...for my birthday

I got the wonderful Flavour Thesaurus! It's a marvellous compilation of food pairings by Niki Segnit, a self-confessed home cook who took on the Sisyphean task of documenting what-goes-with-what.

It's a lovely book to read - nice paper stock and well designed, and is suprisingly easy to dip in and out of. The scope of the book is international so you find out that the pairing of cucumber and rose is a distinctly Scottish/English quirk, and that although goats cheese and fresh coriander may sound strange to our ears, it is ubiquitous in Mexico.

The beauty of the book is just that - she covers classic pairings like say, cheese and apple, but also explores the further reaches of the culinary imagination.  I'd never thought to pair oily fish and anise before, but after reading about Heston Blumenthal's experiments with salmon and liquorice I'm starting to wonder if it might be worth a try...