Diana Henry

It’s hard to choose one Italian book – so many have been written – but Hazan is the queen. The recipes simply work. Nothing extraneous, no nonsense.

For me this was a life-changing book. Simple, seasonal cooking, a Mediterranean spirit applied to whatever ingredients are grown or farmed near you. A delicious shiver went down my spine when I first leafed through this in a bookshop (during the reign of nouvelle cuisine). The menus were daring in their simplicity.

O’Neill is simply the best out there. She writes in a way that makes you look at an ingredient in a different way and shows you how food fits into her life. She understands that food is much more than just something to eat. I wish she had never given up writing about food.

Beautifully designed, beautiful recipes, this is a book where style and content are perfectly matched (a rare thing).

A book to ‘work through’ as there is so much knowledge here. It’s full of the kind of food I want to eat and expresses the ethos of a restaurant that was ahead of its time.

My favourite of all Grigson’s books. She weaves no-nonsense advice together with personal opinion, learning and a love of literature and art. And she always sounds approachable (she wears her learning very lightly). Each essay grabs you from the start. Her vegetable book is just as good but I have a penchant for fruit.

The best book on the regional cooking of France. These are the dishes that made me fall in love with France and with cooking in general. I’ve been cooking out of this book for over thirty years. Learned, huge in scope, it’s now out of print and I wouldn’t lend my copy to anyone.

I bought this along with the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook and both books moved between my bedside table and my kitchen for years. This is food in a cultural context and I was blown away by the fact that someone was writing about food in this way, working as an anthropologist as well as a cook. The prose is elegant and the recipes are terrific. I’ve cooked nearly every dish in here.

A great big huggable book, full of knowledge, great recipes and good advice. It’s clearly the work of a lifetime. It was the first book I know of to use a cloth quarter binding and I immediately fell for it. A handsome tome that you can use forever.

The book that, for me, started it all off. My Granny gave it to me for Christmas one year and I was so excited about making apple snow and eggs baked in tomatoes. The recipes are pitched just right for children and I love the illustrations. I still get a frisson when I open this book – it takes me back. I wouldn’t lend this book to anyone either!