1 The Modern Italian Cook
Joe Trivelli
He is the modest but magical cook who is rightly proud to have spent the past 17 years at the River Cafe under the shadow of Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. Not for him the one-name fame of fellow alumni Jamie and Hugh, but RC head chef Joe Trivelli’s slow-cooked debut could just change all that. For the kitchen shelf not the coffee table. This one is a keeper.
Buy it for the perfect tomato pizza
Seven Dials, £25. To order a copy for £22, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
2 Strudel, Noodles & Dumplings
Anja Dunk
Gemütlich is the new hygge, another old world of comfort. Anja Dunk was mostly brought up in Wales and learned about food and flavours from her German mother’s cooking saturated in cardamom, caraway, cinnamon, dill. Oddly familiar yet foreign, with recipes shot through with a compelling mix of nostalgia and new, this is an assured modern voice from an accomplished cook.
Buy it for great-grandmother Hedel’s caraway roast pork
Fourth Estate, £26. To order a copy for £19.49, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
3 Feast
Anissa Helou
A masterwork from a masterful writer, to sit comfortably among the exalted company of, say, David Thompson’s Thai Food and Claudia Roden’s Book of Jewish Food. Subtitled Food of the Islamic World, the recipes and writing criss-cross the globe from Senegal to Sumatra, Tanzania to Xianjiang with more than 300 dishes over more than 500 pages, documenting thousands of miles of travel. A literal feast. And where else to find a recipe for roasted camel hump?
Buy it for the heady spice mixtures
Bloomsbury, £45. To order a copy for £33.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
4 Time
Gill Meller
With Gather, and now Time, Meller has freed himself from Hugh FW’s shadow (as a cook, teacher, writer and food stylist, he is a key member of the River Cottage team). Packed with alluring and do-able recipes plus poetic snatches of writing, this is a cookbook to pick up and savour when you need inspiration. Just a little bit lifestyle (those gently distressed kitchens and wistful portraits) but backed up by good taste and vigour, Time is of its time. It feels confident, complete.
Buy it for ideas for tomorrow’s dinner
Quadrille, £25. To order a copy for £22, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
5 Together – Our Community Cookbook
Foreword by the Duchess of Sussex
In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, a group of survivors and women from the area gathered at the nearby Al-Manaar centre to cook for the local community. They’re now the Hubb Community Kitchen (hubb means “love” in Arabic), an ongoing project supported by the Royal Foundation charity. Proceeds from the book help the kitchen, and its excellent recipes, contributed by the volunteers, echo their diverse heritage – Algerian plum upside-down cake, Iraqi green rice, Indian shortbread.
Buy it for the recipe for sweet lamb (and the cause)
Ebury, £9.99. To order a copy for £9.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
6 SUQAR: Desserts and Sweets from the Modern Middle East
Greg Malouf, Lucy Malouf
“A coming together of many influences,” is how the Maloufs describe this collection that reflects their travels. So there are honey citrus madeleines that nod to Moorish Spain and cheffy dishes such as bay-butterscotch baklava with caramel pears (basically a baklava ice-cream sandwich).
Buy it for the kunafa with apricot and cream cheese
Hardie Grant, £30. To order a copy for £26.40, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
7 La Grotta Ices
Kitty Travers
Travers was a pastry chef at St John Bread & Wine for five years before setting up La Grotta Ices in 2008. Her first book is the culmination of years of experimentation, tasting and churning from an ice-cream obsessive, with an extraordinary range of recipes, from damson and grappa (“a papal purple colour for a pair of pope’s socks”) to her famously delicious choc ice.
Buy it for dreaming of summer
Square Peg, £18.99. To order a copy for £16.71, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
8 Simple
Yotam Ottolenghi with Tara Wigley and Esme Howarth
The clue is in the title, or at least in the loose acronym that gathers together the book’s governing principles. “S” means recipes for anyone short on time; “i” means 10 ingredients or less; “m” stands for “make ahead”, “p” for pantry, “l” for those feeling lazy and “e” for easier than you think. Ottolenghi at his most user-friendly.
Buy it for Iranian herb fritters, our new favourite brunch
Ebury, £25. To order a copy for £17.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
9 Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food
Nik Sharma
This is, in Sharma’s words, the “story of a gay immigrant, told through food”. Born and brought up in Bombay, where being openly gay was not a possibility, he won a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. While working as a medical researcher in the US, he began a blog, then a column, and now there is Season. He expertly blends flavours of his childhood with those of his adopted home. Think crispy pork belly bites with a coconut vinegar-ginger glaze and margherita naan pizza.
Buy it for devilled eggs with tahini
Chronicle, £26. To order a copy for £22.88, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846
10 Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want
Ruby Tandoh
As well as rebelling against the tyranny of diets, fads and snobbery, Tandoh celebrates the pleasures of eating whatever you like, which could just as easily be a Creme Egg as Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce. And while there’s plenty to be serious about – mental health, eating disorders, and fat shaming – there’s space to remember how lucky we are to have waffles and a great recipe for smoky bean stew.
Buy it for putting real thought into what you want to eat
Serpent’s Tail, £8.99. To order a copy for £7.91, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
11 Solo: The Joy of Cooking for One
Signe Johansen
A book that turns a chore into a pleasure, thanks to Johansen’s framing of fixing dinner alone as a moment to look forward to. Covering everything from “one pan wonders” to easy puddings, it also sidesteps another psychological barrier for the solitary cook – boredom born of repetition. And Johansen is never less than in tune with her reader: there’s a lovely selection of “things on toast”, for example.
Buy it for treating yourself and no one else
Bluebird, £16.99. To order a copy for £14.95, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
12 Honey & Co: At Home
Sarit Packer, Itamar Srulovich
How do two busy Israeli chefs, with a pair of restaurants and a deli in Fitzrovia to take care of, cook and eat when they’re at home? Very handsomely indeed, if the third cookbook from Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich is to be believed. Since starting Honey & Co six years ago, they have learned to make the most of moments of respite, and the result is a repertoire of (mostly) simple dishes packed with Middle Eastern flavour – lamb stew with Medjool dates, pickled peaches with pistachios and parsley, chocolate cloud cake with red- and blackcurrants.
Buy it for the ingenious smoked haddock doughnuts
Pavilion, £26. To order a copy for £17.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
13 Asma’s Indian Kitchen
Asma Khan
In two years, Asma Khan has gone from running a supper club to opening a restaurant with a team of untrained cooks, starting a charitable foundation, starring in an episode of Netflix’s Chef’s Table and, now, writing her first cookbook. It’s full of family stories – food from her Mughlai ancestry and West Bengal and Hyderabad homes. Whether a feast with friends or easy suppers, for Khan all meals are worth celebrating, and each recipe a lesson in how to layer spice and flavour.
Buy it for anda (boiled egg) curry
Pavilion, £20. To order a copy for £17.60, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
14 Etxebarri
Juan Pablo Cardenal, Jon Sarabia
Ranked no 6 in the world’s 50 best restaurants, Asador Etxebarri is even nearer the top in terms of influence. When chefs bang on about cooking over fire, it’s probably the place they have in mind. Grilling is such an artform here – even puddings are grilled – that diners come to the Basque village of Axpe from all over the world.
Buy it for anyone who likes to show off come barbecue season
Grub Street, £30. To order a copy for £26.40, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
15 How to Eat: Anniversary Edition
Nigella Lawson
An outpouring of love met the 20th-anniversary reissue of Nigella’s debut. How To Eat remains a wellspring of common sense as well as a trove of homely recipes, beginning with a simple roast chicken and progressing through fast food (mackerel in cider, baked figs), weekend lunches (steak and kidney pie, banana custard) and to cooking for young children (Nigella had two at the time). It speaks to you in an engaging, intimate voice that doesn’t pretend to be infallible. All saturated of course in sensuality: meringue with maple sugar is “the colour of expensive oyster-satin underwear”.
Buy it for A Spring Lunch to Lift the Spirits (lemon linguine, green salad, Irish tarte tatin)
Vintage Classics, £14.99. To order a copy for £13.19, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
16 Zaitoun
Yasmin Khan
Yasmin Khan fell in love with Palestinian food in 2009, while visiting the West Bank for a human rights charity. In the day she was confronted by the trauma of the troubled region, but at night the food showed a different side of life. She’s since travelled more extensively, and Zaitoun is packed with stories of Palestinian cooks and food culture, of hospitality in the face of adversity.
Buy it for the comforting, flavourful vegetarian soups
Bloomsbury, £26. To order a copy for £19.99, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
17 You and I Eat the Same
ed. Chris Ying
This anthology is an offshoot of Noma’s Mad Camp symposium, each one of its stories shedding light on the ways food can establish common ground. These range from the international language of fried chicken to the remarkable story of Rwanda-born Arthur Karuletwa, an ex-senior executive at Starbucks whose family escaped genocide. “Cuisine cannot exist without the free and fair movement of ingredients, ideas and people,” writes editor Chris Ying in the foreword, which doubles as a gentle manifesto.
Buy it for anyone for whom food means more than “what’s for lunch?”
Artisan, £14.99. To order a copy for £13.19, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
18 How to Eat a Peach
Diana Henry
Some teenagers collect comics, Diana Henry kept menus. She composed fantasy dinner parties in her head and would stand outside restaurants copying set menus into a notebook. Her obsession is the core of her 11th book, with advice on how to balance a menu, in terms of flavour as well as preparation, and combining more involved recipes with others that are simply good ingredients “elevated by a bit of thought, rather than by a complicated process”.
Buy it for the British-Irish Sunday lunch, with memories of her father
Mitchell Beazley, £25. To order a copy for £22, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.
19 Out of My Tree
Daniel Clifford
Clifford has been chef at the two-Michelin-starred Midsummer House in Cambridge for 20 years. What separates Out of My Tree from the usual collection of hard-for-the-home-cook recipes are the moments of reflection. Clifford worked his way out of a tough childhood in the age of cheffy machismo but he’s candid about the toll, regretful, even – chapter four is titled “I cancelled my own wedding for work”.
Buy it for a budding chef with Michelin stars in their eyes
Meze, £45
20 The Life of Tea: A Journey to the World’s Finest Teas
Michael Freeman, Timothy d’Offay
Globetrotting tour of places, cultures and rituals devoted to tea from d’Offay, founder of Postcard Teas, a favourite of Heston Blumenthal, and Freeman, a documentary photographer. The landscapes are staggeringly beautiful but it’s the people who stand out, such as the retired friends in Tokyo who meet every Tuesday afternoon for a ceremony involving matcha, and a little sake on the side.
Buy it for flicking through while waiting for your 4pm pot to brew
Mitchell Beazley, £30. To order a copy for £26.40, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846.