Brilliant cookbooks for every type of at-home cook and food fanatic …
Gorgeous gifts? We’ve found them for you. From the person who has everything to the super special women in your life and the hard-to-buy for men, these are gifts for everyone on your list.
Don’t arrive empty handed to this season’s festivities, shop hostess gifts, hampers and little tokens. We’ve selected gifts for fashionable friends, interiors lovers and beauty addicts. Not forgetting the little ones, keen cooks and art aficionados. You’ll find great Christmas gift ideas – including Irish gift ideas – in the Glossy Gift Guide from now until December 24 …
Cookbook for Kids
Chefs Oliver McCabe and Cherie Denham credit the matriarchs in their families for their love of baking. “My mother taught me how to cook at the age of six with easy recipes that I still have today. She inspired me so much on my journey to love food, cooking and nutrition,” says McCabe, whose new book Kids Kitchen Takeover Cookbook (Viridian Press, €23), for five to 15-year-olds, incorporates easy, budget-friendly recipes using healthy ingredients and store cupboard essentials. He’s on tour this autumn with family food talks, demos and book signings. Check out www.olivermccabe.ie for details.
Bakery Book
Cherie Denham’s An Irish Bakery (Montgomery Books, €31), with gorgeous photography by Andrew Montgomery, is an ode to those recipes passed down through successive generations of Denham’s Co Tyrone-based family. Denham trained at Leith’s School of Food and Wine before working in various prestigious private placements and starting her own catering company. She has compiled over 80 recipes with a spotlight on the best producers working in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Homemade Bread
Making daily bread is a tradition at Ballymaloe Cookery School which celebrates 40 years this autumn. In The New Ballymaloe Bread Book (Gill, €26.99), Darina Allen takes the reader through bread techniques, from simple yeast bread and speedy sodas to making sourdough from scratch.
Dinners and Dessert
How does lamb shanks with soft polenta, cabbage and anchovy, raspberry croissant pudding or roasted peaches with olive oil and zaatar-crusted halloumi sound? Recipes for these and more are in restaurateur Paul Flynn’s new book Butter Boy: Collected Stories & Recipes (Nine Bean Rows, €40).
Recipes for Everyday
Flavour, Everyday Food Made Exceptional by Mark Moriarty (Gill, €19.99) is a must-read for fans of the 29-year-old Dublin-based chef, listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, who has translated his refreshing, no-fuss approach to home cooking and entertaining.
Easy Indian
Another acclaimed Irish chef celebrating his debut cookbook is Sunil Ghai of Pickle Restaurant, Dublin. Spice Box by Sunil Ghai (Penguin, €22.99) contains 100 easy Indian recipes to make every day.
Essential Indian Cookbook
Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, Bloomsbury, €23. Pre-order the gorgeous 50th anniversary edition with new recipes of this classic book on Indian home cooking. Special features include a foreward by superfan Yotam Ottolenghi, and Jaffrey’s own illustrations.
Sunday Best
Sundays, A Cookbook, Sophie Godwin, Murdoch, €24.99. This includes modern recipes to celebrate that Sunday feeling, from long brunches to feasts and quiet solo suppers.
Winter Recipes
Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, Food To Warm The Soul, Diana Henry, Octopus, €26.99. Revised and refreshed this is a new edition of the classic cookbook, first published 20 years ago, which celebrates the ingredients of a winter shopping bag, from pumpkins to pomegranates. It’s full of comforting delights from cold climates, from Vienna to Budapest.
Middle Eastern Delights
Flavour, Sabrina Ghayour, Octopus, €30. A new collection of 100 fabulous crowd-pleasing recipes from the bestselling Middle Eastern chef.
OTHER GREAT BOOKS FOR FOODIES
Home Comforts
Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody’s Looking, Grace Dent, Faber, €21. Based on the Guardian podcast of the same name, this is an honest, nostalgic and unfussy book exploring not only Dent’s favourite foods but also the secret snacks of others including Jo Brand and Siobhán McSweeney.
Food Anthology
Bedside Companion For Food Lovers: An Anthology of Literary Morsels for Every Night of The Year, Jane McMorland Hunter, Batsford Ltd, €28. Includes pieces by renowned food writers such as Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey, Anthony Bourdain, MFK Fisher and Mrs Beeton as well as literary greats Charles Dickens, F Scott Fitzgerald and Maya Angelou.
Dinner Parties With a Difference
A History of The World in 10 Dinners, Victoria Flexner, Jay Riefel, Jessica B Harris, Rizzoli, €37. This scrupulously researched and accessible cookbook presents one-of-a-kind dinner parties inspired by seminal moments in culinary history.
Dinner to Die For
Recipes For Murder, 66 Dishes That Celebrate The Mysteries of Agatha Christie, Karen Pierce, Countryman Press, £16.99. Poison, knives and bullets riddle the stories of Agatha Christie but so does food, which she uses to to develop characters and plotlines, and of course, as a means to commit murder.