My latest tome, The River Cottage Meat Book, comes out next week, and I'm thrilled to hear that the OFM editor reckons it's perfectly OK -appropriate and desirable even - for me to plug it here in my column. So here goes.

Obviously, I hope you'll buy it, but at £25 a pop, I realise it's a bit of a stretch. But you do get 544 pages for that, 187 of which have lovely colour pictures - of animals dead or alive and dishes that I've made from them. If, on the other hand, you think that's too long, and a bit daunting, it may be worth my telling you that pretty much the entire contents of the book is summarised in two pages of the introduction (pages 8-9 to be precise), so you could always nip into a bookshop and 'browse' these two pages. Technically, I could request that you then send me a postal order for one penny (pro-rata royalties for two pages of my prose).

In lieu of the postal order, I'd rather you simply made an effort not to look too disappointed or disdainful when you put the book back on the shelf. It might put off other potential customers. A look that says, 'Fantastic stuff, I'm just off to the cashpoint now...' would be preferable to one that shrieks: 'I'm not going to pay 25 quid for a pompous lecture on why I should be paying three times as much for my meat just so some pig can get a back-rub and a sun-tan...'

If it's humour you're after, I like to think you won't be wholly disappointed, though I wouldn't describe this as a book for the loo. Not unless you want to experiment with the vaguely gestalt notion that blocked bowels may be relieved by looking at pictures of the kind of food that may have caused the problem in the first place.

Of course, most of the 'jokes' in the book are not exactly the kind of gags you can tell in the pub (though there is one, on page 286, about steak and kidney pie, which I reckon should earn you a free pint from any self-respecting landlord). Generally, the humour comes from subtle nuances of style and word play; delicate ironic counterpoints; paradoxical juxtapositions. OK, I admit, it's not a barrel of laughs.

There was one quite good, and quite true, anecdote about the time I went into a butcher's shop and happened to say, in all earnestness, 'Do you have pigs' trotters?' and the butcher actually did answer, with barely a beat's pause, 'No, it's just the way I'm standing...' But as I had to cut more than 40 pages to get it down to the magic 544 (principally in order to prevent the price going up to an astronomical £30), frivolities like this were among the first casualties. And not everyone in the editorial team was sorry to see them go...

If this book were a film, I would be able to come up with a variety of glamorous-sounding claims that, while technically true, might, on detailed analysis, turn out to be a tad disingenuous. I could quite legitimately say, for example, 'Three-and-a-half years in the making!', since I actually wrote the first words of the book in December 2000 and we began the photography in the summer of 2001. The idea would be, of course, to imply Painstaking Research and an Exhaustive but Unstoppable Quest for Truth. I could simply gloss over the other contributing factors to the four-year gestation, and a catalogue of missed deadlines: no fewer than two changes of publisher mid-book, the arrival of my second son, two moves of house and the fact that I stopped writing the book altogether in 2002 in order to bash out The River Cottage Year in time for a Channel 4 series of re-edited repeats of the series.

I could also say, of Simon Wheeler's stunning photography, 'Filmed entirely on location in west Dorset'. This claim is absolutely true, except, I think, for the pictures of Pammy and Ritchie Riggs's gorgeous geese, which were taken just over the border in Devon, and a couple of shots that Simon grabbed at his local farmers' market in Norfolk.

Actually, the original photographic Grand Plan had been to travel the length and breadth of the land, in search of the finest animals and the juiciest steaks in all of Britain. Then Simon and I presented our projected costing for such an excursion. Our editor mentally added our bar bill, and came back with the brilliant observation that 'If you did the Grand Tour thing, then it wouldn't really be the River Cottage Meat Book, would it?' The fact that I haven't lived at River Cottage for more than three years now, and that none of the photography could actually be done there, didn't seem to be troubling him in the least...

Of course, the most important claim you have to make these days in the opening credits of a movie is one I would genuinely struggle with as far as the book goes. Much as I plead in the text for consumers to think hard about issues of provenance, good husbandry and animal welfare when choosing their meat, I honestly don't think I would get away with it if I tried to say that, 'No animals were harmed in the making of this book'.

Stifado (a recipe for OFM that isn't in the book) serves 6 6 tbs olive oil approx 600g chuck steak; 600g shoulder of pork, all cut into large cubes; 250g pork belly, cut into large cubes, with the rind on 250ml red wine (preferably Greek) 4 large tomatoes, skinned and chopped 4 tbs red wine vinegar 3 garlic cloves, crushed 2 bay leaves, 1/2 tsp dried oregano, or Greek rigani 1 cinnamon stick, broken in half 1kg pickling onions or other small onions 25g butter chopped fresh parsley and oregano salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat half the olive oil in a large casserole and brown the meat all over. Remove. Add the red wine, allow to bubble for a few minutes, stirring.

Add the meat, tomatoes, vinegar, garlic, herbs and cinnamon plus enough water to cover; bring to a simmer, cover with a tightfitting lid and cook very gently for 1 hour on a very low hob or in the oven at 120°C, stirring occasionally.

Peel onions, leave whole. Heat the butter and the remaining oil in a large frying pan and sauté the onions until browned all over. Season with salt and pepper. Stir into the meat mixture, adding more water if dry. Cook for 1-1.5 hours, leaving the pan uncovered, if necessary, so the liquid thickens. Garnish.

The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £25 on 24 May. To order a copy for £22 plus p&p, call Observer Book Service on 0870 836 0885.