Quick? Yup. Easy? Most certainly. Indian? Well, yes – but there’s also a lot more to Anjum Anand’s innovative recipes. 

The subject matter means that time spent reading the book on the commute is time well spent and you come away with a resolve to eat better, but enthused by the idea that better needn’t mean boring. As Henry says,’this is good food for people who love eating. It’s a happy bonus that it’s good for you too.’

Japanese Soul Cooking is the title, the word soul perhaps at first striking an odd note. Isn’t Japanese cooking about an almost anal precision, fussy presentation and a dogged determination to strip the world of what’s left of its rare fish stocks?

People who have come from places where food is scarce do not have the luxury of picking and choosing only the finer cuts. And while we in the UK have lost touch with the food of our grandparents, the French still eat nose to tail and Stephane Reynaud, a very French chef, has this book to help us do the same.

You will doubtless know about Mary Berry from the Great British Bake-Off, but it certainly isn’t only baking that she’s good at, as this book shows, even if there is some baking in it. Together with her long-time collaborator Lucy Young, Berry takes the stress out of cooking for a crowd.

Syrians believe you should never eat alone and there is, Salloum says, good natured rivalry between household chefs to put on a great show. It’s from those women; the kitchen was almost entirely a female domain in her youth, that she learnt her skills and recipes.

Vintage vixen Angel Adoree’s new book is the cookbook equivalent of a selection box as it oughta be;’all killer, no filler’.

This is the book to get your mitt(en)s on  for someone with a similar fondness for Turkish Delight as that boy in’The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’. 

This beguiling book had me at the subtitle –’the story of traditional Arab sweets’. Oh, go on then. I’m all ears and I bring with me a whole mouthful of sweet teeth. I’ve also got a fair appetite for a bit of food legacy and legend, so this exotic Middle Eastern delight had my belly dancing from the off.

Recall the past year of banter and omelette challenges with this good and inspiring compendium of great recipes and cheerful chat.  This edition of the Saturday Kitchen cookbook is one to stick on your own kitchen shelves and refer to when other cookbooks make you feel inadequate.