Dough by Richard Bertinet – one of my favourites, though never watched the DVD. Great recipes, great technique, my copy is quite floury now.

The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard – I really like Dan’s newspaper column, loved the recipes I’ve tried from Short and Sweet, so have no doubt that I would really enjoy a book by him about the joys of bread making. What’s not to love?

English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David – a bit more old school, as the original was written in 1977, but a revelation of the history of this most basic of foodstuffs, showing how it gets elevated from just four simple ingredients to something amazing.

Bread Revolution – bang up to date with this book from Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan, who have been busy forging the way with The Thoughtful Bread Company, bringing great bread to a wide audience. Great recipes in this one, like the writing style too.

Wild Sourdough: the Natural Way to Bake – this starts out as a kind of back to basics approach to bread, but when you get into flavours like Halloumi and Mint or Chilli and Feta, then you’re far from basic territory.

Bread is such a fantastic thing to make, particularly with kids, and think of the reward as the house fills with the smell of baking bread. Is there anything better?

Canteen: Great British Food – breakfast, lunch or dinner, Canteen is one of my favourite places.  Great contemporary takes on traditional recipes, like Welsh Rarebit or Coronation Chicken, but in ways that make it seem fresh. I don’t know why I don’t own this book, as it’s very much the sort of stuff I like to cook.

British Baking from Peyton & Byrne – again, a favourite place, and I do own this book. Whilst focused on baking, it covers sweet and savoury, and again represents reinventing great British favourites for today. If I stop by the bakery then there is the huge temptation of a fig roll or a Scotch egg.

British Seasonal Food by Mark Hix – British food in season can’t be beat, just think about how amazing the aparagus is at the moment. And Mark Hix has been a great exponent of British and seasonal. This is good gutsy food, organised by month, so you really know that you’re making the most of everything around us.

Bocca Cookbook – one of the things I pointed out to the Frenchman in the group was the within a half mile radius I could eat from a huge variety of cuisines, and that that diversity is part of what I love about the British food landscape today.  Bocca di Lupo is often cited as one of the UKs best Italian restaurants, and shows that as a nation we love all kinds of food influences, that there is no food snobbery here.

Supper Club: recipes and notes from the underground restaurant by Kerstin Rodgers – supper clubs and underground restaurants have been an important development in the UK over the last couple of years, and Kerstin Rodgers aka Ms Marmite Lover has been one of the leaders of the pack. This is a beautiful book, regardless of whether you want to run a supper club or not. Beautiful photography and great recips that you could use any time you had friends coming round, for any occasion.

Whilst I may not have convinced the Frenchman, I think there is so much great stuff to celebrate in the UK and we should be really celebrating that, every single day.

Maggie’s Harvest by Maggie Beer – this is the one that set me off, with its incredibly beautiful embroidered cover. I mean, fabric and embroidery, in the kitchen? Still, lovely book to look at, and seasonal recipes from the Barossa is surely an appealing concept. Just would have to cling film wrap the book!

Black Pudding & Foie Gras by Andrew Pern – probably Britain’s answer to the embroidered cover, this one is milk chocolate velvet. Equally impractical in the kitchen, but equally beautiful to look at. This is cooking at an incredibly high level, so may be okay for most of us just to leave this one on the coffee table. Somewhere where you can reach out and touch it though.

Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Companion – a slightly more practical one as this has a more hessian feel to it. But as the whole idea is veg plot to plate, then surely still impractical as could end up anywhere from the allotment to the kitchen. That said, it’s a really appealing book for those of us who have some growing space and enjoy really fresh produce.

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine – like Andrew Pern’s book, I doubt many of us are going to actually cook from this. Just as well, as dove grey linen really won’t be very forgiving of very many foodstuffs at all. Not even water.

Tasting India by Christine Mansfield – I suppose this one is almost practical, in that there’s no fabric involved, but it’s got the serious bling factor with a whole load of shiny foil going on. And it has an embossed design, so food likely to get into all the crevices. Still, some great Indian recipes hidden inside, so I’d be tempted by this one.

I’ve always said never trust anyone with clean cookbooks, but I’m not sure that these are really books designed for cooking. What do you think? Do you have any cookbooks just for looking?

These then are a mix of cookbooks that I’m heavily drawing on, or seriously considering adding to the bookshelves:

Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals – this is one of the few cookbooks that I’ve ever known Dr T use, and use quite a lot. All right, it takes a bit of deciphering if you don’t want to cook all of each menu, but each dish we’ve done has always been tasty and quick. I also highly recommend the 20 minute app as a good add on, we’ve done a few dishes from that too, which are different to what’s in the book.

The Gastrokid Cookbook: Feeding a Foodie Family in a Fast Food World – this is one of my fave books, and I’ve cooked a wide variety of dishes from it. Faux Pastor is a great standby dish for using up left over Sunday roast, and the courgette hummus great for using up the glut at the end of the summer. Love this one.

Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home – I don’t own Nigella Express, but this one has a good selection of dishes to be done in under 30 minutes. It’s about robust comfort food to me, which is just what we all need when we get home, particularly at this time of year.

Real Fast Food – this is one of the very first cookbooks I ever bought myself, and so not this edition, but still great recipes produced in a flash. To me, this is the original 30 minute meals. Which makes me wonder why I haven’t got this one back down from the bookshelf yet! Although the recipe I always loved most in here was the inclusion of a recipe for a Smartie sandwich!

Flash Cooking: Fit Fast Flavours for Busy People – title sums up what we need and who we are, and is one that I am seriously considering adding to my collection. It’s also lighter cooking, in that it happens to be low carb, so maybe one for the lighter evenings ahead. It’s all about the flavour, which is as it should be.

Shortness of time doesn’t mean shortness of flavour, and these are helping to keep inspiring us to do new stuff, not just live on 3 variations of spag bol! If anyone has any tried and tested after work recipes, would love to hear them!

* Cooking with My Indian Mother in Law – lets not leave out the mother in laws, particularly when they can share cooking secrets from an upbringing very different to your own. Here is the story of learning to cook, and also a valuable bonding expereince, which is surely what great cooking and eating together is all about.

* Mum’s Favourite Recipes – this is a collection of cooking from the homes of celebrated chefs, from the women who probably introduced them to food in the first place. Not sure if it still counts, but when the book was first published, profts went to Breast Cancer Research.

* Recipes My Mother Cooked – according to the subtitle this is 100 home cooked recipes from the nation’s favourite foodies. I was feeling like a bad foodie, as I’d not really heard of the people involved so slightly relieved to find out that these are not the UK’s favourite foodies, but Australia’s. Which would give you a different angle, and some interesting recipes as well, like avocado fool or Mrs Heath’s jam biscuits.

* Mums Still Know Best: The Hairy Bikers’ Best Loved Recipes – I have both this and the original, and have really enjoyed cooking from them. They are perfect for everyday, family cooking, perfect comfort food with a hint of nostalgia. Corned beef pie anyone?

* Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter – lovely sentiment, this is a new book out shortly from Lisa Faulkner. Sharing recipes across the generations is a great thing to do, keeping family stories, and tastes, alive. Every generation will have its own spin, but good to know where your recipes have come from.

Of course, the best thing to do for Mum this Mother’s Day might be to ensure she can stay out of the kitchen! That said, I love time in the kitchen baking and cooking in a more relaxed weekend way, so I guess you need to make the best choice for the mum in question!

* The Bordello Cookbook – So much to love about this! I’d love to know if anyone owns it already, and I’d love to know some of the reactions as visitors casually glance along your bookshelf. Would be worth buying purely for those moments!

* Consuming Passions: History of English Food and Appetite – bawdy and vulgar, like a scene from Hogarth. History and food collide, and show that there were definitely times before when the British loved their food.

* Fruity Passions – An Introduction to Country Wine-Making – honestly, I’d buy this just for the title, but maybe there could be some fun and games when trying out some of the recipes. Foraging together has to be a very romantic thing to do!

* In the Devil’s Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden History – food history from a slightly naughty perspective, from the moment Eve bit into the apple onwards. Is there any wonder we end up with food issues?

* The Gastronomy of Marriage: A Memoir of Food and Love – after all that lust and passion comes marriage. This is a great tale of how a couple come together and  learn to cook and eat together, without too many compromises.

Great books then to celebrate food in all its shades of passion from like to lust, through to marriage and even detours to the bordello. Something for everyone!

* John Torode’s Beef – hard to avoid John at the moment, thanks to the return of Masterchef. And it’s been great to see him running the kitchen, to remind us that he’s not just that bloke on the telly, but a bloke that can cook. I associate him most with beef, and bet this is a bloke’s kind of cookbook, but as I love my beef, I think I’d cook lots from this too.

* Every Day by Bill Granger – I might well have put this one in before, as it is my fave of the several Bill Granger books I have, and love. I am really thrilled to learn he has opened a restaurant in London, as a lot more chance of me eating there than one of his Australian ones. I’ve also written before about how I love breakfast, and this one has great breakfast and brunch recipes in, which are well thumber in my copy!

* Charmaine Solomon’s Complete Vegetarian Cookbook – not the most up to date choice, but when I went through a veggie phase in my 20s, this was my cookbook bible, along with the Moosewood cookbook. I still remember the cheese souffle stuffed red pepper that was a real fave. The fact that I was cooking it in a bedsit with only a handwhisk to hand is not a part I wish to repeat, but the dishes in the book were definitely worth revisiting.

* Kids’ Birthday Cakes from Australian Women’s Weekly – I wasn’t sure which one to pick from AWW, but this is the first one I ever bought. If you ever want simple cakes that will send kids high as kites with sugar and colourings, this is the one for you. That said, kids love the cakes!

*  Quay by Peter Gilmore – I know very little about Peter Gilmore, I only know from looking at this book that the food and the restaurant looks like what I perceive to be quintessentially Australian. I know we don’t always have the weather for these dishes, but there is something incredibly appetising about so many of these!

Maybe these are a good way of bringing some of the Aussie sunshine into the kitchen during our cold, grey days of winter, as we start to think again of lighter summer eating.

* Thai Food by David Thompson – very comprehensive, covering the breadth of Thai cooking from north to south of the country. Yes it does the things you might know already like Pad Thai, but also things like crispy fish cakes with pork and salted eggs. I also like that it covers a bit about the culture of each area, and also a bit about ingredients as well.

* Thai Street Food by David Thompson – same writer, different approach to same cuisine. I remember being stuck in a traffic jam and looking longingly at all the food being cooked on the street next to the car. It was torture really, so maybe this book would make up for it.

*Stylish Thai in Minutes by Vatcharin Bhumichitr – a good standby or intro text, given that it’s all about quick dinners, with Thai flavours. The cooking style lends itself to speedy dinners, if you have the right ingredients in the right combination. Good for someone looking to explore but necessarily go completely native or expert.

* The Blue Elephant Cookbook by John Hellon – it’s years since I ate at The Blue Elephant, but it was probably one of the first places I had Thai food. Slightly nostalgic for me, but a great book covering a bit of everything, from starters to desserts. Nice chapter on wine matching too.

* Buddha’s Table: Thai Feasting Vegetarian Style – so not forgetting the non meat-eaters, this book seems to get some good reviews even from those who are not massively experienced or keen cooks. I always think Asian vegetarian food is so good that you hardly miss the meat, so could even give this to a non veggie, just for a bit of healthy variety.

So, bring some sunshine to the kitchen this winter, and enjoy some variety, some heat and some great flavours.

Short & Sweet by Dan Lepard – this got quite a few mentions, and some very positive feedback. I know I’ve been debating this one, and think on the basis of these comments, this should be here. Great for breads, cakes, anything on the baking front, but not overwhelming. One of those that you actually could work through from start to finish, and it not be a year’s project.

Made in Sicily by Giorgio Locatelli – I’m including this because it makes me think of sunshine, and I need that more than anything. I love Giorgio and the way he cooks, and the way he talks about food. I also don’t own any of his cookbooks, so this seems like a good place to start, as it’s a different slant on “Italian” cooking.

Jamie’s Great Britain – this got a few mentions, as I’d probably have expected. But I do think this will be a year of Britishness, in no small part down to the Olympics and Jubilee, and Jamie’s got the flags waving already. Even if he has got a British restaurant to promote, I do think it influences and reflects the zeitgeist. Being Jamie, it has good spins on old classics, and I’m sure would turn out dishes that were real crowd pleasers.

Mexican Food Made Simple by Thomasina Miers – not a new book, and not one that I need as I bought it when it first came out, but it’s one I love. If your view of Mexican food is based on Chiquitos and M&S Tex Mex, then you need this book and to cook from it. Fresh flavours, exciting flavours, something to pep the taste buds up after the excesses of Christmas and in the dark days of January. Would recommend this one.

Eat Me! The Stupendous, Self-Raising World of Cupcakes and Bakes According to Cookie Girl- of course I don’t need another baking book, but when did need come into it? This was recommended, particularly for the cookie recipes. I’m replacing cupcakes with cookies this year, so think this could get plenty of use.

So, five to think of (or at least four for me) and a bit of an update for my wishlist. What did you get and love, and would you add anything new to your wishlist now, based on what others had?

I’ve written a few times this week about nice things arriving through the post, and surely a new book arriving is a lovely thing. But most of us will be putting off purchases until we’ve recovered from purchases. So here are five books to look forward, that are not yet published, that you can enjoy waiting for:

Bread Revolution by Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan – you might have seen these two on the TV recently, helping with the set up of a community bakery, and they are certainly passionate about their bread. You have to wait till March for this one, by which time we’ll be thinking about warmer weather, picnics and sandwiches, so you’ll be needing some great bread.

Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater – April, and things really will be beginning to burst back into life, and we’ll be thinking about the bounty of the garden and hedgerow again. And there will be Nigel Slater, with all sorts of delicious fruit based recipes to help us make the most of whatever you come across.

Too Many Cowboys, Only One Indian by Sat Bains – no picture for this one, and it’s not out till May, but I drive past the entrance to Restaurant Sat Bains everyday and eating there is still one of the most memorable meals of my life. There’s not much detail on this one yet, and it doesn’t look cheap, so you’d have to be a really big fan, or one of Sat’s family to order it unseen.

Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons: Enchanting  Dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa by Diana Henry – this is right up my street, all cuisines and flavours that I really love. Sure, I’ve got Arabesque, but that’s just Middle Eastern surely? Out on 6 February, so time to summon up some flavours of sunshine when we are still in dank, dark days.

Vintage Teatime from the Women’s Institute – If you’ve read much of my blog, you’ll know I’m pretty keen on cake and baking. And you’d have to think the WI know a thing about cake, from across the decades. I’d find a reason to add this to my collection, if only that I still have my eye on the culinary cup at the village show. Out on 2 February, so would give me plenty of practice time ahead of the show in September.

Have you spotted anything interesting that’s made it onto your cookery or food book wishlist? Always good to have something to look forward to!