Turning tips into memories

The best new cookbooks to tuck into this Christmas

By CW Contributor on 24/11/2020

We’re all spending more time in our kitchens these days. As one of lockdown’s chief pleasures, cooking has become even more of a national obsession (remember the sourdough social media frenzy?). After all, when things feel bleak, few things are more comforting than a good meal. But it’s not just about the food, it’s also about the rituals – the rhythmic chopping and meditative stirring.
Fortunately, this season’s crop of food-focused books captures that reflective mood, with essays and anthologies making a strong appearance alongside traditional recipe books.
We round up the best new cookbooks to invest in this winter.
By Madeleine Feeny

In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life

Featuring a new generation of food writers, this diverse collection demonstrates how cooking and eating infuse every aspect of life. Food helps us map our emotional terrain and wider cultural histories, and these 13 essays reflect its role in relationships and memory. They include Rebecca Liu decoding the cultural significance of recipe boxes; Laura Freeman peeking into other writers' lunches; Daisy Johnson exploring culinary ritual; Rebecca May Johnson considering the radical potential of finger food; Yemisí Aríbisálà recalling a relationship where cooking proved divisive; and Joel Golby unravelling the troubling – and hilariously accurate – psychology of buffets. Always the heart of a home, in unsettled times the kitchen is more of a sanctuary than ever. This book is soul food for anyone who finds comfort in slicing, stirring and munching.

(Daunt Books, 3 October)

Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes and Stories, by Nigella Lawson

A new Nigella book is always an event – and this one feels especially timely, with a title that pretty much encapsulates lockdown. Tuning into the spirit of the moment, it interweaves recipes with essays, from A is for Anchovy to A Loving Defence of Brown Food. The focus is on delicious home cooking – really the only option now – offering a glimpse into the ‘rhythms and rituals’ of Nigella’s kitchen (on fuller display in BBC Two’s tie-in series). The recipes include the fish finger bhorta currently haunting your Instagram, wide noodles with lamb in aromatic broth, and a typically decadent chocolate peanut butter cake. This book is testament to the fact that Nigella is as much a writer as a cook, and it will surely be on every Christmas list this year.

(Chatto & Windus, 29 October)

Hungry: A Memoir of Wanting More, by Grace Dent

This is the story of how a working-class Cumbrian raised on mince and oven chips ended up as a Guardian restaurant critic and Masterchef judge. In piercing, pithy prose, Grace Dent describes her 80s Carlisle childhood and pre-digital adolescence – a time of Cosmo, fake IDs and a growing hunger for ‘media London’. She duly clawed her way onto the women’s glossies, then on to the Evening Standard. London was a gastronomic revelation, a carousel of spice, heat and umami. But success has its price, and what happens when you get ‘too posh’ for your family? Dent writes movingly about her father’s dementia and perceptively on class – which shapes everything from education to diet in this country – as well as the psychological complexities of how and why we eat. Crackling with her exuberant wit, this memoir is unsparingly honest and fiercely compelling.

(Mudlark, 29 October)

The Noble Rot Book: Wine from Another Galaxy, by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew

From the founders of the magazine and restaurants comes what may be the coolest wine book ever published. After all, they’re quite cool. Dan Keeling was MD of Island Records when he met wine merchant Mark Andrew, and in 2013 they launched their magazine, Noble Rot – which, with its striking design and starry contributors, soon struck a chord. (Brian Eno, James Murphy, Hot Chip, Mark Ronson and Caitlin Moran have all graced its pages.) In 2015 they opened their Lamb’s Conduit Street restaurant, and in 2020 the Soho outpost followed. This unstuffy, lavishly illustrated guide demystifies grapes and processes, and includes a ‘Rotters’ Road Trip’ around their favourite European wine regions. The ‘Lexicon of Usefulness’ will arm novices with the right lingo, while the ‘Restaurateurs’ Guide to Eating In’ features recipes with pairing suggestions. The antithesis of a wine bore, this book is witty, accessible and vibrant.

(Quadrille, 29 October)

Towpath: Recipes and Stories, by Lori de Mori and Laura Jackson

Towpath: Recipes & Stories, by Lori de Mori and Laura Jackson

Anyone who has ambled along the Regent’s Canal in Hackney will surely have been tempted to pause for a fig-leaf cordial or slice of olive oil cake at this slender waterside café. Since 2010, Towpath’s lack of pretension and seasonal home cooking have made it a favourite of celebrities including Keira Knightley, and food royalty such as Fergus and Margot Henderson. Yet it’s a kind of miracle: a restaurant without walls or a front door, founded on principles of simplicity and community. Towpath is closed from November till March, when its reopening heralds the start of spring. Co-written by its owner Lori de Mori and chef Laura Jackson, this book charts its culinary year – from wild garlic revueltos to cod, turmeric and coconut curry; Napoli sausage ragu to aubergine kasundi. Interspersing recipes, stories and archive photographs, Towpath is a cookbook with real heart.

(Chelsea Green Publishing, 1 October)

The Food Almanac: Recipes and Stories for a Year at the Table, by Miranda York

Miranda York is the founder of At the Table, a digital platform dedicated to British food culture. The Food Almanac – a thoughtfully curated smorgasbord of recipes, essays, short stories, poems and original Louise Sheeran illustrations – represents the apotheosis of her project to date. Unfolding over the calendar year, it introduces each month with seasonal produce, menus and reading lists. Its distinguished roster of contributors brings together literary and culinary voices: Deborah Levy muses on lemons, Marina O’Loughlin on toast, Felicity Cloake on picnics, and Kit de Waal on her father’s Christmas cake. Recipes come from Diana Henry, Meera Sodha and Anna Jones, to name a few. There are guides to gathering wild garlic, pairing fruit with booze, and the heritage and uses of saffron and quince. Eclectic and evocative, this is a treasure trove to revisit, time and again.

(Pavilion Books, 1 October)

Ottolenghi Flavour, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage

Following Plenty and Plenty More, this is the third volume in Yotam Ottolenghi’s triptych celebrating the glory of vegetables. It analyses the three factors that determine flavour: process, the alchemy of charring, infusing and ageing; pairing, with acid, fat, heat or sweet; and produce, the inherent qualities of each vegetable. Fusing global cuisines – including Ottolenghi’s Middle Eastern roots and co-author Ixta Belfrage’s Mexican, Brazilian and Italian influences – the recipes are diverse, inventive and flexitarian, with 60 strictly vegan. You’ll need to venture further than Tesco Metro for your ingredients, but thankfully the book includes a list of its larder essentials. Swede gnocchi with miso butter, kimchi and Gruyère rice fritters, and oyster mushroom tacos are just three of 120 dishes that prove veg-centric cooking is both stimulating and satisfying.

(Ebury, 3 September)

Pizza: History, Recipes, Stories, People, Places, Love, by Pizza Pilgrims

James and Thom Elliot aren’t just pizza pilgrims; they’re pizza evangelists. Unlike most of us, they’ve channelled their carb-fuelled energies into founding one of London’s most popular quality chains. This is their effusive, technicolour homage to the world’s favourite fast food, documenting its heritage, cultural significance, and the brand’s origins. In 2011, the two brothers travelled around Italy in a van, learning all they could about pizza. Back in London, they set up a stall in Berwick Street market, and opened their first restaurant 18 months later. The book features home techniques and signature recipes, from the classic to the revolutionary – not least, pizza soup and the frankly depraved ‘chocolate calzonification’ (pizza-wrapped chocolate). But obviously half the fun of pizza is not cooking, and the guides to Naples, Rome, New York and more should ensure you’re never lost for the good stuff, wherever you are.

(Quadrille, 12 November)