Best Cookbooks of 2017

1. Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi, written with pastry chef Helen Goh, brings fresh, evocative ingredients, exotic spices and complex flavourings – including fig, rose petal, saffron, aniseed, orange blossom, pistachio and cardamom – to indulgent cakes, biscuits, tarts, puddings, cheesecakes and ice cream in 124 innovative recipes.

2. Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat is a master class in cooking that condenses decades of professional experience into just four simple elements – salt, fat, acid and heat. “Anyone can cook anything and make it delicious,” declares the author. Page after page of her instructions instill confidence in both novice and experienced cooks.

3. Smitten Kitchen Every Day by Deb Perelman shares more than 100 new, easy-to-cook, impossible-to-resist recipes from the beloved blogger (indexed here) and New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. It is often said that sequels are never as great as the first offering but this is not the case here.

4. BraveTart by Stella Parks, the pastry genius at Serious Eats, delivers a baking book with recipes that have been perfected and updated for all our favorite classics. Stella’s recipes are foolproof.

5. Six Seasons A New Way with Veg is an incredible cookbook from the chef and owner of renowned trattoria Ava Gene’s in Portland, Oregon. McFadden highlights the attributes of vegetables throughout their growing seasons with 270 innovative and absolutely stunning recipes.

6. At My Table by Nigella Lawson is a book that shares our favorite domestic diva’s favorite recipes. Nigella states, ‘Our lives are formed by memories, and the focus of mine is the food I’ve cooked and the people I’ve cooked for, the people who have sat at my table, as well as the other tables I’ve eaten on, from the blue formica of my childhood, to the mottled zinc that is the nexus of my life now.’

7. Dinner: Changing the Game by Melissa Clark shares 253 recipes that each deliver one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone – or be paired with a simple salad or fresh bread on the side. Melissa’s recipes never fail. Melissa has a second book in the runners up section below.

8. Dining In by Alison Roman features 148 recipes for simple, of-the-moment dishes that are full of quickie techniques such as slathering roast chicken in anchovy butter, roasting citrus to bring out new flavors, and keeping boiled potatoes in your fridge for instant crispy smashed potatoes.

9. David Tanis Market Cooking by David Tanis seeks out the best ingredient and explores the best ways of cooking it, pulling from all the world’s great cuisines. So whether it’s Louisiana dirty rice, Persian jewel rice, Chinese sticky rice, Arroz Valenciana, or Italian risotto, you learn the qualities of each ingredient and the best methods and recipes for showcasing what makes it special.

10. The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty, renowned culinary historian, offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry both black and white through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.