Scotsman Books of the Year: Food

Wrap up warm, stay at home and curl up by the fire with the best of this year’s crop of cookbooks. In The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria (Phaidon, £19.95), Heston Blementhal’s mentor explains what he cooks up for the staff every day in his star-studded restaurant: the deal is 31 seasonal three-course menus along the lines of noodle soup with mussels, nothing fancy, quantities adjusted to serve from two to 75 people, plus step-by-step storyboards.

Meanwhile in Heston Blumenthal At Home (Bloomsbury, £30), our very own gastronomic superstar deconstructs the perfect prawn cocktail, the fault-free roast chicken and (mysterious alchemy) the ultimate thrice-cooked chip – and that’s before you tackle his liquorice-poached salmon and sea bass with vanilla butter. Jamie Oliver also comes home in Great Britain (Michael Joseph £30): Scottish offerings include barley and leek risotto, venison and pheasant hash and the mysteriously named Ecclefechan tart – a Christmassy custard pie packed with dried fruit and brown sugar.

History buffs and enthusiasts for the contents of prehistoric middens will find plenty that’s newly excavated in Colin Spencer’s From Microliths to Microwaves: the Evolution of British Agriculture in Food and Cooking (Grub Street, £20) – a thoughtful book and a good one.

As indeed is Clarissa Dickson Wright’s admirable History of English Food (Random House, £25) – never mind that the storyline stays south of the Border, it’s sparkling stuff. Then bring yourself bang up to date with journalist Andrew Webb’s reassuringly optimistic Food Britannia (Random House, £25), which covers much the same territory, but in modern times.

But the year’s big news, in size, glamour and influence, is techno-billionaire Nathan Myhrvold’s six-volume Modernist Cuisine (The Cooking Lab), the ultimate how-to of what we must no longer call molecular gastronomy (Heston and Ferran and all those who practise 20-course tasting-menus in the form of art-on-a-plate have moved onwards and upwards). Myhrvold was Bill Gates’ techie in the early days at Microsoft, from whence, it might be assumed, came his first million, which might explain why he could manage to maintain a project which took seven years and numerous aides to deliver 2,400 pages of exactly what happens when stir-fry jumps in the pan. Never again will there be such fabulous photos, illuminatory science and a chance to deliver such perfect results – and all for the price of a brand new laptop (£395 – what did you expect?).

Just in time for a white Christmas, René Redzepi of Copenhagen’s Noma delivers snowman gastronomy in Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine (Phaidon, £35). As chef- patron of what’s universally acknowledged as the world’s best restaurant, Redzepi serves food which tastes as exquisite as it looks. Dishes are beautifully photographed with every element defined, recipes are surprisingly do-able, and ingredients, give or take a spot of seashore foraging and a touch of deep-fried reindeer moss, unexpectedly straightforward.

Armchair gourmets of a more traditional bent will welcome Giorgio Locatelli’s Made in Sicily (Harper Collins, £30), the result of a late-blossoming love affair with the Mediterranean’s most exotic island: gorgeous photos illuminate authentically regional recipes from caponata to cassata to Sicilian fish couscous (blame it on the pirates of Tunisia). More entertaining traveller’s tales are to be found in designer-cook-artist Jake Tilson’s gorgeous fish book, In at the Deep End (Quadrille, £20). The story is told via evocative text and snapshot photos patched together scrapbook-style from Venice to Tokyo via Aberdeen: Scottish favourites range from salmon pudding, soused herrings and smoked mackerel pâté to partan bree. Meanwhile, Bill Grainger’s Everyday Asian (Quadrille, £20) gives the lowdown on all things familiar and oriental, from pad thai to egg-fried rice.

Francophiles will find much to amuse and inform in The Table Comes First (Quercus, £18.99), a collection of witty essays on adventures in the restaurant trade by New York Times columnist Adam Gopnik. US-born Monsieur Gopnik lives in Paris and eats everything you’ve ever heard of and plenty you haven’t: things you need to know are that the first restaurateur plied his trade in the Tuilleries circa 1789; the Celler de Can Roca in Gerona has the best dessert-chef on the planet; and the dernier cri in the land of Marie-Antoinette is urban-aubergiste (sophisticated rustic, as you ask). Talking of eating cake, Dan Leopard’s Short and Sweet (Fourth Estate, £25) would make a baker out of the most cack-handed novice: the man’s a genius – he tells you not only what to do and how to do it, but how to make it work.

From the thinner end of the wedge – pocket-size but punching well above its weight – pack your best beloved Christmas stocking with Reaktion Books’ small and scholarly hardbacks, neat as a pin and thoroughly collectable in their smart cream jackets: previous titles include Bee Wilson on Sandwiches, Nichola Humble on Cake and Nichola Fletcher on Caviar. The latest is William Rubel’s Bread (Reaktion, £10.99) – history, travelogue, well-tested recipes and 100-bread glossary. Also worthy of stocking space is Penguin’s paperback extracts from oldies-but-goodies (Penguin Great Food series, £6.99): among small pleasures from the likes of Hannah Glass, Gervase Markham, Elizabeth David and Samuel Pepys are such arcane delights as Dr AW Chase’s Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding – at home on the range at the end of the 19th century.

But the award for stocking-stuffer of the year goes to Blandine Vié’s Testicles: Balls in Cooking and Culture (Prospect, £20). First published in French and elegantly translated by distinguished culinary historian Giles MacDonagh, find out all you’ll ever need to know (and quite bit you don’t) about the mythology, literature and gastronomy of the gonad. Wrap it up prettily for your new best friend and pop it under the tree.

• Elisabeth Luard’s new book, A Cook’s Year in A Welsh Farmhouse, is published by Bloomsbury, priced £25.