Tag Archive for: Books

I make no apology for kicking off my books of 2024 round-up with the reissue of a  foodie classic first published in 1950 – a time when we weren’t deluged with cookbooks from every corner of the globe and olive oil and garlic weren’t a staple of our national diet. Alongside it a history of that same English food, whose riches have rarely been given their just recognition…

A Book of Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David (Grub Street, £14.99 reissue) and The English Table by Jill Norman (Reaktion, £17.95)

For nigh on 30 years my most cherished foodie keepsake was a browning programme from Elizabeth David’s memorial service on September 10, 1992. The great and the good of the food world were in attendance inside St Martin-in-the-Fields. Plus me taking a break from the very different world of Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror to honour the great cookery writer, credited with introducing grey Post-War Britain to the sun-dowsed delights of Mediterranean and French cuisine.

Still today a standard-bearer for her values, Jeremy Lee was also in attendance, as a young chef. When he came up to Manchester to guest at Bistrotheque in Ducie Street Warehouse the dinner’s theme? Why, Elizabeth David as Muse! Alas, I took that precious memento to show Jeremy and somewhere on the way home I mislaid it.

A hardback version of her debut, A Book of Mediterranean Food, has not been available for decades (my dog-eared Penguin paperback is from 1975), but facsimile specialists Grub Street have remedied that and, with its original John Minton illustrations, this reissue would make a lovely Christmas present for a new generation.

Just a little taster from it, on Greek meze: “Your feet almost in the Aegean as you drink your ouzou; boys with baskets of little clams or kidonia (sea quince) pass up and down the beach and open them for you at your table; or the waiter will bring you large trays of olives, dishes of atherinous (tiny fried fish like our whitebait), small pieces of grilled octopus…”

Remember this was a pre-package holiday era when such travel was generally the preserve of an elite. She feels the need to explain meze as similar to hors d’oeuvre.

At that distant memorial service, Jill Norman, editor of both Ms David and Jane Grigson, gave an oration. She quoted from the author’s anthology, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine: “Came 1846 the year that Mr Alfred Bird brought forth custard powder, and Mr Bird’s brainchild grew and grew until all the land was covered with custard made with custard powder, and the trifle had become custard’s favourite resting place.”

It is proof that in her later years Elizabeth David (wryly) researched our own native food culture and Jill Norman has followed in her footsteps with some distinction. The English Table is her own contribution to British food history. It’s a crowded field, mind, going back to the days of Dorothy Hartley and Florence White and, more recently, Pen Vogler and Diane Purkiss… plus Manchester-based Dr Neil Buttery, who conducted a fascinating recent interview with Jill on his British Food History podcast.

Now 84, she has taken on a big task to compress a couple of millennia’s worth of food-related social history into some 250 pages. She is ferociously well-read but recognises that in earlier times printed recipes were rarely representative of what most folk ate. In her final chapter she briefly addresses contemporary issues of ultra-processed foods and the need for biodiversity (insect-based anyone?).

A swell of local pride for me when she promotes Incredible Edible, the hands-on  community growing movement that started in my home town of Todmorden 15 years ago. Back to basics is a good mantra to have.

Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons by Diana Henry (Octopus, £26) and Dinner by Meera Sodha (Penguin Fig Tree, £27) xx

Another welcome reissue, this time from the 21st century. Diana Henry lacks the high profile of a Nigella or a Jamie but through nine books and a her Daily Telegraph column has been quietly influential. Crazy Water was her 2002 debut, where she acknowledges the influence of Claudia Roden (another Jill Norman signing) in her own incursions into Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours. She is rightly fascinated by evocative names; ‘crazy water’ is an Italian dish of sea bass poached in  a salty, garlicky broth by the fishermen of the Amalfi coast. Pungent flavours in the recipes are matched by the piquancy of her traveller’s tales. Ms David would surely have approved.

Meerha Sodha is familiar from her own weekly column in The Guardian’s Food supplement – the New Vegan. Her first two award-winning books sprang from her family’s diaspora – they fled from Uganda to less exotic Lincolnshire, where she was born and learned to cook Indian at her mother’s side.

The award-winning Mother India and Fresh India are among the most thumbed through, stained volumes on my kitchen shelves, The fourth, Dinner, continues the plant-based trajectory of follow-up East, offering 120 user-friendly recipes celebrating ‘the most important meal of the day”. That gives a clue to the once hidden, personal calamity at the book’s heart. To quote her chilling Dinner introduction: “A couple of years ago, I lost my love for food. I didn’t want to shop. I didn’t want to cook. I ate for necessity, not pleasure.”

Well, all of us food obsessives have had these days? No, this was true depression,, a can’t het out of bed breakdown – payback time for her over-zealous rise as a food writer. Heart-warming is the way she fought back finally when, realising her husband was himself cracking up after supporting her, she cooked a dinner that brought the family together. This book is a record of how each evening she  rediscovered cooking for pleasure. The pleasure is now ours. This is genuine comfort food to batten down the hatches with against a hostile, demanding world.

The Food of Southern Thailand by Austin Bush (Norton, £35) and The Book of Pintxos by Marti Buckley (Artisan, £30)

Two very different writers who have settled in a distant country and charted its cuisine in minute but vital detail. Both happen to be American – Bush from Oregon, Buckley from Alabama. Bush has contributed hyperactively to Lonely Planet and rival guides to South Eastern Asia, but until this year his magnum opus was The Food of Northern Thailand (2018). Based in that country and a fluent Thai speaker, he has now followed it up with The Food of Southern Thailand, spotlighting  a cuisine more familiar to Western holidaymakers on the surface, but Bush’s expeditions carry him far beyond Phuket resorts’ green curries ands pad thais. It is a visual revelation, too. His photography skills capture the vividness of diverse dishes such as Pork Braised with Soy Sauce, Pepper and Brown Sugar; a Rice Salad with Budu Dressing; a Spicy Dip of Smoked Shrimp; and Simmered Black Sticky Rice with Taro and Jackfruit. Chinese, Malay and Muslim cuisines come together in one cultural melting pot. 

Marti Buckley has been based in Donastia (local name for San Sebastián) for over a decade and I used her debut food volume, Basque Country as a guidebook on a walking tour of that gastronomically rich region. Pintxos dives even deeper via the Basques’ small plate answer to tapas. Rich social history sits on the counter alongside some alluring recipes; I’m taking this one with me on my next trip. Not that I’ll be ordering my pdet phobia, Russian salad. Sorry, Marti.

Between Two Waters by Pam Brunton (Canongate, £20) and Ultra-processed People by Chris van Tulleken Penguin, £10.99pb)

The main image for this article is the view across Loch Fyne from Inver to the ruins of Old Castle Lachlan. It’s lifted from this unique restaurant’s Facebook page. It’s always difficult to illustrate a book review article beyond a parade of covers. On the Inver site alongside a delectable food shot I was struck by this quote from chef patron Pam Brunton:

“The fish and the artichokes grew up a few miles from the restaurant. The sauce –made from the smoked bones of the fish and seaweed from nearby waters – is spiked with exotica from landscapes further away: verbena berries and fragrant bergamot juice, lifting the mellow autumnal umami. The crispy artichoke skins rustle like leaves in cold sunshine. Hardly post anything about food anymore – every time I come on here I’m consumed myself by thoughts of war and political collapse.”

Can’t imagine Nigella Lawson coming out with that, but then she would never have published Between Two Waters. It’s both a memoir of how Pam and her partner created their remote restaurant a decade ago, challenging punters’ expectations and not compromising on their ideals, and a rallying cry, tirade in parts, against how ‘Big Food’ has damaged the way we farm and cook and eat, severed our connection with nature. 

A former philosophy student, she name-checks Descartes and Locke along the way as she lays into salmon farming, the grouse shooting industry and much, much more. She’s proud about buying organic and local, and Inver’s Michelin Green Star for prioritising sustainability. Sounds preachy? No it’s one of the most timely and important food books of recent years, tender and down to earth to when she explores her family roots in Dundee, rhapsodical about the staples of Scottish peasant cuisine. Just don’t get her started on the Highland Clearances.

Medic turned author Chris van Tulleken (above) took his crusade against ultra-processed foods and the damage they do onto BBC 2 the other night. 

“This was explained to me by a scientist who works in the food industry,” reported  Van Tulleken. “I said ‘but if I’m making a chocolate brownie at home, surely it is basically the same as one I buy in the shop?’ And he explained there are two really important differences. Firstly, the shop-bought one will use much more fat, salt and sugar.”

“The second difference is the shop-bought one will use additives which we don’t at home – these are ingredients that aren’t available to us – different fats and sweeteners, emulsifiers, stabilisers, colourings and flavourings.”

Such products are geared to engaging your appetites commercially, while neglecting your health. Not that the the oafish Rod Little, reviewing it in The Sunday Times, was convinced. Conspiracy theories he hinted at. The food industry is obviously keen to downplay what academic research compiled by Dr Chris has indicated. It scared the life out of me. Just buy the book and you may be too.

One Thousand Vines: A New Way to Understand Wine by Pascaline Lepeltier (Mitchell Beazley, £45) and Perry: A Drinker’s Guide by Adam Wells (CAMRA, £17.99pb)

I first encountered Pascaline Lepeltier when she wrote a foreword for (and contributed greatly to) Alice Feiring’s groundbreakingThe Dirty Guide to Wine in 2017, the ultimate terroiriste manifesto. Now Anjou-born, Chenin championing master sommelier Pascal has produced her own erudite overview, challenging pre-conceived ideas. US-based Pascaline also had a background in philosophy and her book ranges across botany, ecology, geology, how perception works in judging wines, the language of wine. It’s a unique work of synthesis, but never dry. Or should that be sec?

Earlier in the year I had the pleasure of interviewing Adam Wells about apple cider’s often neglected country cousin. The mission of Perry is to change all that. I described it as “a hugely evocative beacon of hope that manages to be more celebration than elegy. It’s a wonderful, revelatory read.” It has also added to my drinks bill as I’ve striven to fill the gaps in my knowledge. A trip to the orchards of Herefordshire was particularly fruitful. Do read about my adventures and check out the thoughts of Adam. Last word with him: “Great perry takes consummate care and attention. Which is all the more reason to celebrate the remarkable fact that it even exists.”

Vertigo by Harald Jähner (WH Allen, £25) and Borderlines by Lewis Bastion (Hodder Press, £25)

The history of 20th century Europe continues to fascinate me. Aftermath was Harald Jähner’s eye-opening account of ‘Life in the Fall-out from the Second World War’, where he retraced a decade of ruins and restoration in his native Germany. More ambitiously, with Vertigo, he tackles the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic between the debacle of the Great War and the rise of Hitler. It’s more than just Cabaret decadence; a wealth of research reveals a society rich in innovation but wracked by internecine strife. The redrawing of borders after 1918 contributed to major tensions across Europe. In his quirky but sobering travelogue fellow political historian Lewis Bastion journeys to 29 key European borders to question what national/racial identity is all about it. Historical, it couldn’t feel more topical.

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate, £16.99) and Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Viking £16.99)

Colm Tóibín now ranks among the Irish literary greats and Long Island, his sequel to Brooklyn, was ‘eagerly anticipated’ in this household, but disappointed us both. Neither of us either can see what the fuss is about Sally Rooney, so Intermezzo was never likely to make my stocking. Step forward Sligo’s ever-surprising  Kevin Barry and his wild western tale of lovers on the run in 1890s Montana. Opium-raddled wastrel Tom Rourke and mail order bride with a past Polly Gillespie high-tail it out of a mining town with a saddle pack full of dollars and a price on their head. Plot and language are as leftfield lyrical and inventive as ever. I love the pure Barry blarney of “Tom Rourke salted the eggs unambiguously”.

Since her 1998 debut novel Amy and Isabelle Elizabeth Strout has ploughed a very different literary furrow exploring the separate but eventually interlinking lives of two protagonists, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, one a cantankerous schoolmarm, the other a New York based writer, scarred by a poverty-stricken childhood in Illinois. Their parallel lives, and all involved with them, interlock finally in small town Maine. Strout mines a rare richness out of theconnections. Classic.

Playing catch-up with my Books of the Year recommendations. Late to the party. Every weekend supplement has already been swamped with the buggers. Alas, there has been less evidence than usual of my fave tips – highbrow critics seeking to impress with the likes of “the great belle lettrist Attila Kosztolányi’s magnum opus, many years in the making, has finally seen the light of day. Read in the original Hungarian, it’s a triumph – let’s hope for a translation soon.”
You’ll find my choices less smarmy, I hope. The list is not, as you’d expect, dominated by food books. For research purposes, I have mostly been delving into scholarly old favourites or making practical use of the jus-stained kitchen recipe faithfuls. Blame the lockdown time on my hands for certain continuing reading obsessions – German history and our own 17th century registers of recusants and Roundheads.
Let’s start then with two magisterial examples of the former, published in 2023…

Beyond The Wall by Katja Hoyer (Penguin £26) and In Search of Berlin by John Kampfner (Atlantic £22)

The first account puts a human face on the DDR, taking it beyond the received wisdom of Stasiland, Trabants and steroid-pumped athletes. Hoyer, a British-based historian, is herself an ‘Ostie’, but she was only four years old when the Berlin Wall came down, transforming a country that epitomised the Cold War. In the re-united Germany three decades on reviews have been mixed, but I found it convincing and revelatory. An equally provocative exploration of the reunited state was Kampfner’s best-selling Why Germans Do It Better. Now the former Telegraph foreign correspondent, who reported on the epic events of 1989, puts today’s restored capital in the context of a thousand years of often troubled history. Riveting for an old Berlin hand like myself.

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron (Baskerville £22)

Divided Berlin was, of course, the backdrop for the Cold War spy genre, notably in the works of John Le Carré and Len Deighton. Herron, touted as Le Carré’s natural heir but very much his own man as the laureate of a deadbeat alternative espionage, is best known for his Slow Hours novel sequence, the third of which is currently being screened by Apple TV with Gary Oldman playing grubby anti-hero Jackson Lamb. The Secret Hours is a standalone title but Herron can’t resist giving (an unnamed) Lamb a key walk-on part in a tale that revolves around skulduggery in today’s security circles and an operation to find a Stasi murderer in 1990s Berlin which goes wrong. Intricately plotted surprises come in from the cold.

The Lock-up by John Banville (Hutchinson £22) and Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber £18.99)

The Irish penchant for fiction is as vibrant as ever with Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song recently scooping the Booker Prize. My own bookish bucket list for Christmas, though, is headed by The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, the greatest Irish-based female writer (sorry Sally Rooney). No apologies, though, for recommending two genre-straddling novels by male veterans that have delighted me. The garlanded ‘literary’ novels of old school man of letters Banville have always left me slightly cold, but I am besotted with his increasing dips into crime fiction, featuring an odd couple with their own demons (naturally) – pathologist Dr. Quirke and Detective Inspector St John Strafford. The latest tracks back to 1950s Dublin where young history scholar Rosa Jacobs is found dead in her car. The investigation takes in the Italian mountaintops of Italy, the front lines of World War II Bavaria and deepest rural Ireland.

Barry’s novel also features a cop, retired to a castle in the Dublin coastal suburbs but with skeletons in the cupboard just waiting to be rattled as his past dealings are investigated by former colleagues. It’s dreamlike, almost gothic, packed with red herrings and unreliable narrators. Grim, melancholy, I loved it.

The Blazing World by Jonathan Healey (Bloomsbury £30)

Historical fiction may have peaked with the great Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (my own favourite still Iain Pears’ An Instance at the Fingerpost) but it’s in good hands with the likes of Robert Harris, whose Act of Oblivion (2022), featuring the 17th century pursuit across the New World of two Roundhead regicides, offered contemporary resonances. I read it alongside Anna Keay’s magisterial account of the decade after Charles I’s execution, The Restless Republic. What a blessing then the arrival of a complementary yet contrasting “New History of a Revolutionary Century”. It is a vivid, witty account of certain key characters, who exemplify a divisive age. The title comes from the extravagant aristocrat/polymath Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle, who, after the Restoration, imagined an alternative “Blazing World” of order and tranquillity in contrast to the “malicious detractions” and “homebred insurrection” through which she had lived. My next period read? Likely to be September’s Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish by Francesca Peacock.

Invitation to a Banquet by Fuchsia Dunlop (Particular £25) and Stuffed by Pen Vogler (Atlantic £22)

Let’s stay scholarly as we finally stray into food and drink territory with two books I have already reviewed at length. The first explores the vast complexity of Chinese cuisine, combining historical research and contemporary travelogue; the second, as I summed up, is “a surprisingly political survey of feast and famine with a particular emphasis on the damage wrought on subsistence by 300 years of Enclosures forcing 6.8 million acres of communal land into private ownership. The book title is not just about a full stomach, it’s also about being shafted.” So food adulteration in Victorian times is on a ley line to toxic ultra-processed foods in ours. Plus ça change

Flavour Thesaurus 2 by Nikki Segnit (Bloomsbury £20) and Mother Tongue by Gurdeep Loyal (4th estate £26)

Segnit’s book is the sequel to her eye-opening debut The Flavour Thesaurus, which became an instant classic when it was published 13 years ago. There had never been anything quite like it before, this playful exploration of ingredient matches springing from a flavour wheel of her own random devising. A reference book born out of erudite research that was equally at home by the bedside or on the kitchen table. More of the same, yes, but the  new flavours are predominantly plant-based. From zeitgeist-led vegan, from kale to cashew, pomegranate to pistachio, seaweed to tamarind, but eggs and cheese forced their toothsome way in, too.

A la Segnit, I like to be surprised and Gurdeep Loyal’s colourful cookbook lives up to its fusion manifesto declaring: “Food is a living form of culture that evolves: its boundaries are fluid, blurred, porous and dynamic… authenticity is an unending reel of culinary snapshots, an evolving spectrum that captures many transformative moments along flavourful journeys in generations of kitchens.”

Before Mrs Beeton – Elizabeth Raffald, England’s Most Influential Housekeeper by Dr Neil Buttery (Pen and Sword Books, £20)

Fanny Craddock was a Fifties/Sixties celeb chef in black and white telly world. If the box had been invented in the late 18th century I’m sure Manchester-based Elizabeth Raffald would have had her own show, such was her dynamism. Food historian Buttery charts the dizzying career that culminated in The Experienced English Housekeeper (1786). Why she even gave away the recipe for her invention for the Eccles Cake and there are strong claims that Mrs Beeton “adapted” many of her recipes.

The New French Wine by Jon Bonné (£112) mention Andrew Jefford and natural wine and Noma 2 – Vegetable-Forest-Ocean by Rene Redzepi, Mette Søberg and Junichi Takahashi (Artisan £60)

Two door-stoppers that were published first abroad last year and seeped in to the UK. I first encountered Bonné a decade ago when his New California Wine was a valuable companion on an epic vineyard-led road trip of the state. Since when he has moved to France and compiled this deluxe definitive compendium of the country’s wine makers at a time of profound change. I still treasure Andrew Jefford’s The New France but, published in 2002, it is now ‘Old France’, superseded by this remarkable celebration of a unique wine culture.

The groundbreaking cultural phenomenon that is Noma is reinventing itself as a food laboratory (shades or restaurant rival El Bulli). The gorgeous Noma 2, a hymn to foraging, fermentation and a wacky food aesthetic, may read like a swansong but I’ll take it as a launchpad (though it’s very weighty for lift-off).

Manchester’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars by Matthew Curtis (CAMRA Books, £16.99 pb) and A Beautiful Pint: One man’s search for the perfect pint of Guinness by Ian Ryan (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

Two much slimmer volumes that have a practical purpose in guiding you to the authors’ recommended watering holes. Matthew Curtis, author of the refreshing Modern British Beer upped sticks from London to live in Stockport. Result is a CAMRA beer guide like no other, encompassing craft bars, restaurants and taprooms as well as the traditional pubs. The list of ‘special’ starred establishments is spot on, as is this incomer’s research for a potted history of the scene. 

If that’s a perfect stocking-filler for the hophead in your life, it has a dark rival in Cork exile Ryan’s more niche print follow-up to his notorious Shit London Guinness Instagram and Twitter accounts. The writing is no on a par with Curtis’s but the passion shines through, along with some technical stuff I’d never given thought to. Best of all is his Guinness outlets to visit section. Without it I would never have strayed into the beyond marvellous Cock Tavern on Phoenix Road, just a stroll from Euston Station, where Sheila from Sligo served me the best Guinness I’ve ever had in the UK – at an amazing £4.50 a pint.

Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross (Headline £22) and The Wasteland: Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis (Penguin £12.99 pb)

There are few books I re-read in a year but Steeple Chasing has been one of them. It’s the Glasgow-based feature writer’s follow-up to A Tomb With A View: The Stories and Glories of Graveyards and is even more fascinating. Which is saying something. Elegiac, yes but more… The melancholy element is inevitable, if not as pervasive as in its predecessor despite the pandemic hovering over the journeys. On first reading I pinned it down as a neo-WG Sebaldian quest for meaning among Britain’s steeples and bell towers, but with its own special radiance, especially when he explores the sacred territory of Suffolk. 

I inevitably re-read TS Eliot’s great poem in response to Matthew Hollis’s excavation of the post First World War milieu it grew out of – like “lilacs out of the dead land”. So much personal unhappiness fertilised his creation, trimmed into shape for publication by ‘ll Miglior Fabbro’ (the better craftsman), Ezra Pound. Let us salute both of them, “looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

Here are my favourite food and drink books published in 2022 with something to suit everyone’s prezzie stocking. I make no apologies for kicking off with a couple addressing, in their different approaches, a wellbeing approach to eating. The health of our planet seems inextricably bound to the healthiness of what we eat.

Food For Life by Tim Spector (Jonathan Cape, £20)

Initially sceptical about yet another nutritional gospel, I was won over by the famous epidemiologist dissing ‘superfoods’ and proclaiming his own food passions, which include dark chocolate, red wine and butter alongside all those key ferments, kimchi, kombucha and sourdough bread. Such food choices for health? Im with him all the way.

The new tome is an upgrade on his The Diet Myth, (2015), which popularised the idea that each of us has a unique and constantly changing gut microbiome that is crucial to our health and 2020’s Spoon Fed, in 2020, which debunked a legacy of food misinformation that encourage us to consume many products that are of scant nutritional value. The microbiome continues to take centre stage but the research message is that each individual’s ideal diet is different and common sense should prevail.

Healthy Vegan Street Food by Jackie Kearney (Ryland Peters & Small, £20)

A key element in Spector’s message is the importance of plant-based while avoiding the trap of vegan ready meals. He is keen on spices too, so Jackie’s latest book, revisiting her food discoveries across South East Asia, is a natural companion in the stocking. The former MasterChef finalist expounds on the health value of these tasty cuisines in my recent interview with her. What really impresses is, seven years on from her debut cookbook, the lack of recipe duplication alongside the lessons she has learned about the health value of ingredients as she tackles he own auto-immune issues.

Rambutan: Recipes from Sri Lanka by Cynthia Shanmugalingam (Bloomsbury, £26)

Like with buses, you wait around for ages for a definitive book on Sri Lankan cookery and then two come along. Compendious indeed is Hoppers, from the London chain name-checking the savoury rice crepe synonymous with the island, but I prefer this more narrative-driven alternative with its 80 attractive recipes, including fabulous mutton rolls. Coventry-born Cynthia’s family hails from the northernmost tip of Sri Lanka – Tamil territory – and the book does not shy away from the terrible conflicts as it explores the ravishing culinary culture. Above all, it is a celebration of a family in exile maintaining its links via food.

Notes from a Small Kitchen Island by Debora Robertson (Penguin, £26)

Now for a read that is less dramatic but with it own distinctive, domestic voice. The chapter names reveal the wry take on food from this erstwhile Daily Telegraph columnist: No one wants brunch’; ‘Why everyone hates picnics’; ‘How to survive having people to stay’; ‘unInstagrammable, that’s what you are’. Like Nigella Lawson, I am a fan of this diarist, whose kitchen apercus straddle Co Durham and the Languedoc. 

Here’s Debs on Roast Lamb with Durham Salad: “ My slow-roast lamb is luscious and garlicky, which would probably have offended my northern antecedents, who greeted the arrival of garlic in the trattorias and brasseries of County Durham circa 1970 with no small amount of suspicion, bordering on disdain. My mother, being a free spirit and one of the first people in the county to wear cork wedges, suede trouser suits and, famously, a crocheted bikini made by my Auntie Dolly, was an early adopter and always loved, and still loves, garlic, so this is for her.”

Cooking: Simply and Well for One or Many? by Jeremy Lee (4th Estate, £30)

Distinctive voices? Well that surely bring us to ‘national treasure’ candidate Jeremy Lee, whose debut cook book has been rapturously promoted. For once, happy to endorse; this really is an instant classic – my prime Christmas prezzie recommendation. I devoted a whole article to his recipe for salsify but in my heart of hearts would settle for the signature sandwich at his Soho restaurant Quo Vadis – smoked eel.

Butter: A celebration by Olivia Potts (Headline, £26)

Jeremy Lee prefers light, unsalted butter for cooking and baking. In her debut cookbook Spectator magazine `Vintage Cook’ columnist and former barrister Olivia begs to differ. Salted is her go-to in th fridge. Who’s to argue with a cook devoting 350 pages to the glorious (and healthy) key to so many culinary delights. I’ve been cooking from it ever since it dropped through my letterbox – most notably a Wild Mushroom, Tarragon and Mushroom Pithivier.

A Dark History of Sugar by Dr Neil Buttery (Pen & Sword, £20)

Sugar – now there’s another much-debated kitchen essential, this time with a troubled history to match its place on the table. I interviewed the Levenshulme-based (and yes sweet-toothed) food historian about his research which encompassed the murky worlds of both slavery and later, teeth-rotting commercial exploitation. Dark stuff indeed, but this is a delightful read, if not for the squeamish.

The World of Natural Wine by Aaron Ayscough (Artisan, £31.99) and The Wine Bible by Karen McNeil (Workman, £31.99)

Two very different approaches to wine writing, each to be treasured, both authors from the States. Natural wine proselytiser Ayscough is based in Beaujolais, the crucible of the natural wine movement thanks to certain key figures over the past four decades. Across 400 pages he traces that timeline in depth, exhaustively explaining what make this alternative ethos superior to mainstream ‘manipulative’ winemaking. 

Karen McNeil’s encyclopaedic tome runs to 700 pages and embraces the mainstream. The first two editions have old more than 800,000 copies. This updated third now has the advantage of colour and whole new chapters on Great Britain, Croatia, and Israel. he chapters on France, Italy, Australia, South America, and the United States are greatly expanded. What I like are the little sidebars on regional food or culture anecdotes. A great, approachable yet opinionated entry in the ever-evolving world of the grape.

Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx (4th Estate, £16.99)

In my intro to my food and drink book recommendations I traced links between the health of our food and the wellbeing of our planet. Ecological devastation is now a subject occupying so many creative minds. So it is no surprise, with this slim volume, to see Pulitzer-winning novelist Annie Proulx enter the field – or should that be wetland? The book’s subtitle says it all: “A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis”. If that sound a bit grey, don’t worry. The glorious prose that infused novels such a The Shipping News is still present. The 87-year-old, now based in Washington State,  is particularly acute in her lament for the draining of the UK’s own Fenlands. Such an eco-system, if treated better, they prove vital to the world’s salvation, she argues.

Ephemeron by Fiona Benson (Penguin pb, £12)

Poetry is so often a celebration of the natural world. Prime contemporary example: Alice Oswald’s Dart. I hugely admire the work of our current Oxford Professor of Poetry but there are the other outstanding female voices out there. Devon-based Benson has garnered awards for her previous two slim volumes but this is  a step-up, bravely and tenderly confronting family shibboleths, the love, the fear. Central to the volume is her ‘Translations from the Pasiphaë’, which violently re-tells the Greek myth of the Minotaur, as seen from the point of view of the bull-child’s mother – the betrayed and violated Pasiphaë. Hard not to weep when she calls for her lost son: “They took him away from me/and they killed him in the dark, for years.”

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber, £10)

Forget Sally Rooney, Elmear McBride, Anne Enright, the finest Irish female fiction writer de nos jours is Claire Keegan. If her miniaturist tendencies suggest a lack of ambition, consider what resonates most when reconsidering Joyce – Ulysses or Dubliners. Her latest work, a novella really, clocks in at 110 words but within is a whole universe of nuance. The story ought to major on the shame of a Magdalene Laundries discovery but at  its core is a small town coal and timber merchant, disaffected with what life and family expects of him. Genius.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Picador, £16.99)

The New York-based fashion designer turned chronicler of the Glasgow of his youth has sold more than 1.5 million copies of his debut novel Shuggie Bain on the back of its Booker Prize victory. Superficially this follow-up might sound more of the same, especially with it depiction of a gay boy dealing with a feckless mother he loves. It has it own strengths, though, charting first sexual awakening against a backdrop of sectarian violence. The fishing trip to a Highland loch is a tour de force of numbing exploitation.

Act of Oblivion By Robert Harris (Hutchinson, £22)

I felt I ought to include a genre fiction best seller. The obvious choice was Ian Rankin’s A Heart Full of Headstones, but there was a melodramatic edge to it that seemed strained, as crime lost out to historical fiction in the shape of Harris’s gripping, at times hallucinatory account of two Roundhead colonels being hunted own across an untamed 17th century America. The fugitives’ crime that has put a price on their head? To be complicit in the execution of Charles I. It’s all based on real characters, though Richard Naylor the regicide fanatic on their trail, is an invention of Harris’s.

The Escape Artist  by Jonathan Freedland (John Murray, £20 )

Another true story of escape and redemption that is all the more amazing for not being fictionalised. Aged just 19 in April 1944, Rudolf Vrba and a fellow inmate became the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz against terrible odds. The Slovakian had committed to memory every heart-wrenching detail of the camp and his mission was to alert a world that must be told the truth. Painstakingly researched and utterly gripping, it us up there with the great Holocaust accounts of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.

Endless Flight by Keiron Pim (Granta, £25)

I’ve finally got round to reading The Radetzky March (Granta, £9.99) thanks to the spur of the first ever biography in English of the Austro-Hungarian writer Joseph Roth. The novel, his greatest, is a lament for the old Hapsburg order, banished forever by the Great War, in which Roth fought. His middle years were spent restlessly reporting from the frontline as the Nazis rose to power. From Jewish peasant stock in Galicia, he used Vienna as the launchpad for a lucrative but spendthrift journalistic career that took in Berlin, Prague, Moscow and finally Paris. Living in hotel rooms, taking root in bars, coping with his wife’s schizophrenia and his own infidelities, finding his fictional voice late. Apt then the title of Kieron Pim’s exemplary account of an undervalued genius. Roth died, an alcoholic, aged 44, in a Paris pauper’s hospital in May 1939.

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf (John Murray, £25)

Jena has always felt under the shadow of Weimar in the timeline of German culture. Think again. In the 1790s this tiny university town was the cradle of th Romantic movement with poets, critics and philosophers engaged in a free spirit whirl of relationships, both intellectual and sexual. My personal hero from this romp of a book is the more buttoned-up resident, Friedrich Schiller, who was addicted to the smell of rotting apples – “without it he couldn’t live or work,” his wife Charlotte told his literary soulmate Goethe, retching after discovering some in a drawer.

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars by France Spalding (Thames & Hudson, £35)

It started with Eric Ravilious joining Paul Nash and Lucian Freud in my pantheon of 20th century English painters. I passed hours of lockdown dreamtime in their company via surveys by the like of Alexandra Harris and Martin Gayford. This substantial summing up is the icing on the cake, introducing me to some lesser-known byways of the English artistic landscape. Critic Herbert Read thought the Twenties and Thirties “more vital and experimental than at any time since the Renaissance.” 

Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan (Canongate, £20) 

Disaffection ought to be at the core of Nick Cave, coping with the untimely accidental death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015. The demons are all confronted in his remarkable Ghosteen album. But here in this extended ‘conversation’ with veteran journalist and mate Sean O’Hagan he finds solace in grief and traces the visionary, redemptive paths of his now epic musical career.

Holding Tight, Letting Go by Sarah Hughes (Blink, £16)

A book about terminal cancer that celebrates life. Sarah was one of my dearest friends and this posthumously published series of articles, full of her distinctive voice, resonates on every page. I could never share her passions for horse racing, bonkbusters or shoes; her hugely popular Guardian blogs about Game of Thrones and Line of Duty passed me by because I never fancied the programmes. Maybe I should have listened to her. In her 40s Sarah lived with terminal metastatic cancer for over three years and died in April 2021. Throughout that period she hymned all the small wonders and joys that made holding tight so important. Forensically she charted how the topography of her body altered during chemo. Dresses she fancied would now fit her! How rare to find a book with such an inevitable denouement bursting with such laughter and joy. 

My wife is aiming for a new Kindle for Christmas. Helping to save trees. While I’m dreaming of a couple of fat tomes to occupy my stocking. Maybe not on the topics this website centres on. I’m not averse to fiction or books on German history. Hint.

Lockdowns saw me researching into some recherché culinary roads less travelled, hence of late I’ve purchased fewer new publications. So don’t expect any definitive overview from the 2021 suggestions below. Still much delight. In compiling my list I realised I had bookended it with two authors who have been with me most of my post-Beano reading life. Let’s salute two octogenarians who are the greatest living exemplars in their field – food scholar Claudia Roden, 85, and travel writer Colin Thubron, 82, both of whose books this year transcended all those feeble potboilers piled high around them. 

Med: A Cookbook by Claudia Roden (Ebury, £28)

On the cover of Roden’s first new book in a decade there’s praise from Yotam Ottolenghi: “To read Claudia is to sit at her table, with everything, simply, as it should be. Pull up a table for the food; stay at the table for the stories.” The author herself begins what is much more than a recipe book with the epigraph “Cooking is the landscape in a saucepan”. All of which neatly sums up the fault line, dotted with hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganoush and a 1001 other treats, that lead from her groundbreaking A Book of Middle Eastern Food (1969) to the post-Millennium dinner parties inspired by her disciple Ottolenghi’s own oeuvre.

The Med reflects the fact that she has never rested on her scholarly laurels. Egyptian-born with Sephardic Jewish roots, Roden tapped into Spain with her last book, arguably my favourite of hers, and her latest offers a distillation of all her magpie-like culinary excavations radiating from the Mediterranean shores. Travel to Gaziantep, a Turkish city on the border with Syria via a green olive, walnut and pomegranate salad or investigate her pumpkin soup with orzo and amaretti, finding a new use for the traditional pasta filling of Mantua in Northern Italy. All this accompanied by evocative, anecdotal detail ranging from early family life in Aleppo via exile to Britain to the contemporary culinary mores of Barcelona.

Ripe Figs: Recipes From The Eastern Mediterranean by Yasmin Khan (Bloomsbury, £26) 

Claudia Roden us a hard act to follow but many cookery writers have mined that rich Mediterranean/Middle Eastern seam. I’ve been a huge fan of Yasmin Khan since her debut, The Saffron Tales (2016), which is as much about charting the lives of contemporary Iranians as their exquisite cuisine. Its successor, Zaytoun, inpected Palestinian food through an acutely political lens as she journeyed through kitchens in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Raised in Birmingham, the child of a Pakistani father and Iranian mother, she initially worked as a human rights activist. This is fully evident again if you look behind the handsomely illustrated pages of her third cookbook. It covers the food of Greece, Turkey and Cyprus with a set mission – to explore how migration has shaped cultures for the better… with food a vital litmus test.

Hence Ripe Figs is filled with the stories and recipes from families that have lived in the region for generations but alongside, in the midst of the global refugee crisis, she finds positive contributions from the displaced in the Moria refugee camp on Lesvos and elsewhere. In Istanbul kitchens she cooks with Kurds and in Northern Cyprus explores the thorny British colonial legacy. Fascinating reportage but the book is also a  trove of sun-filled recipes that celebrate how the joy of food can bring us all together.

Sicilia: A Love Letter to Sicily by Ben Tish (Bloomsbury, £26) 

Food and joy to me are synonymous with Sicily. Well maybe not gagging on spleen sandwiches from the street stalls of Palermo. I’m thinking proper tomatoes, lemons, capers, olive oil, ricotta salata, scaccia bread, cannoli and, of course, seafood. The image fronting this article is of the remarkable gambero rosso red prawns from the island’s South West Coast. These particular specimens were served to me with an orange dressing and thyme, in one of my final meals out before the first lockdown, at Norma in London’s Fitzrovia. This homage to Sicilian cuisine, with an inevitable Arabic influence, was created for the Stafford Collection by Ben Tish. In his matching ‘love letter’ he puts his own light stamp on a culinary melting pot of so many influences. It’s worth buying the book just for the pudding recipes.

An A-Z of Pasta by Rachel Roddy (Fig Tree, £25) 

Subtitled ‘Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes’, this is an alphabetical exploration of the quintessential Italian food from the Rome-based home cook, whose evocative despatches appear in The Guardian every Saturday. Does it supersede my super-stylish long-standing pasta primer, The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy (of Bocca di Lupo fame)? Neither can do full justice to the full range of Italian pasta shapes, estimated at over 500. She tackles 50, subdivided into six main categories, with 100 accompanying recipes to justify her claim that “pasta shapes are edible hubs of information”. if that sounds daunting just check out the recipes, most of which are eminently accessible. Tagliolini with datterini tomatoes and chanterelles? Or fresh capelli d’angelo with prawns and lemon. Pass the parmigiano, per favore.

To complete my Italian ‘course’ I’d like to recommend the pasta-driven Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci (Fig Tree, £20), but this eagerly anticipated prezzie is still being loaded up at Santa’s Lapland HQ, I’m hoping. There’ll be hell to pay if I’m not tucking into the Big Night star’s comestible memoir amid the messy aftermath of a roast goose dinner.

A Cook’s Book by Nigel Slater (4th Estate, £30)

What’s not to like about chapters entitled ‘Sometimes You Just Want Pie’ or ‘The Stillness of Cheesecake’? Slater’s Observer column readers, he tells us, didn’t want prunes in a chicken and leek pie, so he has left them out for this book of 200 tried and tested recipes, which plays to his strength – a close kinship with his readers. As the title implies, he is a cook, not a chef. As home-based as his near namesake Nigella, he does not share her ease on telly. Still he writes like a cosy angel, drawing you into the foodie diary of his life. Think Alan Bennett with a well-stocked pantry. The Stillness of Cheesecake may read like a riff on Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Soufflés, anyone?) but it offers the homeliest of advice, too, alongside a slavering appreciation of food kept simple. And I quote: “A slice of cheesecake arrives on a small white plate. Cool, calm, silent. A sour whiff of buttermilk, the caramel sweetness of vanilla, Your fork slides through with barely a sigh.

“The sweet, fudgy filling can cloy after a mouthful. This pale and graceful pastry needs a pot of jam or fruit to waken it, and us, from its vanilla-scented slumber. A tart fruit compote will work – gooseberry, plum or apricot – or a little mound of baked rhubarb at its side.”

No space to digress into his discovery in San Sebastian of Basque cheesecake. Never been a huge fan of this over-praised pud, but Slater’s advocacy makes me want to attempt it again.

The Beer Bible by Jeff Alworth, 2nd Edition (Workman, £30, also available in pb)

Beer really is more my thing than cheesecake and the ideal Christmas present for the ale lover in your life has to be this revised version of Alworth’s award-winning magnum opus, first published in 2015. Six years is a long time in the rapidly evolving world of craft beer and the Portland Oregon-based Beervana blogger has been perfectly placed to chart it. Take Manchester’s iconic Cloudwater Brewing – they were just starting out in 2015, fuelled by co-founder Paul Jones’ learning expedition to the American West Coast where Alworth mentored him in the hop-driven scene.

Now Cloudwater merits four pages in this massive, comprehensive work of reference that still has that personal touch in its appreciation of the world’s vast array of beer cultures. Even sake gets a look in this time round. What I particularly like about the book is its even-handedness, giving space to understand how mass market lagers might appeal. Manchester, too, is not just about Cloudwater and Marble (young head brewer Joe Ince makes the index) but traditional family brewers Hydes, Robinsons and JW Lees are also hailed.

Modern British Beer by Matthew Curtis (CAMRA Books, £15.99pb)

Another acclaimed beer writer liked Manchester so much he moved here permanently. Just after publication this autumn I met the LIncoln-raised writer/photographer at the Sadler’s Cat bar in the city centreto discuss its genesis – in a blog born out of a Damascene conversion to beer in Colorado a decade ago. In my interview/review I wrote: “New wave UK beer writers have codified the global beer styles that have been clarified/reinvented across America and then taken up over here. Matthew Curtis goes a step further and charts the creative melting pot of our own mash tuns and barrel ageing projects. Modern British Beer proves we are not just brewing lackeys; our own cask ale traditions remain the envy of the world, our own innovations the equal of anywhere.” 

The Curtis format certainly does the contemporary UK beer scene justice. The book is divided into seven regions with up to 15 breweries from each profiled via a defining beer style. It has already sparked a number of thirst-quenching pilgrimages. Check out this one to Sheffield’s St Mars of the Desert.

Modern British Cider by Gabe Cook (CAMRA Books, £15.99pb

On the surface a companion volume to MMB and, by chance I also spent a fascinating day  in the company of its author. the self-styled ‘Ciderologist’. Not in a bar this time but in the orchards of Dunham Press Cider, a northern outpost of a drink more associated with Somerset and Herefordshire. Later that day, at a tasting at GRUB in Manchester I even encountered a Scottish cider among a remarkable variety of styles.

In my subsequent report I wrote: “Rather than an artisan polemic, Modern British Cider is a careful summation that makes you want to sample all the delights he flags up in ‘The Most influential British Cider Makers Today’ chapter. In particular, to consider the contrasts between West Counties and East Counties, ie. made from tannic bittersweet cider apple varieties on the one hand and from fresher, fruitier dessert and culinary specimens on the other.”

So is all lovely in the orchard? The book is a fine gazetteer of where to find the good stuff but doesn’t fight shy of confronting the challenges for a tipple saddled with tarnished perceptions from the past. And, of course innovative ‘new wave cider’ has its own responsibility to its traditions. My Christmas suggestion – order this book and maybe treat yourself to a fine Pomona or Oliver cider to accompany your turkey or (apple-stuffed) goose.

A Cheesemonger’s Compendium of British and Irish Cheese by Ned Palmer (Profile, £14.99)

Cider, like beer, is a great accompaniment to cheese. And we’re not talking the token Christmas Stilton here. In 2014 Ned Palmer, schooled at Neal’s Yard Dairy, set up the Cheese Tasting Company to proselytise about the golden age of British cheese (it’s now). Two years ago his A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles beguilingly explored the artisan wonders at hand and the doughty makers who provide us with an alternative to the slabs of pap that dominate the supermarket shelves. A rollicking read from Ned but this follow-up is the book to slip in your pocket as you seek out a Baron Bigod or a Stinking Bishop or ask to compare a Montgomery Cheddar with a Keen’s Mature. It codifies, via style (mould-ripened, blue, washed rind, hard etc) 158 native cheeses, one to each page with a drawing and a succinct story and tasting note. Highly recommended. Next move is  find a good cheese shop. I’m lucky enough to have the outstanding Calder Cheesehouse just a 10 minute walk away in our little mill town of Todmorden. They do online, too. Visit this link. There’s still time before Christmas.

Wines of the Rhône by Matt Walls (Infinite Ideas, £30)

Early in 2021 I caught up with last year’s Noble Rot: Wine From Another Galaxy. I’d been reluctant to join Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew on their ebullient adventures since I’d already read some of them in their Noble Rot magazine. They’ve been busy boys this year too, opening a second Noble Rot restaurant, in the old Gay Hussar site in Soho and wine retail website, Shrine to the Vine. In prose, they have their finger on the pulse of the contemporary wine scene, opening up new paths.

Less showy is the Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library, sparsely illustrated, hugely comprehensive survey of countries or key regions, often written by experts with MW after their name. Matt Walls isn’t a Master of Wine but he is Contributing Editor to Decanter magazine, who uprooted his family to a village outside Avignon fo a couple of years In order to really get under the skin of France’s Rhône region, North and South. The result is a revelatory delight, a reference work full of wise judgements. As up to date as it gets and an inspiration for our Christmas dinner wine offering.

The Amur River by Colin Thubron (Chatto & Windus, £20)

It’s a truism that there is nowhere left on the planet to discover, making it increasingly difficult for travel writers to push the boundaries. Well, veteran explorer Colin Thubron, in his 83rd year, is not one to settle for the ‘we’re all tourists now’ get-out clause. Before reading this – in one transfixed sitting – I couldn’t pin the Amur on the map. Yet it is apparently the 10th longest river on earth, flowing 3,000 miles east from a secret source in the Mongolian mountains to the Tatar Strait. Thubron travels he entire length. What gives the book its tense socio-political edge is that much of the journey follows the highly fortified, much fought-over Russian-Chinese border. 

In his quest to chart how the Russian imperial dream died Thubron’s fortitude is astonishing. Early in the trip traversing fathomless bogs at a frantic trot he falls from his squat, primitive nag and twists his ankle badly. Later he brazens out an arrest by the local police. What transcends any sense of mere derring-do is his grasp of the Amur’s tragic history and, of course, his luminous prose. Witness: “To walk here is to wade through a tide of wildflowers: multicoloured asters, gentians, butter-coloured potentilla, peacock-blue columbines. Over farther slopes, swathes of blown edelweiss make a frosty pallor for miles.”

I’ve followed Thubron from his early books on the Middle East through his eye-opening explorations of Russia and China, but this arguably is his elegiac masterpiece.