Cooking by the book

What cookbooks do chefs and foodies reach for? Alana Rae asks some of our culinary leaders about their favourite tomes.

- Alana Rae

1. JULIE BIUSO chef, food writer, author

Anything by Elizabeth David, Constance Spry or Madhur Jaffrey

I'm not sure I can choose just one book! Food writing was more about a story back when I started buying books, rather than the recipe formula it is today. People knew stuff, and by today's standards, there are huge gaps in the recipes. And there were no photographs. Success came down to your innate knowledge, your interpretation of the words and your intuition. Back in the early 1970s, my friends and I discovered Elizabeth David. She became our culinary guru and we worked our way slavishly through her French and Italian books, transported by the evocative stories.

Claudia Roden's books came next and we delved into Turkish, Egyptian, Lebanese and Moroccan food. In 1976, it was all about Cordon Bleu. I studied at the London school and the course book, The Constance Spry Cookery Book, based on English and French classic cookery, was a tome of knowledge. By the late 1970s, Marcella Hazan became a leading guide for my growing interest in Italian food. And Madhur Jaffrey's Indian books helped develop an interest in spice. They are all bibles! I rarely open these books now. I don't need to. I know their contents intimately, having absorbed the essence of them years ago. In a way, they are part of my cooking DNA.

2. MARTIN BOSLEY chef, food writer, founder of Yellow Brick Road 

Roast Chicken And Other Stories: The Most Useful Cookbook of All Time, by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham