101 Cookbooks by UK Celebrity Chefs

Don't you just love celebrity chefs? I'm glued to the box when celebrity TV-chefs appear, and so is the whole of the British Nation! We don't cook so much but we love our chefs. So why are the British so devoted to their UK celebrity chefs?

Maybe it's because, although we don't have time to cook, we love food! The Brits have a reputation for really lousy cuisine, (at least the French think so), but this reputation isn't totally deserved. It is true that many British people don't cook, and that tourists can't easily buy good British food, but we do have an absolutely fabulous culinary heritage.

This heritage is lurking in old cookbooks, in homes and kitchens, in recipe scrap books and in the hands of older women. The celebrity chefs are working hard to revive both traditional recipes and cooking skills, as well as our reputation and I've picked out just a few of the most pro-active, famous and fun to have a look at. This is a personal saunter through my life of TV cooking and I've selected 100 of the best celebrity chef cookbooks for you.

The 'and one' is my own. On-line and slowly growing, it's a work-in-progress. Have a look at some of the things we are cooking up at Les Trois Chenes B&B, but be warned, many of these recipes are from Limousin, in France The Les Trois Chenes Recipe Book - How to Cook Seasonal Dishes

Image: Jamie's Great Britain Amazon.com

Jamie taught us that you don't need to slave over a hot stove for hours to produce a healthy meal that a celebrity chef could be proud of. He got us going with his thirty minute meals and now he's cut the time in half to make the most wonderful suppers in just fifteen, yes, fifteen minutes. You just got to have Jamie's Fifteen Minute Meals - I know that I'll be hoping to get this in my Christmas Stocking this year.

I heard it through the grapevine!

Rosemary Shrager TV celebrity chef braves unspeakable horrors on TV show I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here

Monica Galetti, judge of TV show Masterchef, has a new book out:

Monica's Kitchen

Westminister Council Accuses Chef Raymond Blanc of Poisoning with Liver!

BBC Radio 4's Today Programme explains that Brasserie Blanc, Raymon Blanc's Covent Garden restaurant,serves it's liver pink. Apparently this is as it should be but after ignoring warnings by Westminster Council given in response to two cases of food poisoning, they have now told to stop serving "undercooked"or pink liver.

Food writer Tom Parker Bowles was not impressed with the idea of cooking liver until it gained the texture of old boots (or words to that effect).

Read more BBC News London

Nigel Slater's New Book

Kitchen Diaries II

Is Nigel Slater a writer or a cook? Slater is the king of simple cooking. He loves vegetables and when I have a glut of marrows, or beetroot and need to get a dinner onto the table with the minimum fuss, it's Nigel I turn to.

So what does he do best? Write or cook? Both! Find out more about his writing and cooking with his latest book, Kitchen Diaries II

Listen to Nigel Slater on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Nigel on Woman's Hour talking about Kitchen Diaries II

Jamie Does

Just watching the repeat first of six episodes of Jamie Does... . Channel 4 at 12.30pm. In this Jamie Does Marrakech.

Jamie Oliver is on his travels again, this time to Europe and north Africa starting with Marrakech, where he dines batchelor style, roasts lamb and makes 'snake cake' - not what it seems. He aims to experience local cultures through food and cooking.

Jamie's next series to tackle Food Waste?

James Martin is the latest celebrity chef to bring out a new cookbook, Slow Cooking' and it looks fantastic! Check out all these latest goodies:

James Martin's Mouthwatering Recipes With Minimum Effort.

Clarissa Dixon's Clarissa's England: Off on her travels again! Never a dull moment with Clarissa. She'd have us eating badgers next!

Mary Berry's Celebrity Bake book - seee below!

Badger campaigner Brian May didn't take kindly to the idea of eating badger. He was reported as saying: "I think we should seriously consider eating senseless people like this Clarissa whoever-she-is". (The First Post).

Gok Cooks Chinese: Mondays 8.30pm on Channel 4

Gok and his Dad, show you just how easy it is to cook fast, healthy and delicious Chinese food. Last night, (Monday 28th May 2012), Gok was making his Dad's Dragon scallops in burning oil sauce, amongst other things. He also told us quite a bit about Chinese hatchets and took us on a tour of a tofu factory. I really loved his all-round approach.

Make sure you don't miss it!

Image: Gok Wan courtesy of Davemcginn, Creative Commons

Want to know more about the of food in Britain? Jamie's out and about discovering the heritage of British cooking past and present. He travels the length and breadth of Britain in his quirky kitchen van, The Cock in Cider, seeking out the best, the old and the new in British cuisine.

Top English chef on TV, Jamie Oliver is out and about discovering the heritage of British cooking past and present. He has his quirky kitchen van and he travels the length and breadth of Britain seeking out the best, the old and the new in British cuisine. Amongst other places, he visits Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire to find out just how that pastry is prepared and how the pie is made. If you love food, love cooking, love pies or Britain or travel, history or just enjoy a good read - then this is for you. (Solve your Christmas gift problem?)

British celebrity chefs rule OK!

Jamie's Great Britain on Amazon.com

Tons of Jamie Oliver's books to choose from:

Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes: Over 100 Recipes from the Great Food Regions of the World

Jamie's 15-Minute Meals

Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook

How to cook good naked

Just joking about the naked!* Gok, who has just joined the ranks of famous UK chefs, showed us how to look good from the outside, and now he's tackling our inner beauty with these nutritious, easy to cook Chinese meals. Gok and his Dad show you just how easy it is to cook healthy, delicious Chinese food fast.

Think Gok's just a pretty face? Think again. We all love Gok, (or nearly all of us), and now he's fining the ultimate way to a woman's heart - through her stomach.

Just don't miss it!

* For anyone who doesn't know, Gok is famed for his fashion crusade to make women feel happy in their own skin and to do magical make-overs turning fashion frumps into red hot mammas.

I've included Mrs Beeton in this list, although, unlike the others, she's a famous chef rather than a celebrity chef. She has a place here because of the recently released TV film about her life, and because she is just so well known in Britain. Although she was christened Isabella Mary Mayson in 1836, she's always referred to as Mrs Beeton and was famed for her book, Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management. I always imagined her as a plump, middle aged cook, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. She married a publisher, Samuel Orchard Beeton, and began to write articles on cooking and household management for her husband's books and magazines but after giving birth to her fourth child in January 1865, Isabella contracted puerperal fever and died a week later at the age of 28.

We Love The Great British Bake Off!

Baking is back and celebrated in Mary Berry's Great British Bake Off. Popular TV series is currently showing on BB2 Tuesday evening at 8pm UK time.

Mary Berry Cookbooks:

Mary Berry's Baking Bible

Mary Berry at Home

Mary Berry's Christmas Collection

Mary Berry Complete Cookbook

100 Cakes and Bakes (My Kitchen Table)

Julia Child, born McWilliams August 15, 1912, was an American chef, author, and television personality, however she was held in such great respect by British chefs and food historians, as witnessed by accounts upon her death in 2004, that she has a place in our hearts here in Britain. Like Mrs Beeton, her life has recently be commemorated in film. In 2009 Nora Ephron adapted Child's memoir My Life in France and Julie Powell's memoir to produce a film, Julie & Julia, in which Meryl Streep played Child. Her performance was nominated for numerous awards, winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical or Comedy.

Photo: Julia Child, Miami Book Fair International, 1989 Author MDCarchives Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Lots of tasty books by Julia Child and about her. Here are just a few:

Julia, Child

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 50th Anniversary

My Life in France

Mastering the Art of French Cooking (2 Volume Set)

Amazingly, no video. Now there's an opening for someone! As a young art student I worked as a cleaner for a couple in Chiswick, London, and when I left I was bought Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book and have treasured it ever since. Grigson takes vegetables in alphabetical order, tells you a little of their history, geography and place in our culture. She tells you how to choose and prepare them followed by a number of excellent recipes. If I have to buy just ten cookery books, this would definitely be one of the first on my list.

Jane Grigson's Fruit Book

Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery

Good Things

English Food

I grew up with Delia. It was Delia Smith more than any other TV chef, who set about teaching Briatin to cook. She famously started with 'how to boil an egg', something that defeats me even today - there are just so many variables. She is still one of my first choices for sensible, down-to-earth recipes that really work. I always use her pizza base recipe! More recently she seems to have fallen from favour, at least my favour, when she became more overt in her promotion of a football team and released her 'cheats' range of recipes. I guess we just look up to her as a real cook and don't like to see her chucking in tins and jars of food that she bought in the supermarket.

Delia's Complete Cookery Course (Vols 1 - 3)

Delia Smith's Christmas

Delia Smith's Summer Collection

Delia Smith's Winter Collection

Sophie Grigson, daughter of Jane Grigson, graced our TV screens briefly. A plump, pretty woman who cooked puddings, as I recall. She continued her mothers work by cooking sensible, fresh and seasonal food. Her TV career began in 1993 with the award-winning series Grow Your Greens, Eat Your Greens for Channel 4. In 2001 she won the Guild of Food Writers Cookery Journalist Award, and is a keen supporter of organic and local food suppliers. Like Jamie Oliver, but less famously so, she is an advocate for decent children's food and is a patron of the Children's food festival.

Sophie Grigson's Country Kitchen

The Soup Book

Fish

Sophie Grigson's Herbs

I must admit, that I have seen few of Keith Floyd's programmes on television, but he's so well known that I couldn't miss him out.

Business man and restaurateur, he offered his first BBC TV series Floyd on Fish in 1984. His eccentric, shambolic style of presentation appealed to viewers worldwide and he shot to fame. His tv trademark was the glass of wine which he held in one hand while he cooked (a man after my own heart!), and his unusual choice of locations such as a fishing boat in rough seas. He was one of the first chefs to step out of the studio went on to present his shows from around the world.

Keith Floyd died following a heart attack, aged 65 on the 14 September 2009 after having enjoyed a last meal of oysters and partridge, with champagne. Go out in style!

Flash Floyd

A Spalsh and a Dash

Floyd on Britain and Ireland

Floyd on Fire

Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson - a right pair!

I used to watch the two fat ladies, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, more for entertainment than cooking tips and, I'm afraid to say, I used to laugh as they splodged cream, sugar, butter and copious amounts of brandy into mixing bowls knowing that I could neither afford the ingredients nor eat their fattening, cholestrol-loaded dishes. Two Fat Ladies was a BBC Two television series that went out in the late 1990s and although their food was dubious, it was their wonderful personalities that caught the British imagination. Not only were they totally unconcerned with fat or calories, but Jennifer Paterson also smoked heavily, to the point of going out for a cigarette while a dish cooks in the oven, and most episodes ended with her smoking a cigarette and drinking something alcoholic. Clarissa Dickson Wright was a recovering alcoholic.

In 1998 Jennifer was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer and was hospitalised immediately. The story goes that the day before she died Jennifer asked Clarissa to bring her a tin of caviar but when Dickson Wright arrived at the hospital, Paterson had died. Clarissa said that after Paterson's funeral, she ate the caviar as a tribute.

Read Clarissa's Autobiography! It is amazing! A real riches to rags story! I didn't know that she was a top solicitor and I won't Spill the Beans by saying anything more - you'll just have to read it for yourself.

Two Fat Ladies Obsessions

Two fat Ladies Ride Again

Rifling Through My Drawers

She's out and about and writing about her travels, her opinions, her food and her friends - and not-so-friends. Great for gossip, recipes, food-love and love of the countryside and place.

The Hairy bikers, David Myers and Simon King, are new celeb chefs and their TV shows are running as I write (2011). Two roughish looking guys from the north of England, they are the antithesis of Clarissa and Jennifer. They are not even chefs but have backgrounds in television and film production. Like Floyd, they combine cooking and travel and do much to promote traditional cooking on their Food Tour of Britain where they cover 15,000 miles in their culinary tour of the counties where they meet the locals and learn about how the land and the produce has informed the way we eat.

Their latest endeavour is a search for Britain's best cooking family. The show includes cooking challenges for the competing families, plenty of foody tips and chat, and a celebrity guest.

More Hairy Biker Cookbooks:

Mum's Know Best

The Hairy Bikers' 12 Days of Christmas

The Hairy Bikers' Best -Loved Recipes

The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain

Was the term 'Domestic Goddess' first applied to Nigella? I've no idea but it seems to me that it was. Nigella Lawson, born in 1960, was the Daughter of the British politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson. In 1998, Lawson brought out her first cookery book, How to Eat, which sold 300,000 copies and became a bestseller. She went on to write her second book in 2000, How to be a Domestic Goddess, winning her the British Book Award for Author of the Year. Her TV career began in 2000, when she hosted her own cookery series on Channel 4, Nigella Bites, accompanied with another bestselling cookery book.

We loved Nigella because she was as beautiful as her father was ugly, she didn't give a toss for hygene, brushing her long, dark hair out of her face as she cooked, and she told lots of stories about her life as she worked. These days she has grown in to food Diva of rather statuesque proportions, who shows us how to entertain as well as to prepare the dinner party food.

Nigella Kitchen

Nigella Bites

Nigellissima

Nigella Christmas

The only thing I don't like about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is his hair! He introduced us to the concept of looking at the whole story of food. He set up his own farm, River Cottage, where he teaches us about how our food should be grown and produced. He's a campaigner for animal rights, organic farming and good, old fashioned food. He investigates traditional techniques such as smoking fish and meat, and makes a point in encouraging the British junk foodies to expand their tastes, their knowledge and relationships with food. Recently he has opened a restaurant at the farm where you can taste his good home cooking.

Hot Gossip! heard today, (mid-September 2011), when Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall appeared on UK TV show Loose Women, that Hugh is turning his back on meat to concentrate on vegetables. Fearnley-Whittingstall has been a farmer, cook and food campaigner for many years. Hugh and his farm, River Cottage in Devon, have become famous for good food, good food production and humane farming methods. He has campaigned side by side with Jamie Oliver to improve conditions for animals kept for meat, milk and eggs. Now he is turning his back on meat to put the spotlight onto the world of vegetables. I for one can't wait to read his new book.

Veg: River Cottage Everyday

The River Cottage preserves Handbook

The River Cottage Bread Handbook

The River Cottage meat Book

I've just finished reading Nigel Slater's autobiography, Toast, where he tracks his life through his memories of food. I loved this book, partly because it was so easy to read, partly because I enjoyed his sensual descriptions of dishes that I love, such as bread and butter pudding, and partly because he reminded me of food from my childhood such as Walnut Whips and Angel Delight. He's another cook who lays stress on growing and cooking simple, nutritious ingredients into delicious dishes.

Real Fast Food

Tender Volume

The Kitchen Diaries

Real Cooking

I don't think I've ever watched a Gordon Ramsey show. All hell and swearing - not really my thing, (I prefer the genteel, calm presentation of Nigel Slater), but it is these very things that have made Gordon Ramsey famous.

Scottish chef, Gordon James Ramsay, born 8 November 1966, began life as a footballer (hence the swearing?) but is famous as a television personality and restaurateur. His TV programmes are about competitive cookery and food, such as the British series Hell's Kitchen, The F Word, and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, along with the U.S. versions of Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, and MasterChef. His life on and off screen is so colourful that I can't even begin to describe all his little foibles here.

Like Gordon Ramsey, Rick Stein, born Christopher Richard Stein in 1947, is an English chef, restaurateur and television presenter, and like Gordon Ramsey, I've heard a lot about Stein but haven't watched many of his shows . Stein opened his first business in Padstow in 1974, and now specialises in fish cookery.

Stein has written and presented a number of cookery series on BBC television including Rick Stein's Taste of the Sea, Fruits of the Sea, Seafood Odyssey, Fresh Food, Seafood Lovers' Guide, Food Heroes, and in 2005 French Odyssey in which he undertakes a gastronomic tour across France. His most recent series, Mediterranean Escapes, starts where French Odyssey left off and explores the Mediterranean coastline and islands in search of the best in the region's foods.

See my recipe for Chicken Tagine here: Easy Chicken Tajine Recipe

Do you really need a Tagine pot to cook these wonderful, exotic dishes? Tajine v Casserole

I'm really enjoying watching Heston Blumenthal on TV. He's like no other cook! His dishes are more like works of modern art, his programmes more like a 'happening crossed with history lesson'. He creates wonderfully fun and unlikely dishes, or re-creates extravaganzas from the past.

Heston Blumenthal was born 27 May 1966 in London and is the chef and owner of The Fat Duck, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Berkshire that was voted the Best Restaurant in the UK by The Good Food Guide 2007 and 2009. To top this it was also voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine in 2005.

He began his TV career in 2005 when he produced a series of six half-hour television programmes called Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal. More recently, 2009, a series entitled Heston's Feasts, featured Victorian, Medieval, Tudor, Christmas (including dormouse and venison) and Roman themed dinner banquets with various celebrities as guests. A second series of this was commissioned in which he created, among others, a Charlie and The Chocolate Factory style feast, a Fairy tale feast and an Edwardian style feast based on the last meal eaten on the Titanic. The latest series is Heston's Mission Impossible, for Channel 4, where Heston Blumenthal tries to improve the food in various British institutions renown for serving up the most appalling fare. Can't wait!

The Fairy Tale Feast

This was an extravaganza, with dining room set in an enchanted forest, Cinderellas pumpkin coaches that go up in flames to reveal tiny starter topped with langustine 'tale' and caviar, followed by the boars head from Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White's sugar poison apples and a chest height ginger-bread house with chocolate gutters. What more could you want?

I have only one Indian cookery book and it's by Madhur Jaffrey. I love it. In my book she introduces the different areas of India together with their individual, local foods and cuisine. Many a time I've taken this book to bed as my bedtime reading.

Madhur Jaffrey was born Madhur Bahadur in Delhi, British India and came to London aged 19 to study drama at RADA. She missed the food of India so much that she asked her mother to send her recipes so that she could learn to cook the traditional dishes of her home country.

Madhur became an actress of note, but it's as a food writer that she became a household name, introducing the Western world to the many cuisines of India. She's presented several cookery series on television, including Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery in 1982, Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery in 1989 and Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India in 1995.

This is what we all like to hear - a good rags to riches story. Raymond Blanc started out as a waiter, taught himself to cook and became a chef at The Rose Revived in Oxfordshire before opening his first restaurant called Les Quat'Saisons in Summertown, Oxford. Inspiring? He started a chain of Boulangeries and opened a chain of small restaurants.

On 13 January 2007, he appeared on TV show, Saturday Kitchen and in the summer of 2007 Blanc saw the BBC promotion for his new reality TV programme The Restaurant, known in America as Last Restaurant Standing, airing on UK television. His books include Cooking for Friends and Foolproof French Cookery.

His series Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets starts today (26 02 11) on BBC1. (Just saw him on Loose Women ITV1, today. Sooo French! Promoting fresh, locally sourced food and simple cooking). In this he cooks real French food. The French don't shy away from offal, tongues, brains and all sorts of bits and pieces that you'd never find in a British supermarket. Raymond shows you just what to do with all these things.

Annabel is a leading author on preparing and cooking food for children. Following the tragic loss of her first baby, Annabel - a trained Cordon Bleu cook - extensively researched the topic of feeding young children and it was her book that I bought when my son was a baby. I was and am convinced that we are feeding our babies the very worst food available! When I was choosing child care I went to one nursery where the food for the babies was a row of packets full of dried 'stuff' that they would add water to. What are we doing? I'm a passionate believer that we should be giving our children the very best start in life, and if we are what we eat, how much more is a small child exactly what they eat?

I do blame the tide of childhood obesity partly on the trend for feeding children commercial baby food. Instead I chose to cook our own food without salt, (avoiding foods that were unsuitable for children at certain ages), and I would then put some of the food into the blender, or mash it up, bottle it in individual portions and freeze it. Annabel Karmel is an excellent guide to what to feed our kids, when to feed it and how to make food fun.

Other well known celebrity chefs, past and present are Fanny & Johnny Craddock, if you can cast your minds back that far, Paula Wolfert who is great on Middle Eastern food, Ainsley Harrriot and Rose Gray.

Oh no! I've run out of Amazon capsules! So here are the last five picks of Celebrity Chef cookbooks:

Gary Rhodes Lorraine Pascale Lorraine Bakes. Lorraine Pascale

Mary Berry Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook

Prue Leith Leiths Cookery Bible and Quick and Easy (Confident Cooking)

I know I've enjoyed putting it together and gathering knowledge and inspiration from the great and the good. If you decide you want to plump for something completely different, my FREE, on line, interactive cookbook is there for you to add to and comment on. I'm an artist, not a chef, and have always enjoyed cooking for the family, and I love a challenge - you know the thing, how to make a meal from two eggs, a tin of chick peas and a lemon ....... Since starting my B & B though, we've had to put a decent four course, meal on the table and I've found this more than a bit of a challenge, so all my recipes are easy, simple, foolproof and don't create a load of washing up. Moreover, they are seasonal and take local and traditional Limousin recipes as a starting point. Have a look and let me know what you think, but do remember, it is an ongoing project fitted into my spare moments. Enjoy! The Les Trois Chenes Recipe Book - How to Cook Seasonal Dishes

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