Jason Goodwin

Author and historian

Biography

After writing five award-winning thrillers set in 19th century Istanbul, and translated into forty languages, historian and traveller Jason Goodwin collected his sleuth’s favourite Ottoman recipes. The result is Yashim Cooks Istanbul, chosen as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2016. These are his desert island books, the ten he’d save from a burning kitchen or pack for the Mars shot. With them, you could rebuild civilisation. He blogs at www.jasongoodwin.info

The Country Kitchen

Jocasta Innes

My mum always felt this was the best cookbook she wrote, the product of years in deepest Dorset baking, bottling, pickling and preserving food.

Honey from a Weed

Patience Gray

Perhaps my favourite cookery book ever: discursive, erudite, amusing, delicious - it's a reflection on a near-vanished Mediterranean culture of poverty and community, fast and feast, without once becoming cloying or sentimental. As she follows her stonemason around quarries from Carrara to Naxos, she teaches you more about cuisine than fifty plump illustrated cookbooks together, and connects food to place, perfectly.

The Book of Jewish Food

Claudia Roden

As much a culinary history of the Jews as a cookbook, this adds up gradually to a journey through vanished times and the places you dream about. It is thorough and fascinating, like all Roden’s books.

Veggiestan

Sally Butcher

With a slightly furry cover and breezy, ballsy intros, this is a recipe book that will make you smile, crammed with amazing ideas picked up by Sally Butcher across the counter of her south London deli.

In the Kitchen with Love

Sophia Loren

No subtitle: who needs a subtitle when Sophia Loren, the Neapolitan film star, offers to take you through her favourite recipes from Italy, and throws in her kitchen snaps to go with them?

Food in England

Dorothy Hartley

On the title page, this quote: ‘Your English housewife must be of chaste thought, stout courage, patient, untyred, watchful, diligent, witty and pleasant...’ It is the Bible of English cookery, regional and historical.

Classic Turkish Cooking

Ghillie Basan

The go-to book for clear and comprehensive Turkish recipes.

The Saffron Tales

Yasmin Khan

An adventure as much as a cookbook, this details Yasmin’s exploratory trips through Iran and the harvest of recipes she brings home. Persian love cake, anyone?

French Provincial Cooking

Elizabeth David

Nobody needs reminding that this book is a classic – they just need reminding to read it, again, now, for the economy of David’s prose and the crispness of her judgements.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Marcella Hazan

The title says it all: the world’s favourite food, logically and even lyrically explained.