HOW TO BE A MASTER CHEF: It's been a year of mouth-watering cookbooks. JANE SHILLING samples the best...

Christmas is traditionally a time of gastronomic stress, both for the person in the kitchen, slaving to produce a festive feast, and for everyone else, waiting in nervous anticipation of the inevitable culinary meltdown.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Cooking should be about love, and laughter and sharing, and if you don’t know how to begin and wouldn’t know a mandolin slicer from a Hammond organ (a clue: only one of these is a kitchen implement) not to worry. There are people out there who can help.

MARY BERRY'S COOKERY COURSE (Dorling Kindersley £25)

This really does show you how to boil an egg (four minutes in gently boiling water. Make a teeny pin-hole in the end before you start).
Once you’ve cracked that one (so to speak), it’s a steady upwards curve towards more sophisticated stuff. In no time you’ll be whipping up oven-poached salmon with chilli mayonnaise, with lemon and lime cheesecake for afters. As you’d expect from Mary, Queen of the Great British Bake-off, there is a splendid section on puddings and baking.

LEITH'S HOW TO COOK (Quadrille £30)

A classic for aspiring and accomplished cooks alike, with easy-to-follow recipes and clear explanations of techniques from the most basic (chopping an onion) to advanced (boning a leg of lamb).
It offers a huge range of recipes, with old favourites (pheasant with whisky, steak and kidney pudding) and more exotic fare (Za’atar crusted prawns with bulgar salad, Moroccan lamb tagine). Beautifully designed, with elegant photographs, How To Cook will become a cherished kitchen friend.

SATURDAY KITCHEN COOKING BIBLE (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £20.00)

Fans of James Martin’s Saturday morning cookery show on BBC1 will relish this cheerful compendium of recipes by James and his celebrity chef guests. 
With appetising photographs and recipes that are tasty, but mostly simple to prepare, this is the book you need when you’re stuck for a supper idea (how about spicy chicken with cucumber and cashew salad?), or want to treat your sweetheart to a special breakfast (salmon, eggs and Irish potato bread should do the trick).

SAVE WITH JAMIE BY JAMIE OLIVER (Michael Joseph £26)

Jamie is a great advocate of culinary economy. His best-selling 30-Minute Meals showed us how to make meals that are speedy but satisfying.
Now his new book promises big flavours for less than the cost of a takeaway. Sections on veg, chicken, beef, pork, lamb and fish offer ‘mothership’ recipes for big but economical Sunday roasts, with inspired ideas for whipping up feasts from the leftovers. Calorie counts for each dish are useful if you’re weight-watching.

FAST COOKING BY JAMES MARTIN (Quadrille £20)

James Martin recommends shop-bought stocks, ready-made custard and even instant mashed potatoes as short cuts to quick, delcious meals.
‘If I’m honest,’ he writes, ‘this is the food I really cook at home.’ Among his collection of 100 dishes that take less than 20 minutes to prepare are such sophisticated delights as summer vegetable vodka tempura with aioli, Singapore chilli crab and baked chocolate and raspberry mousse.

EAT BY NIGEL SLATER (Fourth Estate £26)

Nigel Slater’s first book was Real Fast Food - a collection of foodie alternatives to takeaways. A couple of decades later, he returns to the idea with a book of quick dishes intended to be ‘straightforward and within the grasp of most of us’.
Rather daringly, he presents his recipes ‘in the style of an extended tweet’. That is, he isn’t clinically specific about quantities, and ends each recipe with a poetic thought, as in ‘The scrunch of hazelnuts’, for a combination of potatoes, hazelnuts and egg yolks. An acquired taste, but one worth acquiring.

TAPAS REVOLUTION BY OMAR ALLIBHOY (Ebury Press £20)

When it comes to whizzing up tasty snacks, the Spanish are the original experts, with their tradition of tapas - delicious bite-sized mouthfuls to share with friends over a glass of wine.
Omar Allibhoy started the restaurant chain, Tapas Revolution, and his book of simple-to-prepare Spanish soul food contains a vibrant mixture of traditional favourites (paella Valenciana) and unusual combinations (chocolate and olive truffles). I wonder what  his mum will think about his revelation that she’s not the most gifted of cooks!

LITTLE FRENCH KITCHEN BY RACHEL KHOO (Michael Joseph £20)

Rachel Khoo’s beguiling first cookbook, The Little Paris Kitchen, proved that it is possible to cook wonderful food with the most low-tech equipment (she had a miniature oven and a two-ring hob).
For her second book she ventures outside Paris to explore the regional cuisine of France, with modern twists on traditional recipes including lamb and oysters from Brittany, Provencal veal stew, Lyonnais sausage and kidney pie and Christmassy snowball biscuits from Alsace.

MANGE TOUT BY BRUNO LOUBET (Ebury Press £25)

Bruno Loubet grew up in the Gironde region of south-western France. His grandmother used to say, ‘A good soup brings the men home!’ And Bruno’s childhood was permeated with the savoury scents of home cooking.
His book is a collection of his favourite recipes, collected over 50 years of cooking and eating in France, England and Australia. Among other unusual ideas are lamb shoulder pot-roasted in fig leaves, partridge with ginger and soy Brussels sprouts and an irresistible prune and armagnac sticky pudding.

PORK: PREPARING, CURING AND COOKING ALL THAT'S POSSIBLE FROM A PIG (Kyle Books £25)

It has been said that you can cook every part of a pig except the squeal, and Phil Vickery and Simon Boddy set about proving the truth of the old maxim in their delightful book.
Handsomely bound in black-and-white striped ticking, with lots of photographs of adorable porkers, this toothsome volume offers an eclectic range of recipes for preparing pork, ham, bacon and sausages, as well as some lesser-known cuts. Tail soup with jumbo couscous and cabbage, and twice-cooked trotters with mango chutney glaze look surprisingly tasty.

THE WHOLE COW BY CHRISTOPHER TROTTER AND MAGGIE RAMSAY (Pavilion Books £25)

The roast beef of old England is all very well - but do you prefer it on or off the bone? Rib roast or sirloin? And what about those other traditional favourites, boiled beef and dumplings and steak and oyster pie?
Christopher Trotter and Maggie Ramsay’s book offers recipes for every cut of beef, from tongue to tail. They even give a recipe for home-made corned beef and, for the more experimentally inclined, an Alsatian recipe for tripe with Riesling, and a method for roast marrow bones from Fergus Henderson’s restaurant, St John.

SIMON HOPKINSON COOKS (Ebury Press £25)

Sometimes the act of cooking is as much fun as consuming the end result.
In his new book, the chef Simon Hopkinson writes that ‘cooking is my joy’, and his enthusiasm shines through his book, which presents a series of beautifully balanced menus for different occasions - a celebratory dinner with oysters, truffle omelette and steak; a weekend breakfast with baked mushrooms, veal kidneys and kedgeree. He even suggests apperitifs and digestifs, including an exquisite Champagne cocktail.

THE FRENCH KITCHEN BY MICHEL ROUX JNR (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £25)

With recipes for every kind of exotic cuisine available at the click of a mouse, classic French cookery has fallen a little out of fashion.
But Michel Roux’s lovely collection of French soul food is guaranteed to seduce us all over again. It has its exotic moments (there is a recipe for deep-fried cockscombs: ‘You’ll be surprised how good they taste’). But the Gallic charm of these recipes is irresistible, as are the culinary aphorisms with which they are embellished: ‘You have to love either what you are going to eat, or the person you are cooking for’ is my favourite.

GASTRONOMY OF ITALY BY ANNA DEL CONTE (Pavilion Books £30)

Anna Del Conte is the grandmother of Italian cookery, and her comprehensively updated and handsomely illustrated dictionary of Italian gastronomy is reassuringly authoritative, covering everything from abbacchio (baby lamb) to zuppa inglese (Italian trifle).
If Anna says that ragu alla bolognese has to be cooked for two hours, and should be served with tagliatelle, or to make lasagne, but never with spaghetti, you wouldn’t dare to argue.

RICK STEIN'S INDIA (BBC Books £25)

I love the bit in Rick Stein’s introduction to his vibrant new cookbook where he writes about visiting a spice wholesaler in Kerala: ‘He was the grumpiest person I’ve met for a long time but his spices were magnificent’.
You might conclude from his telly appearances that dear old Rick and his spice wholesaler were well matched in the grumpiness department. But the recipes are so inspiring, and the photographs  of the dishes, and of the Indian kitchens where Rick collected his recipes, so alluring that you’ll want to start cooking right away.

SPICE ODYSSEY BY PAUL MERRETT (Kyle Books £19.99)

Michelin-starred chef Paul Merrett was born on the spice island of Zanzibar and sweetly dedicates his book to his mum, Delphine, ‘friend, culinary inspiration and enthusiastic consumer of all things spicy’.
Spicy doesn’t have to mean hot: Merrett’s eclectic collection includes a very traditional English recipe for potted shrimps with nutmeg and mace, and brandysnaps flavoured with orange and poppy seed. For ambitious cooks who like to combine domestic science with DIY, he even gives instructions for a home-made tandoor oven with which to prepare his chicken tandoori wrap.

SWEET THINGS BY ANNIE RIGG (Kyle Books £16.99)

Remember sherbert dip dabs? Peppermint candy canes? Coconut marshmallows? And peanut butter cups? Annie Rigg’s amazing book of homemade sweeties shows you how to recreate the flavours of childhood in your own kitchen.
There are sections on chocolate, marshmallows, caramels, nougat and hard candy. Alongside the nostalgic treats are some very grown-up treats including Earl Grey tea truffles and cherry brandy fudge. ‘Sweets are most certainly not an essential food group,’ Annie writes. ‘But they do make life more delicious.’ How right she is.

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