Take Your Taste Buds On Holiday With These International Cookbooks
Enjoy a taste of the world from your very own kitchen
With travel restrictions in place to contain the spread of COVID-19, you can’t be blamed for daydreaming about the day when normality will return, and it is once again safe to explore the world. But until then, here are 10 of the best international cookbooks to help transport you (and your taste buds) to your favourite holiday destinations around the globe.
In his first English cookbook, one of Turkey's most acclaimed chefs, Musa Daĝdeviren, who featured in the Netflix docuseries Chef's Table, showcases the diversity of Turkish food, with 550 recipes for the home cook that celebrate the country’s remarkable culinary heritage. From little-known regional dishes such as scorpion fish soup from the Black Sea region of Giresun, or a sour cherry bread pudding from Afyon to those that are globally recognised and stand the test of time including lamb kofte, chicken kebabs, tahini halva, and pistachio baklava.
Inspired by the best restaurants, fondas, loncherias, and taco stands in Mexico City and adapted for the home cook, Made in Mexico is a delicious blend of classic regional and contemporary Mexican cuisine from celebrated chef, Danny Mena, and journalist and recipe developer, Nils Bernstein. With over one hundred dishes covering everything from salads to mains and desserts, as well as staples such as salsa roja and tortillas, with explanations for proper technique and suggestions for ingredient variations, it’s a delicious image-filled guide to the Mexican kitchen.
Part of the Alphabet Cooking series by Quadrille Publishing, Rukmini Iyer’s C is for Caribbean, is a fun, easy to follow cookbook that features all the essential recipes to give Caribbean cooking a go. From jerk ribs to macaroni pie and rice and peas, the unique flavours, colours, textures and smells make for mouth-watering and filling eats.
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Delicious, fresh Vietnamese food is made accessible with Andrea Nguyen’s Vietnamese Food Any Day. Drawing on decades of experience, as well as the cooking hacks her mum adopted after fleeing from Vietnam to America, the cookbook features over 80 recipes that utilise easy-to-find ingredients to create true Vietnamese flavours at home. Our favourites include rice paper rolls, honey-glazed pork riblets, spicy sweet pomegranate tofu, and no-churn Vietnamese ice cream.
Skye McAlpine is the creator of From My Dining Table, a blog where she writes about living and cooking in Venice. With her simple, approachable Italian recipes and charming photography, she offers an insider's perspective on Venetian home cooking. From almond paste croissants to tagliolini with prawns, courgettes and saffron and roast duck legs with plums, many of the recipes feature a short list of ingredients, making them easy enough for anyone to whip up and enjoy.
As one of the most respected authorities on Thai cooking, Leela Punyaratabandhu’s second cookbook, Bangkok: Recipes And Stories From The Heart Of Thailand, is a deeply personal ode to her home city. It features over 100 recipes alongside tales of how she maintains tradition despite her double life, which is split between Bangkok and Chicago. From heirloom family dishes to restaurant classics and street food, the beautiful fare and location photography make this a must-have book for any home chef.
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Following on from her bestselling Palestine on a Plate, Joudie Kalla pays homage to her homeland of Palestine by showcasing its wide ranging, vibrant and truly delicious dishes. Baladi, which means “my home, my land, my country”, offers a flexible approach to cooking as Kalla utilises influences from her homeland to create new dishes, and brings her own twist to more traditional recipes such as daoud basha (lamb meatballs cooked in a tamarind and tomato sauce) and samak makli bil camun (fried fish selection with zucchini, mint and yogurt dip).
Chetna Makan has gone from competing on The Great British Bake Off to writing her own cookbooks. In Chai, Chaat & Chutney, Chetna, who was born in Jabalpur, an ancient city in central India, takes inspiration from the streets to create delicious Indian recipes that are simple to cook at home. You can enjoy tamarind stuffed chillies and sticky Bombay chicken from the south or venture north with sweet carrot halwa and cardamom and pistachio kulfi.
With Our Korean Kitchen, critically acclaimed chef and food writer, Jordan Bourke, and his Korean wife, Rejina Pyo, successfully demystify Korean cuisine, which has become one of the biggest trends in the culinary world. From Korean staples such as bibimbap and kimchi to stir-fried spicy squid, sesame and soy-marinated beef and pecan and cinnamon-stuffed pancakes, it covers an extensive range of over 100 dishes while delving into dining etiquette, key ingredients, and the role of multiple side dishes.
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With over 60 mouth-watering recipes, Tapas And Other Spanish Plates To Share brings an authentic taste of Spain to your table. Traditionally served as a bar snack with a glass of sherry or a cold beer, the book includes a host of tapas classics such as patatas bravas, Spanish omelette, chorizo in red wine, and peppers stuffed with salt cod.