Variations you say?

I got this book at the big charity shop in Nottingham, you know the one, halfway up the hill, near the pasta place and the joke shop? Yes you do. It's all glass and stairs and they always have that lovely display of ties near the counter. That one.
Anyway, having paid my 50p to the slightly strange lady behind the counter i emerged triumphant with 'Variations on a recipe' by Jean Conil & Hugh WIlliams. A slim little paperback, originally published in 1980, it provides simple but tasty recipes and then....and then..it provides variations! For each recipe! Genius.
Furthermore it freely tells you the calorie count for each portion but i suggest you follow my lead and ignore them because the Spaghetti Conil recipe has 700 calories per portion! Which is a lot even if it is a yummy but somewhat retro pasta dish.
It also, god bless it's little cookbooky socks, has the very handy, should be required in ALL cookbooks, metric> imperial> cups converversion chart at the front, dear lord, i love those things.
It rather wonderfully continues with a chemistry and physics section so i am now fully aware that a sauce 'should have no less than 40% of the total amount as wine'. The sort of cookery magic that no one ever thinks to bloody well tell you.
It's not overly heavy on vegetarian recipes but the ones that are included do look like they could provide a talking point next time The Vegan graces me with her fair presence, well two of them, everything else appears to have hard boiled egg yolks in it, begging the question..what the hell do i do with the whites? Feed them as a ever so odd starter and ensure everyone is talking about me and my weird choice of party foods, pop them straight in the bin or...what? I don't know. Other than that it's an ace book and full of win.