Christmas is on its way and if you’re stuck on what to get this year, why not try the gift that keeps on giving, the cookbook? Here are 10 cookbooks perfect for wrapping up and presenting to your loved ones on Christmas Day.

Overall, ‘how to eat in’ has been very inspiring. It serves as more of a guide to cooking restaurant quality food at home than a day-to-day cook book. But if you love to cook and you love good food, this book would be perfect.

Some books become well-used reference items, consulted regularly and trusted sources of information and inspiration. Others are to be enjoyed, devoured even, but are ultimately coffee-table items, dipped into and savoured – and none the worse for that. But if you’re a gastronome or an oenophile – or are searching for a great gift for one – this could be the book for you.

Really, Kirk has thought of everything. This isn’t just some sort of cheerleading exercise, promising the moon on a stick, rather a realistic way to change your health and well-being for the better. She clearly understands the positives but also the potential pitfalls and the book covers both, so the reader can take heart from the successes and avoid the traps that littler the path to better health.

Inside Burgundy is a serious book for serious wine lovers. Offering unrivalled insights on the vineyards, the wine and the people, the 656-page book covers 1,000 specific vineyards from grand crus to obscure plots.

Tessa Kiros is herself a Greek-Cypriot, which makes her the ideal food writer to bring the authentic taste of Greece into our boring English kitchens. Food from Many Greek Kitchens is divided into chapters including traditional food, baker’s food, there and then food, ready cooked food and fasting food and contains over 115 different recipes, all of which take a no-fuss approach.

From entire galaxies to endangered animals, Paris Cutler creates, within Planet Cake Cupcakes a whole new perspective on cupcake mania. She shows how to craft sugar into stunningly realistic objects with step by steps that may not be easy, but are definitely follow-able.

Using three chapters – morning, noon and night – Thomas takes you through what the average Thai is tasting and it’s a hell of a lot. Thais seem to eat nonstop. His commentary and explanation is illuminating and his guide to basic prep and cooking technique very useful. There’s barely a dish in the book that I wouldn’t snap up if it was available in my street.

While you can’t exactly take this book with you to the wine shop, unless you have a small trolley handy, its perfect for reading at home with a glass of something special at your side. It would make an especially good Xmas present, although it might give Santa a hernia.

For many, the clichéd aspects of Scandinavian cooking (dumplings, lingonberry jam, pickled everything and the ubiquitous meatball) can be as cloying as my grandmother’s chintzy tapestry cushions and scatterings of nick-nacks, but here Hahnemann uses a much lighter touch. Arranged seasonally, this book takes a temporally sensitive approach to both produce and preparation…