Has Delia written your recipe bible, does Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries dictate what you cook or do you have every Jamie Oliver recipe book going?

Let us know which books tickle your tastebuds, those well thumbed tomes splashed with sauces and flecked with flour.

For the record, if my chip pan caught fire, I would be running out the door with Nigel Slater's Appetite!

I have so many favourite cook books i have no idea where to begin, i think at the moment though it has to be 'Food To Die For' By Patrica Cornwell, it is a spin off from here crime novels and features her main characters favourite recipes.
I have also started to collect kit-ch/retro books which are now possibly out of print, i have just got a copy of Liberace Cooks and can't wait to try some recipes from the late 60's into the 70's.

PS if any one can recommend a good retro cook book please let me know

Not so much a cook book but makes good reading with recipes included.
Food in England by Dorothy Hartley.

Jamie Olivers " A taste of Italy", Readers Digest Cookery Year Book, Jamie Olivers "Home" and James Martins 300 Collection are my most used books.
I also have a good cookery series called around the world.

I have lots of cookbooks but my firm favourites & always refer to for inspirations are ALL of Jamies's books.

Also have 2 of Nigel Slater's books - Kitchen Appetite & Toast ( a great read).

Like moneysuncle I swear by Readers Digest Cookery Year Book. It is the most practical cookery book I own. I like Jamies books and Nigella for the glossy pretty pictures and the fancy touches and occasional exotic ingredients but I have had the most success Cookery Year recipes. I also have the added bonus of my dear departed aunty's margin notes and if she's put that it was rubbish when she made it in '78 I'm not going to be able to do a better job now!

I collect cookbooks and have 460 - more than the library. I do use them and the good old dairy diary are great ones

I like the idea of taking one book in emergency. I have a lot of books collected during decades of cooking, but if I had to grab and run it would have to be one I am using at the moment. Probably Patricia Wells 'At home in Provence'. What a decision to have to make! Mind you I would never forgive myself if I left behind my own recipe notebook, all that trial and error gone to waste!

My favourite at the moment is Nigella's Express, the recipes are quick and delicious.

If I had to grab and run it would be my own cookbook binder which I collect my favourite recipes in. I find it far easier than trying to remember which recipe is in which book

alc28 the best retro books I have is the complete set of Time Life The Good Cook series, fabulous recipes and wonderful instruction. They are long out of print but still available in second hand shops. I also have a colletion of nearly 600 books, collected over many years, but I think Nigel Slaters are the best loved by the whole family

Oh and forgot to mention I love Delia, apart from the Good Cook series I have more of her books than any other food writer - 11 in total, and 3 more one the list of have to have's!

My newest is A Table in Tarn and I am really enjoying it. Relates the story of the B & B the ex editor of the Good Food Magazine set up several years ago complete with all their recipes. I really want to go for a visit now and taste them all - made for me!!

Farmhouse Kitchen Cookbook from a Yorkshire TV series in the 70/80s. The Pauper's Cookbook by Jocasta Innes and anything by Keith Floyd. Love the All American Cookbook by Martha Lomask

I have a great series of Australian Womans weekly cookery books which are either different countries cusines or a paticular type of cooking (cakes, bread, roasting etc) which are fab because they are paper back and small so take up less room on my (rapidly running out of room) bookcase! But to save from a burning house? Appetite by the amazing Nigel Slater without a doubt. I am now on my third copy because of favourite pages becoming almost unreadable from over use! All of his books inspire me but that one won a place in my heart by reminding me that I don't have to cook (live off toast and soup - been there done that!) but that I do it for the love of making something, I hope, delicious.

I have to say i have yet to buy one of Nigel Slater's books but i am an avid fan of his column and recipe's from the sainsbury's magazine, i recently made his lemon curd, which i have to say (even though i may blow my own trumpet) was the best lemon curd i have ever tasted. I am going to have to start collecting his books.
Thanks to ginger-nut i am going to try to search out the time life good cook series, how ever i feel my husband is going to need to build some more shelves to house my ever growing collection!

I am new to this so hope I don't do anything wrong! A book I practically pack when I go anywhere for more than a month is Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and other Stories (the first one) and for retro stuff his 'Prawn Cocktail Years' or 'Gammon and Spinach' both written with Lindsey Bareham, both fit the bill. I thought my macaroni cheese was the best in the world till I followed his recipe. Another favourite is Rick Stein's first ever cook book, English Seafood Cookery, gave me complete confidence with all sorts of fish I had never cooked before and I am at the moment awash with wonder over Atul Kochhar's wonderful 'Simple Indian'. I also love the recipes (and the look of it, talking of retro) my very ancient (1960) edition of 'Great italian Cooking' by Luigi Carnacina. That great Italian cooking has changed very little, as it always relied on really fresh, locally produced ingredients, even in the 60's, and some of these earlier recipes are just less tinkered about with than recent versions. Oh - I could go on, and on, and on.......
Definitely time to stop.

I often get the odd book on e bay one of which is Sonia Stevenson'a The Magic of Saucery and its brilliant. Firstly I research Amazon for customer reviews and here someone put it is the best cookbook I have ever had. Wouldn't say that but its pretty high up.

Have you seen 'The Good Granny Cookbook' by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hugh's Mum!) ? The recipes are her mother's and grandmother's.

my favourite book is Delia's Complete Cookery Course from the 1970's its easy to follow and reliable for successful result.

I havent one favourite book, seem to have all Nigellas, Jamie Olivers, Deliahs, started a collection recently Barefoot Contessa (Ina Garten) , Gennaro Contaldo. I like to look in my local Oxfam book shop, pick up some nice old books at very low cost. Like Grisini I have my own scrapbook of receipes which I would be lost without if lost.

UKTV food is one of my favourites, I have various cookbooks, one I use a lot is Delia Smiths Food for One.(AsI cook just for myself now all my family are married. Very useful book and down to earth,items not too dear.!!!
Yours sincerely, R. Fraser. (Mrs)

The thing I love about these forums is that I don't have to justify my bookcase full of cookbooks. My flatmate maintains that you only really use five cookbooks. I admit that there are some cookbooks I haven't actually cooked out of, but I still love them. I do own quite a few Jamie and Nigella and Gordon books. I have quite a few fabulous cookbooks by Alison Holst - a kiwi institution along with the Edmonds book. I also have to admit to loving an Australian Women's Weekly book called "COOK:How to cook absolutely everything".

Hi Alc28...

Just a thought on retro cookbooks, I dont think you can get more retro than Fanny Craddock cookbooks from the 70s.....

Like many of you, I have a selection of favourite cookery books that I have bought over many years but the one's I return to time and time again for basic recipes are The New Art of Cooking from the Stork Cookery Service which was published in the 1970's and came to me courtesy of my Mum and Marguerite Patten's Everyday Cookbook. They both have basic recipes, some of which I update in my own way, but they have been fundamental to my love of cooking. They are both looking very battered now, in fact I've lost the front cover off the Stork cook book, but they are like old friends.

Another example of favourite recipie books - not mine this time but my mums. She got given the Good Housekeeping recipie book 1977 edition (the year she got married) as a weddiing present. Many of the lovely recipies did we eat over the years! Then when I was 12 we got a (now sadlt departed and much missed) puppy who objected to being left on his own and got his revenge by mauling her poor recipie books including (obviously) her much loved Good Housekeeping! Many other copies were bought in the serch to replace it but favourite recipies were always missing and the book was out of print. Fast forward 15 years and I was on e-bay for something else and thought I would try my luck on that particular book. I missed out a couple of times but was rewarded by out bidding everyone (and spending a FORTUNE into the bargin!) to get my hands on the correct copy which, thanks to a plaintive email to the seller, arrived December 23rd!! Result? One amazingly happy mum who had her wedding present back and enough brownie points for baby sitting offers all year! And the look on her face on Christmas day was certainly worth every second I'd spent trying to get hold of it Sorry for the essay but it really made my mums (and my) day!