The best cookbooks to gift or be gifted, according to our food editor
Cookbooks are being released at a rate of knots, bringing fresh inspiration to cooks everywhere. While new ideas are always welcomed, there are of course some tomes that we reach for time and again, that follow us from house to house and show their age through torn covers and oil-splattered pages.
These are the best cookbooks from the last century or so, filled with recipes that we know will never fail us. Every household should have these cookbooks on the shelves, they make excellent Christmas, birthday, wedding and housewarming gifts. There are the absolute classics like Elizabeth David and Julia Child that everyone should have on their shelves, alongside modern essentials from Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Yotam Ottolenghi, and best sellers based on successful restaurants such as Hoppers by Karan Gokani and Moro Made Easy by Sam and Sam Clark.
Of course, you'll also find one pot wonders for weeknight inspiration, Indian and Asian inspired recipe collections, dinner party worthy recipes, dedicated veggie and plant-based recipes book, and comfort food go tos. This is a round up of the best cookbooks that will inspire you in the kitchen for years to come.
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Our food editor's picks
Bao by Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung
This is a strikingly aesthetic debut cookbook-cum-manifesto from London’s cult Taiwanese restaurant group founders. Bao began with three art and design graduates serving Taiwanese steamed buns from an East London food stall which led to multiple award-winning London restaurants, each representing different interpretations of Taiwanese culture. The chapters describe each restaurant’s unique concept of ‘think food, serve design’, starting with the ‘holy grail’ recipe for their soft, fluffy, steamed BAO buns filled with Classic shredded pork, Fried chicken or the genius Horlicks ice cream; a witty riff on the Italian brioche filled with gelato. There’s recipes for Bao Bar Fitzrovia’s signature Beef cheek nuggets, Glazed tofu and pickles from Bao Grill House in Borough, comforting and moreish Dan Dan tofu noodles from Bao Noodle Shop in Shoreditch and comfort food like Lu Rou Fan pork rice as well as clever fusion cocktails like Melon sour with white miso and Somerset apple eau de vie. This isn’t a book for the amateur cook but it’s worth owning as a beautiful object and as inspiration into the delicious world of Taiwanese food.
Recipes from BAO's Erchen Chang
Moro Easy, by Samantha Clark and Samuel Clark
When the phenomenally successful first Moro cookbook by husband and wife Sam and Sam Clark was published over 20 years ago, the spices and flavours of North African, Spanish and Eastern Mediterranean swept into our kitchens. Now several more books and two more restaurants later, Moro Easy brings us more of their inspirational recipes, bursting with colour and flavour but simplified for quick and easy results. Conceived during lockdown when the Clark’s restaurants were closed and cooking meant three meals a day for their family, these recipes speak to the home cook. There are chapters for toasts, salads, one pot dishes and desserts: simple ideas that look and taste impressive once assembled, but are easy to make like ‘ceviche, pomegranate, lime, avocado’ or ‘Turkish eggs with tomato, feta and dill’, there’s even a ‘coffee and cardamom ice cream’ that doesn’t need to be churned. Colourful graphics are interspersed with Susan Bell’s beautiful photographs of dishes and evocative scenery, providing images that provoke a both sense of escapism and give context to the recipes. - Blanche Vaughn
Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many, by Jeremy Lee
These are recipes that sum up a lifetime of experience in the kitchen. Jeremy Lee has spent decades cooking in some of London’s iconic restaurants - Bibendum, Alastair Little and The Blue Print Cafe before settling at Quo Vadis where he remains the darling of London’s food scene. Lee’s inimitable writing style and infectious enthusiasm provides tales of purveying ingredients to cooking techniques (everything from pastry, pies, profiteroles and potatoes) and recipe inspiration, culminating in a classic that deserves a place on every shelf. Fish are charmingly described as ‘shiny darlings lifted from the deep’ and potatoes as ‘earthy delights’ in chapters arranged by ingredient: artichokes, blood oranges, impromptu suppers, soup, walnuts and so on, with jaunty illustrations by John Broadley. The recipes are comforting, seasonal and reliably good - ‘chestnut, bacon, bean and pumpkin soup’ or ‘plum compote and apple tart’ this is home cooking at its best. The famous smoked eel and horseradish sandwich from the menu at Quo Vadis is included as are dishes, as are musings on everything from breakfast porridge to cocktails. - Blanche Vaughn
Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka, by Cynthia Shabmugalingam
Shabmugalingam’s debut book precedes the opening of her first restaurant in London’s Borough Market this month. With recipes inspired by her North Sri Lankan roots, the book tells the story of “an immigrant kid” living in London cooking the dishes that connect her to the vibrant markets, sun drenched lush landscapes, and spice infused food that she has left behind. Illustrated with beautiful photographs by Alex Lau of Shabmugalingam’s homeland evoking a culture of families, farming and food. Back in her British kitchen, mainstay ingredients like potatoes, carrots and kale receive a Sri Lankan makeover, clothed in spices, carried by coconut sauces and spiked with curry leaves. From hopper pancakes to avail curry, tempered fried potatoes and Jaffna slow cooked lamb, the recipes combine both old and modern Sri Lankan dishes, steeped in a history of cultural influences, stories retold from a London kitchen. - Blanche Vaughn
Rice Table, Korean recipes and stories to feed the soul by Su Scott
Su Scott, a Korean born food writer living in London married to an Englishman, shares a personal collection of recipes from her Korean roots. This is a story of immigrant motherhood, raising a Korean-British child and passing on the food culture of her Korean roots. Scott introduces us to the sauces, seasonings and spices of Korean cuisine, charmingly describing it as ‘making friends with the ingredients’. With the tool kit of flavours under your belt, you can transform familiar vegetables, meat and grains into homestyle Korean dishes. There are small plates for sharing, like charred cabbage with Gochujang vinaigrette or Soy glazed aubergines. The recipes for pickles and kimchis are much easier to make than you might expect and good additions to other plates like Korean fried chicken, rice dishes and noodle soups. Clean, simple photography by Toby Scott gives the recipes a sense of lightness and approachability, wherever you’re from.
The River Cafe Look Book, Recipes for Kids of All Ages, by Ruth Rogers, Sian Wyn Owen and Joseph Trivelli
“Cooking is about surprising connections” write the authors of this innovative, modern, colourful and visual new cookbook from London’s famous River Cafe restaurant. The soft binding allows the reader to thumb through the colour steeped pages like a flip book, displaying photographed dishes and corresponding “images that speak to them”. A dessert of smooth raspberry sorbet faces a photograph of a vintage pink perspex telephone while on another page, the colour of slow roasted tomatoes with basil is mirrored by a photograph of a car body dripping with bright red paint. Over 50 delicious and simple recipes are printed on brightly coloured pages with a contrasting shade text that literally jumps out through its juxtaposition. Mathew Donaldson’s playful photographs provide a witty and modern aesthetic: giving the visual effect of scrolling through a brilliantly curated instagram recipe feed or flicking through an art magazine. The pared down simplicity of the recipes for pizza, pastas, dolci and more are fun to make with kids and tempting enough to serve to adults. Cooking should be fun and sensory and this book ”involves all of your senses. Above all it involves your imagination”. - Blanche Vaughn
Bake it, Slice it, Eat it, by Tom Oxford and Oliver Coysh
The Exploding Bakery, a cult cafe, wholesale bakery and shop opened in Exeter in 2011. Joint founders and bakers Tom Oxford and Oliver Coysh take a maverick approach to the fancy world of decorated cakes, promoting ingredients and flavour over complicated techniques. Their ethos, which shines through this book, offers “stripped back baking: no faffing around with fancy decorating, just a dedication to texture and flavour in one tray.” requiring minimum equipment for easily sliced cakes. Starter level recipes begin with ‘Raspberry and white choc Bakewell tray bake’, then as the book progresses there’s a nod to healthier options with ‘Sesame orange and fig slice’ and ‘flourless cherry and pistachio cake’ as well a touch of foraging in ‘sea buckthorn cheesecake’ and a reference to their location with a recipe for ‘Devon apple cake’. This book doesn’t expect you to spend hours baking and demystifies the processes that can intimidate. There’s something for everyone: short recipes, good ingredients and a touch of foraging - all baked in a tray. - Blanche Vaughn
Indonesian Table by Petty Pandean-Elliott
Award winning Indonesian chef and writer of multiple cookbooks, Petty Pandean-Elliott gives us not just recipes but also a history of Indonesian culture through its food. As much as a reference guide as a cookbook, filled with beautiful landscape photography of the islands, maps and glossaries of ingredients. There are recipes for much loved and familiar dishes - laksas, satay sauces, beef rendang and nasi goreng, as well as quick ideas like Sweetcorn fritters with chilli sambal, Turmeric coconut rice or Grilled pineapple with coconut milk to infuse your cooking with some Indonesian flavour. Even if you only cook a handful of recipes, you will feel you have travelled and explored these fascinating islands.
Plus the rest we want this year
1/24Zaika: Vegan Recipes from India, by Romy Gill, £14.37 from Amazon
Zaika is chef and food writer Romy Gill's first cookbook. It is dedicated to her mum, who taught her to cook. The plant-based recipe book is based on the regional vegan food from her childhood growing up in West Bengal, where meat was only eaten on special occasions. The book is tenderly from the heart, where she dispels myths that all "Indian food" is the same, and that vegan food takes a long time to prepare, instead showing how quick, tasty and oh-so simple it can be.
2/24One: Pot, Pan, Planet: A greener way to cook for you, your family and the planet, by Anna Jones, £20.05 from Amazon.
Food writer, columnist and former apprentice of Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant, Anna Jones' latest cookbook is all about keeping things simple, fast and easy. It not only contains a whole host of mouthwatering dishes, but also introduces a greener way to cook for ourselves, our families and the planet.
3/24Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking: Traditional Family Recipes From Italy's Best Home Cooks, by Vicky Bennison, £17.20 from Amazon.
In an unlikely turn of events, a group of Italian nonnas rose to fame through their YouTube channel in 2014, showing people how to make pasta. Their first book was a hit, and this new book is all about regional dishes from around Italy. Each page cleverly has a QR code on it too, so you can watch the YouTube video on the recipe, and instantly be transported to Italy.
4/24Meat Free Mexican: Vibrant Vegan Recipes, by Thomasina Miers, £16.99 from Amazon.
The latest book from Thomasina Miers, co-founder of Wahaca restaurants, cook and campaigner is Meat Free Mexican. In true Thomasina form, it's all about making food bright, bold, simple, fun and most of all, packed with flavour. Of course there's tacos, enchiladas and salads aplenty, as well as lots of inspiration for puddings to take care of sweet cravings.
5/24Mandalay: Recipes & Tales from a Burmese Kitchen, by MiMi Aye, £18.29 from Amazon.
As one of the few remaining Asian cuisines that's not so well known in the UK, author MiMi Aye, who was born in the UK to Burmese parents, draws on her heritage and family trips back to Burma to create this wonderful book. This collection of recipes showcases the umami and fermented flavours that are synonymous with Burmese food, including fritters, noodles, rice and salads. It also includes pictures of her family travelling around Burma, and is interwoven with stories to give a real insight into Burmese culture.
6/24How To Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food, by Nigella Lawson, £21.41 from Amazon.
Nigella's debut book How To Eat was first published in 1998 and instantly became a best-seller. It was dubbed the "the most valuable culinary guide published this decade" by the Sunday Telegraph and champions the pleasure of food, and the stress-relieving art of cooking in advance. At over 500 pages, it covers lots of the basics from how to roast chicken and making bechamel, to feeding babies and small children, where the biggest section is dedicated to the glorious weekend lunch.
7/24Sour: The Magical Element That Will Transform Your Cooking, by Mark Diacono, £15.99 from Amazon.
Award winning food writer Mark Diacono's cookbooks all explore one element. Sour looks at vinegars, yoghurts and fermentation – among many other things – and how they can take our food to the next level. Championing the ancient art, which is having another moment in the form of sour beers and kimchi, this book is both informative and highly tempting. His previous book is Spice.
8/24Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, by Alice Waters, £3.56 from Amazon.
From the restaurant of the same name in Berkley, USA, this book is based on the restaurant’s daily changing menu, which, when it opened in 1971, was a pretty ground breaking concept. It was here Alice started a farm to table ethos, only serving food using ingredients that were local and in season. This classic book essentially teaches you how to entertain with a perfectly balanced menu.
9/24Hoppers: The Cookbook: Recipes, Memories and Inspiration from Sri Lankan Homes, Streets and Beyond, by Karan Gokani, £19.29 from Amazon.
The first Hoppers restaurant opened in London's Soho in 2015, and it's had a cult following ever since. After opening two more restaurants, owner Karen Gokani has brought the much-loved recipes together in this beautiful book of the same name. It's so good, you'll no doubt find yourself buying a hopper pan to perfect the country's signature dish, the hopper: a bowl-shaped pancake made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk. Recipes are full of flavour and colour from dosas and pickles to rotis and curries. The book takes you on an adventure, and brings a little slice of the island to your home.
10/24The River Cafe Cookbook, by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers, £23.45 from Amazon.
The River Cafe has long been a real institution. The Italian restaurant has seen many a now-famous chef working on its pass, from Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall to Jamie Oliver, and Ruth Bloomfield who went on to open The Spotted Pig in New York. The original River Cafe cookbook is still the best for simple, elegant Italian cooking.
11/24The Spanish Home Kitchen: Simple, Seasonal Recipes and Memories from My Home, by José Pizarro, £19.35 from Amazon.
As the godfather of Spanish food, José’s books are all inspiring and really bring home the essence of Spanish cooking. His latest gives a real insight into the home cooking of his family, by sharing recipes passed down through generations, which are all from his hometown Talvn in Extremadura in southwest Spain. It's dedicated to his mother, Isobel, and is full of regional dishes, each with its own memory of his family.
12/24Sugar, I Love You, by Ravneet Gill, £12.37 from Amazon.
This book is a real love letter to what Revneet Gill calls the ‘constant companion in her life’: sugar. After working in restaurants including London's St. John and Llewellyn’s, Sugar, I Love You is the second sweet tooth book from pastry chef, Ravneet Gill. This is a joyful book of baking recipes from the sugar queen herself that caters to every level of cook and celebrates sugar in all its forms.
13/24French Provincial Cooking, £11.05 from Amazon.
As the godmother of home cooking Elizabeth David is responsible for taking it from the drab and mundane to exciting and fresh. This book was first published in 1960, and its reprint decades later is testament to its reliability and importance. It is an absolute classic cookbook, and is as interesting to read as it is to cook from. There's no better introduction to everyday French cooking than this.
14/24Cooking With Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook, by Jamie Oliver, £15.53 from Amazon.
Regardless of if you're a well-weathered cook or if you're a real beginner, everyone needs a trusty guide with plenty of the basics in. This book from Jamie Oliver lays out easy to follow information on the tools you need, to the different cuts of meat. The recipes are simple, accessible and really good. There's nothing boring here, and it makes a really great first cookbook for budding chefs.
15/24Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen, by Ravinder Bhogal, £18.29 from Amazon.
Ravinder Bhogal believes in cooking without borders, which is inspired by her heritage. She was born to Indian parents in Kenya, but grew up in London. In both her restaurant and cookbook which share the same name (it means ‘kitchen’ in Kiswahili), she celebrates the way recipes change as people move around the world. It's joyful, colourful and full of flavour, just as you'd expect.
16/24The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand and Vilna to the Present Day, by Claudia Roden, £23.45 from Amazon.
Written by Claudia Roden, who was born in the Jewish quarter of Cairo, this celebratory cookbook has more than 800 recipes and took her 15 years to bring together, travelling across the world, gathering ideas and stories. The book is a fascinating history of the cuisines of the Jewish diaspora, which shows how this cuisine has developed across the world.
17/24Much More Veg by Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall, £20.05 from Amazon.
River Cafe alumni Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall went on to create the inimitable River Cottage HQ on the Devon and Dorset border that champions the farm to fork ethos. As a food writer his books have won numerous awards, where this one was the best-selling meat free cookbook. It inspires us to get creative with the humble vegetable, and to make it the main part of your meal, not just a side dish to meat.
20/24Nose To Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson, £13.71 from Amazon.
Based on the philosophy of his restaurant at St John, which opened in 1995 in London's Smithfield, Fergus has championed using the entirety of an animal and helped bring back offal onto modern menus. The photography and words in this book distill the quirky and ever popular character of this famous restaurant. It's not one for vegetarians, let's just say that…
21/24Flavour, by Ixta Belfrage and Yotam Ottolenghi, £15 from Amazon.
There's no shortage of excellent Ottolenghi books but Flavour has been widely received as one of the best to date, as well as his latest test kitchen series books. Written with Ixta Belfrage, Flavour boasts everyday recipes for making vegetables the absolute star of every show. Split into three parts, process, pairing and produce, it explains how to take vegetables and add flavour to really elevate them into showstopping dishes.
22/24Pierogi: Over 50 Recipes To Create Perfect Polish Dumplings, by Zuza Zak, £14.22 from Amazon.
Polish food writer Zuza Zak started her career by proving Polish cuisine was more than just dumplings. Now she feels attitudes to Eastern European food have matured-there's nothing left to prove and now it’s time to celebrate. Using pierogi, the nation's most famous type of dumpling, she takes readers on a journey to understand Poland’s regional cuisine through dumplings. The traditional part of the book is split into east, west, north and south, and the second section looks at more modern varieties, including vegan and gluten free.
23/24Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering The Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat, £23.99 from Amazon.
Californian chef Samin Nosrat realised if something wasn't working, it was up to these four principles to make it better: salt, fat, acid or heat. This tome helps to teach essential recipes such as dressings or braising meat by understanding the basics. The book is a New York Times best-seller, was the Fortnum & Mason best debut book of 2018 and has inspired a Netflix series of the same name.
24/24Hang Fire Cookbook, by Shauna Guinn and Samantha Evans, £10.66 from Amazon.
This is the bible for southern grilling. From Texas to Tallahassee, Cardiff based duo Sam and Shauna took a road trip to really get under the skin of the experts to find the real tricks behind nailing that smokey, fiery barbecued goodness. In the book you'll learn the basics, from how to rub, cure and brine, how to home smoke your meat, the different types of fuel and how to cook low and slow for the ultimate meat celebration.
