Hattie Ellis

Not explicitly an English cookbook – influences and ingredients also come from elsewhere – this is nonetheless deeply and beautifully rooted in Molyneux’s cooking in her Devon restaurant. Every recipe has that little bit of finesse that makes a dish special without being cheffy.

One of my most splattered books. Anna Del Conte distills what really matters in a recipe in order to make it delicious: no more, no less.

The cookbook that broke conventions by showing food to be part of life, and that you could write about how this happens rather than donning a straitjacket of recipe ‘rules’. There’s such a joy of eating in the book and such a strong sense of how eating is central to home.

One of the first, best, most useful and most personal cookbooks to emphasise seasonal produce. Every page shows a curious home cook pursuing what he loves to eat as well as cook. Full of gems such as Cynical Party-Giving section (December), which is how to entertain lots of people easily and well. He also gives a guide to the cost of the recipes, a useful detail not often mentioned and there’s a comprehensive guide to what’s in season, including cheese.

A chef’s book that is genuinely based on the home kitchen. As well as following the seasons, it also covers different occasions, from dinner for two (‘In Spring a Young Man’s Fancy’) to feeding a crowd (Footballers’ Lunch). The writing is witty and full of well-honed opinions, and I love the illustrations by Lucinda Rogers; illustration dates much less than photography.

A brilliantly useful book that analyses the anatomy of a dish without losing its essence. The book strips different sorts of recipes – a savoury tart, a noodle soup, a chocolate mousse - back to basics so you can understand the fundamentals and then embellish and adapt as you want.

Britain has outstanding livestock farmers and a strong and skilful tradition of meat production and cooking. This groundbreaking book goes into the detail of real meat without holding back. Brave, bold and tasty, this book was a gamechanger in how we see farm animals as well as meat.

‘Cosmopolitan’, says the cover blurb about this selection from Grigson’s Evening Standard recipes. Nowadays we cook from all over the world, but when this came out in 1990, I had just moved to London (as it happens, down the road from where SG had lived) and was exploring the produce from London’s diverse shops. I’ve often found the Standard recipes useful and relevant - Fay Maschler’s Eating In could also have been in this personal selection of my most used cookbooks.

Sybil Kapoor is a great cook and her focus on five different tastes is strongly developed in this book and thoughtfully reflected in the photographs by David Loftus. A book that helps me think more about the balance and character of a dish.

The book that first got me really interested in vegetable-based cooking, and I love it even more for not being explicitly vegetarian. As well as having recipes that I use time and time again, it’s a beautiful book, with a distinctive square shape and such strong design that it still looks and feels fresh even though it was published in 1997. Why hasn’t it been reprinted?