Christmas Cookbooks. Photograph: Katherine Rose for Observer Food MonthlyProper Pub Food by Tom Kerridge
(Absolute Press, £20)
Crowned king of the Best Restaurant in the UK, with a hit BBC series and astonishing sales of this accompanying book: 2013 has been good for Tom Kerridge. Packed with delicious, do-able recipes from a man who clearly loves creating, cooking and eating food, this is a book to read, to savour, to be inspired by. Big flavours and a big idea from the big man: much loved British pub classics with a simple yet sophisticated twist. As he says: "Chillaxo relaxo, feel good about whatever you prepare." The OFM book of the year from the cook of the year. Proper lush!
Eat, The Little Book of Fast Food by Nigel Slater
(4th Estate, £26)
Beautiful, small, packed like an explorer's journal, Eat, like all Nigel Slater's books, is as much artefact as cookbook, though, of course, it comes with "over 600 ideas for dinner". With recipes written almost as extended tweets, this feels the most "modern" book on the list: the food is comforting, clever, though with a feel for what we are eating now. A perfect stocking filler.
Levant: Recipes and Memories from the Middle East by Anissa Helou
(HarperCollins, £20)
The photos intended for this book were stored on a laptop that was then stolen – and it is a measure of the evocative beauty of the writing that they're not really missed as Anissa Helou guides us through the food and family stories of her home region and childhood. Perfectly crafted recipes – with the instruction you follow them carefully – from a gifted cook.
Simon Hopkinson Cooks by Simon Hopkinson
(Ebury, £25)
A new collection from many peoples' most trusted recipe writer, tied to his recent TV series but with added menus and deliciousness. It is constructed as a collection of meals – A Sunday Lunch, A Continental Supper – with trademark attention to detail. This is after all a man who peels the chickpeas for his hummus. Worth buying for the tomato curry recipe alone.
Traditional Recipes of Laos by Phia Sing
(Prospect, £20)
Originally published in 1981 by Alan Davidson's Prospect Books (Davidson's last posting as a career diplomat was as British ambassador to Laos before becoming a food writer and author of the Oxford Companion to Food). It contains 124 recipes from the late master chef at the royal palace plus an account of Lao cookery and ingredients by Davidson and his daughter Jennifer. An exquisite insight into a largely undiscovered food.
The Paris Gourmet by Trish Deseine
(Flammarion, £22.50)
An essential guide to the food of her adopted home town by Irish food writer and "eat-girl" Trish Deseine. A product of many years of enthusiastic research, it is all here: the places to eat, to shop, to stay, with recipes and insider tips by a talented writer who wears her depth of knowledge as lightly as a Pierre Hermé macaron. The perfect companion to a Eurostar ticket.
DOM: Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients by Alex Atala
(Phaidon, £35)
Part mantra, part meditation, part manifesto, and perhaps the most important food book of the year. Not because you will be able (or maybe even want) to make meals from ants, or the fermenting fruits, roots, fish and fauna of the Amazon, but because he introduces his reader to a cooking style and culture that is intensely foreign and yet familiar. Any book that has a "treatise on caipirinha" deserves respect. Atala has arrived.
A Work in Progress: Journal, Recipe and Snapshots by René Redzepi
(Phaidon, £39.95)
Something for everyone's attention span: part Instagram fest, part recipe porn, part intimate diary. For food lovers, it is in the journal where the real joy is found: pages saturated with an intense love of cooking and insight to maintaining creativity, plus an occasional "pressed leaf" of meadowsweet or shepherd's purse. An intimate glimpse into the interesting head – and heart – of the most influential chef on the planet. Inspirational.
Mange Tout by Bruno Loubet
(Ebury, £25)
A book to cook and cook again by perhaps Britain's finest French chef. Packed with bistro classics retooled for modern palates, with occasional nods to the rest of the world ("lime pickle and yoghurt aubergines"). Rooted in Bordeaux, remade in Brisbane, Loubet brings enthusiasm, curiosity and knowledge – he was schooled at La Tante Claire and Le Manoir – to his recipes and it shows.
One Good Dish: the Pleasures of a Simple Meal by David Tanis
(Artisan, £17.99)
A deceptively simple idea from the writer of A Platter of Figs. As you would expect from an alumnus of the Chez Panisse school of cooking who keeps a place in Paris, there are flavours of Europe and California, with north African and Asian influences, gathered together with an understanding of what makes for a good plate of food. A cookbook in the real sense, one that deserves to be well-thumbed and kitchen-stained.
Master it, How to Cook Today by Rory O'Connell
(4th Estate, £25)
A series of private cookery lessons from Ballymaloe's pre-eminent teacher, the next best thing to a residential course. Unjustly overshadowed by his sister Darina Allen, O'Connell offers an elegant template to an understanding of good food. A grounding in everything you need to know, effortlessly explained. The man is revered by Claudia Roden – need we say more?
Restaurant Babylon by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous
(Bantam, £14.99)
How did it take the author of the gossipy Hotel, Fashion and Pop Babylon so long to get around to the restaurant business? Apparently, "only the names and some of the circumstances have been changed to protect the guilty". The OFM verdict? Very thoroughly researched.
A Greedy Man in a Hungry World by Jay Rayner
(William Collins, £12.99)
This is OFM's own Jay Rayner in iconoclastic mood – chapter headings include Supermarkets are not evil, Is small always beautiful? – challenging sacred tenets of ethical eating not for the sake of it, but to highlight the complexities of feeding a planet whose population will soon reach 9 billion.
Cooked by Michael Pollan
(Allen Lane, £20)
Pollan heads back to first principles, the processes – use of fire, water, the exposure to air that aids fermentation – all of them fundamental to the act of cooking itself. It's a serious read, quoting Nietzsche, exploring the food industry's relationship with feminism and spending quite a long time on the pro and cons of chopping onions. But ultimately it's a book about transformation: how turning base ingredients into food shapes the way we live.
The Green Kitchen by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl
(Hardie Grant, £25)
Inspired vegetarian dishes, developed from the authors' cult blog Green Kitchen Stories: the Decadent Beetroot and Chocolate Cake and the Beet Bourguignon are already classics. Beautifully designed and photographed (Frenkiel's day job is as an art director), this is vegetable-led eating as a pleasure, never, ever a chore.
No Time to Cook by Donna Hay
(Hardie Grant, £18.99)
Having children prompted Hay – an institution in Australia – to work out how to juggle deliciousness with being time-poor and retaining proper family meal times. No Time to Cook is the result, full of invention and variety, with recipes such as nori-wrapped wasabi salmon with mushy peas, Chinese chicken hotpot, and crispy fish with avocado-lemon salsa.
The Ethicurean Cookbook
(Ebury, £25)
Seasonality is key at Somerset's Ethicurean, whose trump card is its 100-year-old walled garden. Winner of an OFM award for Best Ethical Restaurant, the team's beautifully packaged first cookbook doubles as celebration of their surroundings, although you don't need to live in the Mendip Hills to cook a beautiful roasted tomato and liquorice basil soup, or salsify and Ogleshield gratin.
Tapas Revolution by Omar Allibhoy
(Ebury, £20)
Allibhoy has two restaurants of the same name – one in the Shepherd's Bush branch of Westfield, the other in Bluewater – both good enough to visit even if you're not on a shopping trip. The revolution he's talking about is actually more like fervent enthusiasm for simple, beautiful Spanish dishes: peas with serrano ham and eggs, cod with piquillo peppers, and tarta de Santiago.
Pitt Cue Co: The Cookbook by Tom Adams et al
(Mitchell Beazley, £20)
For the meat lover in your life. The team behind Pitt Cue are obsessed, rearing their own herd of fatty rare-breed pigs in Cornwall, crucial to the beautiful pulled pork that helped establish them as one of the best barbecue restaurants in the country. You'll find the recipe here, alongside clever fruit ketchups, great slaws, pickling and cocktails.
Under a Mackerel Sky by Rick Stein
(Ebury, £20)
Dealing with his father's suicide by heading for the outback, catching a freighter from New Zealand to New York, running a nightclub: Stein has plenty to talk about before he gets to fish restaurants in Padstow and becoming a fixture of food TV. His fine autobiography never shies away from that defining tragedy and how it rippled through his life, even revealing his sudden need, last summer, to swim to the Cornish cliffs where his dad died.
To order any of these books for a special price, go to guardianbookshop.co.uk/ofmcookbooks
