Anita Desai

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Lizzie Collingham

Curry tells the story of an array of familiar Indian dishes and the people who invented, discovered, cooked and ate them. Curry is vivid, entertaining and delicious. 
 
‘Fascinating and meticulously researched…layers historical fact with mouth-watering dinner table gossip’ Meera Syal, The Times 
 
This imaginative book tells the history of India and its rulers through their food. It follows the story of curry as it spread from the courts of Delhi to the balti houses of Birmingham. 
 
Curry is the product of India's long history of invasion. In the wake of the Mughal conquerors, an army of cooks brought Persian recipes to northern India; in the south, Portugese spice merchants introduced vinegar marinades and the chillies they had recently discovered in the New World; the British soon followed, with their passion for roast meat accompanied by cauliflowers and beans. When these new ingredients were mixed with native spices, they produced these distinctly Indian dishes.

Curry

A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

Anna Del Conte

A wonderful, evocative memoir by the woman who first brought Italian cooking to Britain and fuelled a culinary revolution. 
 
'Anyone who cooks should have Anna's books, it is the simple truth' Nigella Lawson 
 
Born in Milan, Anna del Conte grew up in Italy in a gentler time. When war came to Italy everything changed: her family had to abandon their apartment and the city for the countryside, where the peasants still ate well, but life was dangerous... As a teenager, Anna became used to throwing herself into a ditch as the strafing planes flew over, and was imprisoned, twice. Her story is informed and enlivened by the food and memories of her native land - from lemon granita to wartime risotto with nettles, from vitello tonnato to horsemeat roll, from pastas to porcini. 
 
Anna arrived in England in 1949 to a culinary wasteland. She married an Englishman and stayed on, and while bringing up her children, she wrote books which inspired a new generation of cooks. This is a memoir of a life seen through food - each chapter rounded off with mouthwatering recipes.

Risotto With Nettles

A Memoir with Food

Gabrielle Hamilton

'Magnificent’ Anthony Bourdain 
 
A sharply crafted and unflinchingly honest memoir. This is a rollicking, passionate story of food, purpose and family. 
 
Blood, Bones &amp; Butter follows the chef Gabrielle Hamilton's extraordinary journey through the places she has inhabited over the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; and the kitchen of her beloved Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her own future family. 
 
‘Evocative…dazzling…beautifully written’ New York Times 
 
Perfect for fans of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.

Blood, Bones and Butter

The inadvertent education of a reluctant chef

A great book is like a feast. We love to concoct stories from food but what about making food from some of our favourite stories? 
 
To whip up your own Literary Lunch, just follow this simple recipe… 
 
- Take a generous helping of Ian McEwan and leave to marinate overnight. 
 
- Add some Sebastian Faulks to a pan and sauté on a high heat. 
 
- Mix in a dollop of Louis de Bernieres (don’t stint) and shavings of Mark Haddon and bring to the boil. 
 
- Add a rounded teaspoon of Anne Tyler, a smidgen of Neel Mukherjee and a pinch of Julian Barnes, according to taste. You may also wish to add a sprinkling of Salman Rushdie to add some heat. 
 
- Reduce the mixture down and add a splash of Irvine Welsh, skimming off excess expletives. 
 
- Remove from the heat and add essence of Haruki Murakami slowly, drop by drop, making sure to mix in thoroughly. 
 
- Meanwhile, using a rich brandy or calvados, flambé thinly sliced extracts of Simon Schama – to avoid a scorching, avert face and be prepared for a flare of potentially large flames. 
 
- Finally, bring all the elements together and plate up with a dash of Jeanette Winterson and garnish with a sprig pf Helen Fielding. 
 
Enjoy with a full-bodied red wine.

Literary Lunch

Michael Booth

'The next Bill Bryson.’ New York Times 
 
Michael Booth has had his fill of celebrity chefs and their 'on the table in five minutes' recipes. He wants to learn how to cook properly, so he burns his cookery books and, together with his young family, heads for a new life in Paris - reasoning that, if anyone can be trusted to make food complicated, it's the French. 
 
Embarking on the ultimate foodie's fantasy, he enrols at the world's most famous cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, where wise and battle-scarred French chefs commence their transformation of him into a professional cook. 
 
Along the way Booth shares the insider tips and secret techniques of classical cuisine. His odyssey takes him from trauma to triumph, ending in the white-hot heat of the Michelin-starred kitchen of the greatest chef in France.

Doing without Delia

Tales of Triumph and Disaster in a French Kitchen

Bill Buford

Bill Buford, an enthusiastic, if rather chaotic, home cook, was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of Mario Batali, a Falstaffian figure of voracious appetites who runs one of New York's most successful three-star restaurants. Buford accepted the commission, on the condition Batali allow him to work in his kitchen, as his slave. 
 
He worked his way up to 'line cook' and then left New York to learn from the very teachers who had taught his teacher: preparing game with Marco Pierre White, making pasta in a hillside trattoria, finally becoming apprentice to a Dante-spouting butcher in Chianti. 
 
Heat is a marvellous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventures, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.

Heat

An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany

From the author of the widely acclaimed Heat, an exhilarating account of Bill Buford's adventures in the world of French cooking. 
 
'A romping, chomping, savoury tour de force... Hilarious' Simon Schama 
 
What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and (with his wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. 
 
But what was meant to be six months in a new city turns into a wild five-year odyssey. As Buford apprentices at Lyon's best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, he discoveries the true grit, precision and passion of the French kitchen. 
 
'Hugely entertaining' Observer 
 
'Rollicking, food-stuffed entertainment... Gourmets and gourmands will savour this' Spectator

Dirt

Adventures in French Cooking from the bestselling author of Heat

Xiaomei Martell

Lion's Head, Four Happiness is the captivating story of Xiaomei Martell, who was born in one of China's most remote regions just two years before Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. The youngest of four daughters - her name means 'Little Sister' - her family had no money or connections, yet they raised her with a thirst for knowledge and a love of food, ranging from the Lion's Head meatballs her Uncle Deng cooked to the 'phoenix feet' that apparently cured wrinkles, by way of two-hundred-year-old eggs. 
 
Xiaomei's entertaining and inspiring story takes us to a world where children play with painted pig toes, dumplings give you perfect ears and rather than saying hello, you ask 'chilema' or 'Have you eaten?' 
 
This is a unique and engaging account of a culture and cuisine that is a world away from the China we know today.

Lion's Head, Four Happiness

A Little Sister's Story of Growing up in China

**Shortlisted for the 2017 André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards** 
**Shortlisted for the 2018 Fortnum &amp; Mason Food Book Award** 
 
'The next Bill Bryson.’ New York Times 
 
Food and travel writer Michael Booth and his family embark on an epic journey the length of Japan to explore its dazzling food culture. They find a country much altered since their previous visit ten years earlier (which resulted in the award-winning international bestseller Sushi and Beyond). 
 
Over the last decade the country’s restaurants have won a record number of Michelin stars and its cuisine was awarded United Nations heritage status. The world’s top chefs now flock to learn more about the extraordinary dedication of Japan’s food artisans, while the country’s fast foods – ramen, sushi and yakitori – have conquered the world. As well as the plaudits, Japan is also facing enormous challenges. Ironically, as Booth discovers, the future of Japan’s culinary heritage is under threat. 
 
Often venturing far off the beaten track, the author and his family discover intriguing future food trends and meet a fascinating cast of food heroes, from a couple lavishing love on rotten fish, to a chef who literally sacrificed a limb in pursuit of the ultimate bowl of ramen, and a farmer who has dedicated his life to growing the finest rice in the world… in the shadow of Fukushima.

The Meaning of Rice

A Culinary Tour of Japan

And Other Tales from the Belly of Japan

‘His account of their “foodie family road trip” establishes Booth as the next Bill Bryson.’ New York Times 
 
Japan is the pre-eminent food nation on earth. The creativity of the Japanese, their dedication and ingenuity, not to mention courage in the face of dishes such as cod sperm and octopus ice cream, is only now beginning to be fully appreciated in the sushi-saturated West, as are the remarkable health benefits of the traditional Japanese diet. 
 
Food and travel writer Michael Booth sets of to take the culinary pulse of contemporary Japan and he and his young family travel the length of the country - from bear-infested, beer-loving Hokkaido to snake-infested, seaweed-loving Okinawa. 
 
What do the Japanese know about food? Perhaps more than anyone else on earth, judging by this fascinating and funny journey through an extraordinary food-obsessed country. 
 
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Kate Whiteman Award for the best book on food and travel.

Sushi and Beyond

What the Japanese Know About Cooking

Joan Smith

In HUNGRY FOR YOU, Joan Smith turns her attention to this infinitely intriguing. A collection of her own sharp, funny and stimulating essays on our attitudes to food and eating is accompanied and amplified by a fascinating selection of extracts from novels, tracts, songs, self-help books, poetry and biography. Her essays look at cannibalism and the strange imagination of the man-eating serial killers; at the politics of starvation and anorexia; at sexual 'appetite'; at taboos, and the connection between the stricture of Leviticus and the regimes of Rosemary Conley. Each essay is followed by a series of extracts: from Piers Paul Read's chilling account of cannibalism to Nora Ephron on the comforts of mashed potatoes; from the Princess of Wales talking about bulimia to Proust's voluptuous appreciation of the shape and colour of asparagus, and gems from Catullus, Madonna, Swift, Brian Keenan, Freud, and Lorrie.

Hungry For You

From Cannibalism to Seduction - A Book of Food

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Here, from Anita Desai to Salman Rushdie, are five books about families, India, marriage and the rest, to keep you going as the series moves on.

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