4th April 2025


Books Spotlight Food & drink


Titles in this Spotlight are to be published between May 2025 and April 2026 Previews


World cuisine receives a further boost with a slew of summer titles


Family & budget


Hari Beavis Comfort in One Carnival, September, £26, HB, 9781836009054


Our expert, their picks


Sue Baker


The former Books Editor of Publishing News, Sue Baker, says: “I can’t remember learning to read, I just did – and have never stopped. I loved the additional layers of selling, presentation and converting customers into readers that bookselling involved, and I have enjoyed my later foray into reviewing, unable to lose touch with books and reading, even in my dotage.”


If you are time-poor but do not want to live on a diet of ready meals, one-pot cooking is ideal. It’s quick, easy to prepare and, extra bonus, there is less washing up with these recipes using just one pot, be it pan, pot or tray. As well as easy preparation, it is an ideal way to use up leftovers and good for using up store cupboard ingredients too. The recipes look very tempting and come with plenty of ways to change up and adapt. Beavis’ debut book Country Comfort was a Sunday Times bestseller.


O


nly one air-fryer title was submitted this time around (The Unprocessed Air Fryer by Jenny Tschiesche, Hamlyn) because the most popular


subject now seems to be “one pot/pan” cookery. I am a great fan and have outlined two of the titles in my Top Picks (below). See also Poppy O’Toole’s One Pot from Bloomsbury in September and, from HQ in July, Grace Mortimer’s One Pot Wonders. World cuisine has a high number of


entries and there are some interesting and far-flung additions, such as Anna Ansari’s The Silk Roads: Recipes from Baku to Beijing from DK in October, Fasicka Hicks with The Ethiopian Kitchen from Rock Point in March and, from Alpha in December, Aaron Huh’s Beyond Korean.


Meanwhile, two great chefs and their


world-renowned legacies are celebrated this year: first there is Marco Pierre White and the 35th anniversary of the publication of his classic, White Heat, which as Andrew Turvil explains in Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears (Elliott & Thompson, September) led to a revolution in British cuisine. Second, there is the late, great Anthony


Bourdain and the 21st anniversary of his clas- sic introduction to French bistro cuisine in his Les Halles Cookbook. Bloomsbury will be commemorating with a special anniversary edition in October. And it is never too early to plan for a family


Christmas or, at least, we can fantasise about it with Skye McAlpine’s encyclopaedic The Christmas Companion from Bloomsbury due out in October.


Family & budget


Dominic Franks Upside Down Cooking DK Red, June, £22, HB, 9780241732274


From Instagram’s @dominthekitchen, a one-pan cookbook that even the most inexperienced cook can master. And for cooks stuck for time or inspiration, then one-pan cooking is an ideal way to provide great meals with the minimum of prep. You will find no-fuss recipes for 85 main meals, desserts, treats and snacks with the author’s enthusiasm giving new cooks the confidence to mix, match and adapt the recipes. As Dominic Franks says with his subtitle, Layer, Bake, Flip – A Brand-New Way to Cook in One Tray, so enjoy!


26


Chefs, food writers &celebrity cooks


Stuart Farrimond The Science of Flavour DK, July, £22, HB, 9780241667637


This is a DK Book, so expect top- quality illustrations and infographics to supplement the text that reveals how flavour works in recipes. Learn too how flavourings can enhance a meal and, once learned, you are off – building your own flavour combinations and inventing new recipes. I am a great fan of Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking and learning about the science of cooking, and here in a new investigation into food science, Farrimond looks to teach us what influences our perception of flavour.


Regional & world cuisine


Felicity Cloake Peach Street to Lobster Lane Mudlark, June, £16.99, HB, 9780008687656


Felicity Cloake literally gets on her bike to cycle across the US to find the local traditions, recipes and the adapted and incorporated national dishes of other nations. Undertaking her journey in a fraught election year gives Cloake a first-hand opportunity to experience the electoral cut-and-thrust and the divide between red and blue states and their food traditions. Here is the US as experienced through food, getting behind the fast-food stereotype, something few of us have ever done.


Family & budget


Jenny Chandler The Capsule Kitchen Pavilion Books, February, £20, HB, 9780008725525


Jenny Chandler often works in partnership with Hodmedods, the British company that has done so much to promote the use of beans and peas in cooking, supporting British farmers in re-establishing the production of legumes and traditional grains. Therefore, I was much interested to see her book, which comes with big promises. Her recipes are only part of her approach to cooking in a money-saving and vegetarian way by which one can enjoy a diet that is anything but knitted lentils and worthy beans.


Books


Spotlight: Food & drink


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