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COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR

Persia in Peckham: Recipes from Persepolis by Sally Butcher

This gem of a book mixes alluring Persian recipes with tales of modern Iran and insights about running a corner shop in southeast London. What makes Persia in Peckham so gripping is the engaging authorial voice of Sally Butcher, who explains everything from persimmons to pickles with zip and charm. A university dropout, Butcher married an Iranian and together they run a magical bazaar on Peckham high street called Persepolis. The recipes (which are extremely doable in a Claudia Rodenish way) reflect the food that the couple sells: moreish tahini dips and broad bean pulao, spicy kofta meatballs, sticky honeyed pastries, sour-cherry jam and cooling sherbets. Like a great corner shop, the book is stuffed with unexpected treats – little asides on cinema in Iran, or the link between the Iranian love of saffron fudge and the large number of Iranian dentists.

1080 RECIPES by Simone and Ines Ortega
Phaidon £24.95

If you want to cook like a Spanish housewife of the 1970s, this is the book for you. For 30 years, it has been Spain’s bestselling cookbook, the equivalent of Italy’s The Silver Spoon, which Phaidon brought out two years ago to huge acclaim and sales. 1080 Recipes deserves to be an even greater success. The recipes have a retro charm (green beans with vinaigrette, eggs mimosa, stuffed peppers, countless ways of making flan, the Spanish equivalent of crème caramel) and the book itself is a splendid object, decorated with naive line drawings. It would cheer up any kitchen.

BEYOND NOSE TO TAIL: A Kind of British Cooking by Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly
Bloomsbury £17.99

Wilfully eccentric (baked onions are described as “orbs of joy”) and often irrelevant to the average home cook (roast whole suckling pig, anyone?), this is nevertheless a blissful take on English cuisine. The pudding recipes are particularly to be treasured – brown bread ice-cream, sticky date pudding, damson jelly.

MORO EAST by Sam & Sam Clark
Ebury £25

Any book by Sam and Sam Clark makes for essential reading and essential eating. Do you really need this one if you already own Moro: The Cookbook and Casa Moro? Yes you do. Moro East is based less on what the Clarks serve in their Farringdon restaurant and more on the produce they cooked from their East End allotment, before it was bulldozed this year to make way for the London Olympics (darn you, Sebastian Coe). Here are stunning Middle Eastern salads and soups, and mouthwatering ideas for using up gluts of beetroot, cauliflower or green tomatoes. There are poignant photographs of the allotment, including portraits of fellow gardeners, many of them immigrants from the Mediterranean.

KNIFE SKILLS ILLUSTRATED: A User’s Manual by Peter Hertzmann
Norton £19.99

This is one for the geek in your life. It is impossible not to warm to a book so earnest it even includes diagrams showing you which side of a knife is sharp and which is blunt. Nerdiness aside, this is actually fantastically helpful, telling you which blades not to bother with (a fish-filleting knife, for example) and which are most useful (a paring knife and a chef’s knife). There are step-by-step instructions (for right-handed and left-handed people) on everything from mincing a green onion to julienning a pear. Celery, we are told, is best cut on the diagonal. This would make a fabulous present, paired with a shiny Sabatier.

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