Men's Cooking Manual

Haynes Owner's Kitchen Manual

RRP: £19.99
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978 1 84425 869 7

From hot starts to dangerous desserts (All variations and flavours)
A no-nonsense guide to buying, cooking and eating great food

If you're the sort of bloke who has trouble telling olive oil from Castrol GTX, you're in luck. Haynes, the most practical, nuts-and-bolts publisher in the world, has finally tackled the tricky procedure of cooking.

The Men's Cooking Manual is a straightforward, no-nonsense guide to making food that's totally edible - and in some cases even tasty - written in the sort of language that men understand. Simple. To the point. Concise. With a few jokes. And lots. Of. Full. Stops.

Written by Chris Maillard, one of the founding editors of Top Gear magazine and a keen if unflashy cook, this book is for every man who would like to be able to lash together a quick snack, handle a weekday dinner or learn a few impressive tricks to wheel out at special occasions. Men's Cooking Manual covers everything from how to shop, buying and maintaining tools, selecting ingredients and basic cooking styles, through to at least one recipe that is almost guaranteed to burn your house to the ground.

It is guaranteed NOT to include the following:

• Glossy pictures of food stacked into a pile, drizzled with oil and garnished with two crossed chives.
• Recipes which begin "take 6.43 grams of extra virgin Corsican vanilla".
• Words like "exquisite", "luscious", "fabulous" and "tickety-boo".
• Photographs of busty women pretending to do seductive things with asparagus. Shame. We couldn't afford them.

Men's Cooking Manual does, however, include all the best real men's cooking techniques. Like warnings about cooking while drunk, an eye-watering section on chillies, and plenty of naked flames, boiling liquids, sharp knives and other dangerous but somehow tempting things to play with in the kitchen.

Men's Cooking Manual is the perfect gift for food-illiterate, lazy, enthusiastic but clueless or hassled, busy blokes. Which is almost all of them. It's also perfect for any man who is irritated by celebrity chefs' complicated recipes, annoying mannerisms and smug grins. Which is also almost all of them.

Cunningly, Men's Cooking Manual is out just in time for Father's Day, but it's also a great buy for students leaving home for the first time, working blokes who need swift, easy-to-understand recipes, and older geezers who never learned to cook because it was strictly women's work but always quite fancied a go. Your bachelor uncle Rupert, who always smells slightly of lavender, may prefer something nice by Nigella.

The Men's Cooking Manual is the answer to men's prayers. Or more specifically, the prayer that goes "Christ, I'm starving!".Make food, eat food. It doesn't get any simpler than this.

Author Chris Maillard is available for interview, or to write opinionated articles from 400 - 4,000 words! (Yes he is as opinionated as Simon Cowell and Jeremy Clarkson!)

1. Why chefs are the worst people to teach us how to cook
2. What women don't understand about food?
3. Five things every man needs to know in the kitchen
4. The most dangerous recipes in the world
5. Why men have been bossed out of the kitchen

Haynes is the world's foremost publisher of automotive repair manuals - more than 150 million have been sold worldwide. In addition, Haynes publishes manuals on a wide range of subjects - for example, the Royal Marines Fitness Manual, the Saxophone Manual, the Home Extension Manual, the Computer Manual and the Dog Manual. All are presented in an easy-to-read style with copious illustrations and diagrams.