Tom Hunt’s Top 10 Cookbooks of 2020
Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food writer, climate change campaigner and regular columnist to the Guardian where he discusses topics on food sustainability. His Bristol restaurant Poco has won numerous awards including Best Ethical Restaurant at the Observer Food Monthly Awards. He works to protect biodiversity, promote equality and good food accessibility.
In March 2020 Tom Hunt published his most recent book, Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet. True to Tom’s values, this book combines important lessons of our food systems with thoughtful and flavor-packed recipes in a clear, colourful and accessible way. Stuffed full of good ideas and delicious foods; this book is an essential manifesto for every household.
Recommended by Tom Hunt Whilst curating this list I was drawn to a number of cookbooks written by chefs who I know personally. Perhaps because I can guarantee how genuine and profound their work is, but mainly because they’ve written such thought-provoking cookbooks.
I thought it would be interesting to find out more from the authors themselves. So, I approached each one with -perhaps the unfair question;
“What is your favourite recipe and why?”
Each book touches on my topic of expertise, ‘food sustainability’ in one way or another. In some, it’s explicit, like in Melissa Hemsley’s Eat Green or Scandinavian Green by Trine Hahneman. In others, the connection is more subtle like in Ravinder Bhogal’s Jikoni, a cookbook that celebrates cultural diversity or Wine from another Galaxy which features many low intervention wines; a movement synonymous with regenerative agriculture.
Now, in no particular order, my top ten cookbooks of 2020.
Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower by Gill Meller
with photography by Andrew Montgomery.
Gill and I first cooked together in the late 90’s at Glastonbury Festival. I later joined Gill at River Cottage as his sous chef in 2004, where we worked together for a few years cooking banquets and teaching. Gill’s style of writing, poetry and food speak of our connection with nature.
Gill’s favourite recipe is on Page 262: Jerusalem artichoke and chestnut mushroom salad with dill, lemon and olive oil.
He says, “I think it really encapsulates the theme of the book in a single recipe. Sometimes there are combinations that really work when you don’t think they will. Good cooking doesn’t always involve heat. A simple salad like this, although raw, has masses of character, texture and is exciting to eat.”
Scandinavian Green by Trine Hahnemann
with photography by Columbus Leth.
I met Trine on the food festival circuit at The Good Life Experience. Trine blew me away with her passion and knowledge of what I like to call “climate-cuisine”.
Trine recommends starting with page 105: Baked onions stuffed with spinach and serving it with an incredible looking salad on page 120: Double celeriac with lentils and hazelnuts.
Trine says, “These recipes are perfect for the season. Onions are so under appreciated as vegetables! When baked they are sweet and tender and cheap to. I love celeriac and here I mix baked and pickled. Celeriac is very satisfying to cook with, it’s both sweet and earthy and can be used in so many ways.”
The Food Almanac by Miranda York
with illustrations from Louise Sheeran.
Miranda York is the editor of At the Table, a creative platform that explores and celebrates British food culture. The Food Almanac is a beautifully curated seasonal collection of recipes, stories, notes and poems that are calming to read. It will expand your food knowledge broadly as you get to know the 50 different contributors.
Miranda says, “Though I love all the recipes in The Food Almanac, I think what makes it really special are the stories that sit alongside them. Food is about so much more than what’s on our plates.”
Eat Green by Melissa Hemsley
with photography by Phillipa Langley.
Melissa is a force to be reckoned with! Jovial, energetic and galvanising. I love all her books for their world inspired healthy approach to cooking. Eat Green has a forward by Riverford Organic Farmer Guy Singh-Watson another hero of mine and is full of easy, planet friendly recipes.
Melissa says, “My favourite recipe would probably be the Root Veg Freestyle Fritters, page 188 as the root veg season can sometimes feel very long by the end of winter.
Turning them into these easy fritters means that any root veg can be quickly transformed with any favourite spices. And I love the chutney as a way to use up herb stems and wilting greens. Sometimes I make the fritters bitesize and eat cold as a snack out the fridge, sometimes I use the batter to fill a small frying pan and finish them under the grill. Always delicious, golden and crispy edged, a great way to eat tons of any veg!”
Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes From an Immigrant Kitchen by Ravinder Bhogal
with photographs by Kristin Perers.
Ravinder celebrates the diverse cuisines brought to the U.K. drawing inspiration from her own Indian, Nigerian and British heritage. Jikoni is superbly inventive and without boundaries in its exploration for flavour.
Ravinder says, “It’s so hard to pick a favourite so I’ll pick a one for this season which would have to be the Scrag End Pie. It appears annually on the Jikoni menu and is one of our most loved dishes. It’s a hybrid British-Indian shepherd’s pie made with the neck of lamb or mutton rather than mince, with the hum of spices like sweet cinnamon and tobacco smoky cardamom that’ll warm you right through. The meat is cooked long and slow to extract all the flavour from the bones of this unloved cut. It is then finished with a creamy, gently spiced mash that’s generous enough to insulate an igloo. Simply put, it’s a hug on a plate!”
Wine from Another Galaxy: Noble Rot by Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew
‘Forget everything you thought you knew about wine’. Noble Rot is an iconic wine and food magazine that launched in 2013 by two London restaurants (in Bloomsbury and Soho) that serve outstandingly good food and this tome of a book. This book is full of everything you need to know about wine, written through a respectful but contemporary lens.
Check out ‘The Rot 100’ on page 342 for Dan and Mark’s most-loved wines.
Fäviken: 4015 Days From Beginning to End by Magnus Nilsson
with photography by Erik Olsson.
Although I never made it to the now closed restaurant Fäviken (in Jämtland, Sweden), I idealised it and always dreamt of visiting. Magnus Nilsson’s food helped define New-Nordic cuisine, a genre of cooking centred on locality, foraging and heritage with a rustic, yet precise Scandinavian-Japanese style. This book makes up for missing his restaurant. It lists the dishes served from beginning to end with recipes of his most definitive dishes.
Check out the poetically named, Porridge of grains and seeds from Jämtland finished with a lump of salty butter on Page 134. This recipe in part inspired the Rotation Risotto in my cookbook Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet, which I first served at Dan Barber’s WastED pop up at Selfridges in 2017. Savoury porridge is a brilliant discovery, simple and comforting.
Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea by Marianna Leivaditaki
with photography by Elena Heatherwick.
Marianna is the head chef of Morito in Hackney (Moro’s sister restaurant) and a good friend. She is also the most hardworking chef I know, day in day out producing some of the best food you can eat in London. Marianna has filled Aegean with the Greek recipes that made her the cook she is today. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to cook with Marianna in the past. This book brings me the same feeling and will do the same for you I’m sure as you get to know her food.
Marianna says, “I love the tomato fritters, page 108, because one is not used to making fritters out of tomatoes and these are juicy delicious and so aromatic! The perfect snack.”
Summer Kitchens by Olia Hercules
with photography by Elena Heatherwick and Joe Woodhouse.
Olia Hercules is an extremely talented author who writes beautifully about her home country Ukraine. Summer Kitchens is full of evocative stories and recipes perfectly adapted for a British kitchen. I recently made a short recipe video with Olia about her book for my Instagram TV – where we cooked a variation of her borsch recipe. It was fascinating to hear how people use small outhouses as summer kitchens in Ukraine to ferment, preserve and cook their summer dishes.
Olia says, “One of my favourite recipes in Summer Kitchens is the vegetarian beetroot leaf rolls on page 200. It’s a version of ‘holubtsi’ that most often use cabbage leaves. Beetroot leaves get thrown away so often but if you quickly steam them and wrap them around a mushroom and buckwheat filling, then cook in a tomato and creme fraiche sauce, they taste and look so beautiful!”
Falastin by Tara Wigley and Sami Tamimi
with photography by Jenny Zarins.
This book is a celebration of Palestine; the food, the people, the place with beautiful photographs by the talented Jenny Zarins who also photographed my cookbook. Alongside the recipes, the book describes the beautiful country and people, including a portrait of a women called Baseema Barahmeh who lives in a village called Anza on the south west of Jenin, she taught me how to make a hand rolled couscous called maftoul when I visited Palestine.
Sami says, “It’s so hard to choose one dish from Falastin; I grew up eating and loving most of the dishes that we have included in the book. My father’s eggs with za'atar and lemon have a special place in my heart. Also, the cauliflower fritters with onion and cumin, they bring fond memories of having them stuffed in a pita bread as my school lunch pack.”
Other books that I would have loved to include:
In Bibi’s Kitchen by Hawa Hassan with Julia Turshen
Fire Smoke Green by Martin Nordin
Ekstedt by Niklas Ekstedt
Home Cookery Year by Claire Thomson
Easy Vegan Bible by Katy Beskow
The Sourdough School Sweet Baking by Vanessa Kimbell
The Botanical Kitchen by Elly McCousland
Healthy Indian Vegetarian by Chetna Makan
Life Kitchen by Ryan Riley
