Simply Darina

The Ballymaloe chef's latest recipe book guides amateur cooks through the potential pitfalls of entertaining at home. Kevin Burke grabs his apronAnyone familiar with Darina Allen's earlier signposts to happy food knows what to expect here and they will be more than content. Others to whom this is an introduction are in for a treat. There is straight-from-the-shoulder advice on avoiding the major pitfalls awaiting the amateur cook preparing to extend their culinary horizons. There follow recipes and suggestions to intrigue all levels of cooks. The combination assures a welcome for Darina Allen's counsel, a tutorial distilled from years of nurturing the flame for Irish food gently kindled in East Cork years ago by Myrtle and Ivan Allen.

While neither abandoning the distinctly Irish flavour of her Simply Delicious menus, nor ignoring the delights of rural France and Italy given in earlier publications, Darina has here expanded to a much wider range of recipes. These, presented in the sympathetic and supportive approach which characterises the book, lead gently on to encourage more conservative kitchen enthusiasts to extend their menus beyond the frontiers of aubergines and courgettes. In this expansion she incorporates ingredients hitherto more common to some of our new European Union partners. Recent arrivals to our shores will welcome the use of continental ingredients, whose availability and standards have happily increased under the stimulus of An Bord Bia.

Suggestions cover a wide spectrum, from brunch to lunch to dinner. Simple dishes give encouragement to beginners, while the more complex present a modest challenge to those with more experience. Happily, in all cases the instructions are clear and what may seem at first view slightly intimidating to a novice becomes manageable. A section on slow food, an area from which there can be an inclination to shy away, makes an uncommon but welcome appearance, even if not everyone shares the author's apparent preference for parsnip over celery and turnip!

The division of the text into a dozen sections and a comprehensive index make for easy selection by main ingredient, with variations running from established Irish favourites to welcome proposals for dishes, new to many of her following, originating in the Orient, India or North Africa. Not all enthusiastic amateur cooks will be content to remain inside the traditional framework, truly delicious though it may be. Here is a chance to diversify under the sympathetic guidance of a master chef with incontrovertible talents for successfully leading her disciples into new territory.

There are few things more conducive to warm friendship, indeed to a happy household, than a table furnished by a fruitful cook and surrounded by happy guests. This splendidly presented book will bring encouragement as well as pleasure to hosts and hostesses who, though confident in the preperation of tried and proven recipes, may be deterred from further progress by fear that extending beyond a sextet around the kitchen table might lead to disappointment. Courage, mes amis! Let's go there!