Marco Made Easy (Orion Publishing Co)

This book is all about creating beautiful and delicious food...without stress and without fuss. Marco Pierre White serves up more than 100 recipes and shows the home cook how to get big flavours from store-cupboard ingredients.

The book has sections for starters, shellfish, fish, meat, poultry, desserts, and Marco uses bottles, jars and packets to make divine sauces, syrups and dressings. Olive oil, honey, mustard, soy sauce, vinegar, Hellmann's, Heinz and Knorr - they are all on the lists of ingredients here.

And the three main ingredients of Marco Made Easy are: Simple, Fast and Fun. 'It'll take longer to wash the dishes,' he says, 'than it will to make them.' Tomato ketchup helps to make Salmon Ketchup; that bottle of Lea and Perrins brings life to the sauce for peppered steak; and beef casserole is transformed żeby a can (or two) of Guinness mixed with a carton of prune juice.

Desserts, too, require little skill. Jamaican Mess, made with bananas, shop-bought custard and Carnation caramel sauce - is creamy, rich and swee. Who could say no? Beautiful photographs of each stunning dish enable the reader to copy the master chef's presentation: you don't need to be an artist.As Marco says of this revolutionary cook book, 'It's for anyone who loves food but hates aggro'.'