Jeremy applies this to the menus at Quo Vadis, where the cooking is bright, fresh, light and quintessentially British in a manner most modern. Served with cream, ice-cream and custard, this is very good in those last days of winter when a treat is often much needed. It goes without saying that ingredients have to be top notch but these recipes make the component parts shine. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook).

Along the way he indulges in biscuits, blood oranges, chocolate, fish (“shiny darlings lifted from the deep”) offal, potatoes and soup, among other delights. This is British mostly hearty and comforting food and will definitely go on my ‘to cook from’ shelf rather than the reading shelf or worse the re-gifting shelf! You’re not going to lose ANY weight by cooking from this book, there’s no lemongrass, chilli or avocado in sight so if that’s your bag move along. Take a 50g portion of the pastry and roll it out thinly on a lightly floured surface into a 12-13cm disc.

Firstly, the book is beautiful with fine illustrations that hark back to another age, and great photographs. But has traveled and cooked widely, citing influences from cooks in many places and generously, happily folding them into his repertoire.

I'm giving it 5 stars because it's not the book that I'm complaining about, but the packaging material. When Jeremy Lee received the very first copy of his new cookbook from his publishers, he immediately threw it in a drawer, then cycled from his home in east London to get on with his day at Soho’s Quo Vadis, where he is chef-patron. The recipes are arranged by favourite ingredients and occasions and include an introduction emphasising the importance of the quality and provenance of ingredients. In 2012 Jeremy and Quo Vadis won the Catey for Best Restaurant Menu of the Year and in 2013 they won the Tatler Award for Best Kitchen.Like his cooking, Lee’s long (very long) awaited first book, the gorgeous Cooking: Simply and Well, For One or Many, with photos by Elena Heatherwick and illustrations by John Broadley, is authoritative, substantial, witty, romantic, beautifully presented and completely moreish.

It seems almost redundant to point it out, so obvious is it, but I’ll say it anyway: Cooking by Jeremy Lee is the cookbook of the year. Echoes of Richard Bawden’s work for Fortnum and Masons and certainly a spine that you can easily pick out on a bookshelf. Alongside contemporaries such as Fergus Henderson, of St John, Lee takes as much credit as anyone for the extraordinary flourishing in our national cuisine over the past few decades. It’s wholesome food with twists but not too much and absolutely something people who love to cook would use. Some of my favourite cookbooks have spines that makes them very difficult to see on a packed shelf (Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet, Nigella’s How to Eat to name two), but this one is definitely grabbable!Jeremy Lee uses an old fashioned soup spoon for measuring which is quite quirky although he says a tablespoon will do just as well. The book is arranged with a chef’s eye for ingredients, and favourite things to eat throughout the seasons, rather than in courses or meals. Place the tart on a wire rack over a tray to catch any butter that may fall from the tart while baking. God knows that this kind of thing is standing on the shoulders of the great and the many,” he says, gesturing to the shelves on all walls of his home.