Inspiration
BLOK Guide — Our favourite cookbooks
Welcome to our guide to our favorite cookbooks! Within these pages, you'll discover a world of culinary delights, from classic recipes to innovative creations. These cookbooks are your key to unlocking delicious flavors, expanding your cooking skills, and creating unforgettable meals.
Embarking on a culinary journey through the pages of a cookbook is like setting out on an adventure filled with flavors, techniques, and the joy of creating delectable dishes. In the world of cooking, a well-curated cookbook can be your trusted companion, offering a wealth of recipes, inspiration, and a glimpse into the culinary traditions that span the globe. In this exploration of our favorite cookbooks, we invite you to discover the culinary treasures that have captured our hearts and taste buds, each one a portal to a world of culinary delight.
All the stuff we cooked
Apartamento
A personal and honest cookbook with 44 delicious recipes by danish Frederik Bille Brahe.
All the Stuff We Cooked is Frederik Bille Brahe’s first cookbook. Edited by Jeni Porter, it features 44 recipes for simple but thoughtful dishes, some staples from his internationally renowned Copenhagen restaurants—Atelier September, Apollo Bar, and Kafeteria—others are personal favourites that he cooks at home for his family. It is a cookbook born of a strange time, one in which the world took a collective deep breath and went into an unprecedented lockdown, isolation becoming the new normal for many.
Simple
Ottolenghi
The Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller.
Bursting with colourful photography, Ottolenghi SIMPLE showcases Yotam’s standout dishes that will suit whatever type of cooking you find easy – whether that’s getting wonderful food on the table in under 30 minutes, using just one pot to make a delicious meal, or a flavoursome dish that can be prepared ahead and then served when you’re ready.
These brilliant, flavour-forward dishes are all SIMPLE in at least one way:
S – short on time: less than 30 minutes
I – 10 ingredients or less
M – make ahead
P – pantry
L – lazy
E – easier than you think
Ottolenghi SIMPLE is the stunning cookbook we have all been wishing for: Yotam Ottolenghi’s vibrant food made easy.
A Venetian Cookbook (Of Sorts)
POLPO
A luscious cookbook of little known Venetian specialties from one of London’s hottest restaurants. Tucked away in London’s edgy Soho district, Polpo is one of the most irrepressibly buzzing restaurants in town. Critics and food aficionados have been flocking to this understated bacaro where Russell Norman serves up small dishes-think tapas-from the back streets of Venice. A far cry from the tourist-trap eateries of the famous floating city, this kind of cooking is unfussy, innovative, and exuberantly delicious.
The 120 recipes in this book range from salads and snacks to small main courses, drinks, and desserts, including asparagus with Parmesan and anchovy butter; warm duck salad with beets and walnuts; crispy baby pizzas with zucchini, mint and chilli; scallops with lemon and peppermint; soft-shell crab in Parmesan batter with fennel; fizzy bellinis and glasses of bright orange spritz; panacotta with poached rhubarb; and warm autumn fruits with amaretto cream.
The Cookbook
Cooking with Scorsese
A collection of recipes including savoury, sweet and drinks created by 46 internationally acclaimed chefs in response to filmic moments that bring them culinary joy. Its pages are illustrated with screenshots from the films that inspired each recipe, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the moments that captured each chefs response.
From Wong Kar-wai’s intoxicating scenes in ‘In the Mood for Love’ to Wes Anderson’s delicate pastries in ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, restaurants and chefs have embedded the gestures, imagined aromas, flavours and memories from these scenes into their menus.
Cooking with Scorsese is now a series of books and clothing, morphed into film nights and occasional supper club. Over the years, it has taught us about the circularity of food and film and how each medium has in turn fed into each other.
Cooking for your kids
Phaidon
Let the pros help you plan and prep meals for your family – home-cooking recipes used by chefs to feed those they love!
Looking for meals that will appeal to everyone around the table? Cooking for Your Kids is the perfect solution: 100 recipes – breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, treats – from the repertoires of world-famous chefs who cook for their children at home. Charming first-person stories offer a glimpse into their private lives as they strive to raise adventurous (and healthy) eaters. The chefs explain why each dish is much-loved, highlight how ingredients can expand palates, reveal insider tips, and share their work-life balance challenges.
Ottolenghi Test Kitchen
Ottolenghi
This is Ottolenghi, unplugged. The Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team takes you on a journey through your kitchen cupboards, creating inspired recipes using humble ingredients.
Relaxed, flexible home cooking from Yotam Ottolenghi and his superteam.
Whether they’re conjuring up new recipes or cooking for themselves at home, the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen team do what we all do: they raid their kitchens. But then, they turn whatever they find into approachable creations with an ‘Ottolenghi’ twist.
Bread ahead
Hardie Grant Books
Featuring over 90 fool-proof, classic baking recipes, with both sweet and savoury staples and plenty of seasonal favourites, discover the joy of baking like a professional but from the comfort of your own home kitchen.
From simple classics, such as Victoria Sponge, a Rustic Country Loaf or American Chocolate Chip Cookies, to the more challenging Millefeuille, Babka Loaf or Savoury Croissants, you will even find recipes for all the jams and marmalades you need to complement your creations. Perfect your Christmas Pudding, Mince Pies and other festive favourites with the sumptuous Christmas chapter, or recreate Bread Ahead’s most beloved sweet treat with a chapter dedicated to their infamous filled Doughnuts.
Whatever your skill level, Bread Ahead: The Expert Home Baker will be your go-to baking bible, with all the information you need to know when it comes to good, classic baking.
