Books about food, cooking and eating

Sometimes reading about cooking and eating is all we do. When you have far too many cookbooks to keep track of every recipe, the lovely www.eatyourbooks.com can help. (Better still, one of the partners is a Kiwi, so plenty of local content.) Each year they run a terrific round-up of the best cookbooks from around the world. The list below includes their all-time greats (plus some of our favourites). You can find many of these books at Auckland's biggest cookbook shop, Cook The Books. Drop in and say hi to Felicity, or check her finds at www.cookthebooks.co.nz.

• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat
• Charmaine Solomon’s Encyclopedia of Asian Food by Charmaine Solomon
• Grand Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse’s Culinary Encyclopedia by Alain Ducasse
• Larousse Gastronomique by Larousse editors
• Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louise Bertholle
• On Food & Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
• Tender: Volumes 1 & 11 by Nigel Slater
• Thai Food by David Thompson
• The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden (or anything by her)
• The Cook’s Companion by Stephanie Alexander
• The Cooks’ Bible by Le Cordon Bleu
• The Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan (or anything by her)
• The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson
• The Spice and Herb Bible, Second Edition by Ian Hemphill and Kate Hemphill

New Zealand classics, foodways and histories (by all means, let us know your favourites).