What makes a great cookbook? 5 top choices

What makes a good recipe? Kathleen Griffin should know – she ploughed her way through piles of them before settling on the Guild of Food Writers Cookbook of the Year

The phone rings. It’s Caroline Yates from the Guild of Food Writers. I’ve been asked to be a judge in the awards for the cookery book of the year. I’m frantically busy in the pre-Christmas rush but judging won’t start until January and it sounds like great fun.

Back from the post-Christmas break to discover piles of books waiting for me. We five judges are to establish an initial shortlist of about twenty books with sixty books to choose from. Not as difficult as it sounds, though – there is a clear division between culinary sheep and goats.

So how can you tell? The duffers have clearly been thought up by committee, driven by fashion. This year: Mediterranean books, stir-fry and vegetarian, with an amazing number from Australia.

Impossible ingredients are another clue. My cupboard is well stocked with herbs, spices and all sorts of unusual ingredients. So there is nothing more infuriating when looking at a recipe to find you are missing five of the ingredients. Or instructions like ‘use your own home-made reduced stock’. Not in this lifetime, pal.

Celebrity chef books are tricky – chefs tend to forget that not everyone has fifteen eager assistants longing to chop, reduce sauces and wash up every item in the kitchen. Another rule of thumb – if you have to use more than six kitchen utensils, the book hits the ‘no’ pile with a firm thud.

The cult of the celebrity is another personal no-no. I want my cookery books to be about cooking and I’m not hugely interested if Gary Rhodes’ ‘stomach gets upset if I can’t eat a good rice pudding.’ Sorry Gary. Then there’s cliché central. Ainsley Harriot’s ‘if you like a bit on the side’ as an introduction to a recipe for chutney. Plus photos of Ainsley Harriot reading the paper in a trendy café. Sorry, Ainsley.

When you know about food, you can read a recipe like a map. That’s where the excellent books stand out. It looks great, the layout is easy on the eye and the writing makes you want to put your apron on.

By the time I’ve taken out the duffers, I’m left with about thirty books, some of which are there just because they are a bit quirky. There’s Noshe Djan, a book about Afghan cooking. I really like this one because the author, Helen Saberi, is clearly passionate about Afghan food, has done a lot of research and the recipes look real. It goes on the ‘yes’ list for enthusiasm.

Next page: the shortlist