Latest features Around the world in 10 cookbooks

Date Published:

28/04/2008

Eat the world without leaving your kitchen with culinary classics from the greatest cookery writers

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David
The revered Mrs David brought exotic cuisines into the British mainstream. The temptress published her first mouth-watering book, 'Mediterranean Food', 1950, when rationing meant most of the ingredients she so lovingly described were not available. By the time 'French Provincial Cooking' came along, in 1960, a ravenous readership seized on David's philosophy of simplicity, authenticity, knowledge and care and the grande dame became the guru for a new generation of chefs.

French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David

Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook by Ruth Van Waerebeek
If your experience of Belgian cuisine stops with waffles, you're in for a treat. According to Ms. Van Waerebeek, it's not just some people who eat well in Belgium, the whole country's packed with nutritionally satisfied folk. Her book is much loved and treasured by those who've cooked their way through its pages, and lauded for putting Belgian food into the limelight it apparently richly deserves. Expect recipes packed with nutmeg, saffron, almonds and dried fruits and cheese and a whole chapter devoted to waffles and pancakes.

Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook by Ruth Van Waerebeek

The Silver Spoon - Various authors
The Silver Spoon - or Il Cucchiaio D'Argento if you want to impress your friends - has been the most successful cookbook in Italy for nearly sixty years. It was published in 1950, by a design and architecture magazine called Domus, who sent food experts off trawling across Italy in pursuit of the tastiest regional dishes. Forget toasters or his 'n' hers bathrobes, in Italy, this is one of the most popular wedding presents going. For bonus indulgence, each recipe is accompanied by a list of complementary wines. The new edition has a helpful colour coded layout to aid you in your navigation through the 2000 recipe strong tome and help with cross-referencing ingredients and methods.

The Silver Spoon

1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega and Ines Ortega
Simone Ortega is a Spanish cooking legend whose skill at the grill has earned her international accolades, including the Spanish Special Prize of Gastronomy and, impressively the French Order of Arts and Letters. 1080 Recetas De Cocina is the bible of Spanish cooking. It has been a bestseller in Spain since it was published in 1972 and is now in its 48th edition. Happily for non-Spanish speakers it's now available in an English translation with suggested alternatives for local ingredients. Divided into 14 chapters, this beast of a book includes menu plans from celebrated Spanish chefs, as well as traditional recipes for Spanish classics like tortilla and paella.

The Silver Spoon

The Cook's Companion: The Complete Book of Ingredients and Recipes for the Australian Kitchen by Stephanie Alexander
Shame on you if you thought Australian cookery was all barbecues, turns out, there's a whole range of culinary delights to be enjoyed indoors too. Miss Alexander happened into the realm of food after working as a librarian. When nouvelle cuisine caught the Australian imagination in the 1980s, her restaurant became a hub for gastronomic activity, championing new techniques and celebrating small producers. The Cook’s Companion is an encyclopedic book but, thanks to Alexander's librarian skills, it has been carefully sorted and packaged in a most user-friendly way. A champion of traditional Australian game, Alexander has a great section on kangaroo and wallaby meat, check out her kangaroo tail soup.

The Cook's Companion: The Complete Book of Ingredients and Recipes for the Australian Kitchen

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji
Tsuji worked as a reporter before establishing the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, in 1960. A training school for professional chefs, the Institute is now the largest of its kind in Japan. Having mastered Japanese cooking, Tsuji set his sights on the culinary goalposts of French cuisine and studied the work of the greatest chefs in France. A kitchen whiz, on both sides of the globe, his artistry won him the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France ('Best Craftsman of France') award. A Simple Art is hailed as the definitive guide to Japanese cooking with an extensive recipe list as well as a comprehensive explanation of ingredients, tools and techniques.

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

The Cooking of Scandinavia by Dale Brown
Published as part of Time-Life Books' 'Foods of the World' series way back in 1968, Brown's book is a celebration of 'the natural taste that soil, climate, mountain and lake have produced'. Combining recipes with a potted food history of the Nordic region the book is a culinary tour for the armchair gourmet. Recipes are simple, old fashioned classics and, aside from roasted reindeer marrow, the ingredients are simple to come by even in the UK.

The Cooking of Scandinavia

Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey
Madhur Jaffrey is one of a rare breed of actress/super-chefs. Her jam-packed CV includes decades of film and theatre work, scooping the 1965 Best Actress Award from the Berlin Film Festival and supposedly introducing the kings of costume drama, James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. Somewhere in the midst of that she also found time to become one of the most respected and recognised writers of Indian cookbooks. Indian Cooking is a great introduction to Asian cuisine especially vegetarian recipes and consistently gets rave reviews for its easy to follow methods and stellar results.

Indian Cooking

USA Cookbook by Sheila Lukins
A graduate of London's very own posh catering college, Le Cordon Bleu, Lukins travelled across the whole of America, from East to West, North to South to create a comprehensive cookbook of her nation's specialities. The patriotically red, white and blue book has a friendly banter to it with anecdotes about each state as well as its local dishes. Expect familiar sounding all-American recipes like meatloaf and clam chowder as well as iced tea - 'the Champagne of the South' - and dishes to suit movie buffs like the Whistlestop Café's very own fried green tomatoes.

USA Cookbook

Latin American Cooking by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz
A passion for all things Latin American gave Brit born Elizabeth Lambert an Hispanic name, through love of her Mexican husband, and a career as a food writer, through love of the Jamaican Scotch bonnet chilli. The Lambert Otizes travelled the world meeting local cooks and sharing recipes and Elizabeth translated them into a series of cookbooks that brought exotic Latin American cooking to the ravenous English speakers of the 1960s and 1970s. Despite winning awards for her books, Lambert Ortiz said her greatest achievement was being described as tiene buena mano, ('she has a good hand'). Latin American Cooking features more than 500 recipes including a great guacamole, Equadorian steamed puddings and the hearty Argenitne dish of stuffed, rolled flank steak.

Latin American Cooking

Broaden your culinary horizons with our
Mexican recipes
American recipes and
Japanese recipes