Kitchen tells the story of the life of the kitchen, through the food we eat now and the way we live, in the most important room of the house.

Compendious, informative and utterly engaging, Kitchen brings us feel-good food for cooks and eaters that is comforting but always seductive, nostalgic but with a modern twist - whether express-style easy-exotic recipes for the weekday rush, leisurely slow-cook dishes for weekends and special occasions, or irresistible cakes and cookies as the Domestic Goddess rides again. It answers everyday cooking quandaries - what to give the kids for lunch, how to rustle up a meal for friends in moments, or what to do about those black bananas, wrinkled apples and bullet-hard plums - and since real cooking is so often about leftovers, here one recipe can morph into another... from ham hocks to pea soup and pasties, from chicken to Chinatown salad. This isn''t just about being thrifty but about being creative and seeing how recipes come about and evolve. As well as offering the reader a mouthwatering array of inspired new recipes - from clams with chorizo to Guinness gingerbread, from Asian braised beef to flourless chocolate lime cake, from pasta Genovese to Venetian carrot cake - Nigella rounds up her no-nonsense Kitchen Kit and Caboodle must-haves (and, crucially, what isn''t needed) in the way of equipment and magical standby ingredients. But above all, she reminds the reader how much pleasure there is to be had in real food and in reclaiming the traditional rhythms of the kitchen, as she cooks to the beat of the heart of the home, creating simple, delicious recipes to make life less complicated.

The expansive, lively narrative, with its rich feast of food, makes this new work a natural 21st-century successor to Nigella''s classic How To Eat, this time with a wealth of photographs from the instructive to the glorious.