No catches, no fine print just unadulterated book loving, with your favourite books saved to your own digital bookshelf.
New members get entered into our monthly draw to win £100 to spend in your local bookshop Plus lots lots more…
Find out moreVariety is the spice of life and in our Cookery, Food and Drink section we have a range of new books that you can sit back and enjoy or get your hands messy and whip up something fantastic!
Sparked by the gargantuan global popularity of English Heritage’s The Victorian Way YouTube series, How to Cook the Victorian Way presents the life and recipes of the real Mrs Crocombe. Head cook at Audley End House from 1878 to 1884, her handwritten cookery book was passed down through her family and uniquely reveals the tastes and dining habits of Victorian Britons. With context on Audley End House, “one of the greatest houses of Jacobean England”, and absorbing detail on the kitchens of Mrs Crocombe’s era (the book is co-authored by Andrew Hann, head of the historians’ team at English Heritage), her recipes have been modernized by food historian Annie Gray, yet retain their authenticity. Some of them are familiar - pancakes, ginger beer, macaroni cheese, trifle and spotted dick - then there are more outlandish dishes too (to modern tastes, at least), such as mock turtle soup, larded sweetbreads and squab pie. This beautifully presented, meticulously researched compendium is a true treat for gourmands looking to expand their culinary repertoire - perfect for inspiring flamboyant Victorian ‘Come Dine with Me’ dinner parties.
Exploring the finest and rarest whiskies in the world: wonderful whiskey you're dying to try but probably never willThese whiskies may be extraordinarily hard to find, impossible to buy, or literally the sole survivor of a long lost distillery--some are even priceless but, for the first time ever, they're assembled here for connoisseurs to savor. Some are the Ferraris of whiskey: luxury thoroughbreds beyond the reach of all but the most fortunate, discerning, and wealthy of enthusiasts and collectors. Some are whiskey's equivalent to the Model T Ford--once ubiquitous, but now rendered exceptional by the passage of time. All are legendary. Whether the world's oldest, rarest, or most expensive whiskies, leading whiskey writer Ian Buxton unlocks these liquid treasures and meets the people who make, sell, or simply preserve them. This book shares the secrets of whiskey's elite, explaining what makes these whiskies so special, so intriguing, and so desirable.
Featuring simple, delicious recipes from the new Channel series - Quick and Easy Food - Jamie Oliver's 5 Ingredients is his most straightforward book yet. Using five ingredients, cleverly combined, you'll conjure up THE most exciting food . . . Quick Asian fishcakes - juicy salmon fillets flavoured with fragrant lemongrass, ginger and fresh coriander, dipped into a chilli jam. Italian seared beef - blushing in the middle with green pesto, fiery rocket, pine nuts and Parmesan. Pear and Gorgonzola farfalle - strong, creamy Gorgonzola cheese and ripened sweet pears, crumbled walnuts and red chicory over pasta. Chickpea chard pork - seared pork in a casserole of chickpeas flavoured with fennel seeds, rainbow chard and roasted peppers. Cherry chocolate mousse - delicious dark chocolate, black-pitted cherries folded into a simple mousse made from eggs, double cream and golden caster sugar. It's all about making the journey to good food, super-simple. With over 130 recipes, and chapters on Chicken, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Fish, Eggs, Veg, Salads, Pasta, Rice and Noodles and Sweet Things, there's plenty of quick and easy recipe inspiration to choose from. How about . . . Pomegrante jewels, fresh mint and feta tossed into a Carrot and grain salad. Roast tikka chicken - whole chicken flavoured in tikka paste, roasted with crispy potatoes, golden cauliflower and coriander, finished with a deliciously sumptuous AND impressive Honey berry filo smash topped with coconut yoghurt and pistachios. All ready to tuck into in less than 30-minutes. With every recipe you'll find a visual ingredient guide, serving size, timings, a short, easy-to-follow method, and quick-reference nutritional information. Jamie's new cookbook takes the stress out of mealtimes and will inspire cooks and non-cooks alike with beautiful, crazily simple ideas . . .
THE 5:2 GOOD KITCHEN includes 75 new recipes with a wide selection of vegetarian, vegan and demi-veg friendly meals, plus dishes free from dairy, gluten and sugar. Like Kate's previous books, every ingredient is calorie counted and the focus is on fresh, full-flavoured meals that can be easily adapted to suit anyone - with variations for fast and no-fast days. It also includes: * 5:2 Food Heroes: forget over-priced supplements, Kate profiles the natural, inexpensive star ingredients that make you invincible on fast days; * Inspiring case studies from people who are transforming their lives through intermittent fasting, with amazing changes to their weight, health and confidence; * Practical advice on making sense of food scares and myths, from the truth about breakfast to the fat vs. carb debate; * Seasonal meal plans for summer days and winter warmers. THE 5:2 GOOD KITCHEN offers fresh, balanced meals that put healthy food at the heart of your life.
Discover 7 Ways to reinvent each of your favourite ingredients with Jamie's brand-new, No. 1 bestselling cookbook, featuring 120 exciting and tasty new recipes Includes recipes from Jamie's hit Channel 4 TV show Keep Cooking Family Favourites Jamie has done his research to find out exactly what we, as a nation, love to eat. He's taken 18 of our favourite ingredients and created 7 new, easy and delicious ways to cook them. We're talking about those meal staples we pick up without thinking - chicken breast, salmon fillet, mince, eggs, potatoes, broccoli, mushrooms, to name but a few. Jamie will share 7 achievable, exciting and tasty ways to cook each of these hero ingredients, requiring minimal time, effort and additional ingredients. Jamie's fun, delicious and nutritious recipes include: · Crispy sweet & sour salmon · Filo chicken kiev · Mushroom cannelloni · Sticky ginger beef · Prosciutto pork fillet · Cauliflower cheese pasta With everything from fakeaways and traybakes to family and freezer favourites, you'll find bags of inspiration to help you mix things up in the kitchen. Discover 7 Ways, the most straight-forward cookbook Jamie has ever written.
Paul Hollywood has chosen over 100 recipes that mean the most to him, the ones he has perfected over the years and that sum up a baker’s life. From learning at his father’s knee to the heights of Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood has been striving for excellence throughout his career and now these recipes have been adapted for home bakers. An interesting and rounded collection of recipes, as you would expect, an ideal starting point for cooks wanting to learn new recipes and techniques and also to build up a core baking repertoire. ~ Sue Baker Like for Like Reading English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David Bread Matters: Why and How to Make Your Own Bread by Andrew Whitley
What happened when one of today's best-loved food writers had a change of appetite? Here are the dishes that Diana Henry created when she started to crave a different kind of diet - less meat and heavy food, more vegetable-, fish- and grain-based dishes - often inspired by the food of the Middle East and Far East, but also drawing on cuisines from Georgia to Scandinavia. Curious about what 'healthy eating' really means, and increasingly bombarded by both readers and friends for recipes that are 'good for you', Diana disocovered a lighter, fresher way of eating. From a Cambodian salad of prawns, grapefruit, toasted coconut and mint or North African mackerel with cumin to blood orange and cardamom sorbet, the magical dishes in this book are bursting with flavour, goodness and colour. Peppering the recipes is Diana's inimitable writing on everything from the miracle of broth to the great carbohydrate debate. Above all, this is about opening up our palates to new possibilities. There is no austerity here, simply fabulous food which nourishes body and soul.
100 easy and delicious meals on a tight budget with Jack Monroe's A Girl Called Jack. Jack is a cash-strapped single mum living in Southend. When she found herself with a shopping budget of just GBP10 a week to feed herself and her young son, she addressed the situation with immense resourcefulness, creativity and by embracing her local supermarket's 'basics' range. She created recipe after recipe of delicious, simple and upbeat meals that were outrageously cheap. Learn with Jack Monroe's A Girl Called Jack how to save money on your weekly shop whilst being less wasteful and creating inexpensive, tasty food. Recipes include Vegetable Masala Curry for 30p a portion, Pasta alla Genovese for 19p a portion, Fig, Rosemary and Lemon Bread for 26p and a Jam Sponge reminiscent of school days for 23p a portion. Sassy, political, and cooking amazing food on GBP10 a week. We need more like her . (Xanthe Clay, The Telegraph). Compelling, if sobering, reading . (The Independent). Jack Monroe is a 24-year-old single mother and local newspaper reporter. Finding herself with a food budget of just GBP10 a week, she began to create nutritious recipes to feed herself and her son. Giving the recipes out to a local food bank, to help others in her situation, she then began to publish them online on her blog, A Girl Called Jack, which now has thousands of followers. Jack was awarded the 2013 Fortnum and Mason Judges' Choice Award for the impact that her blog has had. She lives in Essex with her son.
In this major new history of English food, Clarissa Dickson Wright takes the reader on a journey from the time of the Second Crusade and the feasts of medieval kings to the cuisine - both good and bad - of the present day. She looks at the shifting influences on the national diet as new ideas and ingredients have arrived, and as immigrant communities have made their contribution to the life of the country. She evokes lost worlds of open fires and ice houses, of constant pickling and preserving, and of manchet loaves and curly-coated pigs. And she tells the stories of the chefs, cookery book writers, gourmets and gluttons who have shaped public taste, from the salad-loving Catherine or Aragon to the foodies of today. Above all, she gives a vivid sense of what it was like to sit down to the meals of previous ages, whether an eighteenth-century labourer's breakfast or a twelve-course Victorian banquet or a lunch out during the Second World War.
In this magnificent guide to England's cuisine, the inimitable Clarissa Dickson Wright takes us from a medieval feast to a modern-day farmers' market, visiting the Tudor working man's table and a Georgian kitchen along the way. Peppered with surprises and seasoned with wit, A History of England Food is a classic for any food lover.
William Sitwell has chosen 100 recipes that illustrate a history of Western Food. He starts with a bread recipe from Ancient Egypt and progresses through to today ending with a Heston Blumenthal creation. Tailor-made for dipping into this book illuminates, informs and amuses, a lively look at food and our eating habits. Like for Like Reading Consider the Fork: A History of How we Cook and Eat, Bee Wilson The Edible Atlas: Around the World in Thirty-Nine Cuisines, Mina Holland
April 2012 Food and Drink Book of the Month. It’s the second part of the title – “in 100 Recipes” that makes this stand out from the usual plod from hunter-gathering to yesterdays sushi craze. Instead we start with flat bread and gradually follow man’s culinary progress through “Muscules in shelle”, Trifle, Peas Soope, Brussels Sprouts, Rice Krispies treats and ending with Heston Blumenthal’s Meat Fruit. A switch-back of a journey through food good and bad, cooks wild and wily and a public palate that knows no bounds. Contained within the history is a progress through the communication of recipes, how they were first written down and how they changed and developed to encompass radio, TV, magazines and now the computer and aps. I had doubts about the format when I first started reading it but soon settled in and while it lasted A History of Food in 100 Recipes was an excellent bedtime reading treat. Like for Like ReadingA History of English Food, Clarissa Dickson WrightFood in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We Are, Dorothy Hartley
A super-sweet guide to all your favourite sweets from years gone by. A History of Sweets in 50 Wrappers is a colourful and comical history of sweets and chocolates. If you ever dreamt of being the Milkybar Kid, if you remember when Snickers were Marathons and Double Deckers had raisins in them, if you ever checked the colour of your next Fruit Pastille before offering it out, this book is for you. It will lead you down memory lane until you reach the corner shop and load up a 10p mix-up bag. Fully illustrated, with hundreds of classic wrappers and adverts, A History of Sweets in 50 Wrappers is packed full of memories, fun facts, historical research ...and lots and lots of sweets!
There has never been a greater interest in cooking. Never been such a wide range of accessible ingredients from all over the world. Cultural diversity has led to us all broadening our culinary horizons. What better time to celebrate the sumptuous array of delectable books on offer, covering all aspects of our growing obsession with all things food … and drink (!). You won’t find the obvious choices here, the big name chefs and TV show spin-offs. We hope that we’ve lovingly compiled a special menu of off the beaten track titles to fire your imaginations and your ovens. Uncork your inner sommelier, sauté your inner chef and share a spoonful of our passion for something saucy, lip-smacking, eye-feasting and thirst-quenching. Bon Appetit!
We hope you’ll find our Food and Drink category full of titles that can be enjoyed either sitting in the armchair or used in a more practical way in the kitchen. Some of them provide a mixture of both.