THE TIMES

- BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR

This year Jamie Oliver appeared on television perched on a dry-stone wall, chopping onions on a rough-hewn board to prepare a salad. Anyone who has made a salad can tell you that chopping vegetables is not best done this way. Dry-stone walls are wobbly, knives sharp, your onion could end up in the mud with bits of your finger.

Yet viewers loved it, because the premise was that Oliver — a workaholic with a taste for large-scale public influence — had decided that his true passion was eating from his vegetable patch. The series was purest rus in urbe, glossily designed to satisfy the desire to feel included in celebrity lives and to adresss the hunger for home-grown organic food.
Similar in concept, if not execution, was Nigella Lawson's series, in which she played up with flirtatious abandon to her sexpot persona. Viewers were seduced by a fantasy woman, equal quantities of sugar and shaggability.

But both these utterly unrealistic shows were redeemed by their books. In Jamie at Home (Michael Joseph, £25/) Oliver continues to show his knack for recipes novel enough to be exciting but straightforward enough to be cooked by all. Courgette carbonara and pumpkin muffins look pretty and taste good. The recipes in Nigella Express (Chatto, £25) are designed to be speedy, but forswear the obvious combinations beloved of lazy magazines.

Other interesting recipe books this year included two of Spanish dishes, 1080 Recipes, by Simone Ortega and Inés Ortega (Phaidon, £24.95), and Moro East (Ebury, £25), by Sam and Sam Clark, owners of the Moro restaurant in London, which includes dishes using ingredients that the authors produced on their own East End allotment. The soups (jamòn broth with broad beans and asparagus, for example) and salads will probably be more widely cooked than the complex and expensive meat dishes.

As any foodie who has dieted knows, slimming cookbooks are often dreary (although Nigella gets an honourable mention for the slimming section in her How to Eat), so Cook Yourself Thin (Michael Joseph, £14.99), the product of another TV series, did well to produce inspiring low-calorie dishes. Harry Eastwood's beetroot chocolate cake is passing into legend for its fudgy texture.

More sophisticated was Simon Hopkinson's Week In Week Out (Quadrille, £20/£18). The former Bibendum chef and Independent columnist is far more precise and cheffy than, say, Oliver, but his recipes are clear and certainly feel like an accomplishment. His dhal recipe is quite delectable.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has produced the vast The River Cottage Fish Book (Bloomsbury, £30) with Nick Fisher. It is, as ever, informative and beautifully illustrated. The techniques are rather complex for the common cook, but perhaps that is a challenge we should rise to.
Of non-recipe books, Clarissa Dickson Wright's Spilling the Beans (Hodder, £18.99) was a thoughtful rattle through the life of a woman who has eaten wisely and well, and Kate Colquhoun's Taste (Bloomsbury, £20) is a good account of the history of British food as it was eaten in our stratified society.

It is also worth mentioning two books that are scholarly and arch in equal measure. Food and Philosophy (Blackwell, £12.99), edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe, is a series of essays that address the philosophical issues surrounding food— can a veal chop with wild mushrooms be considered art, just like The Moonlight Sonata? Hegel says no, Monroe, philosopher of the palate, disagrees.

Beans, by Kevin Albala (Berg, £14.99), is entirely devoted to a historical and culinary study of beans. It is extraordinarily detailed and amusing, veering from anthropological study to affectionate anthropomorphism: “Peas are the relative who did well, rose above her rank and now only visits the Bean family on occasion. The Pea fancies herself a princess.”'
It is a totally endearing mixture of expertise and whimsy and should, by rights, be a bestseller.

Cookbook Bestsellers 2007

1. Jamie's Little Book of Big Treats
Jamie Oliver
Penguin, £3
Flavour of the year shares his flapjack and other recipes, and raises cash for Comic Relief.

2. Jamie at Home
Jamie Oliver
Michael Joseph, £25

3. Nigella Express
Nigella Lawson
Chatto, £25

4. Fast Food: Recipes From the F Word
Gordon Ramsay
Quadrille, £19.99

5. Mediterranean Escapes
Rick Stein
BBC, £20

FOOTNOTE:

Saturday night I made Jamie's roast pork recipe, page 150 of Jamie at Home. Delicious meal.