Cork food: The best food and cook books for Christmas

It’s been a bumper year for cookery and food books.

Books are always a welcome addition to any gift-giving, even to yourself, for inspiration for the cooking year ahead!

COOKBOOKS

Eat Out at Home, Neven Maguire, Gill Books, €24.99

Neven shares secrets for creating restaurant-style food at home with much-loved recipes from his MacNean Restaurant, and favourite dishes cooked at home for family and friends. A generous catalogue of recipes categorised by small plates, big plates, sides and sweets. There are handy guides for cooking by season, timings, and organising recipes according to size of group to cook for.

Favourite Recipe: Chicken Potstickers

The Old Spot Cookbook, Nine Bean Rows, €35

A cookbook to celebrate a decade of cooking at the eponymous gastropub in Dublin is as much for its devoted following as it is for those discovering its comforting yet elegant food for the first time. This is a collection of all-time cherished recipes, tips, tricks and expert advice to recreate at home dishes such as the Deep-Fried Truffled Mac and Cheese. Take me to church!

Favourite Recipe: 36-Hour Slow-Braised Short-Rib Lasagne

Dad Food, Dylan McGrath, Gill Books, €24.99

A titan of Ireland’s restaurant scene, when McGrath became a dad, he embraced dishes that always delivered on taste whatever the skill level or time available. These are recipes every man should have up his sleeve, promising to help you lose the fear of cooking and help confident cooks take things up a level. Because Dads can cook, too!

Favourite Recipe: Roasted Cauliflower with Tarragon Mayonnaise

Cook – Traditional Irish Cooking with Modern Twists, Graham Herterich, Nine Bean Rows, €35

Follow-up to the enormously successful Bake, Herterich again takes us down memory lane with beautiful stories and recipes from childhood, then reimagined for modern tastes influenced by his passion for travel and flavour. With beautiful photography (and a chapter written by yours truly, ahem!), this is a must for the collection.

Favourite Recipe: Mammy Salad

The Happy Pear 20, David and Stephen Flynn, Gill Books, €24.99

Ireland’s famous foodie twins are celebrating 20 years of The Happy Pear with a new book that reimagines old recipes, has new recipes, reveals the trials and tribulations of their food business, and the cherished community, local and global, that has grown up with their cheerful philosophy on food and healthy living.

Favourite Recipe: Beetroot, Walnut and Feta

Burgers Season, Mark Moriarty, Gill Books, €24.99

Listowel-native, Mark returns with a second book of 100 recipes to walk us through the changing seasons and teach us how to season our food for fantastic flavour.

Salt, pepper, butter, olive oil, lemons, tabasco and soy are everyday ingredients we use in our cookery, but do we know how to get the best from them? Mark is here to show us how!

Favourite Recipe: Boozy Autumn Fruit Pavlovas

Blasta Books, Season 4, €17, Available for pre-order www.blastabooks.com

Cork will be well-represented again in this new season with Orla McAndrew’s Larder and Izz and Eman Alkarajeh of Izz Café with Jibrin.

They will join Facundo Rodulfo and Pam Neumann of Killarney’s Tango Street Food with Tango, and Aoife McElwain with Messy – an antidote to neatness in the kitchen.

Gift a pre-order of the whole series for year-round Christmassy feels!

FOOD BOOKS

An Irish Food Story:100 Foods That Made Us, JP McMahon, Nine Bean Rows, €25

An Irish Food Story chronicles the evolution of our tastes and culinary desires, from the first settlers who arrived on the island 10,000 years ago, to the people who call Ireland home today.

From Birds Custard to Boxty, from seaweed to Findus Crispy Pancakes (plus everything in between), McMahon illustrates that we, indeed, are what we eat – and everything we don’t.

Irish Food History – A Companion, Edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman, Royal Irish Academy, €45

It’s a tome, and it’s everything you ever wanted to know about Irish food through time and culture.

It is more than just an epic work of academia; it also draws on songs, poetry and the Irish tradition of storytelling to illuminate the fascinating journey readers take from pre-history to modern Irish food and Identity.

Seed To Supper, Michelle Darmody, Nine Bean Rows, €20

Michelle has written a food book for children that takes the journey from seed to supper and everything in between.

It is written to demystify and educate, while also being lucid and open about issues within the food system, from how food is produced to climate change.

It’s also joyous in celebrating the conviviality of the table. Includes lots of recipes and activities.