Food is more than just sustenance: it is a lens through which we can explore history and culture. Whether it’s a recipe passed down through generations or a dish from a culture different to our own, food helps us foster connection and inspire curiosity about the world we are in. The titles featured here celebrate not just food but also the traditions that come with them. Uncover Korean culinary techniques that go back generations. Embark on a journey to grow and forage your own food. Trace the lifecycle of a recipe from the soil its ingredients are grown in to the plate it ends up on. This selection of recipe books will keep your curiosity well fed.
1. Beit Trad
Step inside a Lebanese mountain family house transformed into a welcoming guesthouse, offering authentic insight into Lebanese hospitality and traditional home-cooked recipes. In this intimate book, Sarah Trad takes us from her childhood summers in Kfour, through the food, warmth and joy of her mother's legendary gatherings, to the transformation of the house into a guesthouse that embodies the very essence of Levantine hospitality. Beit Trad: Recipes, stories & the art of Lebanese hospitality is a celebration of Lebanese home traditions and a living link between generations.Discover Beit Trad now.
2. The Art of Korean Cooking
The Art of Korean Cooking is a beautifully produced cookbook featuring eighty recipes inspired by traditional Korean cuisine, each meticulously researched and tested by Onjium, a cultural research institute and Michelin-starred restaurant in Seoul. Organized by season, the recipes range from familiar dishes like bibimbap with spring vegetables or seafood hot pot to the lesser known: azalea rice cakes, chestnut porridge, beotgul (oyster) salad, or stir-fried ueong (burdock root) with sweet-potato noodles.
The Art of Korean Cooking publishes on 16 April. Pre-order from Bookshop.org and get 10% off your order with code LOVEBOOKSHOPS.
The Art of Korean Cooking publishes on 16 April. Pre-order from Bookshop.org and get 10% off your order with code LOVEBOOKSHOPS.
3. The Amber Guinness Set
Born in London and raised in Tuscany, author and food writer Amber Guinness has spent her life surrounded by Italian food. In her three books – A House Party in Tuscany, Italian Coastal and Winter in Tuscany – she distils the art of authentic Italian home cooking with vibrant and mouth-watering Italian recipes, whether from a farmhouse in the Tuscan landscape to a sun-drenched island on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Guinness delves into the history, stories and flavours that have come home to her kitchen and shaped her food philosophy.Discover the Amber Guinness set.
4. The Kitchen Garden
Focusing on plants destined for the dinner plate, The Kitchen Garden is an illustrated guide to growing edible plants from sowing to harvesting. Featuring fifty-five plant profiles ranging from the everyday to unique, this compendium offers practical techniques alongside recipes for the home gardener/cook. With an emphasis on seasons rather than months, The Kitchen Garden offers guidance on how best to start your kitchen garden, when to sow and harvest and the ideal plant companions, whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere.Discover The Kitchen Garden.
5. The Bloomsbury Cookbook
The Bloomsbury Group was made up of many of the great figures in art, literature and economics in the early twentieth century: E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, J. M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Part cookbook, part social and cultural history, The Bloomsbury Cookbook offers a unique look at the famed group through the food they ate. Recipes feature alongside sketches, paintings, photographs, letters and handwritten notes to give a more complete picture of the Bloomsbury Group as they gathered around the dining table.Discover The Bloomsbury Cookbook.
6. Soil to Table
We rely on healthy soil for our food. Just as caring for the gut flora within our intestines is vital to human wellbeing, so too is caring for its microbes the essence of soil health. In The Land Gardeners: Soil to Table, authors – and gardeners – Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld explore the full cycle of soil to table, from the microbes in the soil to the seasoning in your dishes, and how they each contribute to a delicious and nutritious meal. Featuring tips for improving the health of your soil as you grow as well as recipes from chef Lulu Cox, this guide is a celebration of the garden’s ability to produce glorious food.Discover Soil to Table.
7. Eat Weeds
It used to be common practice to collect wild food, and the knowledge that went with it was a part of daily life. But with the advent of supermarket culture, monocultural systems of food production and escalating urbanisation, the knowledge associated with foraging has mostly been lost. Eat Weeds is an accessible guide to how you can engage with wild food sources, reconnect with the stories of our ancestors, and care for local ecologies while transforming your neighbourhood into an edible adventure. Featuring in-depth information on each weed and a recipe to make with it, Eat Weeds is a fascinating gateway to the world of foraging.Discover Eat Weeds.
8. Wild Kitchen
Look into the home kitchens and dining areas of twenty of the world’s top chefs, food bloggers and restaurateurs and uncover the inspiring ways in which the food-obsessed are embracing the 'wild' in their everyday cooking and dining. Wild Kitchen: Nature-Loving Chefs at Home offers unique cooking philosophies and insider tips on how to create a unique kitchen space, essential utensils, entertaining and bringing the outside. Each chef also shares a simple recipe that uses their favourite natural ingredients. This recipe book will inform, delight and inspire all food lovers looking to get back to nature.Discover Wild Kitchen.
