"When Diana Henry was sixteen she started a menu notebook (a composition book carefully covered in gift wrap) in which she wrote up the meals she wanted to cook. She kept this book for years. Putting a menu together is still her favorite part of cooking. Menus aren't just groups of dishes that have to work on a practical level (meals that cooks can manage), they also have to work as a succession of flavors. But what is perhaps most special about them is the way they can create very different moods--menus can take you places, from an afternoon by the sea in Brittany, to a sultry evening mezze in Istanbul. They are a way of visiting places you've never seen, revisiting places you love, and celebrating particular seasons. [This book] contains many of Diana's favorite dishes in menus that will take you through the year and to different parts of the world."--Inside cover.