Julie Biuso
Chef, food writer, author
Anything by Elizabeth David, Constance Spry or Madhur Jaffrey
I‘m not sure I can choose just one book! Food writing was more about a story back when I started buying books, rather than the recipe formula it is today. People knew stuff, and by today’s standards, there are huge gaps in the recipes. And there were no photographs. Success came down to your innate knowledge, your interpretation of the words and your intuition. Back in the early 1970s, my friends and I discovered Elizabeth David. She became our culinary guru and we worked our way slavishly through her French and Italian books, transported by the evocative stories.
Claudia Roden’s books came next and we delved into Turkish, Egyptian, Lebanese and Moroccan food. In 1976, it was all about Cordon Bleu. I studied at the London school and the course book, The Constance Spry Cookery Book, based on English and French classic cookery, was a tome of knowledge. By the late 1970s, Marcella Hazan became a leading guide for my growing interest in Italian food. And Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian books helped develop an interest in spice. They are all bibles! I rarely open these books now. I don’t need to. I know their contents intimately, having absorbed the essence of them years ago. In a way, they are part of my cooking DNA.
Martin Bosley
Chef, food writer, founder of Yellow Brick Road
Roast Chicken And Other Stories: The Most Useful Cookbook of All Time, by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham
It’s not René Redzepi’s recipes from Noma or Josh Niland’s fish cookbooks that I settle down on the sofa with. Bought in 1996, it’s this one. An alphabetically ordered list of recipes based around ingredients and the deliciously rich stories they tell. It’s a comforting read but also useful. The recipes are clear, concise and achievable, a love letter to cooking, as it were. The joy is in its simplicity, its gentleness and the belief that one should cook what one wants to eat. The stories are full of Hopkinson’s generous enthusiasm and his belief in simple, fuss-free cooking. I have always felt a deep connection to it.
Al Brown
Chef, restaurateur, Depot, Federal Delicatessen
Polpo: A Venetian Cookbook (of Sorts), by Russell Norman
I‘m a bit of a scavenger when it comes to anything slightly nostalgic, so I do have a pile of old “cookery” books – more like cookery journals – that are from the same era as when the first edition of the Edmonds Cookery Book came on the scene. No photos, of course, but often stuffed between the pages are old handwritten recipes or ones cut from newspapers and the like – usually dated, which somehow makes them extra special and slightly personal.
My go-to cookbook, though, is from our more modern era and from someone who sadly died just last month. Russell Norman opened Polpo restaurant in Soho London in 2009. I love everything about this book. Published in 2012, it has a timeless feel and quality to it. Beautifully designed with wonderful photography that captures the small bacaris or wine bars that are often positioned down the tiny Venetian alleyways, away from the tourist haunts and traps. The food is simple, like the snack food these bacaris are famous for, with most plates made up of just three or four seasonal ingredients. My type of food, vibe and design – I treasure this cookbook.
Philippa Cameron
Otematata Station chef, author
Otematata School’s Book for the Cook 1993
Food evokes memories for me. Places, people and moments in time, all encapsulated in one mouthful. My favourite cookbooks happen to be the ones produced by community groups like rural schools and sporting clubs. Produced for fundraising, but immortalising people and their signature dish.
Growing up, my mum’s favourite was the Northern Southland Hockey booklet, with the butter-splashed and cocoa-stained pages directing me to her most used recipes. My Otematata School’s Book for the Cook 1993 has a cardboard green cover torn from the binding, revealing the electric typewritten pages, which are all in capitals. There are names that you look for – for me, it’s Sue Gray, whose recipes never fail. These are the recipes that need to be made and remembered.
Petra Galler
Pastry chef, author
The Book of Jewish Food, by Claudia Roden
The one cookbook I go back to over and over is by the powerhouse that is Claudia Roden. Growing up, this book held pride of place in the family kitchen, my dad often flicking through it and creating some very special meals. So often when people think of Jewish food, their brain instantly goes to lox and gefilte fish but there is SO much more. Roden has rounded up a staggering 800 recipes from Egypt, Lebanon, North Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean. The way it is written makes this piece of work so much more than a simple cookbook. Yes, the recipes are incredible and diverse, but the narratives around the food make it even more special. It details the development of Jewish cooking over time. My favourites are the kibbeh, Sephardic rice pudding and, of course, the orange and almond cake.
Karla Goodwin
Baker and owner, Bluebells Cakery
Edmonds Cookery Book
I have owned many copies over the years and have fond memories of making the Russian fudge and coconut ice recipes from a very young age. My mother’s favourite recipe, the khaki cake, can be found in older copies. It’s a fantastic back-to-basics cookbook with every recipe you can think of. It’s a great place to start for young and old, experienced or not. I find you can then build on flavours and variations when feeling creative. It’s a wonderful first cookbook for a child – I gave my 3-year-old her very first Edmonds cookbook at Christmas and know it will be well used in the years to come.
Peter Gordon
Chef, teacher, restaurateur, Homeland
Kai: Food Stories and Recipes From My Family Table, by Christall Lowe
Kai is a lovely book to hold and read. I feel I am discovering her whānau and history through kai. The recipes are tasty and flavour-packed – not overly complicated but also not too simple. It’s a book to have at a holiday home, or at home in town. Good ideas and a good use of local ingredients. The oven-cooked hāngī kono I can imagine being made all over the country and the photo is almost good enough to eat. When my whānau were over from Australia, everyone gravitated to this book and had to take turns reading it.
Alby Hailes
The Great Kiwi Bake Off 2021 winner
One: Pot, Pan, Planet, by Anna Jones
Anna Jones has long inspired me in my own food writing. I love her vegetable-forward approach, emphasis on seasonal cooking, and how she challenges the home cook to push the boundaries of flavour, in an accessible way. The perfect balance of interesting yet achievable.
Her latest offering was released in 2021 amid the global pandemic and sees her food writing take on greater meaning and humanity. Alongside countless winning recipes, like pan-roasted cauliflower with saffron butter or carrot soup with tahini and rosemary, there is timely emphasis on empowering the home cook at a grassroots level to eat in a greener way, with practical tips for reducing food waste, saving energy and money, and how to eat for health and sustainability. In the midst of a growing climate crisis and worsening food insecurity, it’s a book that brings heart, wisdom and deliciousness to the table. I cannot recommend it enough.
Vanya Insull
Author, social media foodie
Essential Annabel Langbein, volumes 1 & 2.
Annabel Langbein is a real inspiration to me and I love her laid-back and approachable style of cooking. I know there will always be something in those books (volume one was savoury and volume two sweet) that I would want to whip up in the kitchen. They are also full of tips and tricks which I have loved trying out over the years.
Lauraine Jacobs
Author, writer and former Listener food editor
Cook, by Karen Martini
My shelves groan and sag with a collection of cookbooks that is far greater than anyone needs. However, in the past 15 years, I’ve always turned first to Australian chef Karen Martini’s Cooking At Home and Feasting when I want refreshingly new and brilliantly beautiful inspiration. It was an absolute delight to find her recently published wonderful doorstopper of a book, Cook. It’s a contemporary compendium of almost everything you need to create amazing food in the Australasian kitchen, in the style of Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, but updated with the many influences as the most recent wave of immigrant food has moved mainstream. Cook doesn’t have many of the glossy and evocative photos of food as Martini’s previous books, but it is crammed with deliciously modern recipes, terrific tips, a vital essentials section, great information and more food ideas than you will need in a lifetime in the kitchen. The old favourite, Syrian chicken, is included, a recipe that Martini modestly says “has developed a life of its own” – a dish that probably almost every caterer in Australia uses. This would be the perfect gift for anyone who’s keen on cooking and wants just one comprehensive cookbook.
Alexa Johnston
Baker, author
Anything by Lois Daish
Lois Daish, stellar food columnist for the Listener over many years, is the source of scores of often-used recipes, clipped out and stored in bulging folders in my kitchen. Her three published cookbooks are also filled with delicious, economical, seasonal ideas for meals, snacks, preserves and all kinds of baking. Nita’s mackerel fish cakes (from Sri Lanka) is a favourite recipe from Dinner at Home (1993), and marzipan cake, from Good Food (1989), is completely perfect, as is My Kedgeree, from A Good Year (2005). Lois understands puddings, too. In her words: “I don’t think of dessert as some sort of occasional reward for good behaviour. To me, it is an integral part of the meal.” A woman – and a cook – after my own heart.
Sam Low
MasterChef NZ 2022 winner, author
Land of Fish and Rice, by Fuchsia Dunlop
This was the first book I had bought written by one of my food heroes, Fuchsia Dunlop, a Chinese food gastronomist. She has a wealth of knowledge that’s matched with an infectious love and appreciation for the people, culture and food of China. This book focuses on one of the eight great food regions of China, Jiangnan, a geographic area of Eastern China known for its delicate and subtle beauty in flavours, cooking techniques and presentation. Think Shanghainese braised pork belly, blanched chrysanthemum leaves, various pickles and smoked duck. It’s easy to overlook the food of this region but when explained with Dunlop’s poetic personal stories, historical documentation and easy recipes, you too will fall in love with the food of Jiangnan.
Alice Taylor
MasterChef NZ runner-up 2022, pastry chef
Edmonds Cookery Book
I learnt how to bake from this book, and it is still, to this day, the cookbook that I use the most. If you don’t have it, believe me, it is incredible. Its recipes are foolproof, and they serve as the perfect culinary templates to play around with flavours and ingredients. I’m rather emotionally attached to this book and keep my copy with me wherever I move. My favourites are the biscuits, pastry recipe and puddings – especially the lemon pudding. It’s not the prettiest cookbook in the world, but it is divine.
Anna Valentine
Founder of The Veggie Tree
Wildcrafted Fermentation, by Pascal Baudar
This is actually the only cookbook I have bought for myself. From fermentation basics to fermenting with your environment, making your own wild cheeses, pastes, spreads and sauces, Pascal Baudar dives into using your own local ingredients and exploring local and ethnic flavours. My latest experiment guided by this wonderful book is a wild fermented spice paste using my own foraged wild weed seeds from last summer and lush spring edible weeds. This book is an absolute treasure trove of inspiration. I highly recommend it for folk who are keen to eat and preserve the wild foods that grow all around us.
