Eleanor Maidment

This and its sequel, The Art of Simple Food II, are a pair of extraordinary books from seminal US chef Alice Waters, offering advice on technique as well as simple, seasonal recipes. It’s rare that I love a cookery book with no photography, but these are both exceptional.

I did my professional cookery training at Leiths cookery school in west London. This was the book we learned our classic techniques from. It’s incredibly user-friendly and helpfully tells you why things might have gone wrong.

I love all of Madhur Jaffrey’s books, but this is the one I have cooked from most. It was part of a series the BBC released on regional ‘foolproof’ cookery (Ken Hom covered Chinese, Raymond Blanc French) in about 2000, and the step-by-step recipes are refreshingly uncomplicated and easy-to-follow.

A really interesting insight into the origins of Jewish cooking. Roden is a wonderful storyteller as well as recipe writer.

So many of my go-to classic bakes – banana bread, brownies – come from Nigella Lawson’s second book.

I’ve always been able to follow a recipe, but I think this was the first book that got me thinking about why things work in the kitchen. Delia was genuinely a culinary hero when I was growing up, and I love the way all of her recipes just work.

What a ground-breaking book. I think it truly change the way we cook, introducing ideas of colour, texture and so many ingredients that we hadn’t really cooked with before.

Sometimes a book comes along that is just that little bit different. I think Samin’s approach to breaking down why things work in the kitchen is exciting and engaging.

Admittedly I haven’t cooked anything from here, but it’s such a good-looking book… I adore its design and photography. And the restaurant is great, so I can only imagine the recipes are great too.

A compendium of some the most clever recipes that have ever been published, and a little bit of explanation about what makes them so genius. A great read.