 | European Festival Food by Elisabeth Luard
Buy new: £11.97 / Used from: £11.11 Brilliant cultural/social history meets recipe book - fantastic Christmas recipes in particular.
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 | How to Eat: Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (Cookery) by Nigella Lawson
Buy new: £11.36 / Used from: £4.24 Nigella's greatest gift to mankind. Don't be put off by Nigella's increasingly high camp media savvyness, this book is inspirational.
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 | Roast Chicken and Other Stories (Ebury Paperback Cookery) by Simon Hopkinson
Buy new: £7.34 / Used from: £2.86 Hopkinson cooks the eponymous dish with butter, lemon, garlic and tarragon. I can't imagine eating it any other way again. And his prose is a joy.
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 | Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery by Madhur Jaffrey
Buy new: £12.96 / Used from: £9.90 The best primer to Indian cookery available in English.
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 | From Anna's Kitchen: Plain and Fancy Vegetarian Menus (Penguin Cookery Library) by Anna Thomas
Buy used from: £2.93 The most essential vegetarian cookbook that I know. Thomas's Californian-inspired recipes are delicious, innovative, stodge-free and plausibly healthy.
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 | The Art Of The Tart by Tamasin Day-Lewis
Buy used from: £24.92 A high cholesterol essential. Day Lewis is witty and authoritative and she takes the terror out of pastry-making. Own this book for the tomato and saffron tart alone.
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 | Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book by Jane Grigson
Buy new: £7.21 / Used from: £3.78 Everything you ever wanted to know about vegetables (and how to cook them) but were afraid to ask.
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 | The Big Red Book of Tomatoes (Penguin Cookery Library) by Lindsey Bareham
Buy used from: £57.50 Single-ingredient cookbooks always sound insane, but it really would be insanity not to own this book. Bareham's simple recipe for panzanella is my favourite summer meal.
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 | The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Buy used from: £12.00 So much more than The Good Life with added recipes, this book is a real and passionate guide to good food and good living.
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 | The River Cafe Cook Book by Rose Gray
Buy new: £11.35 / Used from: £4.00 Gray and Rodgers's writing style irritates the hell out out of me, but their recipes are unimpeachable. Some of the simple pasta recipes are a revelation and will fast become supper regulars.
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 | The Man Who Ate Everything: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Food, But Were Afraid to Ask by Jeffrey Steingarten
Buy used from: £0.01 It's not a recipe book (though is does contain THE recipe for mechouia), but it is the most entertaining book about food and eating ever written...
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 | Thai Food by David Thompson
Buy new: £15.73 / Used from: £13.50 OK, you won't find half the ingredients needed in your average supermarket, but this is a compelling read, an instant classic and (currently) a constant bedside companion.
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 | Flavours of Greece by Rosemary Barron
Buy new: £11.69 / Used from: £6.24 Don't be prejudiced about Greek food - just try the chicken with bayleaves recipe
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 | European Peasant Cookery by Elisabeth Luard
Buy used from: £19.50 Everything you need to know about cooking herrings and reindeer
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 | Cooking Like Mummyji by Vicky Bhogal
Buy used from: £69.96 Very practical, very delicious, no-nonsense Punjabi recipes.
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 | Mediterranean Cookery (BBC Books) by Claudia Roden
Buy used from: £23.42 The most thumbed and grease-stained book on my shelf. Roden's recipes are authentic (she is no slave to modishness), her instructions lucid and foolproof, her knowledge 100% authoritative.
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 | Rhubarbaria: Recipes for Rhubarb (English Kitchen) by Mary Prior
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £14.62 Anyone for roast puffin and rhubarb jam? No, I thought not, but the recipes for rhubarb cakes are particularly good. Beautifully written and immaculately researched.
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