My most loved food books sit close to the stove, warped by steam from the kettle, sauce spattered, spines cracked and sticky taped, spilling pages torn from magazines.This hard-working reference library of about 40 books provides both instruction and inspiration and it just about squeezes into a small double bookshelf. Most committed cooks have something similar and when I’m in an unfamiliar kitchen I find myself drawn magnetically to these collections, propelled by a combination of professional curiosity and sheer nosiness. The selections are often more revealing of culinary personality than their owner cooks might like. This list of the really great books of the last 17 years may help fill some of the gaps on your shelves. They’re a mix of essays, recipes, reference and memoir, and they show just how much things have changed in the food-writing world. The mostly female scholar-cooks of the past have been supplemented by globe-trotting chefs and bakers, food scientists, polemicists, offal-eating restaurateurs and moonlighting novelists. Some of the more familiar names speak to us as friends, the kind who encourage rather than admonish.

These books have strong individual voices with something useful to say. Many breathe life into culinary tradition, rephrasing it and making it fresh and achievable. In the past few years, we have become more knowledgeable and discerning: we can now see past the latest TV tie-in or the posturing Michelin-starred chef blinded by his own fame. We crave new tastes alongside the familiar. We may not have the energy to honeymoon in a camper van and seek out unknown flavours in the eastern Mediterranean, but we love Sam and Sam Clark for doing it for us. In David Thompson’s Thai Food and Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery we live vicariously through the long years of research these dedicated teacher cooks have undertaken. While Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden go beyond the method to give you the anthropology, the history and geography of a country’s cuisine. Yet as much as we want to get closer to our idols and draw back the curtain, there is an extremity to some of these voices that’s good to experience at one remove, such as hard-living culinary star Gabrielle Hamilton.

Helped by books like Harold McGee’s or Samin Nosrat’s, we no longer dumbly follow instructions but instead seek to unlock the secrets of the craft of cooking for ourselves. The newest author on this list, Nosrat is amiable, self-deprecating and really smart. She seeks to empower us all to become instinctive cooks and leavens abstract knowledge with the story of her own journey through some very influential kitchens. The path we take from appetite to an appreciation of flavour to autonomy in the kitchen is often fraught and filled with disastrous meals. They may be a staple of the culinary memoir but not many of us have an Italian nonna stashed in the kitchen patiently showing our stumbling childish fingers how to roll gnocchi against a fork. Instead, we have food writers, who speak to us directly and compensate for the break in the matrilineal transference of skills. We can always open a book and let a more knowledgeable stranger into our kitchen. Cooking is creative and meditative, it stirs deep emotions so it’s no surprise that we get upset when it goes wrong. It’s what makes us feel so strongly about the writers whose recipes we have bolted on to our erratic lives and it is why you never get the same feeling of reassurance from a recipe app, however convenient and functional, as you do when turning to a familiar sauce-stained page. JT

JoJo Tulloh is the author of The Modern Peasant (Chatto, £14.99)

(2001, Ebury, £20)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Moro by Sam & Sam Clark.

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for,” Nigella Lawson told Vogue, when the Moro cookbook came out in 2001. She wasn’t the only one. By then, Sam and Sam Clark’s Clerkenwell restaurant, with its menu inspired by some of the less familiar corners of the Mediterranean, had been open for four years; many of us longed to know how to make its famous crab brik, its extraordinary quail baked in flatbread with pistachio sauce, its utterly delicious Malaga raisin ice cream. The two Sams claimed in their introduction that they hoped their recipes would conjure “hairy-chested matadors and hedonistic sultans”. But even if this wasn’t quite the case – opening it, I always tended to picture glasses of cold sherry and mile upon mile of orange groves – their ways with yogurt, saffron and sourdough were enough to ensure that their book is now widely considered a classic. RC

Sichuan Cookery by Fuchsia Dunlop

(2001, Michael Joseph, £20)

An immediate success, not only for its coverage of a region that until then had been a mystery to many non-Chinese food lovers, but also for its combination of solid, scholarly research and enticing recipes. Chinese cuisine was not as well known in the west as it is today, nor was it as well represented. Yan-kit So had produced masterly volumes before Dunlop’s, but Yan-kit’s recipes seemed daunting to those unfamiliar with Chinese cooking, possibly due to the fact that she wrote them from a perspective of a lifetime’s knowledge. Dunlop’s on the other hand were irresistible, probably because she had adopted the cuisine studying in Chengdu; and her approach was to make them as accessible as possible. AH

(2002, Pavilion Books, £30)

I bought this book the year it came out: Thai food was already quite popular in Australia, where I grew up, but this called for ingredients I’d never heard of before – such as salak, or snake-apple fruit. It’s not a beginner’s guide: it’s really complicated and well thought out, using techniques that are hard to find even in Thailand. The first thing that blew me away was coconut ash puddingcorrect, made by grounding the burnt husks into a powder and using it as a colouring agent for a dessert. Then there was hung lae, a curry from the north which is not coconut cream-based, is quite oily and has lots of pickled garlic – so far removed from the Thai curries I knew. Thai Food sent me on a trajectory to where I am now: moving to London, working with David at Nahm in Bangkok for five years, and setting up Som Saa. I’ve gone through seven or eight copies of the book, exhausting them in various ways. So yeah, it’s important. MD

(2003, Atlantic Books, £7.99)

Sometimes it takes an outsider to put things in perspective. Julian Barnes’s elegant, exasperated and extremely funny essays take a long, hard and very timely look at the art of food writing. Barnes weaves together his own coming of age in the kitchen alongside his dyspeptic attempts to wrestle clarity from recipes, neatly skewering middle-class pretensions along the way. He seethes and splutters over the impossibility of knowing how big a medium onion is and rages at being asked to guess how big Richard Olney’s hands are. Hidden beneath the humour is a serious idea, for above all Barnes reminds us that the right word matters, that food writing is writing. It is he says, “based – like novel writing – on imaginative sympathy and precise descriptive powers. Contrary to sentimental belief, most people don’t have a novel in them; nor do most chefs have a cookbook.” JT

(2004, Mitchell Beazley, £14.99)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard.

I had the luxury of being the food stylist for Dan Lepard’s How to Bake column in the Guardian for several years. I baked my way through his blueberry muffins, marmalade macaroons, lamingtons and, best of all, his many breads. It not only improved my baking but it gave me insight into great, consistent recipe writing. In The Handmade Loaf, Dan gathers together the knowledge he acquired travelling, tasting and photographing his way through northern Europe. He takes the handfuls and pinches and turns them into weights and measures to create recipes that are easy to follow. His descriptions of the countries and their bread offerings are warm, personal and inviting. You really get the sense you’re making a loaf passed down from generations which, in essence, is what baking is all about. CP

(2nd edition, 2004, Hodder & Stoughton £39.99)

First published in 1984 and revised and substantially expanded in 2004, On Food & Cooking is often referred to simply by the author’s name. Hardly a week goes by in some chef or food writer’s life when they don’t find themselves fact-checking in McGee. This was the first comprehensive and accessible work on the science of food – McGee had studied astronomy at CalTech but later did his PhD on Keats’s poetry – and it had far-reaching importance in empowering the “modernist” movement in cooking. Adrià, Achatz, Blumenthal and countless others were able to turn from the essentially romantic, almost superstitious adherence toclassic French canon and begin to cook from “first principles”. While many of its proponents have now backed away from “molecular gastronomy”, McGee equipped chefs to question tradition and in doing so paved the way for an almost febrile period of innovation. TH

(2005, 4th Estate, £30)

The three volumes of The Kitchen Diaries are my favourite cookbooks; I’ve pored over the pages and drunk in the rich descriptions of homely comfort, and haven’t cooked a single recipe. I’m not embarrassed to admit this – Slater himself is a tangle of contradictions. He’s a master of lo-fi hygge who’s made it big on Instagram. In the Diaries trilogy, he managed to craft just short of 1,500 pages of autobiographical food writing without revealing any juicy detail about his actual life. He writes cookbooks that are as good to read in the bed or the bathtub as they are to cook from. In a time of bouncy TV chefs and slick styling, these eccentricities have stood him apart from the crowd. The Kitchen Diaries is the distillation of Slater’s essence: our beloved uncle, a normal guy, basking in the glory of a good sandwich. RT

(2006, Bloomsbury, £10.99)

Any time you hear someone expounding on the evils of high-fructose corn syrup, the odds are they’ve been reading Michael Pollan. This book memorably showed that the US food system is “an immense pyramid of corn”. Cheap subsidised corn becomes the feed for pigs and chickens and the syrup in sugary sodas, as well as the corn in corn flakes. “So that’s us,” writes Pollan. “Processed corn, walking.”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma laid bare the landscape of the supermarket, and the crazy and unhealthy food chains it entails. Pollan was a naturalist before he was a food writer, and he shows there is an ecology behind everything we eat, even when it’s a McDonald’s cheeseburger. This book changed the way many people navigate a food shop.

Some food writers do polemic, exposing the horrors of the industrial food supply. Others can write food as poetry, bringing alive the beauty in a chanterelle mushroom or the pleasure of chopping an onion. Michael Pollan is that rare writer who can do both. BW

(2006, 4th Estate, £26)

Three of my favourite things to do: ride pillion on a scooter behind Giorgio as he weaves through the Roman traffic swearing at the other drivers and shouting out his love of the city (“Look Andrew, look at the BEAUTY!!!”); shop with Giorgio in Italian fish markets (“Look how fresh is that fish, it still has rigor mortis!”); cook with Giorgio (“Pay attention Andrew, what the hell are you doing with that carrot?”).

I knew Giorgio’s wonderful book Made in Italy before we became friends and started working together. With respect to Marcella Hazan and Elizabeth David, I think it’s the best Italian cookbook ever published in the English language. True to the patchwork nature of Italy, which is really many countries in one, it covers all the regions and includes just about all the classics, from Milanese risotto with saffron to Sicilian sweet and sour pasta with sardines. It’s a winning blend of love, deep knowledge and practicality: the recipes are perfectly explained and can be cooked by anyone from age 12 to 112. The bible of Italian food, as far as I’m concerned. AG-D

(2006, Phaidon, £19.95)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Breakfast Lunch Tea by Rose Carrarini.

Nowadays, with artisan bakeries and posh cake shops opening up and down the country, it’s easy to take salted caramel doughnuts and passion fruit macarons somewhat for granted. But even as recently as 2006, Rose Carrarini’s simple but inventive recipes for ricotta cheesecake, pistachio cake, caramel tarts and hot gingernut biscuits – miles away from both formal French patisserie and the home baking of the local village fete – were a rarity.

It’s not just cakes and bakes that make this book so special. Breakfast Lunch Tea’s recipes for homemade granola, buckwheat pancakes and quinoa salad predated the craze for avocado toast and its ilk by several years, quietly bringing imaginative brunch recipes into the home.

If Breakfast Lunch Tea didn’t exactly create the current enthusiasm for baking, it was certainly one of its leading lights, paving the way for a modern, unfussy aesthetic that’s now almost standard in both cafes and homes across the UK, and the world. LM

(2007, Bloomsbury, £18.99)

It’s usually assumed that St John restaurant is about Englishness, Excess and Offal but Beyond Nose to Tail drew a much more nuanced picture. Fergus Henderson writes with a near indecent enthusiasm, easy erudition and the voice of a Regency wit. The gentle, reasoned philosophy of honouring any animal you kill by consuming it all became one of the tenets of modern cooking. Similarly, though he’s often characterised as a champion of very British food, his recipes are proudly influenced by European peasant cooking. Where one might have imagined him espousing sybaritic excess he actually wrote of intimate and warm conviviality. Henderson’s writing alone would put this at the top of any list, but the depth of thought and the emotion behind the words guarantee it a place in culinary history. TH

A Platter of Figs by David Tanis

(2008, Artisan Books, £25)

It’s nearly 10 years since my favourite chef published my favourite cookbook. I know that sounds contrived, but I worked under David Tanis at Chez Panisse for three years and he actually was my chef. Working for him was filled with bewildering instructions like, to paraphrase, “It should be more like a meringue cloud floating in a vanilla custard sky.” Amusing and exacting, David encouraged us to be thinking cooks and to make flavour and texture decisions that would enhance our dishes. This book helps the home cook compose a meal from start to finish, but without having to hire a kitchen porter or run out of time to take a shower before your guests arrive. The recipes are straightforward, and yes, sometimes about the simple transformation of a fig that comes first from the tree, then to the market, is then perhaps warmed to bring out its essence and is finally placed on your specially chosen vessel. CP

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration: Bryan Mayes/The Observer

(2010, Ebury, £27)

My wife avoids really hot food – whenever she’s away I console myself by cranking up the heat in the kitchen and cook all the spicy dishes I can’t make when I cook for both of us. The first one I make is not a spicy curry or greasy burger – my dude dinner is always Yotam’s black pepper tofu from Plenty, a dish so flavourful and delicious, so meticulously balanced; the sauce is dark, deep, sweetish and hot, the cubes of tofu provide a cooling blandness in all this storm of flavours. I follow the recipe to the letter; perfect every time, and even though the recipe is stated to feed four I could easily demolish the whole amount myself. This dish epitomises Yotam’s cooking for me – achingly delicious, unexpected, perfectly judged and wholly satisfying. Plenty is not about vegetarian food, its about excellent food, and although there have been many “by the way, it’s vegetarian” cookbooks since, the original is still the best, in my eyes. IS

(2011, Bloomsbury, £35)

Paula Wolfert first went to Morocco in 1959, as a young American traveller. She fell in love with both the country and its cuisine, which she considered to be one of the world’s greatest. When she returned home, she decided to share her love in the form of a cookbook: Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco was published to great acclaim in 1973. Then, in 2011, Wolfert published a new, expanded edition, The Food of Morocco, with many new recipes and photographs. In between the two, the culinary scene had changed and once hard-to-come-by ingredients had become easily available; and where once she had to adapt her detailed yet accessible recipes, there was no need for her to worry this time, making the book even more of a bible for food lovers wishing to expand their repertoire into Moroccan cooking. AH

(2011, Vintage, £10.99)

For food-obsessed visitors to New York, Prune in the East Village has long been on The List, most likely for brunch. Chef Gabrielle Hamilton built a menu based on no particular cuisine, although influenced by stints working in Brittany and Turkey, of things that were a joy to eat. Despite Prune’s success, she has never expanded, and still works in the kitchen. Her memoir reveals her to be similarly uncompromising, driven by desire and appetite. An early high-school graduate and juvenile delinquent from a chaotic family, Hamilton dreams of being a writer, but finds herself in restaurants, drawn first by the convenient money – she learns early that if she pays her own way, she gets to go her own way. She puts no glossy spin on working in a kitchen: high-class catering is grim, being the boss is a drudge and being a celeb chef is weird. Yet through all this, and a loveless marriage, there is always food, and Hamilton writes in a way few other chefs can about the emotions it can evoke. HO

(2012, Mitchell Beazley, £25)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Salt Sugar Smoke by Diana Henry.

For something that’s been done by humans for millennia, preserving food can be surprisingly daunting. While our ancestors had no choice but to try and keep food in some kind of edible form during periods of scarcity, salting, pickling and smoking are rarely done in the home kitchen these days (despite the ubiquity of kimchi in a certain type of restaurant). So if you ever thought making your own damson gin, harissa paste or pickled onions was too complicated, time-consuming and, well, unnecessary in the age of the farmers’ market, Salt Sugar Smoke will make you think again. As Henry herself admits, she is a “home cook. I don’t have masses of special equipment and I don’t do things on a grand scale.” And that is the essence of what makes Salt Sugar Smoke so valuable, with Henry bringing the subject to life with accessible, always delicious recipes, from Middle Eastern pickled turnips to duck confit. LM

(2012, Michael Joseph, £30)

It took Claudia Roden a long time to fall for Spain; thanks both to Franco and mass tourism she had, she once told me, spent her life heartily resisting it. Finally, though, she gave in – this was at the urging of her editor – and in 2012, the result of several years’ research appeared in the form of The Food of Spain. What Roden loved most as she travelled the country gathering recipes was the fact that Spain still has its regional dishes, which explains why her book runs to more than 500 pages. Among the recipes you will surely want to cook – all of these have since passed into her own repertoire – are pollo con manzanas y uvas (a chicken dish with grapes and apples from Asturias), arroz con setas (a rice and mushroom combination from Catalonia) and tarta de Santiago (the almond cake named for St James, whose relics are believed to be buried in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia). RC

(2014, 4th Estate, £25)

Anna Jones wrote her debut cookbook with perfect timing: in 2014, interest in vegetarian food was increasing, and there was a gap on bookshop shelves to be filled. A Modern Way to Eat slotted right in. It encourages readers to think about vegetables in creative and varied ways. Sections of the book abandon traditional recipes to demonstrate how to build dishes using different elements and ingredients that might be on hand. Wisely, Jones never tries to replace meat, so her food never feels like it’s missing it; her style is recognisable by balanced and layered flavours, and interesting textures. A vegetarian herself, she writes without judgment for those who aren’t. Likewise, although she eats dairy and eggs, she makes sure her recipes are adaptable for vegans and those with common food intolerances. Never holier-than-thou, her writing is full of warmth, encouragement and enthusiasm that every day can be easily filled with good things to eat – whatever the mood, appetite or season. A Modern Way to Eat isn’t a vegetarian classic, it’s a contemporary classic. HO

(2016, Fig Tree, £20)

Cookbooks have a short life in my house. They usually sit pretty on the shelf for a few months, untouched, before being carted to the charity shop. If Fresh India doesn’t last long, though, it won’t be because it wasn’t loved enough. My copy is yellowed at the corners by turmeric fingers. The page for hill station salad – scattered with nigella seeds and spiked with fresh green chilli – is hanging on for dear life. Where so many vegetarian and vegan recipes fall headlong into a health spiral, Sodha’s paean to meat-free cooking is joyous, carefree and rich. (My copy is so well-seasoned that it creaks open to creamy paneer butter masala of its own accord.) These recipes, woven through with storytelling, make me want to fill every day with good food. As Sodha’s grandmother says, “If you’re eating properly, you must be happy.” RT

(2017, Canongate, £30)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat.

“Duh. Everyone knows that.” This was pretty much the reaction to Nosrat’s theory when she first aired it to the chefs she worked under. The idea was simple: that salt, fat, acid and heat are the four elements of good cooking, and every great meal, from mac and cheese to sole meunière, will stand or fall on the mastery of these things. Well, I didn’t know that. And judging by the way Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat elbowed its way into the bestseller lists, neither did you. This is a hefty tome – some 470 pages of prose, science and recipes, picking apart everything from osmosis to emulsions – but thanks to Nosrat’s amiable voice, it becomes featherlight. For all the beauty of her theory, the specialness of this book comes from something far less methodical. Good food has heart, and Samin has that in spades. RT