Susan Low

This book was published a couple of years before I moved to the UK from the US. At the time, Indian cooking was practically unknown where I grew up in New England and discovering Indian food in London was like opening the door to Narnia. I was blown away by its complex flavours and ingredients: green and black cardamom, fenugreek, cumin seeds, fresh coriander, cassia bark… How had I lived so long and not discovered these bits of edible magic? A friend gave me Madhur’s book and I was hooked. When I was meant to be writing my dissertation, I spent far too long in the kitchen (clearly a displacement activity), learning how to cook Indian food by following Madhur’s wise words. Many years later, I had the honour to work with Madhur while I was at the BBC. They say to never meet your heroes… Not so with Madhur. She’s as gracious, funny and wise in person as in her books. My signed copy of A Taste of India is now a prized possession.

So much more than a recipe book, this brave food memoir delivers a masterclass in storytelling. Alibhai-Brown’s family emigrated to Britain in 1972 after being expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin. It’s far from rose-tinted in its exploration of belonging, racism, family relationships and community, and the recipes act as the glue that holds it all together.

This cookbook by Soviet emigré Anya von Bremzen opened my eyes to the huge, complex variety of food from what was then the USSR. It covers a vast territory, from Armenia to Siberia, and as well as Russian classics such as blini and pelmeni, there’s a wealth of flavours – “a joyous cacophony of foods” as the author puts – it from the Caucasus, the Baltic countries and Central Asia. A Soviet smorgasbord.

Before she became The Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson was a jobbing journalist with an incisive but refreshing take on food and eating. Her debut book bIazed a food-writing trail: literary but down-to-earth, inspiring and practical, with the pleasure principle firmly at its core. I read it cover to cover when it was came out and wouldn’t part with it now.

Moro the restaurant broke new ground when it opened in London’s then-edgy Exmouth Market back in 1997, and this book introduced a generation to the flavours and aromas of Spain, Portugal, North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Turkey. The food and recipes were redolent with sumac, saffron, tahini and labneh – ingredients that hadn’t quite yet made it supermarket shelves. I’ve cooked a score of recipes from this book and I keep coming back to them. They’re every bit as enticing now as they were then.

Naomi Duguid is the food writer I’d most like to be when I grow up. Her evocative writing about the food, people, culture and cooking of the countries of Asia are utterly transporting, and her words and recipes have literally set me off on more than one journey to far-flung lands. When I need escape, this and her other books (Behind the Great Wall, Burma, Mangoes & Curry Leaves) are the ones I find myself reaching for, to be taken out of my current place and time, to somewhere faraway but delicious.

I’m a huge Claudia Roden fan. I love all of her books and I wavered between this one, The Food of Italy and The Food of Spain but finally the sheer scope and scholarship of The Book of Jewish Food book swung it for me. Roden’s knowledge is immense and her research is painstaking – but its her warmth and humanity that shine through. There’s inevitably a sense of melancholy, of loss, to this book but these are just the qualities that make it a brilliant read.

I love cooking food from all across Asia and I have innumerable books on the subject covering everything from Lao fish and seafood to making your own miso. But when I want something to cook for dinner, that will taste the way it ought to, and will really work, this is the book that I turn to, and whether it’s bao buns or ramen, it never, ever lets me down.

A journalist and storyteller with a deep knowledge of her subject, Caroline Eden does food and travel writing with erudition and insight. In this, her second book, she takes the reader on a journey from Odessa, south along the Black Sea coast to Trabzon in northeast Turkey. It’s a cookbook that you can spend blissful ages reading and learning from – “a way to eat the culture and taste the journey”, as the author so aptly puts it. The recipes are stunning too.

I love good Chinese food but never thought that I’d be able to cook it successfully until I started reading and cooking from Fuchsia Dunlop’s books. I’m a big fan of her other books (especially Sichuan Cooking) but this is the one I find myself returning to again and again, for recipes that are deceptively simple – many have just a handful of ingredients – yet that taste undeniably ‘proper’.