This is a cookbook for people who are looking for inspiration rather than instruction; one that will make you look at familiar ingredients in a new light, and welcome new ones with open arms.

Here Felicity Cloake offers an ingredient for each letter of the alphabet - twenty-six of her favourite things to eat, and recipes using them which will change the way that you think about these ingredients forever. In the Blue Cheese chapter, a Roquefort and honey cheesecake with walnut and pear; in Caramel, roast duck with miso caramel and in Rhubarb, rhubarb gin granita.

Yet there are also more straightforward dishes, no less original or delicious: beetroot noodles with goat's cheese, toasted walnuts and baby kale; chorizo baked potatoes with avocado crema; slow roast tomato pasta with lemon salt, ricotta and basil. And there are many more playful takes on favourite dishes: salted peanut caramel crispy cakes, aloo tikki scotch eggs, jelly cherry jubilee, buttermilk onion rings.

This is a book to shake you out of your recipe rut and make you start to think about food, and cook it in an entirely new way.