How to Butter Toast is the antidote to cookbook-overload; it is a recipe book without any recipes. In this collection of fun and entertaining rhymes Ottolenghi co-writer Tara Wigley makes cooking with ease a cinch for cooks of all levels. Perfect your roasts, bakes, sauces and cocktails with this gorgeous book.

Melted butter on hot toast and served up on a plate.

It seems like nothing, really, could be clearer or more straight.

But though, in terms of things required, the number is just two,

there is a lot of wiggle room for what there is to do.

Cook, author and Team Ottolenghi writing partner Tara Wigley had been to cookery school, read hundreds of cookbooks and developed recipes for over a decade. Yet she found herself confused. The fewer the ingredients in a recipe, Tara found, the more confusion there was about how best to make it. In How to Butter Toast Tara examines the many ways in which an everyday dish can be made. The result is a collection of rhymes that will enlighten and entertain, reassure and ultimately liberate the culinarily confused. This is a recipe book without any recipes, and one that will equip you with the confidence to cook great food instinctively.

The rhymes provide reassuring – and memorable – answers to the culinary conundrums we often face: How long should I boil an egg? What’s the best way to crush garlic? How do I make mayonnaise, a martini or indeed the perfect cup of tea? Tara’s playful take on these food quandaries seems effortless but belies her knowledgeable and carefully researched approach to cooking.

How to Butter Toast is the perfect gift for cooks of all levels – with Tara’s knowledge behind them to revolutionise the way they cook. This is the first book in a series Tara is publishing with Pavilion.