Written by Jean Anderson, winner of a James Beard award and contributer to Bon Appétit, Food & Wine and Gourmet (among others), this is a hefty tome, which promises both recipes and recollections, and there’s no doubt that there’s genuine passion for the food of southern America.

You can sense the “but” coming, can’t you?

My primary gripe comes in terms of the layout and design of the book. In my opinion, it is singularly bad. Very close to awful. While the typeface used for the actual recipes is quite readable, recipe titles are mock wild west which is difficult to read, serving sizes are in another typeface and the book is so cluttered with dividing lines, motifs and multicolored type that it would require the patience of a saint to sit down and read it through, let alone enjoy it.

And this is a great shame. There are all sorts of interesting tidbits throughout, including a timeline which runs in the right margin and contains diverting trivia for each year, from 1513 through to 2006. For example, did you know that Mississippi did not repeal Prohibition until 1966? There are snippets of history about various products, individuals and traditions of the South and there is a handy glossary at the end.

The book begins with ‘How to Use This Book.’ I found this incredibly patronizing. For example, “Do not use one ingredient in place of another unless a recipe suggests substitutions.” Novice, or inexperienced, cooks are unlikely to do so as they are so hesitant, so unsure (this is from personal observation), whereas people comfortable in the kitchen are unlikely to heed this warning. And a cookbook that suggests that one buy powdered or liquid pasteurized egg whites for making meringue?! The prize for condescension goes to: “If you still make your own pastry, good for you.” Yes, actually, good for me. In my food processor, a batch of pastry takes about 5 minutes to produce. It need contain nothing, no E-numbers, no trans fats, other than flour, butter and/or lard, free range eggs and a splash of water. And the last thing I want is a pat on the head about it! Encourage your readers to get their hands dirty - to find out that it’s not difficult or scary, don’t patronize them into the supermarket.

Most of the recipes tend to be on the large size: six portions seems to be about average, but with one recipe weighing in at 25! Things like sauces and dips seem to make between 3 and 4 cups. As a good reader, I’d already been told not to meddle with the recipes, so it was with some trepidation that I chose to make the jambalaya. But we were only 2 and not 6! Wickedly, I substituted chicken marylands for the whole 3.5lb chicken, I used our own, spicy homemade sausages instead of buying andouille (or chorizo), I had no idea what converted rice is (let alone where to buy it) so I used basmati and I used a red pepper instead of a green one. The recipe is supposed to prove that the cooking of ‘British Louisiana’ is not bland, but this dish was not particularly flavorsome, either. We were underwhelmed, with most of the flavor coming from the sausages. It did reheat very well and made an excellent lunch the next day, however I’d never make it again without some tinkering (garlic and perhaps a bit of chili, for starters).

Having said all of that, the recipe did work, and I’ll definitely return to this book, as I would like to try out the Brown Sugar Pie and there are plenty of interesting bean and fish recipes. But, even though A Love Affair with Southern Cooking contains far more history and anecdotes than most cookbooks, it just does not lend itself to a leisurely read.

A Love Affair with Southern Cooking is available from Amazon UK (RRP around £16) or Amazon US (RRP $32.50).

Which doesn’t mean there are no recipes … Nigel Slater looks at greens and offers dishes including bean and black cabbage soup, a very tasty looking chicken broth with kale and pork balls and savoy cabbage with juniper and cream.

There’s also a selection of recipes from the Fairtrade Everyday Cookbook. Unfortunately, my recipe isn’t one of those featured, but the choice of dishes ranges from Caribbean banana bread, through to kedgeree and Indian basmati rice pudding.

OFM then devotes many pages to its top 40 eco foodies: people who’ve changed the way we eat in the UK. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who graces the cover, receives top spot and also features in an interview. Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest crusade is against intensively reared (and very cheap) chicken - surely one of the no-brainers of the food world, but, regretfully, an issue which the supermarkets are dragging their heels when it comes to acting.

Recognition is given to people involved in many diverse aspects of the food industry, from the Prince of Wales, through to David Cameron and Anya Hindmarch. Many on the list also feature in interviews.

With all the interviews out the way, there’s a Good Nutrition Guide which looks at the best and worst of a variety of processed foods. Hopefully, the title of the article is ironic. As Britain gets fatter and fatter, perhaps we should be looking for a piece of fruit, rather than the crisps that are least bad for us - and the same could be said for biscuits, cakes, baked beans and tinned spaghetti and pizza.

Hopefully, with Christmas and New Year out the way, the February OFM will provide some more interesting fodder …

Originally for Christmas, Nigel Slater lays on a feast of vegetarian recipes, such as beetroot frittata, chard and cheddar tart and pumpkin tortilla. A selection of chefs also offer meat-free recipes for the big day and beyond, including globe artichokes baked in foil with thyme, from Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray of River Café fame.

Crisis is a UK charity for the homeless and The Crisis Cookbook contains recipes from some of the world’s top chefs. The selection in the OFM is of puddings and includes Ferran Adrià’s simple apricots with icecream as well as recipes from the likes of Joel Robuchon, Heston Blumenthal and Rick Stein. I tried out Shaun Hill’s chocolate cake - a dense, fondant-like creation containing little other than chocolate, butter and sugar!

The requisite thought provoking material comes in the form of an article about the lab-enhanced superfoods of the future. There’s already some very scary chocolate available in Japan.  It’s called GABA and contains gamma-amino butyric acid (hence the name). The acid occurs naturally in the human brain and has been shown to have a calming effect (on beagles, post menopausal women and students). From the article, it seems that often the link between science and marketing claims is tenuous and that many of the products available (and marketed) elsewhere in the world will struggle to be promoted in the EU in a similar manner. It also sounds as though food labelling is set to become more obscure and confusing, as marketeers attempt to sell some very highly processed foods.

Unsurprisingly, a peek in Alain Ducasse’s shopping basket reveals little in the way of processed food. Despite the rich food, such as Jabugo ham, clotted cream and champagne, the contents get an overall tick from Dr. John Briffa.

The authors Lionel Shriver, Augusten Burroughs and Kate Mosse all talk Christmas and there’s an interview with Rowley Leigh, whose new restaurant, Le Café Anglais, has just opened in London’s Bayswater.

The issue finishes with (possibly) the two most important gastronomic items: cheese and wine. Alex James tastes his way through a variety of cheeses, with Harvey Nichols’ truffle brie, Dayleford Organic’s mature cheddar, La Fromagerie’s buffalo mozzarella and Villarejo manchego all scoring five stars. Mind you, there are an awful lot of four star cheeses there too …

Tim Atkins wraps up with 25 top wines for Christmas.  Ranging in price from just £3.48 a bottle up to £20 there’s something for all budgets and tastes. Mind you, for the New Year there’s little need to go past the champagne!

Taking it from the top, Gourmet Fast has moved to the front of the magazine, but the only dish that took my fancy was a mint and chilli beef salad. Hardly the thing for a cold winter’s night. Fare Exchange was similarly oriented: pan fried garfish with eggplant tonnato and caramelised lemon dressing from Canberra’s Pulp Kitchen, passionfruit marshmallows from Rockpool in Sydney or seared tuna with a herb salad from Restaurant Manx in Brisbane. While they all sound delicious, they’re really the type of dishes you need to eat sitting outside on a warm evening …

Even more requisite of a hot evening is Perfect Match: squid and herb salad with caper and lemon dressing with Chablis. I was sorely tempted to ignore the weather and give it a go but held off.

Both Masterclass and Classic Dish looked towards Christmas, with Christmas cake, baked ham and Christmas pudding (Masterclass) and Stollen (Classic Dish).

There’s a solid list of books - floated as Christmas presents but now ideal for using up any vouchers - which includes Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark and Pork & Sons by Stéphane Reynaud. There’s also quite a few pages devoted to a gift guide.

Author Tim Winton tackles the issue of sustainable seafood (one of my hobby horses). There’s a list of fish to ’say no’ to, and the Australian Marine Conservation society’s website has more details online. For those readers in the UK, you can visit Fish Online and query the sustainability of any species.

Of the regular writers, Leo Schofield has a go at the fad for foam on our plates - bubbles belonging firmly in the glass or the bath tub, A A Gill visists Madagascar and Max Allen takes to the Mornington Peninsula.

The food features are all about Christmas. There’s plenty of turkey dishes. Once you’ve recovered from your classic roast turkey think about lighter ways to use the remainder, such as turkey, fig and duck liver salad, turkey sandwiches, or pomegranate roasted turkey with cracked wheat salad.

There’s Christmas with the Melbourne-based chefs, the McConnell brothers, whose menu features a roast goose with pickled cherries, but also takes in grilled prawns with honey and preserved lemon, a baccalà, green olive and chilli salad, and Christmas pudding icecream.

For a less conventional approach to Christmas, head to the Caribbean with salt cod fritters, crab and green mango salad, jerked ham and (of course) a Caribbean Christmas cake.

If, after all of this, you haven’t got enough on your plate, there’s a whole feature dedicated to side dishes. The spiced brown sugar butter looks and sounds fantastic and I’m quite sure I’m not the only person who could justify eating it on bread and not worry about the Christmas pudding part of things. On a less heart-stopping note, there’s also fig and speck stuffing and a red cabbage, apple and celery salad.

There’s a pile of summery seafood recipes, such as fried whitebait with cumin salt and smokey mayonnaise, which ranges through mulloway, crab, trout, marron, sea urchin and prawn … all crying out for a hot evening.

There’s a selection of recipes from Greg and Lucy Malouf’s new book, turquoise, and the food section wraps up with, appropriately, ‘The Big Finale’: gorgeous puddings. Berry linzer torte, fig, almond and ricotta cake, passionfruit and banana mess, spiced ruit cake with brandy cream and finally, a stunning chocolate-cherry semifreddo.

After all of that, a very quick whiz through the travel section of the magazine: Canada’s Yukon, Dubai and the Atacama desert in Chile.

And what did I try from the magazine? Despite all the dishes that were too summery or for too many people, I opted for a short order idea from In Season: stuffed, baked nectarines. Aside from my struggle with the out of season nectarines, these were absolutely gorgeous and perfect for a winter afternoon tea. Though, when you come to think of it - they’d be perfect on a hot summer’s evening with a chilled glass of slightly sweet white wine …

The rest of the magazine is largely focused on Christmas - no surprises there. Nigel Slater lays on oysters, roast turkey with wild rice, pomegranate and proscuitto salad and baked root vegetables and porcini, followed by a prune and Armagnac parfait. If that sounds like too much hassle, there’s the Donna Hay guide to a ‘fuss-free’ Christmas: red onion and potato gratin, glazed ham, roast pork loin and a range of ‘easiest’ side dishes.

Well-known food writers then choose their ‘perfect’ recipes: baked camembert from Nigel Slater, Bohemian roast goose from Nigella Lawson and Simon Hopkinson’s roast potatoes are amongst the ideas.

As usual, the OFM isn’t just focused on good food, but also on the ethics of eating well, so there’s an article about Kelly Bronze turkeys that are reared ethically in Essex, followed by a few more turkey recipes. This includes the turkey leg with spinach, which makes an attractive alternative for anyone not having to feed a huge family on Christmas Day.

Oliver Rowe heads down the seafood route, including lobster, crab and crayfish.

You’ll have noticed we’ve neglected desserts so far … but there’s more food yet as Bill Granger covers pudding. The puffed apple pancake looks gorgeous, but there’s also chocolate almond cakes, steamed date puddings and a hazelnut and fig cake.

There’s a quick review of rugby player Mike Tindall’s diet and an interview with Raymond Blanc and a quick visit to the Amazon to look at açai berry farming. There’s also extensive coverage of food suppliers for Christmas and the magazine wraps up with Mourad Mazouz testing chocolate for Christmas. Interestingly, in the plain chocolate selection it’s Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference which comes out in front … so it needn’t cost a fortune after all.

This is a very recipe rich issue - but as the focus is on Christmas, a lot of the recipes feed large groups. I guess the rest of us could just feast on left overs for most of January!

A copy of Anne Sheasby’s The Big Book of Bread recently came my way. 365 bread recipes (100 of which are specifically for bread machine use) - a book loaded with carbohydrate goodness!

The book is very simply laid out - a spiral binding allows it to sit flat, each recipe is numbered and there are more words than pictures. But if you do need visual inspiration, the illustrations are glossy, tempting photographs: you can almost smell the brioche and taste the bagels.

Sheasby starts with a coverage of bread history and basics, such as yeast and flour. She also covers technique and offers some advice on how to adapt the ‘by hand’ recipes for a breadmaker. Many of the recipes come with their own specific breadmaker adjustments, so machine based bakers will still come away with more than the 100 recipes at their disposal.

For me, the whole point of making bread is the way the dough feels under your hands as you knead it. I couldn’t imagine making bread but divorcing myself from the physical, sensory process. Kneading the dough, feeling it become elastic and smooth, anxiously waiting for it to rise, the lovely smell of fresh yeast - without all of these breadmaking would, for me, be pointless.

So it’s no surprise that for my recipe test, I started with recipe number 2: basic wholemeal bread. I halved the quantities (even I have a limit at the amount of fresh bread I can eat!) and, in the space of a relaxing Sunday afternoon (a bit of shopping, decorating the Christmas tree), I had a small loaf and four wholemeal rolls.

It turns out I can eat bread a lot faster than I expected and by Wednesday morning I had to resort to some store-bought bread lurking in the freezer. That was disappointing. My bread had guts, body and flavour and every time I opened the bag in which it was stored I caught of waft of yeasty, bready goodness.

I’m now very keen to make my way through the remainder of the book (and invest in some larger bowls so I can make more bread in one hit). Sheasby does not just cover ‘bread’ - a random selection of recipes includes ciabatta, cherry and hazelnut twists, Moroccan flat breads and bacon and Stilton pull apart. There’s a section of gluten free breads and bread dishes, such as French onion soup.

This book would make the perfect Christmas present for the bread lover, the enthusiastic baker or the owner of a bread machine. In short - pretty much everyone!

The Big Book of Bread retails at £12.99/$19.95 and is available from Amazon UK or Amazon US.

A quick scamper through this list suggests that, predominantly, one needs to be rather wealthy to eat sexily. Even the very down to earth picnic suggestion involves a ‘proper’ hamper from Fortnum and Mason. The rest of the list runs the gamut from Le Louis XV in Monaco (one of Alain Ducasse’s restaurants), through several big name London and New York restaurants, before settling on a kebab. While I’m not sure how sexy kebab eating can be, hooray for Alex James in suggesting it!

Nigel Slater whips through his top ten other people’s recipes, which includes Nigella Lawson’s steak with béarnaise sauce and Sam Clark’s salt cod croquettas. The magazine also comes with some pull out cards for Nigel Slater’s Easy Roasts.

There’s a substantial extract from Parisian chef, Babette de Rozières’ new book, Creole.  While the pan-fried Mediterranean prawns and chicken breast or the Creole seafood risotto both sounded delicious, we ended up opting for the Colombo pork loin curry. This was an unusual dish: a sort of spicy, saucy stir-fry, with plenty of lime juice to add a really refreshing finish. And it was quick and easy to boot!
There’s an article on foraging which, while interesting, includes recipes that might be slightly tricky to reproduce at home: cobnuts, nettles, yarrow leaves, hogwort and merlilot twigs are, by and large, going to be difficult to come by for those of us based in cities.

An ex pop star and a political writer are put through their paces in commercial kitchens, and the resident nutritionist takes a look at Julie Delpy’s diet. There’s a large feature on Marco-Pierre White, back in the public eye again after his stint at the helm of Hell’s Kitchen.

Alex Renton visits Bill Cassells’ farm in Scotland where the Highlander cows are reared at their own pace and treated the way we’d like to think all our meat is treated. While reading about cattle slaughter is not, perhaps, the ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, it’s the very thing all of us city-dwellers should understand, so we can make informed decisions about how we spend our meat-buying pound or dollar.

On a more cheery note, readers can vote for their favourite venus in the annual OFM awards, there’s a shop around for the best breakfast products and Matt Skinner recommends 20 great wines ranging in price from £12 to £320.

While this month’s magazine seems lighter on the recipe front, there’s still plenty of though provoking, and taste bud tantalising, reading.

Babette de Rozières’ Creole is available from Amazon UK (RRP £24.95) and Amazon US (RRP $39.95).

Encasa, in Sydney, kicks things off with arroz negro, a sort of Spanish risotto, flavoured with squid ink and served with aioli. Heading into one of Australia’s emerging wine regions, Belgravia at Union Bank, Orange, supplies a recipe for a chunky chorizo, chicken and vegetable soup, which sounds perfect for northern hemisphere winter comfort food. And for something sweet, the spiced chocolate mousse from Bar Lourinha in Melbourne looks perfect, with or without the hazelnut praline topping.

Masterclass features a paella, which, while time consuming to prepare, was delicious and foolproof. While calasparra rice might not be easy to track down, the recipe worked well with arborio rice and produced a colourful and filling dish.

Perfect Match matches tempranillo with roast lamb shoulder with a chickpea and herb salad. You need to begin work a day ahead and the lamb is cooked for over three hours but the result looks stunning.

More Spain in the month’s Classic Dish: crema catalana - although the British and French will recognise the dish as burnt cream or crème brûlée.

Will Studd covers Spanish cheeses and the featured book review is the newly released 1080 Recipes, Spain’s best selling cookbook newly translated into English.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of October’s recipes are also Spanish and cover favourites from Australian restaurants MoVida (in Melbourne) and Bodega (in Sydney), as well as seafood, saffron and sweets from the Iberian peninsula.

It’s no surprise that the travel section covers Spain too … Madrid, Andalucía and Barcelona. However, with this month’s AGT you won’t need to leave your kitchen to visit Spain - just be sure to stock up on the viño, queso and chorizo in advance!

I had intended to cook something from the Gourmet Fast section: ‘luxe meals in under 30 minutes.’ I was tempted by the chickpea and sweet potato cakes and the fish with lemon and fennel pilaf, but when there are so many other far more interesting dishes in the magazine … why would you bother?

To start with, there’s a stunning looking Japanese style spare-ribs dish, from Sydney restaurant Toko. And the Perfect Match this month is the cover model: asparagus and broad beans with sauvignon blanc. I don’t even particularly like broad beans, but this is such a pretty salad and you just know that the match with the sav blanc would be perfect.

There is a large emphasis on beans: the salt cod and bean fritters look like perfect finger food and the bean and fennel soup with ricotta toast would even work for those of us embracing winter. The beans are followed by an extensive collection of Chinese salads that move away from the heavily sauced takeaway meals by which so many of us end up judging Chinese cuisine.

More hearty fare comes from Phillip Searle: lasagne of spinach, polenta and goat’s curd or brown mustard seed ocean trout with basil butter, perhaps followed by his upside down pear cake.

I ended up sampling one of the brunch recipes: baked eggs with Gruyère toasts.  It wasn’t an unmitigated success, but quite a few of the dishes could easily be co-opted for lunch or even supper: the braised bacon with zucchini fritters is a good example.

Easily my favourite part of the magazine is the selection of pudding recipes from Fergus Henderson: treacle tart, seed cake, gingerbread pudding and apple and calvados trifle.

This month, AGT also covers their restaurant awards (the restaurant of the year is Pier in Sydney) and the travel section features a spas and resorts special, taking in spas across the globe.

Aside from Nigel Slater, there are also recipes from Spain’s “traditional cooking bible,” which has just been translated into English. Dishes like sea bream baked with garlic, parsley and vinegar, or ‘important’ potatoes might not sound quintessentially Spanish but the book, and the collection of recipes published in the OFM, promise a genuine touch of Spain.

The seasonal food section contains recipes from across the globe: brussels sprouts with pancetta and chestnuts, a red curry of roasted autumn vegetables, or even the tasty, but very simple, smoky sausage and bean casserole, which was whipped up for Sunday supper.

There’s a large architecture and food special (perhaps not the most natural of pairings) where architects discuss their favourite restaurants - both food and style wise.

Monty Panesar’s diet gets a makeover, and Nicholas Hoult takes OFM to his favourite restaurant, Nando’s. The magazine wraps up with cakes - Britain’s best cake shops, before Gary Rhodes takes a whirl around the supermarket and picks out the best commercially and widely available numbers.

It seems like there’s fewer recipes this month, but you can’t really complain when the space is given over to Nigel Slater’s evocative writing. Even without the cooking, there’s plenty to keep you going until the end of October.

Eating for England is being released on 1 October with an RRP of £16.99, available on pre-order from Amazon UK.