A 2020 New Yorker Best Cookbook of the Year, Peter Hertzmann's mission is simple - to make as many people as possible realise that if you can manage 50 ways of cooking one simple ingredient - the carrot - you can cook almost any dish, and cook it to perfection.

Every method (it is a book of methods, not recipes) presented in this book is approachable for both novice cooks and those with many years' experience and the methods are usually applicable to other ingredients, He gives prescriptive advice, such as the salt concentration for pickling a carrot should be 3%, but his book is easy to put into action in the kitchen.

Some of the methods and topics

Simple slices - Matchsticks, julienne, or bâtonnets - Dicing - Roll cut - Grating carrots - Mandolins - Juicing carrots - Blending carrots - Immersion blenders

Making sauerkraut - A new-fangled pickling container - Salt fermented carrots - Miso-pickled carrots - Acid fermentation - Keeping pickles crisp - Acid fermented carrot pickles - Determining liquid quantity - Salt for acid pickling - Sugar for pickling - Pickling spices - Processing acid-fermented carrots