I found a book that looks plausible, Ross Dobson's 3 Ways with: Stale Bread & 99 Other Ingredients You'll Find in Your Pantry, Fridge or Freezer (Murdoch, 2007), out in paper in Canada for CDN$18.87 plus shipping plus a foreign currency charge on my credit card.

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Market Vegetarian (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2008)

Kitchen Seasons: Easy Recipes for Seasonal Organic Food (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2007)

Chinatown: Sweet Sour Spicy Salty (Murdoch Books, 2005)

Ms. Sarah E. Holdway "bella_bookworm" (Wiltshire, UK):

I waited for ages for this book to arrive from Amazon, having read a review in Delicious magazine and pre-ordered it, but I have to say when it arrived I was really disappointed. Don't get me wrong, this book looks the business. It is beautifully shot and full of gorgeous photographs, but not one of them is of how your final dish is supposed to turn out so there is an element of flying blind if you decide to go for it and make something from it.

My biggest complaint by far is the recipes themselves. The basic premise of this book is that you come home knackered from work, take a look in the fridge or the cupboard, pick an ingredient or two, refer to Mr. Dobson's bible and 25 mins later you have yourself a fabulous meal and your other half thinks you're a culinary genius for producing something out of nothing. Hmmmm. I decided to try this one night after a long day at work... and after 15 minutes of messing about we ended up getting takeaway! One thing we ALWAYS have in our house is red wine so off I went to the 3-ways-with-red-wine page full of confidence that dinner was only minutes away, and was greeted with three options of:

- red wine and beef casserole - fair enough but this takes an hour and a half to cook according to the recipe, not exactly instant when you've just finished a 12-hour hospital shift!

- red wine and vanilla figs - surely very nice but not exctly what I'm after when my tummy is rumbling.

- and finally (and my other half is still laughing about this!), drum roll please.... Slow-cooked octopus in red wine, tomato and olive sauce!!

Now call me old fashioned but WHO keeps OCTOPUS in their fridge/freezer just on the off-chance they might have some red wine left over?? I ask you!

Other pretencious gems include 'sweet & sour herbed egg-plant salad' (thats aubergine to you and me), the humble dried apricot becomes 'tipsy apricots with pistacio yoghurt and honey', and my personal favourite, the simple lasagne sheet becomes 'hand-cut pasta with nutty sage butter'. I'm all for experimentation and dressing things up, but that surely was not the premise of this book?

Call me provincial if you will, but I sometimes feel that when writing all these lovely recipe books, these celebrity chefs have lost sight of the fact that only a small percentage of the culinary population actually live in London where speciality items are readily available from these wonderful Aladdin's caves of shops that we are often given guided tours of on UKTV Food. In reality your average Joe lives down the road from a mid-size Somerfield that is more likely to run out of bread before closing time that stock octopus in its freezers!

In conclusion, a brilliant idea, just a shame Mr. Dobson didn't stay in the real world when writing these recipes. My advice? Save your money here and buy yourself anything by Nigella or Tom-Norrington Davis. Both offer great recipes that never fail, taste delicious, and you actually stand a chance of having the ingredients in your cupboards! Sorry Ross, better luck next time.