SAM PARISH, KOA PRESS, $49.99

Cook smart, not hard – that’s the ethos behind Sam Parish’s Cook Me: 30 Dishes Cooked 3 Ways. And in service of this ethos, Parish has come up with a rather cool concept. She takes 30 classic ingredients or techniques and provides three recipes for each. First a ‘slap it together’ recipe (‘hack-style’ minimum-fuss), secondly a ‘go-to’ (tried-and-true recipes) and thirdly ‘long game’ recipes that go the full nine yards. So for, say, potatoes you’ll get a three-way of recipes including loaded fries, potato salad and twice-cooked garlic lemon potatoes.

It’s a fun and interesting concept and one that I think works better for some chapters than others. I’m not sure the difference in difficulty or technique is always so defined.

A lot of effort has gone into making the book useful, with a series of icons that point at tips to make a recipe vegetarian/vegan say, or to spice or jazz it up.

There’s a really distinctive pop art look to the book and that, along with the sheer amount of info on each page – with icons and tips and tags – means that it can look busy at first, but once you get used to it and are familiar with the various keys it’s all useful information. And ultimately, it suits Sam’s style of cooking to a tee – MOFMOF, minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour. Get a signed, gift- wrapped copy at koapress.co.nz. SÍANA CLIFFORD