Annabel Langbein

I have a copy of the very first 1954 edition, gifted from a distant cousin, and two more modern copies. This was the first book that provided an inkling of the range of regional Italian home cooking and the often-complex food traditions from region to region, and the book I used as my guide when I stepped into my first professional cooking job, at the age of 19 as the “chef” for a little neighbourhood restaurant in Gisborne on New Zealand's East Cape.

A book about eating as well as recipes, encapsulated in 24 wonderful seasonal menus. I really relate to David's food – its’ the way I like to cook for friends and family. Simple, honest, fresh fare delivered with a wonderfully evocative writing style.

I got this book when it first came out in 1986 and fell in love with the subsistence life that Gray documented so passionately as she journeyed around wild remote places in the southern Mediterranean with her sculptor partner. Her writing took me into a peasant life and culture that (at the time of publication) remained largely unchanged for centuries, with simple recipes that capture the heart of a traditional Mediterranean life.

I have all of MFK’s books. She is so extraordinarily erudite, the master of weaving stories about life and food and recipes – often detailed from her own rich life from the late 1930s to the 1970s.

Amazingly researched, passionate, authentic writing and food, and the first to introduce us to a magical world of flavours from the Middle East.

These days I find this food too rich and too fiddly, but these two volumes were the first cookbooks I owned, gifted to me by my mother when I was just 14. She knew I was a cook well before I did. The lobster thermidor is a well-marked page from my days as a lobster fisher – I think it has 23 ingredients and seven different steps, and about as many calories as you need in a whole week!

We cook over the fire three or four nights a week, even in the winter, and this is a really inspiring book of ideas and recipes.

Fish around the world have different names so it's useful to be able to identify the varieties you know and love and discover new ways to prepare them with Mediterranean flair.

David used to have a wonderful restaurant in Sydney and has devoted much of his life to discovering the rich traditions of the Thai kitchen in truly authentic tastes, with many traditional recipes from Thailand’s royal kitchens.

This is the most extraordinary resource on modern cooking techniques developed by former Microsoft strategist and all round clever guy Nathan Myhrvold, along with Chris Young, Maxime Bilet and a team of more than 50 staff and freelance contributors plus 14 outside experts. It cost over US$1 million to produce the first 6000 copies. Released in March 2011, it focuses on the application of scientific research principles and new techniques and technology to cooking. Very much a chef-to-chef resource and quite frankly extraordinary.