Ten Great Books about Food and Drink

1st January 2023

There are many titles on the TripFiction site that are specifically about Food and Drink. They are set right around the world and cover memoirs, amazing eating experiences and even recipes. Reading them really does expand your horizons of food and geography – savour them both. Here are ten of our absolute favourites. Ten great books about Food and Drink.

The Risotto Guru by Laura Fraser – ITALY

A Sardinian wedding feast, the search for the perfect seaside pasta with wild fennel, meeting a risotto master: Laura Fraser journeys from the Spaghettis of her American childhood to savor the best of Italian cuisine and the culture that cooked it up. Using the same dreamy, delicious type of prose that made An Italian Affair a best-selling memoir, these essays will delight readers who loved that book, and all who love Italian food and culture. Sumptuous descriptions of Italian meals—and the passion that goes into them—make this e-book a mouthwatering, uplifting pleasure. In “Italy in 17 Courses,” Fraser uses the pace and order of the dishes in a wedding feast to muse on her own introduction to Italian food, and how it changed her from a diet-obsessed vegetarian to a pasta and pancetta connoisseur. “An Affair to Remember” explores themes of food and nostalgia, and how a good meal can lift the spirit.

Afternoons in Ithaca by Spiri Tsintziras – ITHACA, GREECE 

A charming memoir of self-discovery, family, connection and the power of a tomato. ‘I remember crusty just-baked bread, rubbed with juicy tomato flesh, swimming in a puddle of thick green olive oil. I am seven years old. I sit on a stool in my grandmother’s house. It is the height of summer in a seaside village in the south of Greece. We little Aussies devour ‘tomato sandwiches’ as the family chats and laughs and swats flies …’ From the first heady taste of tomatoes on home-baked bread in her mother’s village in Petalidi, to sitting at a taverna some 30 years later in Ithaka with her young family, Spiri Tsintziras goes on a culinary, creative and spiritual journey that propels her back and forth between Europe and Australia. These evocative, funny and poignant stories explore how food and culture, language and music, and people and their stories help to create a sense of meaning and identity.

The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran by Jennifer Klinec – IRAN

In her thirties, Jennifer Klinec abandons a corporate job to launch a cooking school from her London flat. Raised in Canada to Hungarian-Croatian parents, she has already travelled to countries most people are fearful of, in search of ancient recipes. Her quest leads her to Iran where, hair discreetly covered and eyes modest, she is introduced to a local woman who will teach her the secrets of the Persian kitchen.

Vahid, her son, is suspicious of the strange foreigner who turns up in his mother’s kitchen; he is unused to seeing an independent woman. But a compelling attraction pulls them together and then pits them against harsh Iranian laws and customs.

Getting under the skin of one of the most complex and fascinating nations on earth, The Temporary Bride is a soaring story of being loved, being fed, and the struggle to belong.

Eat the City by Robin Shulman – NEW YORK, USA

New York is not a city for growing and manufacturing food. It’s a money and real estate city, with less naked earth and industry than high-rise glass and concrete. Yet in this intimate, visceral, and beautifully written book, Robin Shulman introduces the people of New York City – both past and present – who do grow vegetables, butcher meat, fish local waters, cut and refine sugar, keep bees for honey, brew beer, and make wine. In the most heavily built urban environment in the country, she shows an organic city full of intrepid and eccentric people who want to make things grow. What’s more, Shulman artfully places today’s urban food production in the context of hundreds of years of history, and traces how we got to where we are.

In these pages meet Willie Morgan, a Harlem man who first grew his own vegetables in a vacant lot as a front for his gambling racket. And David Selig, a beekeeper in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn who found his bees making a mysteriously red honey. Get to know Yolene Joseph, who fishes crabs out of the waters off Coney Island to make curried stews for her family. Meet the creators of the sickly sweet Manischewitz wine, whose brand grew out of Prohibition: and Jacob Ruppert, who owned a beer empire on the Upper East Side, as well as the New York Yankees.

Fragrant Heart by Miranda Emmerson – CHINA, SOUTH EAST ASIA

We buy food we can point to. We stalk the streets until rush hour and wait for the little hatches to open in the sides of restaurants. From the steamy openings, cooks in overalls sell jiaozi (dumplings) and bowls of thick, sticky, white congee – an unholy cross between soup and porridge. Baozi, steamed white buns, are light as air. I buy them filled with water spinach and nettle – delicious dipped in sharp, black Chinese vinegar. In 2008, Miranda and her partner set off for one last big adventure before settling down. They chose to travel through South-East Asia. All did not go to plan: Asian flu, falling off boats and the general chaos of a life abroad challenged them at every step, and yet, in the midst of it all, they fell in love with the culture and culinary delights of China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia.

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel – COAHUILA, MEXICO

The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit – and recipes.

A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her. For the next twenty-two years Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.

Andina by Martin Morales – PERU

Andina is the cuisine of the Andes of Peru. Welcome to one of the most contemporary yet ancient cuisines in the world. Featuring over 110 delicious and unfussy recipes accompanied by fascinating stories, dazzling photography and beautiful paintings, Andina is the first ever book to capture the food and scenery of the Andes and the spirit of its people and traditions.

Andina also signifies a dish, an ingredient or a lady from the Andes. Martin Morales’s grandmother was an andina and here he pays homage to her and all the women chefs (picanteras) who have shaped this soulful and traditional cuisine, which is at the heart of Peruvian food.

For the last 15 years, Martin has travelled throughout the Peruvian Andes to collect simple, traditional recipes, magical stories and culinary inspiration. With dishes dating back thousands of years, alongside new creations by Martin Morales and his team of chefs who run the award-winning Andina restaurants, Andina’s recipes have big flavours, vibrant colour and are simple to cook at home. From light, raw dishes to hearty stews and soups; cheeky bites to exquisite roasts; and sweet, aromatic desserts to comforting hot drinks, Andina presents authentic, nutritious all-day and all-year-round food made with seasonal ingredients.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver – COLORADO, USA

“We wanted to live in a place that could feed us: where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles up right out of the ground.”

Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. Inspired by the flavours and culinary arts of a local food culture, they explore many a farmers market and diversified organic farms at home and across the country.

With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the centre of the political and family agenda. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is part memoir, part journalistic investigation, and is full of original recipes that celebrate healthy eating, sustainability and the pleasures of good food.

Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard – PARIS, FRANCE

Has a meal ever changed your life? Part love story, part wine-splattered cookbook, Lunch in Paris is a deliciously tart, forthright and funny story of falling in love with a Frenchman and moving to the world’s most romantic city – not the Hollywood version, but the real Paris, a heady mix of blood sausage, pains aux chocolats and irregular verbs. From gutting her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen) to discovering the French version of Death by Chocolate, Elizabeth Bard finds that learning to cook and building a new life have a lot in common. Peppered with recipes, this mouth-watering love story is the perfect treat for anyone who has ever suspected that lunch in Paris could change their life.

A Late Dinner by Paul Richardson – SPAIN

In this vivid and humorous journey, Richardson takes us past the cliches of paella and gazpacho to tell the real story of Spain’s mouth-watering food, from the typical coastal cuisine to the shepherd cooking of the interior and the chic ‘urban’ food of Madrid and Barcelona. Along the way he gets caught up in a fish auction and the annual pig slaughter, spends a day at El Bulli restaurant and makes a never-ending stream of new friends.

Enjoy your culinary trip around the world!

Tony for the TripFiction team

Join Team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)

Subscribe to future blog posts