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NW FINE FOOD LOVERS GUIDE by Sue Nelson with foreword by Simon Rimmer
Well we had to put our own book at the top! This guide is a must for serious food lovers. It contains over 300 producers and outlets, detailing the food they make or sell, and how you can get hold of it. Entries include the best producers of cheese, bread, cakes, confectionery, puddings, meat, fish, chutneys, preserves, liqueurs, beers, pies, sausages and so on. It shows the North West's finest delis, farm shops, restaurants and cafes, and the products that won their categories in the prestigious NW Fine Food Awards 2007. All proceeds from the sale of this book, go towards the producers and outlets mentioned, to help them to get the public to "buy local". Buy it on Amazon.
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FAST FOOD NATION by Eric Schlosser
A disturbing exploration of the fast food industry, which has rightly become a massive bestseller. On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant. This book exposes the dirty tricks, unethical practices, and disregard for human life on a scale that is hard to fathom. Reading this book changed our attitude to cheap food and changed our eating habits. If you read the horrific "Whats in the Meat" chapter, you will know why we work at NW Fine Food and believe passionately in local producers.
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REAL FLAVOURS: THE HANDBOOK OF GOURMET AND DELI INGREDIENTS by Glynn Christian
This handbook was described by Nigel Slater as "one of the only ten books you need", and we agree. It's a handbook of speciality ingredient information, from salt and pepper through olive oil to caviar. The book not only tells you what an ingredient is and what it should look and taste like, it also tells you what it goes with and how to use it. There's lots of humour and stories, and although it's a great reference guide you almost read it like a novel. Fantastic.
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CHOCOLAT by Joanne Harris
A wistful story about Vianne Rocher who opens a luxuriant chocolate shop crammed with the most tempting of confections and offering a mouth-watering variety of hot chocolate drinks in a small French village. Loads of lovely chocolate descriptions which will have you reaching for your nearest box of Cheshire Chocolates. A must for any romantic chocoholic - and the film has Johnny Depp in it. What more could you want.
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BAD FOOD BRITAIN by Joanna Blythman
BBC Good Food Magazine described this book as "thought provoking and engaging", and although we don’t agree with all Blythman’s assertions, it makes you think. The author asks why Britain constantly features recipe books in top 10 bestseller lists, and yet the average meal ‘cooked’ at home takes only eight minutes to prepare. People spend more time watching celebrity chefs cooking on TV than doing any cooking themselves and more and more homes do not have a dining table. She also asks why we rely so much on factory-prepared ready meals and why our children eat food that is more nutritionally impoverished than their counterparts in South African townships. Also, why our hospitals can sell fast-food burgers but not home-baked cakes. Depressing reading, but it keeps us inspired to campaign for regional and seasonal food.
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THE RIVER COTTAGE MEAT BOOK by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
This huge book has so many aspects to it, so it’s difficult to know how to describe it. For us, we use it as a definitive guide to the preparation and cooking of meat, in all its various forms. Hugh deals in absolute detail with such topics as roasting, grilling and preserving everything from best end of lamb to pigs trotters. We’re not so keen on the recipes, but there are brilliant sections on the many different types of meat, what you should look for when you buy them, and clear information on the different cuts and what they should be used for.
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KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Bourdain
We’re not sure how much of this book is unbiased reality, or exaggerated story telling, but it’s very entertaining. Bourdain writes a frank confessional about the lusty and thieving real lives of cooks and restaurateurs. He is unapologetically opinionated, and his opening few pages sum up the book pretty well; "there will be horror stories. Heavy drinking, drugs, screwing in the dry-goods area, unappetizing industry-wide practices. Talking about why you probably shouldn't order fish on a Monday, why those who favour well-done get the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, and why seafood frittata is not a wise brunch selection.... But I'm simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I've seen it."
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LAROUSSE GASTRONOMIQUE by Prosper Montagne
This is probably ‘the’ book on food. Anything you want to know about cooking is covered from, how to serve up 100 year old eggs, to how to butcher that cow in your back garden. There’s advice on using appliances; recipes and developments in nutrition. It’s got charts and graphs and excellent photographs and every ingredient and cooking style in history from the past to the present. There’s even detailed information and maps of the wine producing regions of the world. It simply cannot fail to impress.
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PUBS AND INNS OF ENGLAND AND WALES by Alistair Sawday
We’ve always liked Sawday’s guides to hotels and places to stay in Britain and Europe. If you have a family you can trust his advice, book a holiday and you’re pretty certain not to come unstuck. The latest guide to the Pubs and Inns of Britain is, as usual, spot on. A review from a reader on Amazon just about sums it up: “We became quite excited at the thought of what we'd find at each new spot, tiny smugglers fishing coves with sumptuous beer and crab, stunning cliff-top views with crashing seas, Doom Beer and spinach, rosemary and bacon soup or even peaceful river views with a barbecue. Quite unique- we wouldn't go away without it now. It is so incredibly refreshing to find a guide to not only the great British pub but especially the ones with our wonderful Britsh produce. Do not hesitate to buy this.”
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SOLD OUT!: THE TRUE COST OF SUPERMARKET SHOPPING by William Long
We saw a review in a daily newspaper about this book and went to buy it for research purposes for the office the next day. You should read this if you care where your food comes from, how it is produced and sold. This book presents all the facts consumers should know in order to make a conscious choice when they are buying food. If you liked Naomi Klein’s No Logo you will like this book too. Since we all eat food from supermarkets at some time or other you should know the facts, and this book will help inform your decisions.
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THE RETURN OF THE NAKED CHEF by Jamie Oliver
When we try to think of a decent meal to cook at home, we decided this was the book we turned to most often. It's a brilliant collection of smart-casual food, simple yet sophisticated, sensual and modern. There isn't one duff recipe in the whole book. Informed by professional and commercial skills it truly translates into home cooking, which so few cookery books do. It’s hard to remember, but these recipes have changed the way we cook (we’ve stopped weighing ingredients now), and gave us confidence to experiment around the edges. We still think Jamie Oliver is a bit irritating though!
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TOAST: THE STORY OF A BOY'S HUNGER by Nigel Slater
You’ve probably got to be over 40 to enjoy this book or have any understanding of the memories it brings back. It’s an autobiographical look back at Nigel Slater’s childhood through the food he ate during the 60s and 70s. Each short chapter is named after a particular dish (e.g. Butterscotch Angel Delight) and contains a story about a time when he ate those particular foods. It’s amazing that we all survived to tell the tale, but we can still smell and taste many of the dishes he describes.
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300 BEERS TO TRY BEFORE YOU DIE by Roger Protz
Once you get to try proper beer by local producers, it’s hard to put up with the carbonated water with beer additives that the mass brewers foist on pubs and clubs. 300 Beers to Try Before You Die! is a personal and comprehensive portfolio of international beers compiled by Roger Protz, one of the world’s leading beer writers. This beautifully illustrated collection has distilled decades of beer knowledge into an entertaining and indispensable guide to the ales that no beer lover should miss, from hoppy British real ale to German and Czech Republic lagers, American micro-brewed golden ales to Belgian fruit beers.
