KEY POINTS:
Cookbooks are a pornography of sorts. Addictive, possibly dangerously reading them is not quite as good as indulging in the real act (of eating, I mean). But they're pretty enjoyable still, they're quicker, you can do it on your own and you get a glimpse of all sorts of exciting tricks you wouldn't (or haven't yet) employed in real life (I'd always thought I was too straight-laced for carpaccio, but when I saw Nigel Slater doing it, it did make me wonder if we'd enjoy it at home).
This is feast time for cookbook lovers, as food-on-the-page floods the market in time for the lucrative "what to get mother/sister/aunty/wife for Christmas" market.
New in store is everything from the serious, weighty and comprehensive to fast, fab food. Slater's The Kitchen Diaries (HarperCollins, $49.99) walks you day by day through a year canvassing what's in season and how to cook it (Warning: it's a Northern Hemisphere year so he recommends warming gingerbread in January and so on).
More down to earth is the New Zealand Federation of Women's Institute cookbook Recipes from the Heartland (Penguin, $25), offering tips for Corned Beef a la Mode and Weetbix Squares.
This season's theme is travel/food books. The lavishly illustrated Marcus Samuelsson's The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavours of Africa (John Wiles, $70) is part travel and social commentary, as well as using food to explore a culture.
It's gorgeous to read but the exoticism does mean you'll need to source speciality ingredients.
The food is more familiar in Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes (Random House, $65) and Provence Cookery School by Gui Gedda and Marie-Pierre Moine (Penguin, $55). Again they deliver loads of glossy pictures and regional travelogues.
If you're looking for fun and friendly there are two new releases from the all-about-effortless Donna Hay (new in her Simple Essentials range of cookbooks is Salads and Vegetables and Fruit, (both HarperCollins, $29.99) and Nigella Express (Random House, $85) from the eponymous Domestic Goddess.
They're great for time- and skill-poor cooks wanting maximum effect without too much basting and double blanching.
If you're firmly in this camp then there's also a 10th anniversary edition of Jo Seagar's brilliantly named You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble, darling (Random House, $29.99). It's a New Zealand classic recipe book devoted to food that looks more complicated than it is. Just be aware Jo never stints on the butter or cream.
If even those sound too complicated, reach for Barbecue Bible (Penguin, $19.95) which is practical, straightforward and let's you stay out of the kitchen altogether. Or if you're in the can't cook, won't cook camp try the two kids' cookbooks.
There's the bright and colourful CKC Cool Kids Cookbook (HachetteLivre, $24.99), based on the short TV2 cooking-for-kids segments running weekdays at 3.25pm, which talks you through how to make nachos and fish fingers. Or, slightly more demanding, It's my Turn to Cook (New Holland, $24.99) is co-written by Margaret Brooker and her two daughters aged 10 and 8.
- Detours, HoS
