A Love For Food by Daylesford

A lovely cookbook and a perfect way to get going in the kitchen with all the fantastic produce that autumn brings (one early recipe is for blackcurrant vodka: cheering, no?) What's particularly great about the Daylesford cook book – of course it's brimming with fab seasonal recipes and great photography, you would expect nothing less – but what makes it stand out is the fact that it's packed with contributions by the various Daylesford experts. So the guy who actually grows the salad, writes about that, and the guy who keeps chickens writes about eggs (and is revelatory about what really happens in most free-range systems). So you get really top-notch tips about food throughout the book: growing it, buying it, cooking it and eating it. But this isn't a preachy book at all: it's a celebration of everything that grows in Britain and it makes you want to cook all those things immediately. The chapter on savoury tarts and pies and the section on slow-cooked casseroles and stews are especially good, and the melt-in-the-mouth-good lemon shortbread biscuits we made yesterday have now disappeared.

A Little Bird Loves

Fortnum's Easter