James Martin's great British dinners - James Martin

Chef James Martin offers simple-to-prepare recipes for classic British meals, from the humble pork pie to roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, battered cod and chips and steak and kidney pie. Also included are some of the best dishes we have adopted from overseas, such as chicken tikka masala and spaghetti bolognaise. The recipes are divided into eight chapters: all-day breakfasts; soups, tarts and terrines; roasts, pies and bakes; stews, pots and spicy foods; fish and seafood; extras; puds; and cakes.

James Martin is one of Britain's favourite chefs. He wowed the country with his great desserts and cakes in the hugely popular BBC series Sweet Baby James, and also presents Saturday Kitchen on BBC1. He most recently co-presented the BBC's The Great British Village Show, which celebrated the traditional village fte. James won fame for quite a different talent when he reached the semi-finals of the 2005 series of Strictly Come Dancing. He is a consultant to P&O and has his own restaurants on the

British food, yes. British dinners, yes again. But British cuisine, no. There is something about what we, the British, call British food that rests uneasily in a broader context of, for example, European cookery. As if roast beef and Yorkshire pudding give food a bad name. British food, orthodox opinion has it, is just an embarrassment to the rest of Europe. Even Americans laugh at British food. There can be no escaping the strong negative connotations of British heritage cookery, but James Martin here makes the most of some very simple dishes and recipes, not all of them British (there is more to British dinners than British food). Food nostalgia is popular and there is some evidence that traditional British food is fashionable, perhaps with a younger demographic.