Cookbooks - my pick of the current crop

As readers of my other food lenses will know, I am also a practical and down-to-earth cook and my preference is for simple recipes that anyone can make using easily found and inexpensive ingredients . I like local and seasonal and the chefs whose shows reflect those ideals are the ones that mostly feature here - but with just a little spice for fun.

I like clearly written recipes, interesting facts about ingredients, instructions for growing and recipe origins.

I am also keen to show that the many cultures that now make up British society have completely permeated the food we eat. we are no longer a nation of just roast beef and Yorkshire pudding! The chillies that go into my Caribbean, Mexican and Indian inspired dishes are grown in my back garden and vegetables considered 'exotic' a few years ago are on sale in every supermarket, many now grown in the UK with no excessive 'food miles' to fret about.

River Cottage Every Day

Just before Christmas 2009, I was visited by a good fairy who directed me to find some gift tokens that were lurking in the bottom of a drawer. It just so happened that it was the very day that I was paying a visit to a bookshop to do some research for this lens. And so it happened that I came home with my no.1 favourite book!

The whole River Cottage thing started as a self-sufficiency exercise with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall doing his best to grow or raise every bit of food that he ate or barter his own produce for what he needed.

The success of the project depended entirely on what was in season in his garden supplemented with what he could glean from hedges, fields and woods all around. Now it has branched off in all kinds of profitable directions, but the essence is still there. Seasonal, local and organic wherever possible.

In River Cottage Every Day Hugh shares with us what his family eats. Breakfasts, home lunches, school/work lunchboxes, weekday suppers and simple weekend entertaining. The food is essentially British in origin, but still shows influences from other cuisines. Middle Eastern flatbreads and dips, a very American-style sourdough bread, curry and much more.

If you are on a tight budget, this is definitely the book to choose. The meat chapter is strong on using the cheaper cuts that sometimes don't even make the supermarket shelves - find a real butcher or a farmer who sells direct. The vegetable and salads recipes are based on everyday roots, beans and greens.

It's a book to warm your heart and stomach like a bowl of soup and a hug from someone you love. This is honest straightforward food, with no pretensions. There is also information about sustainability and animal welfare. Hugh has put a lot of effort into the Chicken Out! campaign trying to persuade the supermarkets and the Brtish public that free range is best for the poultry, for consumers and for the environment.

James Every Day:
The Essential Collection

Hmm what a lovely thought, the hunkiest celeb chef in your own kitchen every day! I very nearly chose this as my No.1 - in fact I got halfway to the till in the book shop before I went back and swapped for the River Cottage book.

Like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, James also lives his principle of using what is in season in the kitchen and available from his own garden. One of his TV series showed him creating a new vegetable garden and using the produce and many of the recipes appear here. I have to say for anyone that already has one of his earlier books is that some recipes from Delicious! and Eating in with James Martin also appear in this book.

Don't think this is a criticism, because the food is beautiful, but the iingredients tend to be just that bit more expensive - sea bass rather than herring and mackerel - and that was what kept it out of my number one slot. There are rather more dishes that you might cook for a dinner party than to whip up for your partner and the children on a midweek evening.

The recipes look very easy to follow and the photographs are mouthwatering. A very tempting No. 2.

James currently appears every Saturday on BBC's 'Saturday Kitchen' programme. You should also read my blog here!

Jamie's America

Anyone who lives in the UK will be immediately familiar with Jamie Oliver. As well as being the author of several cookery books and a celebrity chef, he is the 'face' of one of our largest supermarket chains Sainsburys and a campaigner to get people cooking from scratch rather than relying on ready made food.

Currently I only have one book about American food and another one would be really welcome. My personal experience of USA cuisine was gained in a 3 week road trip from Houston to San Francisco in 2005, so we were eating out all the time and only occasionally went in a supermarket to get water bottles and maybe a snack. We never saw home cooking which was such a pity.

Jamie visits homes, state fairs, cook-offs and family barbecues and doesn't just sample the food, he gets right in there and helps prepare it. The book is as much the story of these encounters and parties as it is a recipe collection.

What he does manage to demonstrate is that America is not all about junk food which is how it is very often seen from a UK persepective. Looking at the recipe list, you can see that every immigrant community has contributed and dishes have developed from what the poorest Americans could afford to buy for their families.

The recipes are arranged by the places that Jamie visited, so you will see chicken soup and cheesecake from New York, gumbo and bourbon and pecan tart from Louisiana and Mexican influenced chilli cheese cornbread and chicken Mole from Arizona.

A good read as well as yummy recipes.

The Settler's Cookbook:
A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food

I would describe this book as an autobiography as much as a cookbook, because of the way it is presented and written.

Yasmin tells the story of her life though the food that she ate as a child, how her family took their valued cooking pots from India to Uganda and eventually to Britain, how she learned the basics of cooking from her mother over the phone as she learned to feed her new husband and how she has seen the food of her childhood absorbed into the wider British food culture.

It is also an intensely personal and intimate story of the author's life. She is now a successful writer, broadcaster and human rights campaigner in the UK and this book will take her still further.

I first heard this book serialised on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year and odd phrases and snippets from it have stuck in my memory ever since. I can imagine Yasmin's own children passing it on to their families in years to come, as a history of several generations re-told in the language of food.

The recipes are put in context, and sometimes written as part of the narrative, but there is a good index, so you can easily find a recipe you like again.

Caribbean Food Made Easy

The BBC TV show that was the basis for this book was screened in 2009 in the UK and I watched it eagerly as it was a style of cooking I had never really tried.

Levi Roots first came to the notice of the British public when he appeared on the entrepreneurial show 'Dragons Den' in a bid to bring his Jamaican inspired table and cooking sauces and marinades to the market - he succeeded, and also launched him as an authority on Caribbean food. Visit his website here

I wondered if some of the ingredients might be hard to find, but most of them are now on supermarket shelves. If you live in a big city you may be able to find shops or market stalls in Afro-Caribbean areas selling what you need and there are companies like spice experts Seasoned Pioneers that have online shops.

This book will bring Caribbean sunshine and Levi's enthusiasm for good food into your kitchen. It's about dishes that you would be served on street stalls or in Jamaican homes, rather than restaurant food. The recipes use fresh fruit and vegetables so it is healthy and nutritious and inexpensive too.

The book is great for vegetarians as many of the vegetable dishes can be main courses as well as sides.

Dine on pepperpot and hot potato and prawn curry or dress up your Sunday roast chicken with brown sugar and rum rather than sage and onion. Put some Bob Marley on the CD player and dance around your kitchen - the atmosphere created by the Caribbean flavours is infectious!

The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain

Si King and Dave Myers AKA the Hairy Bikers travel the length and breadth of the UK to discover our finest traditional foods. Touring the counties of Britain on their trusty triumphs, Si and Dave present local recipes and chefs from the villages and towns they explore.

Find out where the best sausages are made and discover the century-old recipe for gingerbread with a hint of rum and port. Si and Dave are self-confessed life-long foodies. They celebrate each ingredient and create delicious dishes while providing some laughs along the way.

Dave Myers originally joined the BBC as a make-up artist, and while travelling the world with various TV series he picked up recipes and Si King along the way, the mutual attraction being food and a love of big hairy motorbikes.

Other books from the pair tell of their travels by bike in other countries, this one is strictly British and if you are looking for an insight into what makes British food good and special, this is the book for you. I would have it to remind me of the saying "East, West, home is best".

River Cottage Diary 2010

This is not a handbag diary, but one you will want to keep on your desk as an inspiration for daily meals and guidelines for growing your own fruit and veg.

It is themed on 'Sustainability' and includes some ideas for 'climate change gardening'. You will also find recipes for every month, a website directory and lots of information about food and the countryside.

And of course, it is, as you would expect, printed on 100% recylcable paper and card. However, by the end of the year it will be so full of essential food and cooking notes, you won't WANT to throw it away!

I've written lenses about wildlife, places I'd like to visit, LOTS of food and cooking lenses and some quizzes - plenty there for everyone.

Best place to start is My Lensography

Don't forget to mention me in the Squidu forum if you find something you really like - and PLEASE do comment - I love reading what people think so I can improve my lens writing.