It was the early Naked Chef books that really got me going about 10? years ago, they were so easy to follow and seemed to get such good results.

Can’t go past The River Cottage Meat Book, as a carnivore and one looking to raise and kill my own pig, beef and lamb, its a must.

I also would buy any book that has Maggie Beers sour cream pastry recipe in it. As someone who is always making tarts and quiche to use up my large supply of duck eggs, its an absolute rolled gold winner.

Doesn’t it make contemporary celebrity chefs sound sooo dull by comparison? “For me, fresh produce is important and there’s nothing I like more than sharing a table with family and friends,” blah boring blah. Interesting how it seems contemporary chefs must be LIKED as well as admired/respected … can’t really see Bill Granger or Karen Martini giving a reader a boot up the arse for getting something wrong or being lazy, can you?

And Ali your mezze motherlode, no matter how daggy, also sounds deeply appealing, especially right about now, just before lunch.

I really must now get my hands on the Jane Grigson veg book, and also the Welsh lamb book (or just the recipe, Empress?). I am a Madhur Jaffrey fan too, Fiona. And I have Claudia Roden’s Arabesque which is fab, but I’m sure not as comprehensive as TBoMEF.

And yes I know I’m harsh on ol’ Boobiana Lawson; perhaps a secondhand book is the way to learn to love her.

The magazine disposal question is eternal and the reason I pretty much stopped buying them. Have enough trouble with piles of New Yorkers I can’t let go, and therefore count myself lucky never to have bought a Cuisine because that sounds as if it would only add to the tower.

Husband’s birthday yesterday yielded yet more cookbooks! A slow cooking one and a Vietnamese, which both look great. And herb/veg gardening book! So my book space is happily shrinking, if not my personal lard supply…

Stephanie- lovely to find a fellow Pomiane fancier:
No limit to the quotes but how about this reassuring comment about mussels:”… mussel poisoning is rare and never very serious….. If the stomach of a sufferer from mussel poisoning is artificially emptied,the symptoms disappear rapidly.”

I return over and over to favourite recipes – in the orange bible the Sticky Toffee Pudding gives such a brilliant result (after what intially looks like a worryingly watery batter) that everyone I cook for has been served it many times. I once took it away for a weekend, at which I was the dessert cook, AS BATTER, and it cooked perfectly the following night.

My big library gap is Claudia Roden’s ‘Middle Eastern Food’, although from other sources I do cook her recipes – incl the old standby whole orange and almond cake – which I’ve also cooked w lemons, limes and tangellos.

But my favourite food writer is Jane Grigson. I have the vegetable book and the fruit book. They are sensational. Full of history, ideas, chat – truly satisfying reads. Beautifully indexed too. Despite some, to us, oddly long cooking times for eg asparagus – they suit the way I cook now, which is more produce based, I suppose: I’ve bought eggplant, what will I do with it – so to flip through a couple of books that segment recipes according to produce is handy.

Charlotte you are hard on old Nigella! Yes, it’s all a bit twee, but I have to say I like the way she so obviously loves eating and cooking, but I didn’t have any of her books until a couple of weeks ago when I was in a second hand bookshop in Queenscliff flipping through ‘How to Eat’ which I dropped, bent, then felt I had to buy. It’s really good. A great first cookery book with lots of technique very clearly explained, and a nice sense of humour.

I also have a shamefully messy drawer in the kitchen full of the recipes I tear out of newspapers or ask people for. But my burning question is: what does everyone do with their food magazines? It’s hard enough to chuck out a Gourmet Traveller, but I cannot part with a Cuisine, even if there’s nothing in it I’ve actually cooked.