When it comes to cookbooks, we were spoiled for choice in 2022 – with a whole range of colourful, mouth-watering and thought-provoking new releases coming out.
Celebrity books still reigned supreme, with Paul Hollywood, Tom Kerridge and Mary Berry all putting out new offerings to vast success, but there was also space for new voices.
Melissa Thompson’s Motherland was a particular highlight – tracing the history of Jamaican food in a delicious fashion – and special shout-out has to go to the award-winning Nistisima by Georgina Hayden, which focused on fasting food eaten by those of Orthodox faith around the Mediterranean, Middle East and in Eastern Europe.
Some more unexpected names made a splash in the food world too – with reality star Megan McKenna, actor Joe Swash and musical husband-and-wife team Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Richard Jones giving us a peek inside their kitchens. With the cost-of-living crisis biting, there’s no doubt we’ll see more budget-friendly books as we move into 2023 – like Phil Vickery’s The Canny Cook, which centred on tasty meals you can whip up from tins.
With so many books up for grabs, it’s easy for some gems to get lost in the noise. These are three phenomenal cookbooks – and recipes – from 2022 you should definitely have on your radar.
There was always going to be a lot of anticipation around North London-based chef Hasan Semay’s debut cookbook. Known as Big Has, he’s one of Jamie Oliver protégées, who trained in the Fifteen programme. It was there Has – who had previously bounced around odd jobs – settled on a career as a chef.
Like his mentor, Has is all about bringing delicious food to the masses. His Turkish Cypriot heritage is strongly felt in dishes like grilled octopus and lamb and potato kofte, and he also draws upon Mediterranean influences in crowd-pleasing recipes like cacio e pepe and fried courgette flowers. The dishes aren’t tricky but they’re full of life and soul – and with so many recipes calling for a BBQ, there are plenty to bookmark for next summer.
There’s something very relatable and authentic about Has’ debut – the pages are peppered with swearing, and you feel like he’s telling stories straight from his kitchen. And there’s a lot of range within the book, with his stories covering everything from driving to the fishmongers in Enfield, to how he learned how to light a BBQ, or how his father was drafted into the Cypriot civil war at 17.
“This is the equivalent of a Cypriot Sunday roast. In Cyprus, most houses have an outdoor wood-fired oven and this dish cooks slowly for hours with burning olive-tree logs gently smouldering,” says Big Has.
“I don’t have one (I wish I did); if you do, defo do this in there; if not, you’ll have to stick to good old-fashioned indoor oven-cooking like me.
“Now, Cypriots don’t really care about cooking chickens beautifully. They’d just put this all in a tray and stick it in the oven for hours, but as no one wants to eat sawdust chicken, I’ve stripped the recipe back and tried to get it to a point where whoever gets the breast can actually enjoy it.”
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
1 chicken, weighing 1.8kg
A bunch of thyme
800g round shallots, peeled
1.5kg Cyprus potatoes, peeled and quartered lengthways
500g sweet pointed peppers
320g long green Turkish peppers
