The best cookbooks for Christmas 2017

Peru’s incredible fusion cuisine has been a smash hit in the UK in recent years, and Martin Morales has been at the forefront of the revolution. His first cookbook – Ceviche Peruvian Kitchen – was an award-winning masterpiece taken from his first restaurant, and Andina follows suit with yet more inspiration from the Andes. The book pays homage to Martin’s grandmother, who provided many of the recipes in the book, and Martin has even included a collection of short stories at the back to add a lovely personal touch.

If you’ve ever trawled the internet looking for flavour pairings, or wondered what to do with that overflowing spice cupboard, this is the book for you. Niki Segnit’s seminal work is an indispensable guide to flavour combinations – breaking down pairings with wit and panache, and providing endless solutions to help you deal with things that lurk in the bottom of your salad drawer.

Originally published in 1984, Harold McGee’s gastro-bible was re-published with a major update in 2004, and it remains the ultimate authority on culinary science and technique to this day. On Food and Cooking delves into everything you could ever want to know, and does so in incredible detail. If you have any interest in cooking at home, McGee should be sitting proudly on your shelves.

J. Kenji López-Alt – often referred to affectionately as Kenji – writes one of the web’s very best food columns over at Serious Eats, and his book is a treasure trove of fantastic information based on his experiments with food. He goes into exhaustive detail on everything from equipment and technique to some of his favourite recipes, but his engaging writing style keeps everything accessible. Very much worthy of a place on your shelves.

Planning a trip to Italy? Even for fluent Italian speakers, getting a comprehensive grip on the length and breadth of Italian food can be confusing. Monica Saroni Cesari’s miniature encyclopedia does an admirable job of clearing the fog, breaking down Italian food terminology region by region, so when you find yourself perusing the menu in a tiny Tuscan trattoria, you’ll know what to order.

Having worked for the likes of Pierre Koffmann, Raymond Blanc and Marco Pierre White, there’s no one as qualified as William Curley to teach the ins and outs of great patisserie. William’s latest book breaks down the science of sweet-making and includes sections on techniques like chocolate tempering and pastry, as well as a host of nostalgic recipes from Black Forest gateaux and Bakewell tarts to walnut whips.

Not content with changing the way we think about home cookery, Yotam Ottolenghi and pastry chef Helen Goh are on a mission to overhaul your desserts too. Recipes like tahini and halva brownies and cinnamon Pavlova with praline cream and fresh figs are typical of the pair – modern but comforting – and there are little touches all over that open your mind to the possibilities offered by a well-stocked spice cupboard.

France has always been the spiritual epicentre of patisserie, but scores of pastry chefs have been moving to Japan in recent years to ply their trade in food-forward cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara. The results have been stunning – perfectly marrying French and Japanese technique and flavour with scientific precision. James Campbell is an incredibly accomplished pastry chef himself, and the perfect man to guide you through these complex creations, including sweets like lemon and yuzu éclairs and savoury treats like mouth-watering panko doughnuts stuffed with pork katsu.

‘With Justin, the force is strong and the crumb is good,’ says Fergus Henderson of his former head baker. Justin spent twelve years at St John, and developed their superb sourdough loaf before moving on to found the Bread Ahead bakery. The book has a fantastic range of recipes, and Justin divulges some of his own recipes, including his sourdough starter and Bread Ahead’s incredible donuts, as well as some more inventive ideas like his fennel blossom ice cream and courgette and carrot garden cake.

Diana Henry is a master when it comes to elevating simple dishes into something special with a few twists, and her latest book does exactly that. Simple shows you how to take ingredients you’ll find easily in the shops and and turn them into beautiful dishes – including Turkish pasta with caramelized onions, yoghurt and dill, and paprika-baked pork chops with beetroot, caraway and sour cream. There are thoughtful flavour combinations throughout and inspiration from far and wide across the globe.

We don’t need to list his many awards for you to know that Marcus Wareing is one of the country’s most acclaimed chefs. With the help of his protégé and Tredwells head chef Chantelle Nicholson, Marcus has put together a book full of his favourite everyday recipes. His delightful watermelon salad with pickled rind, salted ricotta and coriander stands out immediately as a good example of what to expect – inventive, foolproof recipes – and there’s plenty of reinvented classics too, like his pork schnitzel with ‘nduja aioli.

Nathan Outlaw’s previous books have all tackled fish and seafood – he is, after all, the authority on such things – but Home Kitchen is proof that he’s no one-trick pony. The multi-Michelin-starred chef takes on family-friendly home cooking in his fourth publication, offering up over 100 straightforward delicious recipes, from classics like pea and ham soup and sticky toffee pudding to dinner party fare like his prawn and Champagne risotto.

Ever since his early days at No. 1 Cromer in Norfolk, serving up some of the best fish and chips in the country, Galton Blackiston has been passionate about seafood. Hook Line Sinker is firmly aimed at competent home cooks, and is packed with over ninety genuine Michelin-star-level recipes inspired by Galton’s travels across the globe, including blow-torched sea bream with Sauternes and curry sauce, squid ink crackers with smoked salmon and lemon purée and crab claw tempura with lime mayonnaise.

Tom Kitchin is is a chef with an extraordinary touch when it comes to meat and game cookery, so if you’re looking for a mentor, you’ve come to the right man. From his restaurant in Edinburgh, Tom cooks the most incredible meat and game dishes, and his latest book is a heartwarming roll-call of classic recipes, including roast pheasant with cabbage and apple salad, steak and kidney pie and braised lamb shanks with lemon confit.

To mark the incomparable River Café turning thirty this year, Ruth Rogers and her River Café head chefs have come together to create a celebratory book, complete with recipes, new photography and some unseen archive images from long ago. The best recipes from the original blue River Café cookbook have been updated and included alongside thirty new recipes, including panzanella, risotto with porcini and girolles, and their famous chocolate nemesis. A perfect coffee table accompaniment.

It was a lemon tart at Chez Nico that convinced a thirty-one-year-old Stephen Harris to become a chef. Twenty-five years later, Stephen runs The Sportsman pub in Seasalter, Kent – a hugely acclaimed award-winning gastropub, with a burgeoning reputation for quality, locally sourced food. Stephen’s cookbook is not for the faint of heart – the recipes are straight from his kitchen at The Sportsman – but there’s an abundance of fantastic British cooking here, including some of his much-admired lamb recipes.

Like Stephen Harris, Richard Turner came to food later in life after a seven year stint in the Paras. Between Hawksmoor, Pitt Cue Co and Blacklock, he has a considerable claim to the throne as London’s king of meat, and Prime delves deep into a subject close to his heart – beef. Richard delves deep into techniques for perfect beef cooking and breaks down the differences between different breeds, as well as including his favourite recipes and sides from all across the globe.

In 2017, chef Hayden Groves joined a team of amateur cyclists and took on the three Grand Tours (Giro d'Italia, Le Tour de France and Vuelta a España) to raise £1 million for the Cure Leukaemia charity. This book not only charts their story, but includes recipes from the different regions Hayden visited during his gruelling ride. It's a beautiful coffee table book, and if you know anyone who loves both being in the kitchen and going out for a cycle, we can't think of a better gift.

Rich Woods has been described as ‘Heston Blumenthal for cocktails’ in some circles, and whilst his approach to mixology is inventive, it’s still relatively approachable for novice mixologists who fancy whipping up cocktails for dinner parties. Rich breaks down every aspect of the perfect cocktail, from techniques and equipment to a vast collection of recipes, and his first book features everything from basic drinks to his most creative and challenging recipes.

Foraging is just as valuable in the world of mixology as it is for cooking – there’s a wealth of ingredients sitting on your doorstep and all you need is the know-how to use them. With Wild Mixology, Valeria Mosca provides more than just an invaluable guide to sourcing natural ingredients for your cocktails; she also breaks down myriad ways of processing and preserving them and offers up thirty of her own cocktail recipes.

Ryan Chetiyawardana is one of London’s most celebrated cocktail creators. His second book is more a labour of love than a mixology bible, and Ryan has enlisted some illustrious friends from around the globe to contribute some of their favourite recipes – including the likes of Mark Birchall, Robin Gill and Joan Roca – for him to mix accompanying cocktails to. These aren’t tried and tested recipes from either of his bars; instead, they’re an interesting introspective into how you can tailor your cocktails to a dish or occasion and widen your mixology repertoire.