Online
I particularly enjoy the reviews, columns and recipes of:
Giles Coren; Marina O’Loughlin; Nigel Slater; Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall; Nick Lander; Fay Maschler; AA Gill; Yotam Ottolenghi; Rowley Leigh.
I have the following blogs bookmarked:
Cheese and Biscuits; Food Stories; London Eater; Recipe Rifle; Hollow Legs; Gourmet Traveller; a Rather Unusual Chinaman; Food Urchin; Leluu; TwelvePointFivePercent; Poires au Chocolat; Burger Anarchy; Eat Like A Girl; Eatlovenoodles; The Little Loaf; Mummy I Can Cook; Gatto Bravo; The Intolerant Gourmet and the supreme Yugnich Eats.
I find these websites to be useful resources:
- Eat the Seasons – what to eat when
- Fish Online – the buyers guide to sustainable fish
- Think Vegetables – lots of stuff on veg
- Gourmet Britain – good re British food
- Amazon – because they always sell food books at 50% RRP
- Sainsbury’s Magazine – great resource with loads of ideas for entertaining
In print
I collect recipe books. Old and new. I don’t intend to list them all. Back in May 2010 I recommended the following:
- Buckingham, Annabel and Miers, Thomasina ed., Soup Kitchen (London, Collins, 2005) – great collection of seasonal soups.
- David, Elizabeth, French Provincial Cooking (London, Grub Street, 2007) – a genuinely useful classic.
- Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh, The River Cottage Cookbook (London, Harper Collins, 2001) – a seminal tome, both in content and design.
- Hopkinson, Simon, Roast chicken and other stories (London, Ebury Press, 1994) – pleasing ideas for a selection of key ingredients.
- Lawson, Nigella, How to Eat: the pleasures and principles of good food (London, Chatto & Windus, 1998) – as the title says.
- Martin, James, Desserts (London, Quadrille, 2007) – terrible TV presenter, good dessert recipes.
- Oliver, Jamie, The Naked Chef (London, Michael Joseph, 1999) – his first and maybe best?
- Slater, Nigel, The Kitchen Diaries (London, Fourth Estate, 2005) – a year’s eating from the king of food writers.
- Slater, Nigel, Tender, vol I: a cook and his vegetable patch (London, Fourth Estate, 2009) – because there should be at least two of his in this list (could have been any of a number).
- Smith, Delia, Delia Smith’s Winter Collection (London, BBC Books, 1995) – you probably don’t think it, but she’s the reason, directly or indirectly, why many of us can cook.
I also said that, on another day, others would have come to mind. Now (March 2012), I think that amongst many others and in addition to the list above, I use and admire the following quite a lot:
- Blumenthal, Heston, Heston Blumenthal at Home (London, Bloomsbury, 2011) – complicating easy home dishes, but telling us why and how.
- Clark, Sam and Clark, Sam, Moro, the Cookbook (London, Ebury Press, 2001) – the original Moro cookbook. So many fantastic recipes.
- Henderson, Fergus, Nose to Tail Eating: a Kind of British Cooking (London, Bloomsbury, 2004) – pure British genius, uniquely written. I yearn for a 1999 First Edition.
- Hildebrand, Caz & Kenedy, Jacob, The Geometry of Pasta (London, Boxtree, 2010) – a pasta bible and a beautifully designed and written book.
- Ottolenghi, Yotam, Ottolenghi the Cookbook (London, Ebury Press, 2008) – super salads & meat dishes. Ideal for buffet inspiration.
- McGee, Harold, McGee on Food and Cooking: an Encyclopedia of Kitchen Science, History and Culture (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 2004) – revised version of 1984 compendium on the science of cooking. No recipes but instructive and a must for the interested cook.
Finally, if you like reading about food, I think you will enjoy:
- Chang, David/McSweeney’s, Lucky Peach – Fire and Knives on crack.
- Dahl, Roald, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, new edition (Puffin Fiction, 2001)
- Hayward, Tim (ed), Fire and Knives – a quarterly collection of new food writing
- Kurlansky, Mark, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (Vintage Books, 1999)
- Segnit, Nicki, The Flavour Thesaurus; Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook (London, Bloomsbury, 2010)
- Slater, Nigel, Toast: the story of a boy’s hunger (Harper Perennial, 2004)
- Cereal magazine. Properly nice.