top of page

5 Cookbooks I've got on Rotation for 2025

Writer's picture: DottyDotty

Each year when January rolls around I find myself drawn back to my cookbook collection. I’ve usually got one or two new titles to add to the collection, and, whilst finding them a spot on the shelf, I inevitably find myself thumbing through the beautiful photographs and recipes. Instead of putting the books away, I take more off the shelf and add them to the pile by my bed….. oops.

January is a bit of a quieter time for me in with Dotty in the Kitchen too which means that I have more time to cook at home. Often when I’m cooking a lot at work, I come home and throw together quick, tasty meals hashed together from unusual collections of leftovers. Whilst I love this freestyle, chaotic way of cooking, It can also be lovely to put myself in the hands of someone else’s recipe.


Here are five cook books that I have caught my eye for 2025. These aren’t all new books; they’re just the ones that speak to what I’m craving and how I want to cook this year.

 



1)        Mezcla by Ixta Belfrage


I first coveted this cook book at a friend’s house. A group of us were staying for the weekend and a couple more were coming over for dinner that night. We agreed that we would cook something lovely together and I was drawn to the bright and exciting colours of this book. I’d followed Ixta on Instagram for a while so already knew that I liked her bold and creative style but the book exceeded expectations. For me, the first recipe in a book tells you so much about the book. I hate it when the first recipe is something like a cold salad- something you just whip together with no real imagination or preparation. Maybe that’s meant to reassure people that this book will be approachable and easy to follow but honestly it’s a real turn off for me.


The first recipe in Mezcla is a far cry from a simple salad.  Cheesy Roasted Aubergines with Salsa Roja. YES PLEASE. The ingredients list goes all the way down the side of the first page and includes delightful names such as “gruyere” “double cream” and “habanero chilli”. We knew we had to cook this dish. It was as good as we’d hoped. Absolute knock out.


Other recipes that tickle my fancy are Sweet and Sour Celery, Fish Poached in Charred Tomato Broth and Roasted Cabbage with Mango and Harissa. The fusion of different flavours and techniques in this book is genuinely exciting and the photography is so enticing. I can’t wait to cook more from this book.


2)        Thali by Maunika Gowardhan


This book has quickly become my Indian food bible. I love these recipes. If I’d written this list last year, I think Thali would also have been on the list then too. Everything I’ve cooked from it has been delicious and the recipes have always worked perfectly. My husband, who by his own admission gets easily stressed by recipes and is by no means a natural cook, has cooked from this book on more than one occasion to great success.


We love the Stir Fired Paneer and Pepper in a Kadhai Masala (incidentally, the first recipe in the book. Spice and cheese is clearly my thing), Home Style Chicken Curry, and the Turmeric and Mustard Fish Curry.


If I don’t know what to cook, this is usually the first book I pick up. If you’re the kind of person who has a spice drawer teeming with bits and bobs, you’ll probably be able to find just the thing you’re craving and you’ll more than likely have the ingredients you need to whip it up.

I also gave this book to my dad as a father’s day gift a couple of years ago and it went down so well. It’s a great one for gifting, too.


3)        Easy Wins by Anna Jones


Easy Wins is another vegetarian cookery book from Anna Jones and it joins my shelf along with two of her other titles. Although I love her books – her style of writing and organising books really speaks to a home cook, I think – I don’t cook from them as much as I would like. When it’s the depths of winter, or I’m busy I fall into that constant rut of basing my cooking around a protein and a carb which often means I don’t eat as much vegetarian food as I feel that I should as someone who cares about sustainable eating.


So, this book speaks to the kind of cook that I hope to be in 2025. Easy Wins is centred around 12 of Anna’s store cupboard staples – olive oil, lemons, garlic, tomato, chili and capers, for example. I too have most of these ingredients knocking around at home most of the time so this book has been more well used (so far) than some of her others. The other week I made Smoked Chilli Cornbread from the book as a weeknight dinner for some friends who were popping around. It turned out wonderfully and was certainly very different to the usually thing I whip up last minute on a Thursday night.


I’ve also got my eye on Squash and Smoked Chilli Empanadas (chilli and cheese… again) and Caper Bring Margarita.


4)        The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan


This is a weighty tome of a cookbook, densely packed with recipes as there are no pictures. I feel that it speaks volumes about the clarity of the writing that there are so many recipes that I want to make even without glossy photographs to sell them to me.


I love the simplicity of some of the recipes in this book. For example, there’s a recipe for Fennel Salad which is just fennel, salt, extra virgin oil and pepper. Hardly a recipe at all really. But when you pair that simple dish with another – perhaps the Baked Sea Bass Stuffed with Shellfish and freshly made pasta it’s suddenly sheer decadence and delight.


This book feels somehow nostalgic too. The recipes seem to speak of a different time. A time when everyone could cook and fast food meant buttered spaghetti with rosemary and garlic and a fresh green salad. Perhaps that time never really existed apart from in the imaginations of food obsessives like me. I enjoy the fantasy nonetheless.



5)        Tartine by Chad Robertson


We’re baking like it’s 2020 again in my kitchen this year. My lockdown sourdough starter is long gone, but I’ve began a new one this January.


The instructions Tartine are comprehensively detailed: the recipe for a simple loaf of bread with just three ingredients spans over a dozen pages and yet I am still to master the art of baking a loaf. I have tried, on and off, since around 2017 to no avail. My dough is too wet, too dry, too sticky, too active, not active enough. I find the process labourious and time consuming. I don’t know how anyone manages to make baking sourdough a part of their normal lives and I feel that I am more committed to cooking than some!


Will 2025 be the year I finally master sourdough? The optimist in me wants to say yes, but I suspect the reality will be no. The book lies open on my kitchen counter as I write and my first two loaves of the year are proving on the side waiting to go into the oven for the bake but I can already tell that they have stuck – perhaps irrevocably- to their baskets so I’m not terribly optimistic.

-

2025 is also the year I launch something I’ve been toying with for a while: Dotty’s Cook Book Club. I love reading cookbooks, cooking and chatting about what I’m cooking and if you do too then I would love to meet you.

The premise is simple: each month we will choose one book, cook from it, eat from it and chat about it. You’ll have the chance to share your favourite cook books and foodie tips with people who share your love for all things food.

The first event is on Friday 21st February and I would love to see you there. You can get your tickets here.

Comments


bottom of page