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A gentle introduction to Italian cooking, Catherine's Italian Kitchen is the companion book to Catherine Fulvio's well-received television series, which was nominated for a World Food Media Award earlier this year. Fulvio, who runs the well regarded Ballyknocken Cookery School at her family home in Wicklow, is married to Sicilian native Claudio. With this connection and her teaching experience, she is well placed to translate Italian recipes to an Irish audience.

While Catherine's Italian Kitchen covers all of Italy, the most interesting recipes in the book are those from Sicily, dishes like Arancini di Riso, little balls of rice stuffed with meat, Pistachio and Asparagus Penne (with a sprinkle of the "poor man's Parmesan" or dried breadcrumbs) and an elaborate sponge-ricotta-candied fruit concoction called Cassata. Arab influences on Sicilian cooking - like the addition of pine nuts and raisins to dishes like Pasta with Sardines and Wild Fennel or Panelle, a chickpea fritter eaten as a snack - feature throughout the book. Other Arab imports - aubergines, lemons and the oranges that Sicily is associated with - all make frequent appearances in dishes like Spaghetti with Aubergine Balls, Lemon and Pine Nut Biscotti or Roasted Pumpkin with Shallots and Orange.

A bread, pizza and calzone chapter includes tempting Sicilian breads such as Stromboli (Mozarella and Pancetta Filled Bread) and Sfincione (Sicilian Pizza Bread), alongside recipes for focaccia, breadsticks and pizza. Meat highlights include a Lemon Chicken with Fennel and Lemon Risotto Stuffing, Pork Belly with Lemon, Honey and Thyme and a braised beef dish, sprinkled with a lively mix of chopped garlic, lemon and chilli before serving.

The focus is on simple dishes using seasonal ingredients and nothing is too complicated. Fulvio may not be reinventing the Italian wheel but Catherine's Italian Kitchen is the book to encourage people into the kitchen and try out recipes that are a few steps removed from old reliables like bolognese and lasagna.

Watch out for Fulvio's new series, Catherine's Roman Holiday, starting this Friday, 3 September, on RTÉ One at 8.30pm.

Must Try: the cheese and tomato Aubergine Parmigiana, an easy Oven-Baked Fennel Sausage and Tomato Risotto

Catherine's Italian Kitchen by Catherine Fulvio is published by Gill and Macmillian.

Not having a television, I had never heard of Gregg Wallace before Gregg's Favourite Puddings landed on the doorstep. A co-presenter of BBC show Masterchef, apparently he is well known for his sweet tooth, and this book is like a greatest hits of the pudding world.

On the lighter side of things, there is a focus on fruit puddings (Wallace is a big fan of the crumble) and a great selection of ices and mousses, including an exceptionally tempting Coffee Hazelnut Ice. The chocolate chapter, however, tips the balance way, way in the other direction. Chocolate Gateau with Rum and Walnuts, Triple Chocolate Brûlée and Hot Chocolate Liqueur Soufflé are just some of the riches on offer. The Chocoholic's Alaska is the kind of pudding that might incite you to invite people round and serve only this.

The classics also feature in their own chapter, with recipes for Brown Betty, Strawberry Shortcake and an almondy Tiramisù with amaretti biscuits. In fact there is rather an almond theme throughout the book: an Apple Pie comes complete with almond pastry, almonds and figs make it into some Baked Apples and the Vanilla Biscotti are flecked with toasted, unblanched almonds.

Although Wallace's presence in the book is limited to short introductions, the recipes stand strongly by themselves. Open any page and dip into pure indulgence of a very, very tasty kind.

Must try: the chilli-spiked Spiced Mango Sorbet with Pineapple, the decadence of a Chocolate Fudge Cake, a Linzer Torten made with, yes, more almonds

Gregg's Favourite Puddings by Gregg Wallace is published by Octopus Publishing Group.

There are times when a book arrives at exactly the right time. Elizabeth Carty's Shrewd Food, with its focus on - as the subtitle says - a new way of shopping, cooking and eating, is that book. As Carthy points out in her introduction, food does not have to be expensive to be good and recipes in the following pages prove this.

She may not be reinventing the wheel but many of the commonsense tips that are scattered throughout the book have been forgotten in recent years. With grab-it-and-go in the supermarket having been replaced by careful shopping around, advice like making a list (and sticking to it!), checking product price per kilo and menu planning is always worth repeating. Carty encourages readers to use their freezers to maximise the value of supermarket special offers, to buy food that is in season for better value and to buy local produce which will be fresher. She also emphasises the importance of enjoying cooking as well as eating and there is no recipe included that won't be enjoyed by all the family.

Before moving back to Ireland in 2000, Carty lived in London, Cyprus and Dubai and her experiences abroad have informed the recipes that she includes. Middle Eastern Salad, Greek Roast Lamb and Kibbe sit alongside more familiar Irish-style recipes like Mushroom and Leek Soup, Apple Crumble and Cauliflower Cheese. Each recipe include a shopping lists, along with information on adapting the dish to appeal to children, or to make it low fat or gluten-free.

With a wealth of interesting recipes, Shewd Food is a book that shows how eating on a budget can be much more of a pleasure than a hair shirt penance.

Must Try: Courgette Pasta (to use up the current garden glut), Gigot à la Cuillère, Clementine Clafoutis

Shrewd Food by Elizabeth Carty (£12.99) is published by Hachette Ireland. Elizabeth Carty's website is ShrewdFood.ie and she is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Simple, accessible recipes are Tana Ramsay's hallmark and that hasn't changed in her latest book, Tana's Kitchen Secrets. Unlike her superchef husband, Ramsay's family-orientated recipes - she has four children to cater for - are all of the easily achievable, what-will-I-make-tonight kind. Dishes like Indian Lamb Chops, Moroccan Fish Tagine or Raspberry & Lemon Torta will appeal to everyone and there's no need for complicated equipment or difficult-to-find ingredients.

Each of the recipes is accompanied with a "kitchen secret" or tip - how to make perfect roasted vegetables, cooking with honey, skinning a fish - which will be invaluable for new cooks as well as a great refresher for the more experienced. The chapter on Slow and Easy Meat is perfect for anyone who likes to get the prep (and the washing!) out of the way early and Ramsay also has great chapters on vegetables, bread making and sauces/dressings.

Sweet treats aren't forgotten about with a tempting selection of puddings, cakes and biscuits that includes the traditional - Victoria Sponge, Cherry & Almond Loaf - alongside recipes that are just a little bit different, such as Caramelised Peaches with Hazelnut Crème Fraîche, Pineapple with a Lime Twist, Lemon and Thyme Shortbread.

Packed with plenty of colourful, tasty ideas, Tana's Kitchen Secrets is a cookbook designed for lots of kitchen use.

Must Try: Roast Beetroot with Crème Fraîche & Chives, Chocolate Cheesecake, Pineapple Tart Tatin, Tomato and Tarragon Mayonnaise

Tana's Kitchen Secrets by Tana Ramsay is published by Mitchell Beazley

How do you make seaweed sexy? Take a passionate woman who happens to be an expert forager and cook, add a strong sense of place - the Sligo coast - scatter with a selection of recipes from well known (Domini Kemp, Hugo Arnold) and local Irish chefs (Brid Torrades of Sligo's Tobergal Lane Cafe) and you have Prannie Rhatigan's fabulous Irish Seaweed Kitchen.

An erudite cookbook that makes seaweed accessible to those who never had the opportunity to harvest duileasc, kelp or sleabhac, Rhatigan combines tempting recipes with tips on how to make the most of a large variety of sea vegetables. Seaweed plays a major part in some recipes - Filo Pie with Sea Spaghetti, Mushrooms and Apples, Duileasc Champ, Nori Pancakes with St Tola Cheese - but Rhatigan also has a wide range of recipes with unexpected additions: a seed cake with sugar kelp, cookies with sea spaghetti or alaria, duileasc in cheese scones. The Teddy Bears' Picnic chapter gives a great selection of recipes that will appeal to kids and directions on how to set up your own clambake, a method of steaming foods - Ratigan includes lobsters, chickens, clams and mussels - in a pit with seaweed, had me salivating.

Alongside information on how to gently introduce seaweed to your diet and a glossary of edible seaweeds, there is also a well-photographed chapter on picking your own, with tips on where the different varieties grow. Just in case you don't get a chance to splash around by the sea side, Rhatigan also includes the contact details for Irish and Northern Irish seaweed suppliers, including Bibliocook favourite and Foodtalk: Wild Food interviewee Seamus Moran of LoTide Fine Foods. That list - and a useful bookmark printed with a simple guide to preparing seaweed for culinary use - will give impetus to many people interested in embarking on their own seaweed adventure. A fascinating, delicious and inspiring read.

Irish Seaweed Kitchen by Prannie Rhatigan is published by Booklink. More information on her own website at www.prannie.com. After being inspired by her cookbook, keep an eye on The Organic Centre website for her popular seaweed cookery demonstrations and walks.

If Failte Ireland want to use just one thing to promote Ireland overseas, The Country Cooking of Ireland is the book that they need to thrust into the hands of potential tourists. 

Writer Colman Andrews has impeccable pedigree - one of the founders of Saveur, the author of books on Catalan, Italian and French cuisine, and freelance contributer to any number of esteemed American food magazines including the last lamented Gourmet, Bon Appétit and Food & Wine - and he ate his way through the high- and byways of this country to put this book together. He credits a meeting with Peter Ward of Nenagh's Country Choice in a Kinsale bar for starting him off on the journey that led to this book - and for pointing him in the direction of the best food available, something that he might not have stumbled on by accident.  

As it happens, Country Cooking of Ireland is like a roll call of the best eating available with Andrews singling out people like butcher Jack McCarthy in Kanturk, Esther Barron of Cappoquin's Barron's Bakery, chef Ian Orr of Rathmullan House in Donegal and the Shinnick's of the Fermoy Natural Cheese Company. He is like a culinary magpie, his eye always cocked for an artisan producer, local speciality, or place featuring good food. 

The usual chapters on soups, fish, poultry, meats and baking are supplemented by sections on savoury pies, salmon ("The Magical Fish"), potatoes ("The Definitive Food") and a soda bread-focused bread chapter. There are little essays scattered throughout the book on a historical and factual topics, from how to serve Irish smoked salmon, the recent Polish influence on Ireland and explanations of Irish ingredients and old cooking techniques.   

He quotes widely from Irish cookbooks, over 100 of which are mentioned in the extensive bibliography, and recipes from all eras are included - Miss Jane Bury's Potato Pancakes, Maura Laverty's Yalla Male Bread, Gerry Galvin's Tipsy Pudding with Mulled Wine, Shepherd's Pie from Regina Sexton and Clodagh McKenna.  

There is enough Irish myth and legend to please the Yanks but, while Andrews gazes at the stars, his wellies are still down in the mud - generations of Irish mammies will nod their heads approvingly as Bisto makes an appearance in a recipe for Savoury Mince, Dublin Coddle is to be served with YR Sauce and there's even a recipe for Broccoli in Butter (Andrews justifies its inclusion by writing that it is a "common offering" with main dishes in many restaurants, "even in the most sophisticated ones"). 

While some of his information is already dated - a couple of the micro breweries that he mentions have disappeared - in the main, this is the kind of book that will have you wondering how on earth you have managed to miss out on such food riches in your own back yard. But, as Andrews pointed out at the Good Food Ireland launch of the book in Dublin's Merrion Hotel, Ireland is not a great food destination - yet. But the potential, much of it enclosed between the covers of this fantastic book, is here. 

Must Try: Bernadette O'Shea's Leek and Black Pudding Pizza, Pot Roasted Pork with Root Vegetables and Apples from Martin Dwyer, Peter Ward's Christmas Pudding (the recipe for which alone is worth the price of the book)

The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews is published by Chronicle Books and is available online from Good Food Ireland.

Related Link: Choice in the Country: where are we now?

Flood risk assessment: WRE

If ever your grandmother knew how slow cooking turned beef cheeks meltingly tender, could tell her Rhode Island Reds from Marans or was able to grow, harvest, preserve and cook her own runner beans, you'll nod knowingly at Forgotten Skills of Cooking and enjoy leafing through the pages. If you weren't lucky enough to have that kind of paragon of virtue in your life, think of Darina Allen's latest book as a kind of virtual granny in book form.

Alongside reams of information on the kind of old fashioned kitchen and housekeeping techniques that were in danger of being lost, Allen has crammed more than 700 recipes into 600 pages of close-packed text. If you've ever had a yearning to take up chicken rearing, cider making, fish smoking or foraging for seaweed, you'll find all that here, and more. Much, much more.

From foraging to poultry, dairy to preserving, this is the kind of book that you pick up for one recipe and get lost for days. It's particularly strong on baking with plenty of recipes for puddings (Summer Fruit Jelly, Figgy Toffee Pudding), cakes (Lemon Cornmeal Cake, Barmbrack) and biscuits (Gingernuts, Shortbread Biscuits) and a whole bread chapter that is no less than a call to arms in defence of our daily bread.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking is a book that just might change your life. And, even if it doesn't go that far, it certainly will enhance it.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen is published by Kyle Cathie

SilverCircle.ie: Interview: Darina Allen - Reclaiming forgotten skills plus a recipe for Emer Fitzgerald's Braised Lamb Neck Moussaka.

Nicola Galloway may be based in Nelson, New Zealand, but this no-nonsense, practical cookbook will appeal to parents in any hemisphere. From first tastes and flavors to school lunches and dinnertimes, there are plenty of ideas here for feeding children of every age group as well as recipes you can adapt for the entire family.

A trained chef and nutritionist, Galloway focuses on healthy eating but not at the expense of taste and ease of preparation. This book is packed with simple recipes - rather than spending money on the big brand versions, why not make your own rusks, muesli or Chocolate Hazelnut Spread? - along with ideas for adding iron (dried fruit) to baby porridge, protein (ground oats) to pancakes and vitamin and mineral-rich spirulina to smoothies.

Plenty of tips on using ingredients like spices, ground nuts and kelp are scattered in bite-sized chunks throughout the text. The recipes are sandwiched between a chapter on nutrition and a collection of useful appendices, including a meal planner and food introduction table.

While this book will be of most interest to parents, there are few people that won't learn a little about eating well from reading it.

Cooking for Your Child by Nicola Galloway is published by Craig Potton Publishing and is available online - more details from www.nicolagalloway.com

Must Try: Cashew Banana Chew, Pinwheel Scones, Grilled Chicken with Yellow Rice Pilaf

Without television, radio or mobile reception, heading off to the Husband's family bach, or holiday home, at Lake Rotoiti always entails packing lots of books. The use of the Husband's Mother's library card is always very much appreciated and gives me a chance to pick up a few cookbooks from the great selection available (did I ever mention that I love NZ libraries?). Between occasional walks and trips down to the small village of St Arnaud for coffee at the Alpine Lodge café - fresh baked muffins (favourite: raspberry, pecan and chocolate) and scones every morning, great looking brunches and lunches, with long blacks worth walking miles for - there is plenty of time for reading.

I like to dig out one of the old fashioned lean-back deck chairs (it comes complete with a woggly sunshade which can either keep the sun out of your eyes or alternatively decide to land down on top of your sunglasses), pile up my bounty at the side and just indulge, sand flies and Little Missy willing. This is what is on the pile at the moment.

Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe - fascinating, but chilling reading. This is full of gloomy stories about pollution, collapsing fish stocks and global warming. Apparently there's some hopeful pointers on what fish we should be eating to come but I haven't got there yet. Educational but depressing. www.tarasgrescoe.com

Cooking for Your Child by Nicola Galloway - this book by Nelson-based Nicola was introduced to me by the Husband's Mother a few years ago. I immediately loved her no-nonsense attitude to feeding kids and bought a copy for the Writer, which - after the arrival of LM - I have had on extended loan. After borrowing it from the library this trip I decided it was definitely time to buy my own copy. LM enjoys her (Nana-made) banana teething rusks, banana scrambled eggs are up for dinner tonight and I'm liking recipes that can be used for grown ups as well as smallies. www.nicolagalloway.com

Frugal Food by Delia Smith - For me, Delia's star has been forever tarnished by her appalling How to Cheat at Cooking but I did want to take a look at Frugal Food as it is an updated version of her 1970s book. I have to say that it is a little underwhelming, nothing very new or interesting to find here. www.deliaonline.com

Taste Favourites - Taste is a great food magazine that I always pick up when I visit NZ. An intelligent blend of the aspirational and achievable, every copy I look at has me reaching for my notebook to scribble down ideas and ingredient combinations. Having said that, this cookbook, with 70 recipes from the magazine, just isn't as much fun as the monthly publication. Now that my Cuisine subscription has lapsed, maybe it's time to change magazines for a while.www.taste.co.nz

Nigel, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love your appetite-stimulating writing, your easy recipes, your ability to always show me something interesting to do with kitchen constants like cauliflower, onions or lentils. I love your weekly column in the Observer and I love the Observer Food Monthly magazine (which, while living in NZ, I had sent out to me by my long-suffering mother!). I love your books, right from the copy of Real Fast Food that I got when in college, through entertaining from Real Food and Appetite while in my first job, The Kitchen Diaries that I recommended to many of my customers in Urru, bookclub choice Toast and, now, to Tender.

Ah, Tender. Not only am a fan of Nigel's but I'm a sucker for ingredient-categorised books like this. Tender, as the title says, is a tale of a cook and his vegetable patch, of growing food in the city and what happens to the produce when it makes it into the kitchen. Nigel has a long, thin, London terrace garden that, with a lot of love and some help from friends (Monty Don being an especially good friend to have in this kind of situation), has been transformed into "a romantic mingling of vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers." It's also productive, with vegetables like chard, courgettes and tomatoes all playing starring roles both inside and outside the house.

Each section has information on growing a particular vegetable, different varieties to try in the garden, a selection of recipes and - this is what Nigel is particularly good at doing - lots of ideas, both for ingredients that go well with it and different ways to cook/serve it. This will join Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book and the Garden Cookbook by Sarah Raven in the line of well-thumbed books that live on the kitchen mantelpiece for dealing with vegetable gluts. And it's not over yet. Volume II, his guide to the fruit garden, is due in May 2010. Another one to watch for.

Must Try: A Soup of Cauliflower and Cheese, Chocolate Beetroot Cake with Crème Fraîche and Poppy Seeds, Chickpeas with Pumpkin, Lemongrass and Coriander

Tender: v. 1: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch by Nigel Slater is published by Fourth Estate.

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Cook ahead, shop ahead, think ahead - those are the main points of Carmel Somers' first cookbook. Somers is the chef/owner of the Good Things Café, an acclaimed restaurant and popular cookery school in Durrus, West Cork. Eat Good Things Every Day, however, is not in the least bit cheffy. It is all about simple family dishes, often lifted with an unexpected ingredient: an apple in a cabbage stir fry with pork belly, bananas fried to accompany a Cuban rice dish, raw rhubarb tossed in a salad with cucumber and mint.

Eat Good Things Every Day is a book with a plan for eight weeks' worth of uncomplicated dinner recipes. Each week begins with a shopping list and Somers sets down a few cook ahead recipes (rice, tomato sauce, stocks) that can be made without too much fuss at the weekend. These are the building blocks of the weeks' dinners, getting transformed into Kedgeree or Moroccan Lamb (rice), Moussaka or Fish Stew (tomato sauce) and Topside of Beef or Braised Fennel (stocks). At the end of the book there are also chapters on soups, sweet things and a few extra special recipes that people have requested. Somers' Spinach and Durrus Cheese Pizza from the Good Things Café turns up here, as does her Roasted Turnips with Ginger and a very good all-in-one Chocolate and Banana Cake.

Planning aside, these are just very good recipes, all of which have been tested on her own family of three daughters. Imaginative leftovers form an important part of the book (Coconut Chicken with Spices and Herbs, Noodles with Peanut Dressing and Pork ) and Somers supplies plenty of dishes to use up those odd bits of vegetables that often hang around the fridge. There are lots of great fish dishes, crunchy winter salads and I love the idea of substituting chopped dulse for anchovies with lamb.

This is a cookbook which deserves to become splattered with food from kitchen use.

Must Try: Red Lentils Stewed with Tomatoes and Spices, served with Spinach, Baked Potato and Natural Yoghurt

Eat Good Things Every Day by Carmel Somers is published by Atrium.

Listen to Carmel Somers talk about Spices on Foodtalk with Newstalk from here.

When the weather gets tough, it's time to get baking. Just made Carmel Somers' Banana and Chocolate Cake from her Eat Good Things Every Day cookbook and it's a winner.

With Little Missy loving her banana lunches when we're out and about, the fruit bowl is kept stocked up. Sometimes, I have to admit, overstocked, so it's always good to have a selection of banana cake recipes for using up the strays.

Carmel's recipe, available in Eat Good Things Everyday, makes one x 2lb loaf or you can easily divide it between two 1lb loaf tins - one to eat and one to pass on!

In the last few years, the Cliff House Hotel has really put Ardmore on the map. A small seaside village in Co Waterford, Ardmore was one of those places we visited as children during our summer holidays along the coast in Youghal. We always loved the cliff walk and I remember the old hotel that we used to pass on our way there, remarkable only for the large garden alongside.

Now, in its place, there is a spanking new hotel, far bigger than the original, and making the most of its scenic position on the cliff side. My Twin Cousins and I visited last year - we had a delicious light lunch in the bar - but I have never (yet!) had the opportunity to eat dinner there. After reading chef Martijn Kajuiter's cookbook that may soon be remedied.

Being Dutch, Kajuiter brings a new eye to local ingredients. He takes something simple - and very Irish - such as Potato Soup and transforms it by including apples, eggs and almonds. Spelt Bread is given a Cork slant with the inclusion of Beamish and Ardmore shrimp get turned into Dutch Shrimp Balls. Some of the recipes come from local sources, such as Granny McGrath's Brown Soda Bread, and Kajuiter has his own take on Irish Stew, using meaty lamb shanks. He talks with affection of his local suppliers and producers - gooseberries from Mrs Nugent, sampire and seakale from Liam Kelly, while St Raphael's residential and daycare centre grow salads for the hotel.

All the dishes are beautifully plated but this is not just a coffee table brochure for the hotel: it is a genuinely interesting cookbook with many usable ideas. That's not to say that a restaurant sensibility doesn't creep in sometimes. Kajuiter's solution to the problem of producing a still tender, yet well done steak is to cook it sous vide with a dash of whiskey, a great response to the Irish refusal to eat meat with any hint of blood, but hardly feasible for home cooking! Leaving that aside, there are lots of inventive ideas for the home cook, including things like bread dough wrapped around sausage rolls, Bread and Butter Pudding with Wild Mushrooms, peas cooked with oregano and lemon juice, olive oil used to make Chocolate Mousse. The chapter on jams and preserves is particularly good, with recipes for Pumpkin Chutney, Elderflower Barley Water and a variety of fruit cubes (Strawberry and Black Pepper, Lemon and Mint Fruit Tea).

Plenty to try in your own kitchen - and even more to whet the appetite for a visit to the Cliff House Hotel.

Must Try: Irish Spelt Bread with Beamish, Honey and Thyme

Cliff House Hotel: The Cookbook by Martijn Kajuiter is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I might have missed Donal Skehan in last year's Eurosong Finals but I have been following and enjoying his food blog for the last couple of years. Skehan, who juggles his music career (he's a member of pop group Industry) with food writing, has just produced his first cookbook, Good Mood Food. With a few basic rules - eat a variety of colourful fresh foods and drink plenty of water - this is good, solid, sensible eating presented in a bright, accessible format.

Healthy food doesn't have to be tasteless or boring is the stand out message as Skehan produces a series of simple, quick dishes ranging from breakfasts (Nutty Breakfast Bars, Oat Pancakes), to lunches (Sesame Pasta Salad, Tahini Noodle Toss), dinners (Mojito Chicken, Sweet Potato and Parsnip Mash) and even some sweet treats (Baked Pears with Spiced Honey). If you're feeling under the weather, Skehan points out that food is the best way of fighting back with a selection of cleansing and healing juices, teas (I particularly liked the Orange, Mint and Lemon Balm Tea) and soups.

All tousled hair and cheeky grin, Skehan's youth and pop connections should appeal to a younger audience than most cookbooks reach. A perfect gift for the student in your life.

Must try: Swedish Cinnamon Buns, Real Baked Beans with Ciabatta, Oven Roasted Sausage and Sweet Potato

Good Mood Food by Donal Skehan is published by Mercier Press.

For generations, perhaps scarred by the shared memory of starvation, Irish eating habits were simply about having enough. Food was plain, but plentiful: steaming piles of potatoes, well-boiled vegetables (often home-grown) and meat from the local butcher.

But in the last 20 years Ireland has become a different country.

With a population shifting from country to urban living, people side-stepped the back-breaking, uncertain, 24-7 world of farming for life in the suburbs, a 9-5 job and knowing exactly how much they would earn at the end of the month. Home cooked foods became unfashionable: who had time to slave over a hot stove when you could just zap a ready-made lasagne in the microwave? The further we got from the dirt and sweat of food production, the less we cared about how it was done, with price being the main issue. Until, of course, that food turned out to be tainted.

For anyone who is at all interested in what we eat, Basket Case is unmissable. The authors - RTÉ journalists Philip Boucher-Hayes and Suzanne Campbell - paint an alarming picture of how we have handed over control of our nation's food to profit-hungry supermarkets. It is a comprehensive, if depressing, assessment of Irish eating habits, from farmers' markets to German discount supermarkets, convenience foods to dioxin scares.

Well written, entertaining and educational (although I could have done without the David McWilliams-style Flash Paddy and inner culchie tags) this is the kind of book that will act as a wake up call for anyone who thinks that the farmers have it easy. The low price you pay today in the supermarket for your food may not be the price you end up paying in the long run when the race to the bottom drives farmers out of business and the food supply chain lengthens.

The authors do offer a tiny glimmer of hope. For consumers, their advice is to shop around the outer edges of the supermarket for real food - vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat and fish. For the industry as a whole, they argue that a food industry crisis could be prevented by state involvement and more support for quality Irish food production. It remains to be seen if anyone is listening.

Basket Case will appeal to any fans of Felicity Lawrence, Michael Pollan and Joanna Blythman. An essential read.

Basket Case: What's Happening to Ireland's Food? by Philip Boucher-Hayes and Suzanne Campbell is published by Gill & Macmillan.

Growing up in a household where Punjabi rotia and English casseroles each had their own places, Vicky Bhogal revels in placing ingredients from different cultures side by side. In the introduction to Flavour, she talks about making the most of imported as well as local foods, explaining her own democratic approach to ingredients. She revels in comforting risotto as much the tartness of tamarind, the garam masala of her Indian childhood used as much as Italian peccorino.

Some of the combinations may seem, on first glance, to be a little outlandish but Vicky explains the reasons behind each dish in a brief recipe introduction and there are many inspiring ideas: rainbow trout are crusted in oatmeal and served with a poppy seed and ginger butter sauce; spiced plums and star anise combined with duck risotto; steak rubbed with piri piri and cocoa. She keeps her recipes balanced and in proportion, concentrating on just three flavours and noting where you can substitute ingredients with similar flavour profiles.

Flavour is a bright, well-illustrated book, full of colourful sketches and jam-packed full of ideas. When Vicky is not expanding her simple and unusual recipes, giving a selection of alternatives or substitutions, she's exploring the lineage of the ingredients with references to Sanskrit literature, Jewish custom and ancient Greek texts.

Punchy and exciting, Flavour is the kind of cookbook that will really inspire you in the kitchen.

Must try: Crumbled Lincolnshire Sausage, Cranberry and Lemon Pasta; Grilled Sardines with Beetroot, Pink Grapefruit and Parsley; and, especially yummy, a fantastic recipe for Foil-Baked Feta

Flavour by Vicky Bhogal is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

From Burdass-Reared Wold's lamb to Ampleforth Abbey Apple Tart Tatin, Andrew Pern's Black Pudding and Foie Gras is as firmly rooted in the food of Yorkshire as his Michelin-stared establishment is embedded in the village of Harome. Andrew's Star Inn is a 14th century country pub in North Yorkshire which opened 13 years ago. He laughs as he recalls that it all started with just three people - himself in the kitchen, his wife Jacquie working front of house and her mother behind the bar. Now they run a total of seven interlinked businesses in Harome, including self catering cottages, a deli and a butcher's shop, employing some 120 people.

Andrew is not one to do things by halves and he brought the same level of dedication to Black Pudding and Foie Gras, his first cookbook. He describes the handsome chocolate-coloured velvet-bound book as a "labour of love", adding that it is self-published because "we decided to do the whole thing ourselves." That included having someone decipher his scrawl: he wrote the original draft in longhand with a HB pencil. The book was named after his signature dish, which he started cooking 12 years ago at the Star, a well-judged combination of North Country staple with French luxury. It is this rich man/poor man juxtaposition that has made the place stand out - and Michelin come calling. The Star Inn is one of the few pubs in the UK to be awarded a star, and this despite a Michelin inspector telling Andrew that the Star had to choose between being a pub or a restaurant.

Black Pudding and Foie Gras picked up its own gong in July when Andrew took the silver medal for best chef book at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. The book is a culinary memoir, a love letter to Yorkshire producers and a showcase for many of the dishes that he cooks at The Star Inn. Andrew writes of the childhood influences that made cooking a way of life for him: new foods eaten on trips abroad; rabbit shooting and wild mushroom hunting on his dad's farm; the combination of flaccid Fray Bentos meat pies and Robert Carrier cookbooks that started him off on a career in kitchens. His real passion, however, is reserved for the ranks of suppliers that he relies on. Andrew's local network includes Sand Hutton Asparagus, fish from Alan Hodgson of Hartlepool, Ampleforth College Orchard and their own butchers, Pern's of Helmsley - a loving litany of names and places that reveals his deep attachment to the region. With accounts of cider-making merriment, anniversary parties which the whole village attends and the Star Inn cricket team, it is evident that the Perns are very much part of the community.

And then there are the recipes. While they read very much like an multi-faceted entry on a restaurant menu, they can each be broken down into their constituent parts for the not-quite-as-ambitious home cook. At first glance, a dish like Soused Hartlepool Halibut with Pink Peppercorns and Pickled Shallots, Crushed Pink Fir Apple Potato Salad, Dill Vodka is not something that you're likely to whip up of an evening at home but soused fish can be prepared a day in advance, the zesty potato salad is an easy addition to any meal and having a bottle of dill vodka in the freezer to accompany any fish dish sounds like a good idea.

I was particularly taken by Andrew's use of homemade liqueurs. The last chapter in the book, Drinks Cabinet, will encourage any reader to start making their own Rhubarb Schnapps, Gooseberry Gin and Damson Vodka. Other recipes which stand out include a traditional Baked Ginger Parkin with Rhubarb Ripple Ice Cream, Hot Spiced Treacle; Risotto of Felixkirk Organic Beetroot with a Deep-Fried Blue Wensleydale Beignet, Wild Garlic Pesto; and the pure theatre of Whiskey in a Jar. Lots of ideas to enjoy and plenty of dishes to try.

Andrew is to be commended for shining an affectionate light on an area that he has very definitely put on the map for anyone interested in good food. Black Pudding and Foie Gras will undoubtedly serve to whet many more appetites for his cooking at The Star Inn.

Must try: that Baked Ginger Parkin - I've never found a good recipe yet - to eat with some Rhubarb Schnapps.

Black Pudding and Foie Gras by Andrew Pern is published by Face. RRP £39.99.

There is a satisfying heft about Cornucopia at Home, an approachable collection of recipes from one of Dublin's best-known vegetarian restaurants. Written, photographed and designed by former staff, this handsome volume is a labour of love – and it shows.

Eleanor Heffernan, who worked in the restaurants a waitress, manager and chef for seven years, is the beating heart of the book: she knows the recipes from all angles, having been the chef preparing squash for the savoury Butternut Squash, Pumpkin Seed and Rosemary Scones (she always used the easy-to-chop, straight end!), dealing with the customer who wanted to buy an uncooked Apple Crumble for baking at home to impress a date, and noticing which of the dishes are most demand when they arrive on the counter (Sweet Potato, Broccoli and Lentil Sambar, White Bean and Roast Mediterranean Vegetable Pie with Basil Mash and Chocolate Marble Silken Torte are just a few of the favourites). With atmospheric photography and food styling from Orla Keeshan and Orlagh Murphy's colourful graphic design/illustration, the book is both testament and tribute to the ideals behind Cornucopia.

Cornucopia was set up in 1986 by Neil and Deirdre McCafferty. This Irish couple had just returned from nine years living in Boston and, having being influenced by the vegetarian and raw food cultures in America, decided to set up a health food shop and cafe on Wicklow Street. Successful from the start, after a few years, the food side of things expanded into the entire premises and so it has remained, under Deirdre's stewardship – Neil died suddenly of pancreatic cancer in 1993.

The restaurant has remained true to their original ideals: constantly aiming to achieve a happy union between health and taste. Quality seasonal ingredients, organic when possible, cooked simply are the basis of these recipes which will appeal – as does the restaurant – to those who are on special diets, are vegetarian or vegan, or who just appreciate good food.

The cookbook contains the greatest hits of Cornucopia, recipes chosen by democratic and diplomatic means, snapshots taken of staff behind the counter, educational information on ingredients and scenes from the life of the restaurant. Divided into five chapters – Soups, Salads, Mains, Breads and Deserts – each is subdivided into sections which make it easy to find your way around. In Salads, basic information is set alongside recipes for potato salads (including my favourite Garlic Mayonnaise Potato Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts), bean salads, grains and noodles and raw salads. The Bread section has a particularly useful table of bread preparation tunes, along with the ever-fantastic and exceptionally simple Spelt Bread that is ever-present on the counter.

Recipes are clearly laid out, easy to follow and, in the main, very uncomplicated. Just a cursory flick through will give you lots of ideas for dinner – take a look at Moroccan Chickpea Tagine with Orange-Scented Bulgar Wheat, Butter Bean, Roast Fennel, Pepper and Rocket Salad or Tomato, White Bean and Savoy Cabbage with Basil Oil Soup. For anyone who is restricted to a special diet, there are plenty of ideas, with some particularly good recipes for gluten-free and sugar-free baking.

There's no doubt that this book will be snapped up by the restaurant's many long-term restaurant customers – but they're not the only ones that are going to enjoy, appreciate and cook from Cornucopia at Home.

Cornucopia at Home is published by Atrium. Read more about the cookbook here.

What do you read while travelling in France? A stack of novels, a French phrase book – and Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. My holidays normally involve dragging at least one cookbook of the country about with me, often with a relevant Lonely Planet World Food guide. World Food France is out of print, unfortunately, but I grabbed the last copy of the ED book at work as I ran out the door on the last day.

Although we didn't push ourselves to travel too far, there were still hours spent in the Astra, driving to and from the boat at Roscoff, various campsites and a side-trip to St-Emilion, all made much more manageable by ED's entertainingly opinionated and self-assured writing. While the Husband and the Teacher drove and navigated, I read about the cooking of various regions, perused lists of French terminology for techniques and ingredients and inspired a pre-late-lunch appetite by poring over descriptions of Oeufs sur la Plat, Blettes à la Crème and Pommes au Beurre.

Back home now, but ED's writing has lost none of its inspiration. The vegetables and eggs chapters, especially, have lots of ideas to play around with: I've cooked her Endives au Beurre since I came home and La Pipérade was especially good to feed the boys while camping. I still have to work my way through the last part of the book, the fish section is particularly appealing at the moment as I've gotten some fantastic pollard from my fishing-loving Kildorrery Cousin. If you're travelling to France at any stage – or if you just want to evoke the food of the countryside - French Provincial Cooking is the book for you.

Open any page in A Table in the Tarn and you're likely to be seduced. I got stuck in the Deserts, Petits Four and Chocolates chapter, with recipes for Blackcurrant Leaf Sorbet, Home-Made Vanilla Marshmallows and Cocoa-Nib Florentines but, once I tore myself away from the sweet things, there was much more to recommend this memoir-style cookbook.

A former editor of the BBC's Good Food and Olive Magazines, Orlando Murrin, together with his partner Peter Steggall, abandoned the hurly burly of London life to reclocate to the South-West of France. The first chunk of the book tells the tale of their buying the rundown Le Manoir de Raynaudes in the Tarn countryside and renovating it, followed by five chapters of recipes ranging from Parmesan, Nigella and Sesame Bites and Caramelised Potatoes through Tart Tatin of Chicory and Twice Baked Garlic Soufflés.

The emphasis is on food that is both seasonal and local. There are many dishes that can be prepared ahead and are easy to cook for crowds. Tips on presentation at the end of recipes are thoughtful without being too faffy, the Baking, Tea and Breakfast chapter is first class and there is a selection of particularly good potato recipes. As befits his background, Orlando is very strong on timings and temperatures, including settings for the fan ovens that many of us are inflicted with.

A Table in the Tarn is rather like an upmarket brochure for what Orlando calls “a reassuringly expensive” boutique hotel in France, with lots of gardening information – and plenty of pragmatic advice for those who may find themselves similarly tempted. However, it is also an absorbing and inspiring read, with recipes aplenty to try in your own kitchen. Maybe on our next trip to France there'll have to be a visit, Raynaudes-direction.

A Table in the Tarn by Orlando Murrin is published by HarperNonFiction.

It was only a matter of time before Kieran Murphy's entertaining Ice Cream Ireland blog made it to the printed page. The Book of Sweet Things, written by Kieran and his brother/business partner Seán, tells the story of how two Americans got into the ice cream business in Dingle. Murphys' Ice Cream is now sold from their two shops - one in Dingle and the other in Killarney - while their distinctive blue and white containers are stocked in delis and foodstores throughout Ireland.

The history of Murphys' Ice Cream - from meetings in Paris to work out a business plan, painting the first shop, expanding to Killarney and setting off nervously to Dublin, trying to break into the luxury ice cream market - would give any budding entrepreneur hope but the proof of this book is truly in the pudding.

Recipes are divided into categories covering basic ice creams, Irish and international influences, sorbets and sauces, ice cream deserts, candy and baking and topped off with a section on coffee and hot chocolate. Tales of Kerry cows, ice cream innovations and decent coffees sit side-by-side with snippets of history, kitchen tips and Seán's Favourite Pairings (think warm brownie with Irish Cream Liqueur Ice Cream and hot chocolate sauce or even Toffee Ice Cream and Pecan Pie).

The importance of using first class ingredients - quality chocolate, in-season soft fruits, free range eggs - is rightly emphasised and there are plenty of useful notes at the bottom of the recipes to keep you on track.

The traditional (Vanilla, Chocolate, Mint, Brown Bread Ice Creams) sit happily alongside the more intriguing varieties. Who could resist trying Honey Lavender, Cinnamon Latte or Chocolate Whiskey Ice Creams? What about Mulled Wine Sorbet or Gelato alla Crema? All yours for the making - if you have an ice cream machine. If you don't (and believe me, you will want one after spending time with this book), try wandering into the baking section. Toffee, Honeycomb Candy and Sachertorte are just some of the treats on offer or, if you're into ice cream toppings, recipes for Caramel Sauce and Hot Fudge Sauce will give you something to think about next time you pick up a tub of Murphys' Ice Cream.

As for me, I've heard that you can get an ice cream attachment for the KitchenAid...

The Book of Sweet Things by Seán and Kieran Murphy is published by Mercier Press.

Could Portugal be the new Spain? Reading Tessa Kiros' Piri Piri Starfish and its references to petisco (tapas, Portuguese-style), chourico (substitute chorizo), port instead of sherry and salt cod (in Portugal - bacalhau, in Spain - bacalao) you could be forgiven for wondering if things are moving that direction. This, the follow up to Kiros' acclaimed parent-and-child-orientated Apples for Jam, is a more straightforward cookbook. As with Apples..., colour is very important, although the chapters are laid out in a more clear-cut way - Essential Recipes, Petisco Plates, Starters and Soups, Mains and Side Plates, Deserts and Cakes - than that book's rainbow bright colour-coded sections. Here the tone is more grown up, with lots of muted blues and greys, beautifully designed page titles and a thick white and blue ribbon for marking your way through the book.

For Piri Piri…, Kiros and her family lived in and travelled around Portugal and the book is written in the form of a travel diary, entries dated as she writes of her impressions of that country - the place and the people - as well as about the food that she encounters there: Maria Alice's Chorico Cake from Chaves in the North of Portugal; a one-pot recipe for Caldeirada a Portuguesa (Portuguese Fish Stew) from Albertina in Lisbon; Passionfruit Crème Caramel inspired by the dishes eaten in San Miguel in the Azores. Photographs of food sit alongside tourist-style images of children playing on the streets, a Portuguese girl looking down from her washing-laden window, men's hats in a shop window.

The recipes are typically Kiros, typically inviting - my list of things to try includes Peas with Eggs and Chorico, Caramel Cake, Roasted New Potatoes with Tomatoes and Red Wine and Pan Fried Fish with Vinegar. Green Peppers, port, piri piri peppers and salt cod are reoccurring ingredients - some of them a little difficult to source from North Cork but I'll know what to go looking for when - rather than if - I visit Portugal.

Also reviewed on Bibliocook: Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros
An interview with Tessa Kiros on Who Wants Seconds?

I love experimenting with and learning different cooking techniques, especially if they involve playing with yeast. No Knead Bread? Yes please! Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Made that. Sourdough from my own starter? Still bubbling quietly away in the fridge. But grilled or barbequed pizza? Not yet - that was until I got my hands on a copy of Craig Priebe's Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas. Craig developed his grilling technique, using a barbeque, when he ran his own pizza restaurant in Atlanta and this book explains it in detail. When we did the pizza day in Ballymaloe, Darina cooked one of her creations on the barbeque outside the demo theatre door but, more fascinated by the wood-fired oven, I didn't hang around in the rain, instead directing my attentions indoors so I never got to investigate the barbequed pizza properly.

Wanting to put this cookbook to the test (sometimes, when piles of cookbooks start stacking on the stairs, next to the bed, all over the kitchen counter and on the dining table, the Husband asks why I don't spend less time reading cookbooks and more time actually using them) I decided to make some dough on Sunday morning for a Sunday night pizza fest. It took minutes in the KitchenAid, although I had to add a lot of extra flour - perhaps something to do flour stored in American kitchens being much drier than in Irish cottages at the end of a long, damp winter. After a couple of hours on a warm window sill, the dough was landed into the fridge and sat there all afternoon, firming up enough to handle.

When we got home that evening it was raining too much to pull out the barbeque so I dragged out my big, heavy cast-iron frying pan and heated it up while the Husband mixed some of Craig's Herbed Grill Oil. The pan is not quite big enough to cook 12-inch pizzas so, instead of two 12-inch pizzas we made three 10-ish-inch rounds out of the dough - next time I'd make four thinner ones. As everything came together faster than expected - Craig did warn me, I just hadn't read that piece! - there was a bit of juggling with temperatures on the pan, topping ingredients on the counter and finishing off under the grill but, much faster than expected, we finally had a selection of decent pizzas to sit down to.

I discovered that basil pesto and marinated feta, combined with Craig's Herb Oil, makes for an overly greasy pizza but goat's cheese, roasted red pepper and Caramelised Onions are a winning combination. Hegarty's Cheddar, with thinly sliced salami (Gubbeen, for preference) and Tomato Chilli Jam also worked out well. Next time I may even be organised enough to try a few of Greg's own ideas for toppings - spinach, pesto, mushrooms and feta sounds good, as does sausage, pepperoni, artichoke hearts and peppers. The book also includes a selection of salads (I've already got my eye on Baby Lettuce with a Citrus Peppercorn Dressing) and deserts (Cinnamon Churros, grilled pizza style) to accompany the pizzas, alongside recipes for the Italian-style flatbreads called piadinas - something to try out for next Sunday, perhaps.

Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas by Craig Priebe is published by DK Publishing

Although I've been immersed in study, there is (somehow!) always time for reading cookbooks. Here are a few recommendations for Christmas.

Cook Simple by Diana Henry (Mitchell Beazley)
I'm a fan of Diana's Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons and last year's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow so I was looking forward to reading Cook Simple and it's remained on top of the pile ever since. Here you'll find brilliant ideas for dinners, and plenty of them, with influences from Sweden, Sicily, Turkey and Georgia. Divided into chapters based around easily available core ingredients - pasta, fish, sausages, leg of lamb - with seasonal vegetables and fruit in their own sections, Diana gives lots of recipes and ideas to make mealtimes easier. Must Make: Roast Squash, Feta and Black Olive Salad.

Food From Friends edited by Kate Fraser for the Matthew Fraser Motor Neuron Charitable Trust
When I lived in Christchurch, NZ, I would always pick up The Press every Thursday for Zest, Kate Fraser's weekly food section. When her son was diagnosed with Motor Neuron disease, the Matthew Fraser Motor Neuron Charitable Trust was set up and this book of recipes is a fundraiser to help provide for his care needs. Charitable cookbooks are only worth picking up if they actually have decent recipes; with contributors ranging from Paris-based American food writer Patricia Wells and European Peasant Cookery author Elizabeth Luard to homegrown writers like Ray McVinnie, Fiona Smith, Peter Gordon and Lois Daish this is not a problem with Food From Friends. Great recipes - and a good cause. Food from Friends is available here. Must Make: Roasted Vegetable Flatbread Pizza

The Creators: Individuals of Irish Food by Dianne Curtin (Atrium)
Fifteen producers are featured in Dianne Curtin's The Creators, a wonderful picture of the artisan food available throughout Cork city and county. Profiles of people like organic beef farmer (and the woman behind our favourite Brown Envelope Seeds) Madeline McKeever, chocolatier Eve St Ledger and fisherman Cornie Bohane are all followed by Dianne's own recipes, chosen to make the most of that producer's ingredient. As well as the chocolate, cheese, beef, poultry, vegetables and fish featured here, Dianne includes a directory of other producers so that readers have the chance to discover even more local delicacies. Must Make: Carrot and Gin Soup (with Cork Dry Gin!)

Wild Garlic, Gooseberries… and Me by Denis Cotter (Collins)
Denis Cotter's third cookbook is an enthusiastic insight into his creative process and the symbiotic partnership he has with the growers who provide the local produce that he uses in Café Paradiso. This is a journey through stories about and recipes for vegetables both familiar - cabbages, kale, watercress - and the more unusual varieties, like oca or yams, salsify and scorzonera. Wild Garlic... is a book to whet the appetite and stimulate the brain. Must Make: Damson Membrillo

Breakfast, Lunch, Tea by Rose Carrarini (Phaidon)
A tempting role call of recipes that includes six different types of scone, five soups, four variations on pancakes and a substantial selection of sweet and savoury tarts, cakes, biscuits and tray bakes. Must Make: Brownie Cheesecake

Time to Eat by Gary Rhodes (Penguin)
I've never been a fan of Mr Rhodes but Time to Eat is great. Organised according to the amount time that you have, from No Time to Cook to Cooking for Pleasure - When Time Doesn't Matter, there are plenty of simple and tasty ideas to try out. The pictures of beautifully plated food were also surprisingly useful when I was trying to concentrate on presentation for school, could have done without all the photos of Gary in his tight white t-shirt, though! Must Make: Fiery Mushrooms on Toast

More to follow...

This is the book for anyone who has ever gone to Paris seeking French food and been completely waylaid from their Coq au Vin by the rich variety of ethnic restaurants in the city. With a far-flung variety of former colonies and protectorates, Paris is a melting pot for people and cuisines from all over North Africa, Asia and the Middle East. When we were there last year we spent a lot of time exploring the food available at places like the café at L'Institut du Monde Arabe, grabbing pastries from a spectacular Algerian bakery called La Bague de Kenza (subsequently written up in the New York Times, with recipes, and there's also some great photos on Lulu Loves London) and trying to find a much-recommended restaurant called l'Afghanistan in the 11th arrondissement.

Part guide for your next trip to Paris and part recipe collection, authors Charlotte Puckette and Olivia Kiang-Snaije mix stories of immigrant experiences in Paris, information about ethnic restaurants and interviews with their proprietors/chefs, with well-chosen recipes and delightful drawings - just take a look at the cheery cover to get an idea. It is illustrated by Paris-based Lebanese artist Dinah Diwan and her vivid images are full of fun and energy.

Separated by nationality - Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia, Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos/China, Japan, Cameroon/Senegal/The West Indies, Lebanon and Syria - each chapter has the makings of an entire meal, from Green Papaya and Moroccan Carrot Salads, Shrimp Rougail and Pork Colombo, to Saharan Almond Cake with Orange Coulis or Coconut and Lime Flan.

It may be a slightly rose-coloured picture of French colonial and immigrant history, but this picture of a vibrant multicultural Paris and its associated food makes for fascinating reading. Information on the more obscure ingredients - my favourite argan oil, for instance - is always useful and the recipes are encouragingly straightforward. I've already dog-eared more that a few of the Moroccan and Lebanese recipes to try. A colourful addition to your cookbook shelves.

The Ethnic Paris Cookbook has also got its own blog here, where you can read about the adventures of the authors on the book promotion trail.

While at last year's Savour New Zealand, Australian chef Greg Malouf was just back from a month spent travelling and eating in Lebanon and Syria and he spoke enthusiastically about the book that he was writing with his former wife, Lucy, based on the time they spent there. Saha is the gorgeous end result. A beautifully designed book which is equally comfortable on your coffee table as in your kitchen, it comes across as a pure labour of love.

While Greg explores flavours from his childhood and finds new inspiration for his cooking, Lucy documents their travels and relates stories about the craftspeople they meet, the food culture and the history of both countries. He supplies the recipes - Green Beans Slow-Cooked with Cumin and Tomatoes; Grilled Tiger Prawn Shish Kebabs with Spicy Cracked Wheat Salad and Tomato Dressing; Crunchy Sesame-Pistachio Biscuits - while she furnishes the context.

Lucy writes in a very personal and honest way of their experiences, occasional misgivings and adventures in places like the Roman remains at Baalbeck and Palmyra, the legendary desert kingdom of Queen Zenobia. Her stories and the evocative images by photographer Matt Harvey are complimented by Greg's recipes, in chapters that range from Mezze Dips and Meat Mezze to Sweet Treats and Beverages. There are new ingredients - desert truffles, mastic, barberries - and some complex recipes but many of the dishes are easily managed and, after my success with Greg's yoghurt instructions, that recipe is set to become a staple in my kitchen.

Saha depicts a Lebanon still scarred, but recovering, from the ravages of the civil war that ended in 1990. People are hopeful about the future, Beirut is nearly reconstructed, tourists are starting to investigate the beauties of the country. Sadly, after this summer's shameful Israeli invasion, it is impossible not to wonder what has happened to the people and places that Greg and Lucy met and visited.

Also reviewed on Bibliocook: Moorish by Greg and Lucy Malouf

There's no nonsense about Judith Tabron. Starting in the restaurant industry as a 16-year-old apprentice, she worked her way up to become the co-owner of Soul, an acclaimed, successful bar and bistro situated at the Viaduct Harbour in Auckland. On stage at last year's Savour New Zealand - she co-presented Greg Malouf's class on Middle Eastern Magic - her straight talking, take-no-prisoners attitude was very refreshing. She is, as she says herself, a leader rather than a follower, and her interest in new trends and different cuisines came through strongly at the symposium as it does in this, her first cookbook.

Tabron is an enthusiastic advocate of the practice of bringing other chefs into the kitchen and the book showcases the most popular dishes served at Soul alongside recipes from a selection of visiting guest chefs - Melbourne-based Bill Marchetti, Greg Malouf and Stephanie Alexander; Chicago's Charlie Trotter; Soul maitre d' and TV presenter Geeling; and Philip Johnson of e'cco in Brisbane. Beautiful photographs by Stephen Robinson illustrate recipes using a variety of unusual combinations and techniques - Caramelised Belgian Endive filled with Goat's Cheese with Crisp Almonds and Dates, Potato and Goat's Cheese Terrine with Rocket Salad and Lemon Vinaigrette, Tea Petal-Rubbed Akaora Aalmon served alongside Rhubarb and Orange Salad with Mirin and Sake Dressing. Tabron comments on each dish, whether about suppliers (Tom Bates of Akaroa Salmon), influences (trips to San Francisco, other chefs) and stories about the restaurant.

Soul is a bit more cheffy (by which I mean that many of the dishes have far too many components for my home kitchen) than I normally like but the ideas here are exciting and the recipes can easily be broken down to their constituent parts. Worth more than just a quick look, especially if you get caught - as I have - on the Greg Malouf-influenced recipe for John Dory on Parsnip Mash with Lentil, Shallot and Olive Vinaigrette. Time to dig out that Ras el Hanout again!

Soul by Judith Tabron & Friends is published by Random House New Zealand.

It's the colour that catches your eye first. The bold pink and red cover of Tessa Kiros' Apples for Jam is immediately distinctive, particularly with its eye-catching photo of a pair of red, well-worn children's shoes. And colour is hugely important in this book as Tessa and her colour-coded recipes explore the spectrum of childhood through chapters that include gold and monochrome, pink, yellow and red.

From simple, wholesome dishes like Broccoli Soup (green), Wholemeal Apricot and Apple Pie (orange) or Potato and Yoghurt Salad (white), Tessa also covers decadent-looking Brownies, sandwiched with whipped cream, strawberries and iced with a simple chocolate ganache (brown), an easy pre-made Pandoro Birthday Cake (multicolour) and Chocolate Toffee Nut Squares (stripes). Each coloured chapter comes complete with a childhood memory - a belief in toys coming awake at night, the ice cream man and his "sweet, chocolatey music", water-drinking competitions - just one of the many things that make this cookbook so sweetly evocative. The recipes are no less attractive, without being too difficult, and my copy of the book is flecked with a host of little post-its, marking the dishes that I'm intent on trying in the near future.

As she detailed in her first book, the lovely Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, Tessa is half-Finnish and half-Greek-Cypriot. Her upbringing in South Africa and travels throughout the world, cooking in London, Sydney, Athens and Mexico, have all informed the food that she presents here. She now lives in Tuscany with her Italian husband and two daughters, hence her second seasonal book, Twelve: A Tuscan Cookbook, and the Italian influence is strongly evident, particularly in the tomato- and pasta-heavy red section.

As with all Tessa's cookbooks, Apples for Jam is a lavish production. It's a satisfyingly chunky book (400-plus pages) with mouthwatering (yet realistic) photos of food, children's drawings reproduced in full colour, bright wallpaper designs and a useful pink satin bookmark. Charming and down-to-earth, this is a book with both style and substance.

Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros is published by Murdoch Books.

This is the perfect book for any foodie who's ever spent hours puzzling over unfamiliar ingredients in their local delicatessen or ethnic food shop. Glynn Christian, originally from New Zealand, has been a food writer and broadcaster in England for many years, and as a result, has a rare international perspective. His breadth of experience also includes setting up the legendary Mr Christian's Delicatessen in London's Notting Hill in the 1970s.

With a cover quote from Nigel Slater - "one of the only ten books you need" (I'd be interested in finding out the names of the other nine!) - Real Flavours does live up to its subtitle: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients. From possum to pine nut oil, goulash to grockle (an obscure sea vegetable), this book has information on all the foodstuffs you could imagine - and plenty that you haven't even come across yet. You could comfortably spend a few weeks wandering around the riches of the herbs, spices and flavourings chapter.

But be careful. You may open Real Flavours to look up a particular item but soon find yourself sucked in by this greedy gourmet's no-nonsense, opinionated and entertaining writing. An essential addition to every epicurean's kitchen.

Real Flavours: The Handbook of Gourmet and Deli Ingredients by Glynn Christian is published by Grub Street Publishing.

Cookbook sections in secondhand bookshops can be a little hit or miss. There's always a pile of microwave cookbooks - no one, for some reason wants to hang onto these dodgy and dated texts - a scattering of horrible diet books and often lots of ancient Family Circle publications, with their "triple-tested in the test kitchens" claim, but, rarely something that you actually want to cook from, let alone buy. Still, I live in hope, so a recent trip to Athlone had to include a browse in the local secondhand bookshop (I still haven't discovered its name) which turned out to be a most amazing example of its kind.

Just a couple of shelves were devoted to cookbooks but what was on offer was enough to have me standing there, leafing through the pages, for quite a while. My eye was taken by a red hardbacked book from the 1960s, the gold letters on its spine saying "Monica's Kitchen". Opening it, I was so entertained by Monica Sheridan's humorous prose that I had to read it out loud to the Boyfriend - something that I continued to do through the weekend's café interludes, car journeys and meals in the tent.

Apart from her unfortunate love of unsweetened condensed milk in soups and the like, Monica's Kitchen is actually a breath of fresh air. Well travelled, she carelessly mentions dishes from France and the continent (she once spent months learning the foie gras business, "with the intention of setting myself up as a Goose Girl in the West of Ireland") alongside the plain, simple Irish recipes. Her roast chicken, unstuffed and dressed with the pan juices, would be appreciated by Nigel Slater and there are definite French influences to many of her vegetable recipes which are, fortunately, a long way from the traditional Irish boil-it-until-it-turns-grey method.

Some of her opinions are laugh-out-loud hilarious. I particularly liked her take the things necessary to make a cook:

"Another essential to good cooking is a husband or son with an adventurous palate. Women do not cook for other women, or for themselves. If they are cooking for other women, it is to annoy them or dazzle them..."

A few of her recipe asides veer towards the demented - ideas on dye in pea soup ("Any fool can make pea soup, but here are the refinements that give it an air. You should add a good spoon of green vegetable dye to the soup just before you serve it. That will take the anaemic look off it."), boned chicken ("Frankly, I wouldn't recommend it, but, if you want to see green in the eyes of the women and hear the praise of gluttonous men ringing in your ears, well, here goes."), brown bread ("The longevity of the men and women of rural Ireland may be directly attributed to their simple diet of porridge, wholemeal bread and stews - together with their uncompromising refusal to fraternise with Income Tax Collectors.") - but Monica's Kitchen is chock-full of useful suggestions and recipes as well as being a complete treat to read. Well worth looking out for.

Monica's Kitchen by Monica Sheridan is published by Castle Publications Ltd.

In London there is a wonderful shop called Books for Cooks. A bookshop, filled with - what else - cookbooks, it is situated at 4 Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill and is the kind of place that Sunday supplements wax lyrical about. As does anyone who visits the shop. It is small, not so very wide, and has bookshelves from floor to ceiling, crammed with hundreds upon hundreds of books of amazing dishes, foods, ingredients and people. There is a cosy, albeit battered, couch in the middle of the floor, right between a piled-high table and a low shelf - just the place to sit and leaf through one of the many books that will take you on a journey to far off lands or reveal more about your own culinary surroundings. All this, and I haven't yet got to the best bit.

When you walk into the shop, intent though you may be on cookbooks, your nose might distract you, leading you down the back, past the shelves and couch - to the Books for Cooks test kitchen. It's where the cooks - Ursula Ferrigno (Bread, Trattoria), Eric Treuillé (Bread, Planet Organic - Naturally Good Food), Celia Brooks Brown (New Vegetarian, Vegetarian Foodscape) Jennifer Joyce (The Well Dressed Salad) - work through recipes from the plethora of cookbooks on the shelves.

Each day they cook a different simple and seasonal menu - soup, quiche or tart, maybe a desert or two, a few cakes - serving lunches, coffees and sweet things until, as they say themselves, everything runs out. And, with the smells of slow roasted tomatoes and Lemon Polenta Cake mingling with that of black inky print and new paper, everything does disappear quickly. Don't even bother on a Saturday, much easier to grab a table or a space during the week and give yourself time to savour some good seasonal food with, perhaps a glass of wine from owner Eric's own biodynamic vineyard in South West France.

If, as happened to me, you find yourself slightly dazed by all the cookbooks on offer, then you could always go the easy way out and pick up one of Books for Cooks own cookbooks. These are collections of the most requested and best-loved recipes from the cookbooks used in the test kitchen, tried out on very willing customers. Engaging and inspiring, the slim volumes are what Carolyn Hart's Cook's Books, while entertaining, tried to do but didn't quite achieve. Familiar writers like Nigel Slater, Darina Allen, Sybil Kapoor, Donna Hay are all invoked, along with some less usual names - Tessa Bramley (The Instinctive Cook), Patricia Lousada (Flavours of the Sun) and Camellia Panjabi (Fifty Great Curries of India). The first time I was there, got a copy of their Favourite Recipes from Books 1, 2 & 3. I have since acquired volumes 4 and 5 and, methinks, a trip to the shop to check if there are any new additions, is soon in order. Books for Cooks - heaven on earth!

Books for Cooks is at 4 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, London, W11 1NN and - this is the important bit - is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10.00am to 6.00pm

One of the big advantages of being settled back in Dublin, with book shelves once again, is having all my old cookbooks to pore over and rediscover. Although I did manage to build up a fair collection in New Zealand, it couldn't really compare to my beloved older stacks of books by Nigel Slater, Darina Allen, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Nigella Lawson and my ancient copies of the Paula Daly-written McDonnell's Good Food Cook Books. The first and second books in this series, bought from saving up the tokens on Stork Margarine packets, were two of the first cookbooks owned by my mother.

Every recipe, of course, used Stork Margarine - they were first printed in 1976, long before Darina Allen started turning the Irish nation back into butter lovers - and just leafing through them is an exercise in nostalgia. As a child I cooked my way through Drop Scones, Franzipan Flan, Steak Diane and Melba Toast, while a picture of The Runaway Train children's birthday cake furnished many hours-worth of dreaming. I subsequently made this for a cousin who probably was too young to appreciate more than the Liquorice Allsorts used for wheels and the Smartie cargo - it's not really a cake worth returning to. But many of the recipes, albeit with Stork swapped for butter, definitely are.

Every Christmas Cake in our house was, and still is, covered with Almond and Royal Icing according to the tables in the first book. I learned how to make choux pastry from the step-by-step photographs when I was about eleven and subsequently became famed for my Chocolate Éclairs. Family get-togethers were normally preceded by several days of Éclair-making when I took over the kitchen and most of the freezer (and probably my mother's nerves!) to make what I considered a sufficient supply - normally 2-3 per person. While I haven't made Éclairs in years, I have returned to several other of the recipes, with a few modern updates, to great success.

The Sausage Plait pictured on the cover was a particular favourite when I was younger. One day I cooked it on the shelf below one of my mum's Apple Tarts and, although I initially thought it was ruined when the tart's sweet, appley juices overflowed on top of it, the apple flavour actually complemented the pork so much that I now add apple to the recipe. It's a great supper dish, especially with a good accompanying salad, and it also travels very well as part of a picnic spread.

As charity cookbooks go, Real Food for Real People is a real gem. The book is part of a fundraising drive for Moneystown National School's building fund and was produced and published by the Parents' Committee in this County Wicklow village. But, even though Real Food for Real People was evidentially done on a shoestring, the design quality still shines out. Illustrated mainly with children's drawings and photos, and scattered with quotations from, amongst others, Shakespeare and Lenin, it is a simple and well laid-out book.

The recipes do not disappoint either, with Real Food for Real People gathering together a broad selection of well-loved recipes from local families, some of which have been handed down through the generations. Foreign dishes - Mrs Bittel's Waffles, Flamiche aux Poitreaux - share space with Stuffed Marrow, Nettle Soup and Mrs Doyle's Brown Bread. There's also a substantial selection of biscuits (Congolais, Gigi's Chocolate Chip Cookies), deserts (Chocolate Roulade, Ishy Gran's Trifle) and cakes (Mary Quinn's Currant Cake, Granny Tish's Christmas Cake)

Along with the food, the book also includes a history of Moneystown National School by former principle Frank McGillick, making it a lovely keepsake for anyone in or connected to the community. But - and that's what sets Real Food for Real People apart from so many other similar productions - the design and the recipes are of a high enough standard to let it stand alone, far beyond the confines of County Wicklow.

And it seems like lots of people agree. Priced at an eminently reasonable €10, the first print run sold out in about a month but the book has since been reprinted. I picked up my copy in the Alliance Française in Dublin, I've also seen it in Avoca Handweavers and it is also available online at www.moneystowncookbook.com for €10.00 + €2.50 P&P. A good cause and great cooking.

Real Food for Real People is published by Moneystown National School's Parents' Committee.

Undoubtedly creative and definitely contemporary, Kevin Dundon's Full on Irish is a book that is easy to admire yet, as a collection of recipes, it is not entirely successful. Too much fussing over presentation, as with the beautifully and immaculately layered Smoked Salmon Cake with Chive Cream Cheese, is a huge turn off for me. I want to be able to look at the pictures and think "I can do that" rather than "it's too complicated for me." Maybe it is to do with my style of cooking, which is all about landing dishes on the table and letting people help themselves, rather than delicately plating up little morsels of food, but I find it very difficult to get excited about cookbooks that devote a paragraph to telling me how to arrange the dish before presenting it.

Still, grumbles aside, Full on Irish is a beautifully put together book. Each recipe is illustrated with well arranged photographs from Alan Murphy, who also takes pictures of the chef in action - making Orange Scented Pastry Cages, harvesting spuds, picking Wexford mussels and cradling a hen from the gardens of Dunbrody House, Dundon's award-winning restaurant and luxury hotel in County Wexford. Dunbrody House is also host to a cookery school run by Dundon and he is a great champion of local produce and artisan producers. Traditional butcher Leo Halford in Wellington Bridge, specialist mushrooms from Fancy Fungi and Hook Head potatoes from Vincent and Geraldine Rowe are just some of the foodstuffs that he highlights while Atlantic salmon and Wexford strawberries also get a mention. Dundon also has to be applauded for sensibly valuing local and seasonal foods over organic imports and for growing many of his own fruit and vegetables in the gardens around Dunbrody House.

While I would prefer to admire rather than cook many of the dishes in Full on Irish, it has piqued my interest in visiting Dunbrody House and Dundon's final two chapters - Kitchen Garden and The Larder - have a particularly useful selection of recipes for Balsamic Reduction, Chilli Jam and Dunbrody Cucumber Pickle with Rocket. Eye candy, undoubtedly, but Full on Irish may not get much use in the kitchen.

Full on Irish: Creative Contemporary Cooking by Kevin Dundon is published by Epicure Press.

Although these wee cookbooks are small - just 64 pages - they are beautifully formed. The Irish Food books are from the same stable that produces the Bridgestone Top 100 guides to restaurants and places to stay, as well as the Irish Food Guide - Sally and John McKenna's Estragon Press - they are well worth investing in, and at €3 apiece, they won't break the bank.

Slow & Traditional is a celebration of what the McKennas call Irish soul food. Indeed, with a selection of simple and approachable recipes for dishes like Dublin Coddle, Champ and Colcannon, this is comfort cooking at its best.

Waterford's acclaimed Tannery Restaurant chef Paul Flynn teams up with Sally McKenna in Fast & Modern. Concentrating on the best of Irish artisan produce, Flynn and McKenna present a selection of imaginative recipes that showcase wonderful products like mature Hegarty's cheddar cheese (Risotto of Peaches and Mature Hegarty's Cheddar) and Glenilen Clotted Cream (Crab Quiche with Glenilen Clotted Cream).

A section at the back of each book contains background information on associations and individuals working with Irish food as well as a directory of producers. Small packages indeed, but very good ones. I wonder if we'll have to wait long for their big brothers?

Irish Food: Slow & Traditional by John and Sally McKenna & Irish Food: Fast & Modern by Paul Flynn and Sally McKenna are published by Estragon Press.

With a subtitle that says, "Big-time home cooking for family and friends" you can't say that you haven't been warned. Tom Douglas, with his wife Jackie Cross, is the owner of several restaurants in Seattle one of which, Etta's Seafood, I've heard about for years from a friend that worked there some time ago. As is evident from the cover photograph, he's a big man with a big appetite - the kind of chef that, in short, you'd trust to cook you dinner or to tell you how to cook your own dinner. Don't go looking for any nouvelle cuisine in this book 'cos you ain't gonna find it. What you will find, however, are plenty of recipes that will make you want to march right into that kitchen of yours and start cooking for crowds.

Douglas writes by menu and the book has a total of thirteen adaptable menus for every (American) occasion, including Puget Sound Crab Feed, Screen Door Barbeque, Kat and Clay's Merlot Release Picnic and Christmas Eve with the Dows. There are no dinners à deux here; rather this is a book to arrange events by. Plan your own adaptation of Pop Pop's Winter Solstice, get half-a-dozen people over for A Chinese Feast or figure out where your local market is so that you can organise a Pike Place Market Menu.

Each menu starts off with a creative cocktail, a most civilised way to start a meal, and Douglas also gives suggestions on appropriate wines to go with the food. There are tips in the side margins and explanations of ingredients and techniques. After years of seeing kosher salt recommended in American recipes I now know why (because it tastes less harsh taste and salty than table salt) and how to make reductions to add intensity to the dishes I cook. One of the best things about this book is Douglas' A Step Ahead section in each recipe where he details anything that you can prepare in advance - something I wish more cookbook writers would make use of.

Douglas is a proud champion of the best of local food producers and this book will be a wealth of information to anyone based in and around Seattle. The rest of us will have to settle for trying a glass of his Homemade Bianco on the Rocks with a Twist followed by - to do a little menu mixing - some Sweet and Hot Fried Almonds, Spring Chickens with Green Marinade and Sweet Pea Risotto, topped off with Bitter Orange Chocolate Mousse. What's not to like?

Tom's Big Dinners by Tom Douglas is published by Morrow Cookbooks.

Before I started reading/reviewing these books, Anne Willan was unfamiliar to me but, as soon as they arrived, her name started to crop up in my reading with increasing regularity. An American by way of Yorkshire, Willan established La Varenne, the prestigious Burgundy-based French cooking school, in 1975. For those who haven't the time or money to study with her, she has also written an impressive number of cookbooks, ranging from Dorling Kindersley's Perfect series (Perfect Chicken Dishes, Perfect Chocolate Deserts, Perfect Appetizers etc), last year's useful A Cook's Book of Quick Fixes to the more personal in From My Chateau Kitchen.

How to Cook Absolutely Everything and Best Recipes for Absolutely Everything are, however, work manuals rather cookbooks to gloat and glory over (see Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking or Unwrapped: Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes for examples of those!). How to Cook..., in particular, is very instruction book-like, laid out with photographs of food at various stages of doneness with accompanying text that explains details of colour and texture. It originated, as Willan points out in the introduction, in her kitchen: " 'That looks done to me,' I said one day as a student lifted a roast chicken out of the oven. And then I thought - how do I know? Cooking is a skill learned by experience, and nothing is more difficult than judging when a dish is cooked just right." Although she states that smell, sight, touch, hearing and, finally, taste, are all important in determining when food is ready, Willan does a surprisingly good job of communicating this through the visual images and text in this small (well under 200 pages) book.

With chapters ranging through eggs, pasta, desserts, meat and fruit, there's a wealth of information here for both inexperienced and veteran cooks. The chapter on sauces, for instance, covers - amongst others - stocks, gravies, hollandaise, mayonnaise and vinaigrette alongside sweet sauces like pastry cream and fruit coulis. The meat chapter has useful instructions on how to use a simple thumb test for firmness - as in comparing your thumb muscle's resilience to that of the food - as a way to judge how well a piece of meat or fish is cooked. It sure beats having to cut into a piece of steak in the pan to see how bloody it is. The images which accompany grain pilaffs and risottos are similarly helpful and it is always useful to compare your mental image of how a food looks when it is cooked with actual pictures of the real thing. Each section starts with a paragraph on the method of cooking, as well as tips on appropriate seasonings and remedies for technical problems.

Willan does includes several recipes so that readers can experiment with their new-found knowledge (in the apple section, Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin looks particularly good) but there just aren't enough, especially when you get to the chocolate mousse and ganache sections in the desserts chapter. For those associated recipes - Chocolate Mousse with Raspberries and Pecan Truffles - you have to go to the companion book, Best Recipes for Absolutely Everything. As Best Recipes... and How to Cook... are so complimentary to each other, I don't understand why Quadrille Publishing didn't publish both books in the one volume. How to Cook Absolutely Everything is both educational and interesting but it is frustrating to have to go search for recipes in Best Recipes for Absolutely Everything. Only two stars out of fivce - it could have been more.

How to Cook Absolutely Everything and Best Recipes for Absolutely Everything by Anne Willan are published by Quadrille Publishing.

My first introduction to Ursula Ferrigno was through a book called Bread (published by Dorling Kindersley) that she co-wrote with Eric Treuillé, the owner of London shop/haven Books For Cooks. It's an eminently useful publication with, as is the Dorling Kindersley way, plenty, almost too many, illustrations. This became a much-used publication in my kitchen - especially when the Boyfriend appointed himself official bagel-maker! - and so it was with great interest I turned to Ferrigno's latest book, Trattoria: Food for Family and Friends.

Fortunately publishers Mitchell Beazley don't go in for the totally step-by-step, picture-at-each-stage idea. Trattoria is more atmospheric than the dictatorial Bread but the quality of the recipes doesn't suffer from that. Ferrigno has published several other well-regarded Italian cookery books and she certainly knows her stuff. Each recipe starts with a paragraph where she talks evocatively about the ingredients used, the history of the dish and the area that the food is associated with. The emphasis throughout is on fresh, regional and seasonal food and, while Ferrigno celebrates tradition, she is not hide-bound by it.

Ferrigno includes recipes from and little histories of some of her favourite trattoria, tempting the reader to visit Italy as well as cooking its food. The book is sumptuously photographed by Francesca Yorke - the dishes, as well as the people, produce and landscape - and will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in Italian food. All I need now is a map so I can plot my gastronomic tour of Italy!

Trattoria: Food for Family and Friends by Ursula Ferrigno is published by Mitchell Beazley.

Although already the author of two well-received memoirs - Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour - as well as a couple of not so popular detective novels, it has taken American chef Anthony Bourdain a little while to embark on his own cookbook and he throws himself into the undertaking with commendable vigour.

An already hyperactive writing style doesn't get lost anywhere along the way as he pushes, prods and sometimes seems to want to deliberately antagonise readers. Bourdain is the executive chef at New York City restaurant Les Halles, and he has decreed that this book is a "field manual to strategy and tactics". To that end, he's determined to treat the reader as if he or she were a rookie in his kitchen. He doesn't mince his words as he coerces and advises, issuing warnings and occasionally yelling (in print).

Bourdain takes the solid, mainly carnivorous (don't miss the blood and guts chapter), French principles behind Les Halles and reworks them for a private kitchen to good effect. Behind all the bluster, there's a chef with a talent for imparting his knowledge of food to those who wish to learn. While it won't be very useful to vegetarians (fans of Ysanne Spevack's Fresh and Wild Cookbook avoid!), the Les Halles Cookbook is an undoubted education.

Les Halles Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain is published by Bloomsbury.

Derry woman and Sunday Telegraph food writer Diana Henry has again come up trumps with her latest book, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow. Her first cookbook, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, focused on the tastes and enchantments of the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa. With praise from Claudia Roden and its appearance twice on the Glenfiddich award shortlist, it became an instant classic.

Like Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, there is a focus on travelling in Roast Figs, Sugar Snow. Henry has traversed the chilly areas of the Northern Hemisphere and collected recipes from Maine, Norway, Tuscany and Denmark, grouping them by theme under idiosyncratic chapter headings. Tales From the Hunt covers game and wild mushrooms, Earthly Pleasures focuses on pumpkin, squash, beans and lentils while Sugar Snow is devoted to maple syrup.

Henry's introductions to each chapter are evocative and personal, being as much a travel guide as information on the ingredients. Like her previous book, there are seasonal quotes scattered throughout from Laurie Lee, Marianne Moore and Robert Frost as well as the piece that inspired her - Laura Ingalls Wilder's vivid description of a sugar snow in Vermont from Little House in the Big Woods. These literary diversions make Roast Figs, Sugar Snow a book that is worth reading as well as cooking from. But don't underestimate Henry's recipes. There's the detail of Sugar-On-Snow for those Ingalls Wilder fanatics, Beef Pie with Wild Mushrooms and Claret ("you can make men fall in love with you with this pie"), the substantial-sounding Steamed Apple and Marmalade Pudding and Uncle Desmond's Sloe Gin.

Vividly luminous photographs by Jason Lowe compliment Henry's sensuous writing and make Roast Figs, Sugar Snow a book to curl up with on a dark night in front of a roaring fire. Just don't try doing it when you're hungry.

Roast Figs, Sugar Snow by Diana Henry is published by Mitchell Beazley.

British organic and Fair Trade food chain Fresh and Wild teamed up with organic expert Ysanne Spevack, editor of online organic food magazine OrganicFoodee.com, to produce this cookbook. It's both worthy and worthwhile, but sometimes Spevack's party political broadcasts on behalf of Fresh and Wild do get a little tiresome, especially when there's only a limited amount of the shops to go around.

That aside, the biggest problem with this book is the lack of a glossary. There are frequent references to ingredients that probably won't be familiar to many readers - tempeh, spelt, rapadura - and, although Spevack does explain what they are, that's only useful if you read the whole thing in sequence. Things can get confusing if you, like me, tend to dip in and out of recipe books rather than peruse it from cover to cover. An A to Z glossary would save both time and patience, further demystifying all those odd things you find in health shops.

The selection of recipes in the Fresh and Wild Cookbook are undeniably healthy and often intriguing. Worth working through if you're making the effort to move away from meat and two veg.

Fresh and Wild Cookbook by Ysanne Spevack is published by Thorsons.

New Zealand cafés do fantastic salads and whenever my tastebuds need a kick and I'm looking for an unusual salad recipe, I turn to former café owner (now cookbook writer) Julie Le Clerc or one of Mark McDonough's Zarbo books. Zarbo is a popular Auckland-based delicatessen, fresh food store and café. The name is familiar throughout New Zealand from being emblazoned on its own range of dressings, marinades, rubs and chutneys. The shop also stocks an exceptional range of imported food products, meaning - if you're in Auckand, of course - that you'll never be stuck for any of the ingredients mentioned in Zarbo Zest.

The inspirations for Mark's recipes come from both near and far - the exotic flavours of North Africa and, even closer, Asia; the fresh produce of New Zealand; more familiar food from Europe. Another thing that inspires him is the balance between work and life. His recipes are all workable for the time-poor generation with homemade smoothies and muesli for the busy weekdays and homemade jams and brunch dishes for more leisurely weekends.

Mark has some intriguing combinations of flavours and techniques - Kaffir Lime Leaf Marmalade, for instance, and Gravlax with Coriander Root and Szechwan Pepper or Pumpkin, Orange and Bay Jam. He has a section on dressings which gets full marks for a homemade version of Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce but it is a little disappointing that he doesn't clarify which dressing goes best with what.

That aside, Zarbo Zest is an inspiring and approachable cookbook with plenty of mouthwatering dishes for every occasion. Now, if only I could get back to New Zealand to see the café itself in action...

Zarbo Zest by Mark McDonough is published by Random House New Zealand.

To my sorrow I must admit that I have only once eaten in Denis Cotter's award-winning Café Paradiso restaurant in Cork. But that one time, nearly ten years ago now, was mostly memorable for my first taste of polenta. My sociologist student friend felt it was deeply ironic that I should be writing my thesis on the Irish Famine at the time and eating what was known in 1840s Ireland as "Peel's Brimstone" - the Indian meal imported by British Prime Minister Robert Peel to help the starving Irish. All irony aside, that day I fell in love with Denis Cotter's cooking and a return trip is long on the cards.

A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking is Cotter's latest book and it has succeeded in whetting my appetite even further. The recipes in it, as in its companion Spring and Summer Cooking, are selected from his Paradiso Seasons, which was the 2003 winner of the Best Vegetarian Book in the World Award. Cotter, however, doesn't place an emphasis on vegetarian cooking as much as he does on cooking vegetables. His is the kind of cooking where lack of meat is unnoticed and even the most determined non-vegetarian will find plenty of tempting recipes here.

My time in spent in New Zealand markets has encouraged me to think and cook in a more seasonal manner. This book is, therefore, right up my street, especially when Cotter talks about pumpkins and leeks being the bedrock of his autumn cooking. Winter he associates with hardy greens and edible roots, and the book also includes a section on the spring greens and purple sprouting broccoli of Early Spring.

Having been surrounded by pumpkins, particularly Cotter's beloved Crown variety, in New Zealand, it's heart-warming to find an Irish writer with such an imaginative take on this fantastic - and much underrated on this side of the world - vegetable. Pumpkin Gnocchi with Spinach in a Roasted Garlic Cream, Roast Pumpkin, Onion and Feta Tart in a Walnut Filo Pastry with Cucumber and Yoghurt Sauce or Baked Pumpkin, Cashew and Yoghurt Curry are all recipes which, when I manage to get my hands on the chief ingredient, I intend to try myself.

While many of the recipes may seem to be more orientated towards restaurant- rather than home-cooking, Cotter makes the point that they are reference points as much as definite instructions and his flavour combinations are inspiring. I may never get round to making the whole of the beautiful cover dish - Pistachio, Cardamom and Basmati Rice Cake with Coconut Greens and Gingered Mango Salsa - but I can definitely see myself using the constituent parts of Cotter's recipe.

Sitting these winter nights, poring over Autumn and Winter Cooking without a kitchen in which to try out Cotter's recipes, has been tantalising. I've promised myself a trip to Café Paradiso and his recipes have made me more determined than ever to track down some pumpkins!

A Paradiso Year: Autumn and Winter Cooking by Denis Cotter is published by Cork University Press.

First there was Myrtle Allen who was responsible for raising the profile and quality of Irish food through her work abroad and in her country house hotel at Ballymaloe. Daughter-in-law Darina backed her up, beginning the Ballymaloe Cookery School and, with her Simply Delicious television series and books, started pushing the message through to the wider public in Ireland. Now it's the turn of a third generation and Rachel Allen is successfully following in the television footsteps of mother-in-law Darina.

Not having a television set for a few years (and spending the last 12 months in New Zealand!) I haven't yet managed to catch any of Rachel's programmes but I have got my hands on her second book, Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends, based on the series of the same name.

My mother hasn't been impressed with her television persona, describing her as "very milk and water" (another way of saying wishy-washy) but, based on her book, it is easy to see why she's so successful. Rachel is not inventing the wheel but she is re-introducing it to a new generation.

Darina, at first, focused on traditional Irish cooking - soda bread, raspberry jam, roasts and scones - but she also ventured into then-exotic (I'm talking early 1990s Ireland here!) Mediterranean foodstuffs like pasta and Peperonata. Rachel, who like many of us in our 30s, has travelled throughout the world, takes inspiration from a variety of further afield sources. Her recipes for dishes that we might have tasted on our own travels - Tom Yum, Moroccan Chickpea Soup and Kulfi - are all simple and manageable.

Rachel endeared herself to me by starting off many of the chapters with soups (Chunky Smoked Haddock Chowder, Cannellini Bean and Chicken Soup with Basil). When you're reading her book on the DART on a cold dark winter's night, that's exactly what you want to see. There are plenty of useful tips scattered throughout the book and I particularly loved her comment that caramelised sugar is ready when it turns the colour of whiskey. That's not a tip that you're going to forget in a hurry. Her sweet pastry technique - untouched by hand, lots of resting, rolled out between clingfilm - seems to be exciting a lot of interest too and, judging from personal experience with my aunt's apple tart, I know that it tastes delicious.

Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends is perfect for home cooks anxious to expand their repertoire and well worth a browse for everyone else. I'm sure it's going to feature in many a Christmas stocking this year.

Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends by Rachel Allen is published by Gill & Macmillan

Since I first saw this book in our local Oxfam shop in Dublin I've been having lustful thoughts about it. Green & Black's produce fabulous organic Fair Trade chocolate - their spice/orange Maya Gold bar heading the list of my all time favourite chocolates - and the photos that I saw on a brief browse through the book were mouth-watering. It's taken some time but I finally bought my own copy and my first impressions did not deceive.

Unwrapped, subtitled From the Cacao Pod to Muffins, Mousses and Moles, is, as it says, all about chocolate and its uses, both sweet and savoury. There are several recipes for delectable gooey brownies (Chocolate and Cherry Brownies, Celebration Brownies), a couple of variations on flourless chocolate cakes - Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake, Polenta Chocolate Cake - and lots of tempting savoury dishes, including a highly intriguing recipe for Gorgonzola with Dark Chocolate. There's also a recipe for Vodka Chilli Chocolates that feeds directly into my current chocolate/chilli fixation - with the added boost of the vodka involvement.

This is a celebration of chocolate in its every shape and form but where it differs from other cookbooks, is in its attention to the detail of the cacao bean production and the merits of Fair Trade. Pictures of the cacao bean growing in its natural environment and of the people that cultivate it are dispersed throughout the book, adding another level of interest to what is already a fascinating book. I can't believe I waited so long to buy it.

Unwrapped: Green and Black's Chocolate Recipes edited by Caroline Jeremy is published by Kyle Cathie.

Why is it that recipe names look so much more evocative when written in French? Gâteau au chocolate et à l'abricot seems so much more sophisticated than just plain Chocolate apricot cake. Still, from the look of this slice of this moist dark cake pictured in Christelle Le Ru's Simply Irresistible French Desserts I don't think that anyone will complain if you set it in front of them, no matter which name you use. But Carrés à la noix de pécan and Crèmes chaudes aux myrtilles (Pecan squares and Hot blueberry creams, respectively) certainly do have much more of a ring to them en Français and that's a great deal to do with the charm of this Christchurch-based Frenchwoman's self-published cookbook.

In a world dominated by glossy over-airbrushed and Photoshop-manipulated food photographs, it is refreshing to come across a cookbook with such real illustrations. Like any normal home cook, Christelle doesn't always get perfect slices and sometimes her icing looks intent on flowing off the cake but when she says that that particular cake will "delight many" you believe her. After all, she's got the weight of experience behind her as all these recipes have been thoroughly tried and tested on her friends and family.

Simply Irresistible French Desserts showcases a tempting selection of Christelle's sweet creations, from traditional French charlottes (choose between Chocolate and banana, Pear and chocolate and Strawberry variations) to her take on a baked cheesecake (Fondant au chocolate). The recipes are divided between chapters entitled Chocolate Creations, Fruit Delights and Small Treats, each of which hold a selection of entirely mouthwatering treats. None of the recipes are difficult and there are plenty that have me edging towards the kitchen as I type. I think I'm going to enjoy experimenting with Christelle's Simply Irresistible French Desserts - and I will especially relish using the French names!

Simply Irresistible French Desserts by Christelle Le Ru is published by CLR.

It's not often that chefs can manage to simplify techniques so that they are both intelligible and useful to those of us who confine our cooking to the home kitchen but Auckland-based Genevieve McGough has managed it in Brilliant But Basic. In this slim publication she deals with a total of 19 different techniques, teaching formulas for useful cooking basics such as meringue, risotto, slow-cooked meats and cheesecake.

Each section starts with an explanation, a basic recipe and then the cream on top - substitutions and variations. Where this approach really shines is in the Classic Dressings chapter. The area devoted to Pesto and Pistou runs through appropriate herbs and nuts to use in these dressings, offering combination suggestions. Just the idea of coriander and cashew nut dressing with camembert cheese had me almost raiding the herb patch, despite the fact that we're a long way from having enough coriander to give more than just a dab of flavour! The vinaigrette and mayonnaise sections, too, offers some delightful innovations. For anyone who eats a lot of salad and is interested in expanding their dressings repertoire this chapter alone would make the book worth buying.

But that's not all Brilliant But Basic has to offer. Hot smoking and brining techniques are a few of the more off-kilter, but appealing, ideas. One evening, lacking a starch to accompany a stew, I successfully road-tested McGough's plain creamy risotto. The next time I'll get stuck into some of her ideas involving smoked paprika and roast garlic.

While the recipes included in each section are sometimes too restaurant-kitchen for this home cook, the ideas behind them are sound and McGough gives the reader the knowledge and the guidelines for success. For cooks at any level, Brilliant But Basic is a book that will repay careful study.

Brilliant But Basic by Genevieve McGough is published by Penguin Books.

Taste: Baking With Flavour is the third book from the partnership of professional baker Dean Brettschneider and contributing food editor at Cuisine magazine, Lauraine Jacobs. Their first two books - The New Zealand Baker and Baker, The Best of International Baking from Australian and New Zealand Professionals - were perhaps a little too technical for home use, although it was evident that they were fantastic resources for anyone in the baking business.

Without dumbing down in any way, the authors have redressed this issue in Taste and the book is packed with more than 50 recipes that will have even the more inexperienced cooks making a beeline for the kitchen. This time round, the authors have broken the method down to manageable steps plus, beside each recipe, are useful Keys to Success, which draw your attention to variations, substitutions and suggestions to make the recipe easier.

There are several unusual taste and texture combinations - Plum, Almond and Fennel Tart or Rosemary Rice Pudding Tart being just two of these - and plenty of gluten-free options, Lemon and Blueberry Polenta Cake and Poppy Seed Bread, for example. There are also recipes for those interested in taking bread baking a little big further and the Chardonnay Loaf, topped with a hand-moulded bunch of grapes (instructions and pictures included!), is a fine illustration of this.

The book is divided into three chapters - Pastries, Pies and Tarts; Breads; and Cakes and Cookies - each of which starts with basic techniques and recipes to enable you to get the best out of whichever recipes you decide to cook. Ending with supplementary information on ingredients and equipment, Taste: Baking With Flavour is an essential addition to anyone's baking library.

Taste by Dean Brettschneider and Lauraine Jacobs is published by Random House New Zealand.

Australian cook Bill Granger is the darling of the Sydney restaurant scene. He open his first café, Bill's, twelve years ago and hasn't looked back since. Earlier this month he opened his third Sydney restaurant and he has just visited Christchurch to launch his fourth cookbook, Simply Bill. Not bad for an untrained cook who, until he opened Bill's, had no experience in a commercial kitchen.

Bill's Open Kitchen is his third cookbook. In it, Granger veers towards fusion cookery with plenty of Asian and Mediterranean flavours but, fortunately, not in the same dish - although he has a nice take on mixing old traditions (afternoon tea) with modern flavourings (Orange and Cardamom Biscuits).

As befits a man who also does all the cooking at home (he and his partner had three small girls at the time) Granger also has plenty of ideas for fast and not inordinately difficult food. A professed fan of casual and easy dining, his Tagliatelle with Chicken and Green Beans and Spicy Omelette Sandwiches all look like tasty and quick options for the harassed and short-of-time cook.

The images and presentation are wonderful if, at times, a little bit too staged but there are good recipes and useful tips in Bill's Open Kitchen.

Now this cookbook is right up my alley. The combination of the words comfort, food, eating and pleasure - especially in winter - talk far more to me that those hated phrases low fat, slimline and reduced calories. Which isn't to say that comfort food is going to have a drastic effect on your waistline, although it might! It's just that the whole idea of comfort food which, by nature, involves things hated by the health police such as full fat milk, real butter and clotted cream, is especially evocative in the winter. With cold and rain outside (here in New Zealand), now is the perfect time to stay indoors, browse through cookery books and decide what tasty treat to cook for dinner tonight. You Northern Hemispherians will have some time to wait but there's no harm in getting ready in advance for dismal, dreary weather.

Maxine Clark being Scottish, there's an emphasis on porridge, scones and shortbread but she doesn't sell herself short and there's also plenty of foods from other cultures like Gooey Butterscotch Nut Muffins (America), Lamb Shanks and Apricots with Minted Sesame Couscous (Morocco) and Spanish spices make their way into Cod and Bean Stew with Saffron and Paprika. She also has a good way of giving a twist to a traditional recipe, adding a buttery caramel to the apples for a Deep Dish Apple Pie.

Divided into chapters such as At the Table, On The Sofa, Breakfast in Bed and On the Tray, Clark also makes the case for a more leisurely, contemplative lifestyle, one which involves your breakfast arriving on your lap as you wake up, the tinkle of the tea trolley at mid-afternoon, a unhurried dinner and curling up on the couch in the evening. If only life were so good! Comfort Food: Eating for Pleasure is more a state of mind than anything else and you may find yourself comforted by the mere reading of this book, as well as unable to resist a trip to the kitchen to put some of its recipes into action.

In a world full of cookbooks, Sybil Kapoor's Taste: A New Way to Cook is truly innovative. Kapoor writes from a far more scientific perspective than most food writers, explaining in great detail about the elementary tastes of sour, salt, umani (savoury), bitter and sweet. She helps the reader to understand basic taste combinations and how these work to enhance and compliment each other.

A chapter is given to each taste, with salt and umani combined, plus one on how chilli heightens taste awareness and another on how aromatic ingredients - spices and herbs - have an impact on each of the five tastes.

Taste: A New Way to Cook is photographed like the science book that it is closer to than a cookbook. But there are also recipes for each chapter, carefully chosen to highlight whichever taste Kapoor is focusing on.

This is not an easy read, and it can be somewhat confusing, but it is always truly intriguing. This is a book to return to again and again as Kapoor suggests experiments and combinations to try and you start making sense of her statements in your own head. This, rather than atomic particles or the table of the elements is the part of science that makes most sense to me. Informatively educational.

This distinctive book - its size and multi-coloured stripes will ensure that you won't mislay it in your kitchen - is a veritable tome but it is surprisingly readable. It sat on my coffee table for a month, chapters to be digested along with meals, and it has so many post-its hanging out of it to denote the ideas that interest me or recipes that I would like to try that it runs the risk of most of the 1075 pages (not including the index) being marked.

The book is an A-Z, by ingredient, and each chapter starts with a treatise by Stephanie Alexander on that particular ingredient plus information on varieties and season, selection, storage and preparation. A handful of well chosen recipes follow, accompanied by margin notes which point out complimentary ingredients and give ideas for other dishes.

Although I thought The Cook's Companion, being an Australian cookery book, would only have limited interest for me, its practical A-Z of ingredients and techniques looks fair set to surpass my reliance on Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course.

There is a real personality to this book with surprisingly funny comments from Alexander and, although her habit of using unnecessary parenthesis can sometimes irritate, maybe that wouldn't be quite as noticeable if you were dipping in and out of The Cook's Companion rather than swallowing it whole.

There are plenty of unusual - to Northern Hemispheric eyes - ingredients including kangaroo, wallaby and albone but the amount and quality of information on more readily available things like lemons, coconuts, spinach and rice make this book worth turning to on a regular basis. And, if I even need to cook a yabby, I'll know exactly where to find all the information. Worth investing in.

Michelin-starred Irish chef Conrad Gallagher sets out the ethos of this book in the introduction. Each recipe is to contain just six ingredients - not counting salt (Maldon Sea Salt), pepper (freshly ground) and best quality olive oil.

Gallagher always has been a curious mixture of the inspired (his cooking) and the pretentious (his behaviour) and he cannot resist adding, in the introduction, that he dives for his own, hand-picked scallops. The recipes also bear this out. The home cook's heart may sink when faced with recipes for Scrambled Eggs with Foie Gras, Truffle and Chives or Oysters with Caviar, Radish and Cucumber but, later in the book, you will also encounter recipes for relatively simple but taste-complex dishes including Lemon Soup, Smoked Chilli Buttered Sweetcorn and Caramelised Bananas with Lemongrass.

Just skip the last few lines of each recipe as Gallagher gives instructions on plating and presentation. For me, if I want something beautifully titivated on a plate, I choose to go to a restaurant. It's not an ambition of mine for the home kitchen.

For all Gallagher's presentation obsessions, there are some great recipes here. And yes, he does just use six ingredients. Well worth checking out and, if you're trying to reach restaurant standards at home, this will be the book for you.

New Zealand cook Judith Cullen used to run her own café in Dunedin before she changed careers to become a successful teacher of cookery classes, many of which are run from her home. Judith Cullen's Cookery Classes is her first published book but she has a fresh and simple approach that many more seasoned cookbook writers would envy.

Staying with the format of her cookery classes, Cullen has opted to divide the book into monthly menus with a seasonal slant - picnic ideas for January, mid-winter slow cooking in July. An introduction to each chapter gives some background on her choices as well as plenty of useful tips and ideas. One thing that I loved about the book was the way in which Cullen made the most of seasonal fruits with her emphasis on relishes and sauces.

This is fusion cookery without fuss. Cullen uses an eclectic but judicious mixture of foods and flavours, with influences ranging from Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and North African, introducing and demystifying unfamiliar ingredients, from pomegranate molasses to tamarind and sumac.

The one fault that I found with the book is the fact that no recipe states how many people it serves. Although on further investigation I found a line in the introduction saying that most of the recipes feed four to six people, I shouldn't have to go searching for it. Nor does this better inform me of the number of biscuits/cakes that I will get from the recipes for Blue Cheese Biscuits or Ricotta Cakes.

That aside, Judith Cullen's Cookery Classes is a beautifully written and photographed introduction to modern New Zealand cooking.

Judith Cullen's Cookery Classes is published by Longacre Press

Although we're very solidly into autumn now here in New Zealand (autumn! In April! I'm still not quite getting my head around it) with little prospect of camping ahead, Nicola Saker's Blue Sky Kitchen: Creative Cookery For Kiwi Campers still caught my eye, despite the sickly image of the nuclear family that feature on the cover. Although not a Kiwi, I certainly am a camper cooking for a Kiwi so I figure I fall into Saker's target market. Anyway, I'm always looking for good things to cook over our wee gas burner (one-pot options only need apply) and this has plenty of great workable ideas for campsite cuisine.

Saker isn't one of these super-efficient, scary women that you sometimes see in campsite kitchens, whipping up a three-course meal with nothing but a billy can and tin opener. As she says herself, "I'm not a trained cook, and I'm not a hugely experienced camper" - sounds like someone on the same end of the scale as myself, then. The start of the book concentrates on good advice to do with food storage and, most importantly, food safety - something which is often forgotten or disregarded while camping. There are also handy lists of cooking utensils and stores for those who, unlike myself, dare to go under canvas with more than one generation.

I've been a fan of Nigella's writing since Nigel Slater (my other favourite cookery writer) gave his readers a tip-off about her first cookery book How To Eat. In fact, How To Eat was so beloved in our house that both I and my housemate had a copy - just in case we parted ways and one of us would end up living without it. Together with all Nigel's books and Darina Allen's impressive Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook, How To Eat sits on that section of the cookbook shelf that gets plundered on a regular basis.

While How To Be A Domestic Goddess is also a worthwhile and oft-used book, especially if I'm in the mood for night-time baking, neither Nigella Bites nor Forever Summer managed to set my world alight. Perhaps there was too much emphasis on Nigella the TV star and not enough on Nigella the cook. So it's a relief to pick (or heft) Feast up and realise that, freed from programme constraints, this is Nigella doing what she does best; writing gloriously evocative and approachable recipes. It's a dense tome of a book, which clocks in at almost 500 pages and has text that looks like it was sized down to make sure it didn't take over another couple of hundred pages.