5 star books

The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde

The Wilderness Cure begins and ends on Black Friday. In what Mo Wilde saw as a symbol of destructive consumer behaviour towards the planet, she made a pledge: to live off entirely free and foraged food for an entire year. As a foraging specialist, ethnobotanist and research herbalist, Mo was more than equipped to meet the demands of her wild experiment.

The book diaries her year, journaling the seasons and weaving in historical accounts and studies to present a compelling argument for more mindful eating habits. She details the highs and lows of the journey from the scarce winter months, her relationship with eating meat, to how her body changes and reacts to a diet of foraged food. And while food may be wild, the meals she makes are as elegant as the writing describing it. Nothing goes to waste, nuts are made into flours, berries into ferments and ingredients dehydrated to last for longer. They are turned into meals that sound as if they’d be at home on the menu of any fine dining restaurant.

It’s written with such charm and an open reverence for the natural world, it’s impossible not to want to join her in examining our relationship with food. For instance, she forages an astonishing amount of different plant species and in doing so, shines a light on the relatively small amount that most of us eat as supermarket consumers. In a time of soaring living costs, the knowledge of how to find nutritious and free food on our doorstep would be valuable to have.

The Wilderness Cure makes a thought-provoking case for us to examine what, how and when we eat certain foods and our relationship with the environment that produces them. It is essential reading, not just for those interested in foraging and food but for all of us as consumers.

Review Rating: Five stars
Buy this book: The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde
£16.99, Simon & Schuster UK

Review written by Nick Dodd a Leeds-based pianist, teacher and writer. Contact him at www.yorkshirepiano.co.uk

The Wilderness Cure has been shortlisted for the Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2022

Motherland by Melissa Thompson

What’s the USP? The front cover of Melissa Thompson’s Motherland describes it as ‘A Jamaican Cookbook’, which is something of an understatement, all things considered. Motherland is a cookbook, yes, and it shares with its reader the food and recipes that feed and fuel Jamaicans each day. But it also shares something more than that: a history, both political and cultural, and an addressing of the many factors that create a modern cuisine.

Who wrote it? Thompson is a food writer who regularly pops up in weekend papers and glossy food magazines. Born in Dorset to a Jamaican father and a Maltese mother, this is her first cookbook. There will be no complaints if she chooses to publish a dozen more.

Is it good bedtime reading? Motherland is excellent, if not happy, bedtime reading. In Thompson’s introduction to the book she describes it as ‘a history of the people, influences and ingredients that uniquely united to create the wonderful patchwork cuisine that is Jamaican food today’. This history is scattered throughout the book – partly through the short introductions to each recipe, but mostly through powerful essays that are not afraid to cover the ground our school educations often ignore. These sections do not make for light reading, emotionally, but are fascinating and rich with a love and respect for the native people of Jamaica and its fellow Caribbean islands.

How annoyingly vague are the recipes? Thompson is descriptive without being prescriptive – the perfect balance. Here we have a book that accounts for the way real ingredients might vary, and offers crisp and clear instruction on turning the food you have at hand into something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? The eternal question of where to find great cuts of meat remains for many, so you may stumble in your quest for oxtail, mutton or goat. And while many supermarkets still lack the likes of breadfruit and yams, they’re still easy enough to find if you look for a good international market. Otherwise, the majority of dishes here are well within reach.

What’s the faff factor? Thompson is serving up some real comfort foods here, and comfort foods usually go one of two directions. You’ve got your slow and steady options – stews and roasts that you can more or less leave to themselves. From the Red Peas Soup to Roast Chicken with Thyme & Grapefruit, there’s plenty of those on offer. And then you’ve got the fried goodness. These dishes, be they Ginger Beer Prawns, Sticky Rum & Tamarind Wings or Curry Fried Chicken are definitely a faff, but might also be the most delicious things in here.

How often will I cook from the book? This could easily be in regular rotation in your kitchen. Thompson’s ideas are fun, flavoursome and – importantly – varied. There are all the dishes you that may first leap to mind when you think of Jamaican cooking (jerk, curry goat, and even a recipe for homemade ginger beer), but also a wealth of discoveries to be made.

Killer recipes: Peanut & Sweet Potato Stew, Oxtail Nuggets with Pepper Sauce Mayo, Crispy Ginger Beer Pork Belly, Guinness Punch Pie, Tamarind & Bay Caramel Brownies

Should I buy it? If you’re looking for a book that delivers real gastronomical insight as well as deeply flavoursome dishes to bring real cosiness to your kitchen, this is a great way into Jamaican cuisine. If you aren’t looking for that, there’s no helping you.

Cuisine: Jamaican
Suitable for: Beginner and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy the book: Motherland by Melissa Thompson
£26, Bloomsbury Publishing

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Nottingham-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas

Motherland has been shortlisted for the Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2022

Lune by Katie Reid

Lune: Croissants All Day, All Night – to which is there any other answer than, yes please? Making croissants is something I’ve always thought best left to the professionals. It’s a fine art and while not rocket science, there’s definitely crossover: one requires precision, delicacy and an intricate understanding of weight and heat distribution; the other is rocket science. Kate Reid, owner and author of Lune, originally worked as an aerospace engineer for the Williams Formula 1 Team before a trip to Paris convinced her to apply her skillset to making croissants. Over a decade later, Lune has multiple venues in Australia, queues of people willing to wait hours to try their products and as of last year, a debut cookbook.

Reid has talked at length at how the two seemingly distinct career paths have benefited one another. She compares Lune to a “croissant Formula 1 team”, being driven by a need for an experimental and results driven approach in the pursuit of excellence. The book wears its engineering influences quite literally on its sleeve: starting with the croissant-shaped spaceship logo, a sleek black and reflective silver design, high contrast photography and a rigorously assembled ingredients list and methodology. Recipes are broadly listed by what time of day to have them, from Breakfast to Dinner, all the times in between and interspersed with personal stories of establishing Lune.

The golden thread throughout the book is the croissant dough. Once made, it can be applied to numerous different pastry recipes ranging from croissants, cruffins, danishes, escargots and more. Alongside the classics, are inventive recipes like Chocolate Plum Sake Danishes or Beef Bourguignon croissants. The book gets this out of the way early and it’s only fair I should too: you will not be travelling at speed. It will take at least 48 hours over the course of three days and a decent amount of effort to produce a single batch. Croissant casuals need not apply.

Day one requires a morning making a poolish and an afternoon bringing the dough together. Day two is lamination, the process of layering butter and pastry that gives croissants their flaky layers and if laminated in the morning, can then be shaped in the evening. Day three calls for a 2am start (spoiler: I did not get up at 2am), proving the croissants for five hours before baking to have with breakfast.

It is as time consuming as the book assures you it is but the dough recipe is so exacting, with photographs accompanying every step and measurements to the centimetre and gram there is little scope to go wrong. It is entirely worth the effort. I bake mine at a much more reasonable 1pm, filling the house with croissant pheromones that continually entice us back into the kitchen to check on their progress. The results are ethereal wonders, so lovingly formed and delicate I consider making an application for a UNESCO heritage listing to preserve them forever. They taste even better, as if they descended fully formed, a divine aura sailing them gracefully into my mouth.

Thankfully, the dough recipe returns enough for five batches and leaves plenty of opportunity to explore other pastries. The Cacio e Pepe Escargot is as lavish as its namesake. Danishes filled with strawberries and a burnt miso caramel custard are a rollercoaster of sweet and savoury. Cruffins are surprisingly easy to assemble and, in less of a shock, absolutely magnificent when filled with a peanut butter crème pâtissière and jam.

There are some small barriers to entry, investments in both time and equipment being examples. If you’re already a home baker, you’ll likely have the essentials to make the dough but for certain recipes, you’ll need more bespoke items like small, square silicone moulds for danish pastries. However, I didn’t have some of these and used the best equivalent I could find. The results were, admittedly, misshapen but no less delicious for it.

One of the many joys of this book is its laser focus. All of the recipes start from the same place – the croissant dough – which you’re going to learn to do very well and then apply it in an abundance of wildly inventive recipes. It’s refreshing to be encouraged to hone a craft, that yes, this is a practice of patience and discipline but it’s worth doing well. And once mastered, it can be taken in any creative direction you like – the sky’s the limit as they say, though I think Lune makes me want to shoot for the moon.

Cuisine: International
Suitable for: Confident home cooks/professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy the book: Lune: Croissants All Day, All Night by Katie Read
£28, Hardie Grant Books

Review written by Nick Dodd a Leeds-based pianist, teacher and writer. Contact him at www.yorkshirepiano.co.uk

Lune has been shortlisted for the Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2022

Interview with Jeremy Lee by Andy Lynes

Jeremy Lee is one of the shortlisted authors in the food category of this year’s Andre Simon Awards for his marvellous debut Cooking. Dundee born Jeremy Lee one of London’s most celebrated chef and heads up the kitchens at Quo Vadis restaurant and club in London’s bustling Soho. He was previously the head chef of Sir Terence Conran’s Blueprint Cafe in Shad Thames and at Euphorium in Islington where he first came to national attention (Independent news paper critic Emily Bell said that Lee ‘delivers flavour like Oliver Stone serves up violence’, a very 1995 sort of thing to say). Working backwards in time, Lee also cooked at Alistair Little at 49 Frith Street (now home to Hoppers Sri Lankan restaurant and just a ladle’s throw from Quo Vadis in Dean Street) and at Bibendum in South Kensington for Simon Hopkinson.

Cooking has quite rightly been described by ESQUIRE magazine as ‘cookbook of the year’ and also ‘long awaited’ which is equally true. What took you so long!

Ah, you are too kind. This was a greatly appreciated gong. Oh golly, so many factors contributed to the time taken, not least building the confidence to realise that not all had been written about food as food evolves constantly as does cooking, ingredients and seasons. It took so long finding the path that would include, Mum and Dad, childhood, home, becoming a chef and the extraordinary learning curve required to acquire the knowledge to run a kitchen, write menus and find the produce with which to furnish the kitchen to produce the dishes. The book was not so different. It was also hugely impactful learning that writing a book and running a kitchen were not the easiest of bedfellows, played a considerable role in a lengthy delay.

The book is very distinctive, in terms of writing style, content and design. Was it a conscious decision to try and do something different or just the way the book turned out?

Ah, thank you. In truth, the arbitrary approach seemed to fall quite naturally on the pages. There was always just the great hope the book would be good but there was never really a structured plan, more an instinctive and intuitive feeling that grew exponentially as the book progressed. I have written much for newspapers and journals but had never written on this scale. The most fascinating thing was the realisation that the book had to feel quite natural and pleasing.

I’ve had the good fortune to see chef’s kitchen ‘recipes’ in situ which are often no more than a list of ingredients and weights if they are even written down. The recipes in Cooking are brilliantly written for the home cook and work perfectly in the domestic kitchen. Did that take some mental re-wiring on your part to see things from the home cook’s perspective?

Ah, years of writing columns for the Guardian, other broadsheets and a fair few journals had taught me much. The most important quality was a genuine and honest approach avoiding myriad pitfalls. Most importantly, taking nothing for granted and ensuring a place in the finished manuscript. There were too a wealth of memories from years watching my Granny and my Mum in the kitchen cooking for her family which were easily tapped being buried deep in our, my siblings and my subconscious.

I’m guessing that you had a lot of recipes to draw on for the book, how did you go about narrowing down the selection?

Oh that was fun, I would say, mostly trial and the occasional error. Writing a menu, you only ever choose dishes you want to cook and eat yourself. It was the same with the book. Some old, some new, some constant, some occasionally. It seemed natural to pay homage to the great writers, cooks, chefs, restaurants, suppliers and producers enjoyed over the years with a growing awareness of being in the now and dishes that would continue to please. Louise Haines who had commissioned and was to publish the book and Carolyn who edited the book were brilliant at steering with the most subtle of quiet comments ensured nothing went in that had not been fully considered and put down on paper fully. Many chapters grew wildly such as fish, a chapter that could have been twice the size until Louise calmly explained about the flow and balance of the chapters.

What are your three favourite recipes in the book or recipes that best represent your style of cooking for readers who might be new to your food?

Oh no, terrible ask. I love them all. It’s like someone in the dining room asking what they should order. Were I to choose, eek, then, roast leg of pork with bitter leaves, onions and sage might be one, another might be steamed kid pudding and probably that good friend, a smoked eel sandwich. But oh, there are so many more.

You’ve done some TV (Great British Menu obviously but I also remember a magazine programme on Channel 4 I think to which you contributed recipe demonstrations including what I recall as an historic version of mushrooms on toast – hope I haven’t misremembered that!) but isn’t it high time you had your own series? Could Cooking be the perfect springboard for that?

Oh Telly…well thank you, you certainly know how to make a cook blush. I love telly and think often of Michael Smith, Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey who presented cooking with such ease, charm and style. Should the stars align, perhaps something charming in the loveliest kitchen with the glorious family we made when turning a manuscript into a book?

What does being shortlisted for the Andre Simon award mean to you?

Oh my goodness, such a nomination means the world. I have judged books several times and it is a task not taken lightly. I know well from my time as adjudicator that each book had to be scrutinised and each decision made, justified to a scrupulous committee. When the judgement of the judge is under scrutiny , oh lordy, one must be so sure and say so. So this is truly a very great honour and I could not bow lower.

What is your desert island cookbook?

Oh my, there are so many. Yet there is always a pile of constant favourites and I think, the one forever on the or near the top is French Provincial Cooking, beside Italian Food by Elizabeth David. Peerless.

Cooking has been a big success, are you planning a follow up?

Thank you. Tis such a great honour. And, well, as it happens, there is to be another ,4^th Estate having just commissioned a second book. We barely touched on puddings, and I can say no more as the scraps of paper covered in thoughts once again litter desk and floor at home.

Read the review

Buy the book: Cooking by Jeremy Lee
£30, Fourth Estate

Read more about the Andre Simon Award 2022

The Cook You Want To Be by Andy Baraghani

Two of my friends, Jack and Harry, are brothers. Sometimes it seems as though Jack and Harry have very little in common, besides the fact that they are both singer-songwriters with a satisfying mid-Wales accent. But the truth, of course, is that they share many traits. Perhaps the biggest of these: they each are blessed with a confidence in their own opinions hitherto not seen outside of the central residence of Vatican City.

In most folk, this sort of conviction of belief might come across as arrogant. But Jack and Harry deliver their righteous indignation with a charm and a knowing sense of silliness. After all, absolutely nothing Jack or Harry share their opinions on actually matters, and I think they know it. And so I’m able to enjoy the ludicrous confidence I am faced with as they pretend the first three Billy Joel albums don’t exist, or chastise me for having the audacity to drink Orangina despite not being a Parisian schoolboy. None of this matters. It’s all just supplementary colour; decoration to a life well lived.

Andy Baraghani’s The Cook You Want To Be reminds me a little of Jack and Harry. Baraghani, who trained at Chez Panisse before working for Bon Appétit as a Senior Food Editor, is perhaps as present in his cookbook as any food writer has ever been. Yes, the cookbook can be an intensely personal literary form, and writers like Nigel Slater have made a career out of delivering food-forward diaries. But Baraghani somehow moves beyond this. He is more than the author of The Cook You Want To Be; he is an ingredient in each recipe, his opinions and obsessions worn on his turmeric-stained sleeves.

From the very outset, Baraghani writes with passion and walks a tightrope of self-awareness. The book’s title often seems like a deliberate misdirection – though his advice frequently encourages the reader to grow and develop as a cook, it is only rarely that we aren’t pressed in very specific directions. We are told which brand of Japanese mandoline to use, we are gently pushed to use more herbs, teased if we don’t love garlic. Is this The Cook You Want To Be or The Cook Andy Baraghani Wants You To Be? Does it really matter, when the food tastes this good?

And the food does taste good, that much is not in doubt. Baraghani’s dishes draw heavily on his Persian background, his training at Chez Panisse, and what he eats at home. The result is a book that is, not unlike the author, unpretentious but still a little showy. Take the Buttery Beef and Peanut Stir-fry, which I knocked up on a weekday evening in less than half an hour. Twenty minutes of that was marinating time. The final dish was scrappy-looking but full of depth of flavour. The sort of thing that will catch a visiting friend off-guard, which is possibly the best thing one can do when cooking for someone else. Surprise: this is incredible.

Dishes are split into sections with tellingly possessive titles (‘Snacks to Share… or Not’, ‘Soup Obsessed’, ‘Fish, I Love You’), but the real theme here is always Baraghani’s tastes and desires. Some of my favourite cookbooks are those that focus solely on what the author loves best, from Neil Perry’s Everything I Love To Cook to Colu Henry’s Colu Cooks. But it doesn’t work if the author doesn’t have anything fresh or exciting to put on the table. Baraghani has plenty, and there’s often a tantalising stickiness to his dishes, be they Caramelized Sweet Potatoes with Browned Butter Harissa or Jammy Egg and Scallion Sandwiches. The food here celebrates itself and asks to be relished, to be wolfed down and savoured, lips and fingertips licked for every last speck.

There are irresistible vegetable dishes tucked amongst the sticky goodness and the self-assured writing (“When you make this dish (not if)’, “I wish you could press a button on this page and hear the sound effects of how I feel about this recipe”). From Roasted Carrots with Hot Green Tahini to Fall-Apart Caramelized Cabbage Smothered in Anchovies and Dill, Baraghani is constantly encouraging you to rediscover the most common of ingredients.

The Cook You Want To Be is one of those most glorious of things: a cookbook with real character. Baraghani’s presence is so keenly felt on every page – there’s no dry, anonymous advice here. Everything is served with a little slice of a big personality. And it’s a joy to see this singular vision place so much importance upon something with such low stakes because cooking like this doesn’t really matter, not really. Like all the little things Jack and Harry have needlessly precise opinions on, nothing in this book is a matter of life and death. But finding joy in this small, delicious stuff: that’s what makes life matter in the first place.

Cuisine: International
Suitable for: Beginner and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book: The Cook You Want To Be by Andy Baraghani
£26, Ebury Press

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Nottingham-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas

Cooking by Jeremy Lee

What’s the USP? Somewhat delightfully, there isn’t one. There’s no tortuous concept or shoehorned-in theme. There’s no claim of quick and easy recipes, that it’s the only cookbook you’ll ever need or that it’s yet another of that irksome and ubiquitous ilk, the cookbook for ‘every day’. As Robert de Niro once memorably stated in The Deer Hunter ‘This is this. This ain’t somethin’ else. This is this.’ It’s a cookbook. It’s a very good cookbook written by an outstanding chef with thirty years of knowledge, experience and wisdom he’s like to share with you. What else do you need?

Who is the author? Dundee born Jeremy Lee is the head chef of Quo Vadis restaurant and club in London’s bustling Soho. He was previously the head chef of Sir Terence Conran’s Blueprint Cafe in Shad Thames and at Euphorium in Islington where he first came to national attention (Independent news paper critic Emily Bell said that Lee ‘delivers flavour like Oliver Stone serves up violence’, a very 1995 sort of thing to say). Working backwards in time, Lee also cooked at Alistair Little at 49 Frith Street (now home to Hoppers Sri Lankan restaurant and just a ladle’s throw from Quo Vadis in Dean Street) and at Bibendum in South Kensington for Simon Hopkinson. There’s more, but you can buy the book to find it out (spoiler alert, you really should buy the book). Surprisingly, Cooking is Lee’s first cookbook.

Is it good bedtime reading? It is. There’s a reasonably chunky introduction that skips and hops briefly through Lee’s background and culinary career as well as some thoughts on his approach to food and cooking in general. Each of the 24 chapters, themed most around ingredients, includes a full page or so of introduction and many of the 100 or so recipes have substantial intros. There are also a couple of essays, one on equipment and one on stocking your pantry. That’s how you end up with a 400 hundred page book.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? The first line of the book reads ‘The simple truth I’ve learned from a lifetime of cooking is that good food is honed from fine ingredients.’ The simple truth that I’ve learned from a lifetime of shopping at supermarkets is that last thing they sell is fine ingredients. I mean, they’re fine for plebs like us, but they’re not fine. The likelihood is that you’ll be able to get most things that Lee cooks with in the book, but probably not of the same quality, unless you live somewhere that has great butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers and delis. You know, central London.

Some ingredients that might prove tricky if you are reliant on Lidl (or even Waitrose) might include fresh artichokes, samphire, monk’s bread, Tropea onions, Roscoff onions, Treviso, Tardivo, Banyuls vinegar ‘very, very good chicken’, ‘excellent duck’. marjoram, summer savory, Agen prunes, fennel pollen, herring, fresh mackerel, whole lemon sole, cuttlefish, verdina beans, skate knobs, cockles, Arbroath smokies, razor clams, smoked eel, quail, onglet, lamb’s sweetbreads, feuilles de brick, kid, hare, dandelion, puntarelle, Catalonga, lovage, salsify and sorrel.

That might seem like a long list, but do not let it put you off buying the book. Help is of course at hand from specialist internet suppliers and, post pandemic, it’s now easier than ever to get hold of excellent quality fresh fish, meat, vegetables and groceries delivered to your door (for a price of course). The excellent list of stockists at the back of the book will be extremely useful to many readers. There are also many recipes that you will be able to source ingredients for with no trouble or you will be able to make substitutions with reasonable ease.

How annoyingly vague are the recipes? There is the odd ‘handful’ of this and ‘pinch’ of that, but they are few and far between. Methods are as well written as you might expect of such a well experienced chef and are as detailed as they need to be and easy to follow.

How often will I cook from the book? A lot. There’s pretty much a dish for every occasion, every time of day and every cook’s mood. There’s maple walnut biscuits breakfast or mid-morning coffee, chard and cheddar omelette for a quick lunch and chicken leek and tarragon pie for a comforting dinner. There a simple as can be puntarelle and anchovy salad for when time is short or a cottage pie made with braised oxtails for when you want to linger in the kitchen. Lee is also particularly good on baking, desserts and sweet things in general so expect an apple tart in your future soon.

However, this is a resolutely British and European book; a pinch of chilli flakes or a few drop of tabasco is about as spicy as things get. There are no modish Middle Eastern influences and India, Asia and South America don’t get a look in. Lee knows what he likes and sticks to it which gives the book a very strong identity. Cooking doesn’t cover every conceivable culinary base, but that’s no bad thing at all. There are many, many books available that will fill those particular needs, just have a browse around this site. Cooking is not an encyclopaedia of the subject but ‘home cooking rediscovered after a lifetime spent in professional cooking’ and all the better for it.

What will I love? You’ll recognise John Broadley’s intricate yet bold black and white illustrations from the menus at Quo Vadis if you’ve been fortunate enough to visit the restaurant (and if you haven’t, I’d highly recommend rectifying that particular situation, especially now as the restaurant has just been refurbished and expanded). They are a complete joy and give the book a unique style.

Lee’s writing style is also highly individual and charming. He has a turn of phrase like no other food writer. A spiced marmalade steamed pudding is ‘made bold with whole ginger and a spice’ and breadcrumbs are fashioned from ‘husks, heels and buckshee slices of bread’. Open the book at random and you’ll find sentences such as ‘I like the Presbyterian forthrightness of leek pie’ or ‘It is near miraculous how much water is released from the chard but perseverance pays a fine dividend’. There’s a kind of effortless poetry on every page that’s utterly delightful and doesn’t feel in the slightest bit forced. Within a single paragraph, Lee can be informative, instructional and celebratory; that’s fine food writing.

Killer recipes: salmagundy (warm roast chicken salad with summer slaw); maple walnut biscuits; chard potato and celeriac gratin; St Emilion au chocolat; hake with parsley, dill and anchovy sauce; smoked eel sandwich; lamb’s sweetbreads, peas, almonds and herbs; duck pea and cabbage hash (the list goes on…)

Should I buy it? With Cooking, Lee has joined the pantheon of great British food writers that includes Jane Grigson, Sophie Grigson, Elizabeth David, Alan Davidson, Alistair Little, Richard Whittington, Shaun Hill, Stephen Bull, Mark Hix and others. It might be reminiscent of older books, but in the current publishing climate, it’s a breath of fresh air. Rather than advising you on hints and tips that will enable you to spend the least amount of time as possible in your kitchen, Cooking is aimed at a readership that actually enjoys the craft and are happily chained to their stoves (you won’t find air fryer or slow cooker recipes here).

Cooking is worth the cover price just to learn how to cook chard properly. But you will learn so much more including the virtues of making a properly good vegetable salad, how to lift the flavour of a rustic kale soup with a spoon of new season Tuscan olive oil and how to make ‘coupe Danemark’ – a delicious yet simple dessert made from chocolate melted with cream, poured over vanilla ice cream and topped with nuts. Cooking is also full of intriguing kitchen miscellanea. Did you know a wishbone used to be known as the ‘merry thought’? Or that there’s a variety of potato called ‘Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy 1899’? Of course you didn’t. That’s why you need to buy this book. A genuine pleasure to cook from and to read, Cooking is an essential addition to any keen home cook or professional chef’s cookbook collection.

Cuisine: European
Suitable for: Confident home cooks/professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book: Cooking by Jeremy Lee
£30, Fourth Estate

Winner of the 2022 Andre Simon Food Award

The British Cookbook by Ben Mervis

What’s the USP? Phaidon are back with the latest addition to their ever-expanding range of globally-inspired cookbooks. Previous entries have included hefty volumes on the food of Latin America, Greece, Mexico and Lebanon, but this time round we’re focusing a little closer to home.

The British Cookbook delivers exactly what it promises: around 550 recipes drawn from across the United Kingdom. This means there’s plenty of room for all the obvious regional specialties (Staffordshire Oatcakes, Sussex Pond Pudding) and a wealth of niche little wonders you may never have heard of (Singin’ Hinnies, Bara Sinsir, or Beesting Pudding, which has absolutely nothing to do with bees).

Who wrote it? Ben Mervis, a Philadelphian native who moved to Glasgow for university and never left. Well, except for his turn in the kitchens at Noma. A man with culinary pedigree, then, and a good deal of love for the food of his adopted home. Mervis has drawn this book together over several years, whittling down from a preliminary list of around 1,500 recipes to bring us this final selection. The recipes themselves have been contributed by a mixture of ‘food writers, chefs, bakers and home cooks’.

Is it good bedtime reading? Phaidon’s international cookbooks rarely are, being so focused on the delivery of hundreds of recipes. Mervis offers up an interesting introductory essay on the meaning of ‘British food’, and there’s a short foreword by man of the hour Jeremy Lee, the one voice in British cooking who seems truly inescapable right now.

Though hardly enough to count as bedtime reading, credit is due to Mervis for his recipe introductions. Phaidon’s titles often skip these altogether, leaving readers baffled over the difference between various Mexican moles that they’ve never previously encountered, nor fully understand. Mervis provides short introductions for every recipe in the book, though. These offer valuable insights into the history of the dish, the best way to serve it, or the colonial influences that often crop up.

How annoyingly vague are the recipes? Mervis delivers again with precise instructions that will even go so far as to define a ‘splash of buttermilk’ for those who aren’t content to judge for themselves (about 20ml, he reckons). Measurements are provided in imperial and metric as well.

Efforts have been made to highlight dietary concerns in each dish, with small symbols denoting whether it will be suitable for vegetarians, vegans, or those suffering from intolerances to gluten, nuts or dairy. This is a thoughtful touch that would be very welcome across the rest of the series.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? For the most part, no. Occasionally you may find yourself in need of a good butcher, but besides that everything should be within reach.

What’s the faff factor? We are a nation in love with a good stew, and so there are plenty of recipes here that require a few hours. But for the most part, Mervis strives for simplicity. Alongside the legends denoting dietary concerns there are also symbols highlighting one-pot dishes, as well as those featuring five ingredients or fewer, or deliverable in under half an hour.

How often will I cook from the book? This will come down to very personal preferences. I grew up in a house where 90% of our dinners would have been considered ‘British’, and have responded as an adult by returning to the national cuisine once a week at the very most. But if you’ve a taste for the comforting treats of our home nation, there’s more than enough here to keep you very happy. Mervis’ choice to include dishes we’ve stolen or co-opted from nations we’ve invaded in our past means there’s more variety than the average British cookbook too.

Killer recipes: Tweed kettle, Mussel popcorn, Stargazey pie, Pastai persli, Flummery, Sauty bannocks, Goosenargh cakes and Cumberland rum nicky – there are so many delicious dishes here, sometimes it’s easiest just to hone in on the ones with the most satisfying names.

Should I buy it? It’s no secret that British food has long been maligned as drab and lacking joy. The past thirty years or so has seen us throw everything we have at dispelling this myth, and we’re finally at a point where London is seen as one of the great food cities of the world, and a cooking show is one of our biggest cultural exports. Hopefully Ben Mervis’s excellent book can act as our closing argument, then. By digging deep into the food of our small nation, Mervis has highlighted the variety of flavours we have to offer. From national dishes to delicacies originating from the smallest of villages, The Great British Cookbook delivers the benchmark by which all other Phaidon cookbooks should be measured.

Cuisine: British
Suitable for: Beginner and confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book: The British Cookbook by Ben Mervis
£39.95, Phaidon Press

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Nottingham-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas

The Wok by J. Kenji López-Alt

A friend does a great impression of a former housemate. It’s at exactly the moment they realise it’s much quicker to make mashed potatoes by chopping it into smaller bits first, rather than boiling one giant potato and mashing it whole. We’ve all been there. A fizzle and a crack as old neurons make new connections, a deluge of endorphins, a brief moment of shame and eureka: a higher plane of consciousness.

Get used to this feeling reading The Wok, a book of such astonishing detail and craft that comparisons to other weighty tomes like encyclopaedias seem somehow derogatory. J. Kenji López-Alt has built his reputation on this meticulous, science-oriented approach to cooking and has seen him garner a huge online following with over a million subscribers to his excellent YouTube channel as well as regular contributions to major publications and a growing collection of cookbooks.

His latest is substantial in both size and scope. Physically, it’s the sort of thing that used to be compared to the Yellow Pages but now is probably more like a stack of iPads. Though the heft is a reward for the sheer breadth of information found on its pages, ranging from the basics of stir-frying and chopping all the way to Scoville units and the glutamic acid content of certain foods.

Woks are versatile creatures and the chapters reflect this, being summarised by either ways of cooking with a wok, like Stir-Frying, Braising or Deep Frying or cooking with wok-centric ingredients like Rice or Noodles. Each chapter mingles technique, scientific explanations and applicable recipes like in the section dedicated to stir-frying chicken for instance, you will find an explanation for velveting, the scientific reasoning behind it and then a recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken.

If you’ve ever enjoyed something cooked with a wok whether from China, Japan, Thailand or even at your local takeaway, it’s likely to be here. There’s recipes for ramen, tempura, dumplings, curries, all types of noodles, classic takeaway meals, traditional dishes, oils, and condiments. The recipes are written with such exacting measurements and instructions it’s almost impossible to get wrong and are so precise, you’re often told exactly where to place the ingredients into the wok (swirl your sauce around the side!). Trust in the process and it’ll deliver probably the best homemade version of that particular dish you could hope for.

The book has elevated every part of my cooking with a wok. Dishes like Fried Rice, Dan Dan Noodles, Pad See Ew and Lo Mein that benefit from the turbocharged gas burners in restaurants were as good of an approximation I could have wished to achieve at home (I’ve yet to try the suggestion of using a blow torch to achieve more authentic results). Recipes less demanding of high heat like Kung Pao Chicken, Khai Jiao (Thai-Style Omelette), Mapo Tofu and Soy Glazed Mushrooms were all exceptional. Better still, The Wok has improved my cooking even when not following the book. Using the lessons learned like the specific size of the vegetables, the order of cooking the ingredients or how you heat the oil has meant the quick Tuesday night stir-fry is as good as it’s ever been.

There’s no avoiding The Wok is theory heavy, more a Cook’s Book than a cookbook. Scientific explanations are almost always lurking over the next page and how much you engage with these will depend on your appetite for it. They are tiny marvels in themselves, using a data and process driven approach to justify any conclusions though personally, I find overly academic accounts of kitchen alchemy can leave me a little cold, like gazing at a rainbow and being told it’s just water drops and light dispersion, actually.

This however, is a pocket-sized gripe. Much like López-Alt’s The Food Lab, Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, The Wok is a book that isn’t content with showing you how, it wants to show you why. Sure, you can teach a man to fish but you could also show him how salt interacts with protein on a molecular level until he makes the best Kung Pao Prawns this side of the river. For a little time and energy, this is a book that will change how you cook for a lifetime.

Cuisine: International
Suitable for: Confident home cooks/Professional chefs
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book: The Wok by J. Kenji López-Alt
£36, WW Norton & Co

Review written by Nick Dodd a Leeds-based pianist, teacher and writer. Contact him at www.yorkshirepiano.co.uk

The Food Almanac: Volume II by Miranda York

What’s the USP? A month-by-month guide to the culinary year, exploring seasonal produce and timely dishes with contributions from a wealth of chefs, writers and other folk with high-functioning tongues. This is the second edition of The Food Almanac, which suggests an earnest effort by publisher Pavilion to make this, if not an annual event (volume one was published two years earlier in 2020) then at least a regular one.

Who wrote it? A picnic basketful of names are involved, though once again the central voice is that of Miranda York. Though York has been a key figure in food and culture writing for a short while now, last year’s inaugural almanac was her first book. As with that edition, this volume draws on a range of voices of varying levels of familiarity. There are entries by Diana Henry and the currently inescapable Jeremy Lee, as well as Rachel Roddy and Olia Hercules. Some of the book’s most enchanting moments come from less established names: Nina Mingya Powles, author of meditative food memoir Tiny Moons, offers up a delightful recipe-as-poem in November.

Is it good bedtime reading? Once a month, for a night or two, The Food Almanac will offer absolutely perfect bedtime reading – at once uniformly thoughtful and exquisitely varied. In each chapter the reader can explore a choice selection of seasonal offerings. An introduction by York that focuses on a specific ingredient, a deeper dive that expands on cultural context, or offers another perspective and a matching recipe. There’ll be a further section or two that might take the form of a guide to the ‘Easter Buns of Europe’, or a collection of ideas for warming tonics for a cold January day. Perhaps you’ll have a short personal essay to follow, before a three-part menu for the month, each curated by a different food writer (Ravneet Gill’s menu for July focuses on seasonal fruits; a month earlier, Nik Sharma presents us with Indian-influenced dishes, including a subtle but delicious Spiced Pea Soup that I couldn’t resist making half a year early).

How annoyingly vague are the recipes? Curated and edited with every bit as much care as the rest of the book, each recipe is presented with clarity and precision. The joy of a collaborative title like this is the sheer variety of approaches to cooking on display – but York reigns everything in to ensure consistency amidst the cornucopia of ideas.

Will I have trouble finding the ingredients? Most dishes are bracingly straight-forward, and based on seasonal ingredients. If you are seeking to source these in the allotted months (or a few weeks either side) you’ll mostly be in luck. Of course, our supermarkets are experts in allowing us year-round access to most fresh produce, so you’ll rarely struggle if you do want to attempt a summer dish in the depths of winter.

That said, occasionally the almanac may tempt you with something a little more difficult to source. Much is made in September of sea buckthorn – a forager’s delight that will be out of reach for many across the UK.

How often will I cook from the book? You would hope at least once a month, but then, that isn’t really the point of The Food Almanac. If you decide to try out one of the five or so dishes on offer in each chapter, you’ll likely find joy on every occasion. But if you instead take the time simply to enjoy the wonderful food writing and spend a little longer thinking about the month’s seasonal offerings, the book will have been well worth the purchase.

Killer recipes: Solyanka, Braeburn Eve’s Pudding with Calvados, Wild Garlic and Prawn Noodles, Sambal Bajak, Strawberry Popcorn Knickerbocker Glory, Mexican Flans with Mezcal Raspberries, Salt Mallard and Pickled Prunes, Deep-Fried Sprout Tonnato with Crispy Capers

Should I buy it? Oh, goodness, yes. The Food Almanac is an opportunity to look at the gastronomical year through the eyes of some of our best food writers, offering a chance to rediscover the seasonality of our homegrown produce in the age of supermarket ubiquity. It’s an absolute joy, and only the strongest-willed amongst us will be able to resist skipping ahead and gobbling it all up in just a few sittings.

Cuisine: International
Suitable for: Confident home cooks
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars

Buy this book: The Food Almanac: Volume II by Miranda York
£22, Pavilion Books

Review written by Stephen Rötzsch Thomas a Nottingham-based writer. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @srotzschthomas

Noma 2.0 by René Redzepi, Mette Søberg & Junichi Takahashi

It’s a decade since Noma, Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine was published, the book that helped put Copenhagen-based chef Rene Redzepi, his love for foraging and his fiercely locavore culinary philosophy on the map. Now, the appropriately titled sequel Noma 2.0 tells the story of the restaurant’s reinvention in 2018 when it relocated to an urban farm on the outskirts of the city.

The publication of the book coincides with Redzepi’s shock announcement that he will be closing Noma as a restaurant at the end of 2024 and, according to a report in the New York Times, will continue to run it as a ‘full-time food laboratory, developing new dishes and products for its e-commerce operation, Noma Projects, and the dining rooms will be open only for periodic pop-ups.’ Hopefully Redzepi will be able to make the change in a more speedy manner than his Spanish counterpart Ferran Adria who still hasn’t fully launched his research lab and pop up restaurant elBulli 1846 in the grounds of his legendary elBulli restaurant which closed back in 2011. This year, 2023 is the year apparently. We’ll see.

So it’s fitting that, standing a foot high and containing 352 pages, Noma 2.0 is a tombstone of a book. Essays by Redzepi, Noma’s gardener Piet Oudolf and Mette Soberg, head of research and development, are beautifully illustrated by Ditte Isager’s stunning photography. Three chapters mirror the menus served each year in the restaurant; ‘Vegetable’ when Noma becomes a vegetarian restaurant in the spring and summer, ‘Forest’ in the autumn when the menu is based around wild plants, mushrooms and game, and ‘Ocean’ in the winter when when Redzepi says that ‘the soil is frozen and nothing grows’ but ‘fish are fat and pristine, their bellies full of roe’.

Whatever the season, the food is so intricate there’s only enough space in the massive book for descriptions of the dishes; the ‘Noma Gastronomique’ appendix includes full details of building blocks such as ferments, garums and misos but you need to scan a QR to access the complete recipes for the likes of Reindeer Brain Jelly (or maybe you’d prefer Reindeer Penis Salad?) online.

This is not a book for the faint hearted, with dishes such as Duck Brain Tempura and Duck Heart Tartare served in the cleaned and beeswax-lined skull and beak of the bird. His Stag Beetle dessert, fashioned from a leather made with blackened pears, blackberries and Japanese black garlic is all too scarily reminiscent of a bush tucker trial.

Not everyone will have the time, resources or inclination to attempt to replicate Redzepi’s extraordinary cuisine in their own kitchens, but it is nevertheless an essential purchase for any ambitious and creative chef who can’t fail to be inspired by the book’s bounty of surprising and unusual ideas.

Cuisine: Nordic
Suitable for: Professional chefs. And very, very dedicated home cooks. Who live in Scandinavia. And have a lot of time on their hands. Or who can persuade 50 odd people to help them make their dinner, for free.
Cookbook Review Rating: Five stars (awarded for originality and beautiful presentation rather than practicality)

Buy this book: Noma 2.0 by René Redzepi, Mette Søberg, Junichi Takahashi
£60, Artisan Publishers