Following COVID, food may taste "bland, salty, sweet, or metallic," according to the National Health Service. The NHS recommends adding adding spices, herbs, and sauces to food to improve flavour. Riley says spice and heat will always help, but it's that umami that's key. "Bringing in that deep rich savoriness when you have umami-rich ingredients, they stimulate all of the all of taste buds and your palate," says Riley. "So I would always say try and get as much of umami into your food, try to add a tablespoon of miso, a tablespoon of soy sauce, grate some parmesan over that pasta, try to really push the flavours as high and as powerfully as you can." Like the café, the shop is tiny and charming and a living embodiment of the word “curated.” Their Guide to Drinking & Dining stays impeccably on brand, and honestly, you’ll feel worldlier just opening the front cover. Along with global recommendations from some of the most discerning voices, you’ll also find some extremely upscale recipes. Think pea-and-panceta croquetas from the Oldroyd, and solomillo pork with pobre potatoes from Lurra. At Life Kitchen, Riley uses five elements: aroma, umami, texture, layering, and trigeminal food sensations (the tingling, burning, and cooling feeling you get from spices). They used these five basic tastes when creating recipes for Taste and Flavour. Well, put a cape on Yotam Ottolenghi, because he is a superhero for vegetarian and vegan cooks. He is doing everything he can think of to add interest and flavor to vegetables. His cookbooks are a love letter to the taste and texture of vegetables, and his latest, Flavor, is his strongest missive to date. I think people were really interested to learn how to do typical Caribbean food at home,” says Craig, 32. “It’s been popular in the UK for a long while but isn’t on everyone’s repertoire, I suppose, and people haven’t stopped to learn how things are done. That’s been changing.”

It wasn’t long before the brothers self-published a cookbook. It did well, and their second was the subject of a bidding war. Bloomsbury got the deal – and sent them off to Jamaica so they could find out more about heritage cooking techniques and flavours to build on what they had learnt from their family. While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. When hot, add the mushrooms and pepper and fry for five to six minutes, until the mushrooms are golden brown. Add the lemon zest and juice and cook for a further one minute to allow the mushrooms to absorb some of the juice. Add the béchamel sauce and cheese, then stir occasionally, until the cheese has melted.Add the drained pasta to the sauce and combine well to coat. Add a sprinkling of parsley and enjoy. In Jamaica, things like pimento and seasoning are vital. But we’ve put our own spin on things. We’ve got coconut ramen, for example, and a pizza with a dumpling base. We’ve adapted our methods and tried to be playful and inclusive. Get Nadya’s British Food Adventure cookbook at Waterstones and Books a Million Honourable mention: Original Flava Ideal for summer, Martin Morales’s first cookbook is full of the types of recipes meant for balmy evenings in your garden, pisco sour in hand. Bonus points if you live somewhere that is not London and actually has balmy nights.

Three months of living in a closed-down London, and it’s official. I am well past ready to have a delicious meal outside of my own home, prepared by someone else. I say this with every safety caveat required—I’m not rushing to run out and breathe on strangers! I just could use a real change of pace while I stuff my face, and I live for the day where we can dine in instead of take out. In this stunning cookbook Yotam and co-writer Ixta Belfrage break down the three factors that create flavour and offer innovative vegetable dishes that deliver brand-new ingredient combinations to excite and inspire.

Summarises all the cool sauces, marinades and dressings that can be made in batches and stored for later use to spice up other meals. A new Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook is always an event, and the vegetable-based Ottolenghi Flavor is a winner.”— Julian Armstrong, Montreal Gazette In Flavor, Ottolenghi, along with his test kitchen chefs Ixta Belfrage and Tara Wigley, focus on 3 Ps: process, pairing, and produce. Add in his homemade condiments (aka his secret weapons: flavor bombs), and you can find vegetable recipes for main dishes, sides, and even desserts for the most vegetable-averse out there. Get the Monica’s Kitchen cookbook at Waterstones The Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem Quite a lot of people who have COVID find garlic, onions, eggs, roasted meats really repulsive and that's because they've got a distorted sense of smell," says Riley. They've had to develop recipes that don't include those ingredients.