Here are our top ten cookbooks of the year, voted for by Readings staff. Displayed in no particular order.

A Modern Way to Cook: Over 150 Quick, Smart and Flavour-Packed Recipes for Every Day by Anna Jones

The quirky and successful food blogger extraordinaire is back with another collection of delicious, healthy, inspiring vegetarian recipes. Jones’s no-fuss, no-mess approach is refreshing and accessible. I love that the book is divided into time slots (recipes for under 15, 20, 30 or 40 minutes) as this type of practical assistance makes life easier, and to be honest, better.

Simply Nigella: Feel Good Food by Nigella Lawson

Busy woman Lawson has again ticked the trend. She has generated a book that seems to create time out of thin air by developing an extensive collection of recipes that produce wickedly good results in a short amount of time. There are dishes for crowds, for family and for wonderful solitary television evenings. This book, as you would expect, is luscious and practical.

New Kitchen by Karen Martini

Here Martini focuses on bringing international food trends into our everyday meal plan. She manages to interpret puzzling grains, pulses and various other trends into readily accessible feast ideas for you, your family and for fancy times. Melbourne-based Martini is a wonder woman at making the seemingly difficult into easy bite-sized steps.

Tokyo Cult Recipes by Maori Murota

This book is nearly as good as heading over to experience the wonders of Toyko. A celebration of food, culture and place, here are 100 dishes from that city of paradoxes. And here is the great news – none of the recipes here are complicated nor require a vast knowledge of Japanese cuisine. This collection aims to demystify and to inspire.

The Great Australian Cookbook by Various

What a ripper of an idea: gather 100 of Australia’s finest cooks, chefs, bakers and local heroes and ask them to share their favourite at-home recipes. The result is a tremendous collection of 165 recipes, from classics to contemporary cuisine that display Australia’s diversity and regional produce.

Nopi: The Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully

Aspirational and delicious, this cookbook, drawn from Ottolenghi’s famous restaurant, is for those that want to impress, can impress and are impressive. The flavour combinations are innovative and successful, the plating up steps are an elegant work of art. Accept the challenge and enjoy the journey.

The Moroccan Soup Bar: Recipes of a Spoken Menu and a Little Bit of Spice by Hana Assafiri

The famous Moroccan Soup Bar is not just an urban myth – and this tremendous cookbook is the proof. Here is a collection of recipes that make The Moroccan Soup Bar brilliant. Reading this book is like spending a long delicious afternoon drinking sweet tea with owner and chef Assafiri. The book is a slice of Melbourne’s history and an ode to our global collective.

Mr. Wilkinson’s Simply Dressed Salads: A Cookbook to Celebrate the Seasons by Matt Wilkinson

Wilkinson’s book is not promoting a new-fangled idea, but rather a collection of salad recipes that feel as fresh as a new spring of rosemary. The recipes in Simply Dressed Salads are based on sourcing the finest and freshest garden produce to make unpretentious dishes that could be either part of a meal or indeed the full monty.

David Herbert’s Best Home Cooking by David Herbert

Herbert has chosen the recipes for this fine assembly by conducting a nationwide focus group study. Well, that may be an exaggeration, but certainly he has selected the most requested recipes from his column in the Weekend Australian. Every meal and occasion is covered in this no-frills no-fuss testimony to fine good eating.

Luke Nguyen’s France by Luke Nguyen

Luke Nyugen celebrates the impact of French cuisine on Vietnamese food, but is also honouring his Vietnamese roots by exploring the regions where it all started. The upshot is a luscious assemblage of French–Vietnamese fusion food that seems pretty much perfect for our palates and our environment.