The prospect of dinner and a movie is always an enticing one. Whether it is a date early on in a relationship with all the apprehension and barely contained frisson that that entails or an opportunity for a child free evening and the chance to watch a full length film of your choice without having to keep your finger on the remote to pause for toilet breaks, the combination of food and cinema is a winning one. Food is inextricably linked to all aspects of our lives, food for feasts, food to comfort, food to harm and always food to raise the sexual tension. Cinematographers know this too. So often there are dishes in a movie that deserve a mention in the credits so pivotal are they to the storyline. You only have to mention "Silence of the Lambs" for fava beans and chianti spring into the conversation and apple pie is often off or suddenly back on the menu for anyone who has recently watched American Pie for the first time. Let us get one thing straight here the dishes celebrated in this book are not physically available at the pictures. Food served in containers too large to be used as airline carryon baggage is not what this book is about. The recipes here are for those movie moments that made you step away from the popcorn bucket. Who doesn't want to slice garlic with a razor blade to create the garlicky spaghetti sauce so lovingly made in Goodfellas or jump through the screen to nibble absolutely everything in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory (including Johnny Depp although that may be just my own fantasy) and every woman on this planet wants "what she's having" in When Harry met Sally! So this is your chance, if it was eaten on screen then the recipe for it may well be in this book. Unless of course you fancy making the chilled monkey brains from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in which case I suggest you still buy the book but change your dessert plans. What about a nice Apple Strudel from the Sound of Music instead?

With food prices rising faster than the national debt we need to get every scrap of value from the goods we buy. Good menu planning is a sure way of saving money, and this book takes menu planning to another level. It shows how, by linking your meals from one day to another, you can cook - and shop - economically but deliciously; and use up any leftover ingredients that might otherwise be scraped into the bin or left to gather mould in the fridge. Example of a meal chain in the book: THE ROAST CHICKEN TO PIZZA MARGERITA CHAIN Roast chicken > use the carcass to make stock and the leftover chicken meat to make Chicken risotto > use leftover risotto plus salami, mozzarella and passata to make Arancini with tomato sauce >use the leftover salami, mozzarella and passatta to make Pizza Margarita. Four meals - all linked, and no wasted ingredients. Other chains include: Roast Lamb to a Dirty Martini through six links. Poached Salmon to Chocolate Cake through five links. Chicken tikka to hummus in four links. Beef brisket to egg fried rice in four links. Breaking the chain Links in the chain can be frozen, ready and waiting for the chain to be started up at a later date. The aim? To reduce waste with no compromise on taste.