

There are also step-by-step masterclasses in:

Preparing squid, oysters, cooked lobster and crab

Making fresh ravioli and gnocchi from scratch

Making bread dough and pastry

There are hundreds of recipes here for everyday meals as well as weekend feasts, for when you have a little more time to spend in the kitchen. There are sections focused on making special occasions stress-free, including a whole chapter on Christmas cooking that contains countdowns, checklists and quantity guides, and a chapter dedicated to feeding crowds.

With step-by-step methods, kitchen know how and masterclasses, nutritional breakdowns and full-colour photography, The Good Food Cook Book is the perfect gift and a book to treasure and return to, year after year.

Jane Hornby trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine and, after graduating, found her dream job at Good Food magazine. There she spent six happy years writing, food styling, editing and working with some of the countrys top chefs, as well as editing seven of the BBC Books 101 series. Jane now writes and styles recipes for Good Food and Olive magazines and her first book, What to Cook and How to Cook It, was published in 2010.

by Gillian Carter

This book is for everyone who wants reliable recipes and practical help for their everyday cooking as well as for special occasions. It really is like having a friend in the kitchen whose advice you can trust.

The recipes were originally produced for Good Food magazine, and have been selected by food writer Jane Hornby. Jane worked on Good Food magazine for 5 years, and is a truly natural and creative cook who has the knack of showing others how to get as much pleasure out of cooking as she does.

As youd expect from Good Food, this book is packed with easy-to-follow information, so first timers can confidently follow instructions and get great results. More experienced and adventurous cooks, cake makers, and those of you who love to entertain, will find plenty to inspire you, so you can take your cooking to a new level.

I hope you enjoy using this fantastic book.

Welcome to The Good Food Cook Book, the biggest and best-ever collection of recipes from BBC Good Food magazine. We hope this book will become your friend in the kitchen no matter what kind of cook you are.

With literally thousands of great recipes to choose from, picking the definitive 650 recipes wasnt easy. The final cut consists of a fabulous range of recipes for any occasion youd care to mention, with a helpful and practical stance that will neither alienate you nor bog you down with too much information. Expect to find everything from how to boil an egg to making a wedding cake and all thats in between.

Theres more to good cooking than just a good recipe, of course confidence is key. Weve poured all our experience from the Good Food test kitchen, plus useful reader feedback, into this book to create something that is as helpful and practical as possible and gives you all the information you need to get cooking.

Whatever you want to cook, were confident youll find it here. With a clear design, this book is easy to dip in and out of when youre busy, whilst containing the knowledge behind more in-depth techniques, should you need it.

The recipes are split into 18 intuitive chapters. Experience tells us that most people look for quick and simple recipes to cook throughout the week, and save more complicated or lengthy cooking for the weekend. So with that in mind, the savoury meal ideas in the first half of the book are split between Everyday ideas and Weekend cooking, to spare you the search. Of course, its up to you what you cook and when, but the recipes marked as everyday ideas will have shorter methods, fewer ingredients, and on the whole are family friendly and make good use of storecupboard ingredients. Weekend recipes are that little bit more special, sometimes with more involved cooking, and ideal for informal entertaining.

But its not just great ideas for lunch and dinner that youll find amongst these pages, are each carefully chosen collections of recipes for when you want to cook something special or more unusual - one of our famous bakes perhaps, your own homemade bread or preserves, or maybe even a celebration cake. And each chapter has plenty of supporting information to make your dish a success. If you need guidance in cooking for big occasions, we have two whole chapters dedicated to Christmas and cooking for crowds, complete with menu ideas.

Each chapter begins with a few reference-style pages, covering shopping, storage and preparation and other useful information on the ingredients featured, plus illustrated step-by-step guides to give you real confidence with new techniques. Chapters also include guidance on such kitchen quandaries as how to know when a steak is ready, how to rescue a split sauce and how to make ice cream without a special machine. Page by page, weve really tried to answer all your culinary questions.

Many of the recipes have helpful hints and tricks alongside, which weve called tips, know-how and .

Although we dont have a chapter especially for vegetarians, many of the recipes in this book are vegetarian or meat-free. Recipes marked with the meat-free sign might include cheese or other diary products. We dont specify vegetarian cheese in these recipes but there are a number of veggie-friendly cheeses readily available these days, which you can substitute for regular cheese.

At the start of every recipe the prep and cook time is given, plus helpful information on the numbers it serves. Many recipes can be scaled up or down easily, and this too is indicated. The given prep time includes gathering ingredients and any chopping; cook time includes any step in which heat is used. Often you will be able to continue prepping as you cook, making best use of your time.

Where overnight soaking, marinating, cooling or any other lengthy prep is needed, weve let you know from the outset, so there are no nasty surprises. And dont be too quick to dismiss a recipe because it has a long cook time; it might include a walk-away time, for example, when a stew needs long, slow simmering, but no involvement from you, allowing you to get on with something else as it cooks.

The indices at the back of the book work hard for you too the recipe index flags up recipes that are family friendly, meat-free, healthy, ideal for two, suitable for freezing ahead, one-pots and ready in 30 minutes or less, while the main index allows you to find recipes quickly by ingredient.