There's more to a salad than just lettuce and tomatoes as Elsa Petersen-Schepelern clearly shows in her attractively presented book on the subject. From accompaniments, starters and main courses, she offers an inspirational range of tasty temptations all accompanied by the luscious photographs of Peter Cassidy. So fresh and vibrant are the pictures, you almost expect to see a caterpillar crawl out from under a leaf! Salad dressings, mayonnaise, pestos, couscous, noodles and rice all feature in these pages along with more filling meat and fish salads such as French duck salade tiede, rare beef salad and mussels in ice wine. In often eclectic but surprisingly satisfactory concoctions there is Thai mango beef salad, chicory with chorizo, carrot salad with coriander curd. Globally influenced, you will soon discover there's more to salad than just salad cream and a cos lettuce. - Lucy Watson