I am reading How to eat by Nigella Lawson again, it is a wonderful cookery book, I love Nigella Lawson, and am really wanting to purchase her new book, Nigella Express. The recipes in How to eat are quite simply, and it is a pleasure to read, I recomend it to anyone who loves to cook.

This was the first cookery book that I really enjoyed sitting and reading as you would a novel, not just for the recipes, but in it's own right. I love the flowing narrative she uses in between recipes etc, it really helps to make the recipes come to life and be achievable and 'real'. I think Nigel Slater writes with a similar style, and I recommend his 'Kitchen Diaries' for year long inspiration!

I have 'Nigella Express' Melanie, and highly recommend it for lots of really easy, eatable meal ideas - just my taste!

I have been after Kitchen Diaries aswell, I will get them, eventually. I totally agree about How To Eat, it is a pleasure to read.

Nigella's "Feast" is good too...i "borrowed" that one from my mum months ago!!!

Melanie - oh if you'd only told me this 2 months ago! I had all but her newest cookbook and donated them to my church garage sale in March because while lovely, they took up room and I NEVER cooked out of them.

Try ebay - that's where I got all of mine and they were in brand new condition. I won each of them for only a few dollars plus shipping.

Oh, thanks for the thought Karla, I have all her books except Express, which I am really wanting to purchase, I just love Nigella, and her recipes are so scrumptious and a doddle to do. I love Feast aswell, and How to be a domestic goddess has some fab recipes in.

How To Be A Domestic Goddess is the only one I don't have... (oh, and the Forever Summer one). I get the impression it's mostly cakes and baking sweet goods - am I right Melanie? Maybe I should get it after all....

I like Feast too. I made the Xmas choc cake from it last year (very nice and rich!) and have been planning on making the curry feast forever!

I don't have the domestic goddess one either, though I have the other two....what kind of recipes does it have??

Oh and jamie Oliver's is good too....

Domestic Goddess is mostly sweet things, although there is savoury things in there, like bread. It is an excellent book, though you do have to like baking, because it is all baking recipes. I love that book and use it regulary, that is where I got the recipe for the lemon syrup cake from, and I make that quite often as it is a favourite in our house.

I have all Jamie Oliver's books too Ouissi - fab recipes, and easy to do yourself. Top favourites in our house are his fish pie, sausage and mash with onion gravy, and cous-cous salad with roasted peppers, herbs, chillies etc. Very addicitive!

If you love sausages there is a recipe in his newest book with sausages and loads of baby tomatoes...and it is divine!!!

I know - I have been meaning to make that one for ages! In fact, now you've reminded me, I'll have to do just that asap Ouissi!

I love M.K. Fisher's books. I have The Art of Eating, Consider the Oyster, The Gastronomical Me, Here Let Us Feast and How to Cook a Wolf. The last is my favorite, hysterically funny, but maybe so appropriate right now with the whole financial stability of the world sliding down the plug hole and the proverbial ravenous animal at our doors. It's about how to make do in the kitchen with very little. One of her delicious stories involves a starving but ingenious student friend of hers in a bed-sitter under the attic in winter whose skinflint landlady has installed a coin operated radiator to squeeze more income out of her renters. He buys some of those chocolate coins wrapped in foil, very carefully peels the foil off without deforming their shapes, places them on the sill outside his window, dribbles in a little water, lets them freeze into coin shapes and uses them in the radiator. The landlady keeps calling a repairman because the radiator stays on even though the coin box remains empty. Talk about cooking the wolf!
Linda