How to Butter Toast is the antidote to cookbook-overload. In this fun and entertaining recipe book without any recipes, Ottolenghi co-writer Tara Wigley equips you with rhymes and confidence to cook great food instinctively.

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 and author Tara Wigley had been to cookery school, read hundreds of cookbooks and developed recipes for over a decade. Yet she found the fewer the ingredients in a recipe, the more confusion there was about how best to make it. The result is How to Butter Toast, a collection of rhymes that will enlighten and entertain, reassure and ultimately liberate the culinarily confused.

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.

Beautifully packaged with bold and witty illustrations throughout, How to Butter Toast is the perfect gift for cooks of all levels. This is the first book in a series Tara is publishing with Pavilion.