Discover Rachel Allen's timeless collection of recipes for soups, breads, garnishes, stocks and more.

In this love-letter to the world's most ubiquitous dish, acclaimed TV chef, cookery writer and renowned teacher, Rachel Allen, explores everything soup has to offer. Whether as a starter or main dish, a quick fix or a leisurely indulgence, to nourish a cold or heal a broken heart, or to feed yourself, your family or a crowd of friends, there is a soup for every occasion. With Rachel's expert guidance you can learn the classics and then expand your horizons, with delicious, achievable, heart-warming recipes you'll turn to time and time again.

Recipes include:

• Carrot and harissa soup with za'atar croutons
• Chunky chickpea and chorizo broth
• Italian wedding soup
• Japanese chicken and udon noodle broth
• Watermelon gazpacho
• Nordic salmon and dill soup
• - Fish ball laksa
• Lamb and pearl barley broth
• West African peanut soup
• Pork and fennel meatball soup

Rachel also shares easy recipes for fresh homemade breads, as well as clever garnishes, essential stocks, and a wealth of tips on equipment, batch-cooking, freezing, and presentation.

Just as every cook needs good soup in their repertoire, this book will be a must-have source of inspiration for every kitchen shelf.

Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans-all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world? A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French-speaking mother's gumbo often began with a chicken chased down in the yard. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries. In Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou, Wells does just that. He spends time with octogenarian chefs who turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; observes the gumbo-making rituals of an iconic New Orleans restaurant where high-end Creole cooking and Cajun cuisine first merged. Gumbo Life, rendered in Wells' affable prose, makes clear that gumbo is more than simply a delicious dish: it's an attitude, a way of seeing the world. For all who read its pages, this is a tasty culinary memoir-to be enjoyed and shared like a simmering pot of gumbo.