Cookbooks

My family has always been quite food-orientated... my Dad's a keen cook, my Mum grew up in Malaysia and so has loads of great Far-Eastern recipes and me and my sister seem to have got the cooking bug too. Anyway, I thought I would step away from traditional books for today's post and talk about some of my favourite recipes from some of the best cookery books out there.

Salad: For the best side salad, you've got to look at French chef, Daniel Galmiche's The French Brasserie Cookbook. He does a scrummy garden salad with tomatoes, onions and little bits of raw garlic. He's obviously not the only cook to have ever added raw garlic to a salad, but it does give it a real kick and the dressing is simple and tasty.

Thai: Vatch's Thai Cookbook is great - real Thai cooking with some fantastic flavours. My favourite is probably his grilled chicken with a delicious sauce made from white wine vinegar, coriander and chilli. You heat it up with sugar so that it becomes almost a syrup. Delicious! Controversially, I'm quite a fan of Jamie Oliver's red Thai curry in 30 Minute Meals. You have complete control over the spice, so it's a good one to do for guests who don't like too much of it.

Pasta: As a kid I was brought up on Pasta Putanesca. This recipe is inescapable as I'm pretty sure every chef under the sun has their own version. My Dad always used to use Delia Smith's from Delia's Winter Collection but he has always added tuna. The basic recipe is delicious and, again, can be as spicy as you like but I do recommend the tuna addition. I don't even like tuna all that much... but it gives it a great consistency and taste.

Pudding: I do like puddings... and I can't say I have a favourite. Any form of sticky toffee pudding (Nigella's is particularly delicious and super easy) and almost all fruit crumbles will see a big smile across my face. Daniel Galmiche, as previously mentioned, has a lovely recipe for Tarte Tatin in his book and the banana cake in Pret A Manger's cookbook always comes out perfectly and goes down very well...

Vegetarian: My sister is a vegetarian so we eat a lot of meat-free dishes in our house. My personal favourite veggie dishes include Ottolenghi's Mee Goreng and loads of recipes from The Accidental Vegetarian, which is really worth a look.

If you simply have ingredients but don't know what to do with them... google the BBC Good Food website and type in your ingredients... it's  brilliant. Some of my all-time favourites come from their phenomenal database of recipes... shouldn't be snubbed.

I'm sure I've missed some great recipes and cookbooks that I'll hit myself about later but hope you like my little selection here. To have a read about food in literature, have a look at my post from a couple of months ago: FOOD IN LITERATURE...