My favourite cookbooks bought last year

I guess by now we´re all tired out by best of 2010 lists, but never mind.

Here are the favourite cookbooks I bought last year. I´ve gone a little crazy with the whole Amazon free super saver shipping and ordered more stuff than makes sense, but these are good books (by the way most links are not to Amazon but to reviews or interviews):

Kitchenella- chock full of good recipes, thoughtful texts and sound advice. A touch stern, maybe even a bit chippy, but never mind. It´s a great book to start cooking from, though I suspect that being long on text and short on (stunning) photos, it will appeal to the converted.

Momofuku- a cheffy book, yes, but fun to read, and full of dishes you might try.

River cottage everyday- very British, but helpful now that I live in Scotland. Otherwise I wouldn´t know what to do with all these parsnips and turnips and barley and such.

Mad Hungry- feeding men and boys. With a son born in Febuary, I couldn´t resist, but it´s a great book for everyone. Sensible, delicious food, and no namby pamby portions, or unrealistic stuff like quails.

Cooking under pressure- A great starting point for a pressure cooker neophite. Later you come to adjust things to your taste, but it´s way more reliable than the strangely transtlated booklet that came with my WMF Perfect.

I don´t really include Nigella Lawson´s latest because I don´t think it her best, but of course I´ve read it from cover to cover.

Now for books that I have read but not cooked from, yet:

In the kitchen with a good appetite- My first Kindle cookbook, and likely the last. The format is no good for a cookery book, even one without photos. I like something I can splash sauce onto. Still, the text is good and there´s a lot I want to try.

Food from plenty- lovely photos, format, friendly headnotes, the works. It´s full of little post it stickers, and I don´t know why I haven´t taken it into the kitchen yet. But I will, surely.

I found a second hand copy of The French menu cookbook, touted as the best of all time by the Observer. It´s pure fantasy, of course, but lovely to read about exquisite menus I will never, ever, for a nanosecond, consider cooking.

The last is not a cookbook proper, but is the most fun of the whole list. The flavour Thesaurus is the perfect book to keep on the nightstand. Chock full of information, delivered in a way that makes you think you´d always known that. Brilliant one-liners, too, perfect for trotting out on the unsuspecting.