Newsletter: 🎄 Christmas prep sorted + win a year’s subscription to ckbk with our new photo review feature 🎁

We are halfway to Christmas Eve—how did that happen? It is time to plan the food shopping, and what to make when, and while we can’t do your shopping or organise your diary for you, we can certainly make sure that you have all the ideas, recipes, and ingredient lists you could possibly need. Christmas ckbk-style is a tempting proposition!

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Behind the Cookbook: The Dooky Chase COOKBOOK

The Dooky Chase Cookbook, first published in 1990 and re-issued last year, is the latest classic title to be added to ckbk. Its author, Leah Chase (1923–2019), was known as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine”. While she stood less than 5 feet tall, she had an outsize influence on food culture in her hometown of New Orleans, and far beyond.

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New feature: Upload a photo along with your recipe review

It’s great to see more and more recipe reviews appearing on ckbk each week! Reviews help to identify the standout dishes in ckbk’s large (and sometimes almost overwhelming) collection of cookbooks. Reviews are also a great way for users to share their practical tips, based on their experience cooking a recipe—and quite often the cookbook author may chime in with advice too. To make reviews even more useful, we’ve now added the ability to include a photo so you can show how the recipe worked out. Read on to find out how to use this feature, and how you could win a ckbk apron and free ckbk Premium Membership for a year.

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Newsletter: 🥨 German Heritage Baking is our December cookbook of the month + you share your foodie gift ideas 🎁

Born near Frankfurt in Germany, Heidrun Metzler’s childhood was gloriously flavored by the delicious baking of her mother, aunt and grandmother. Traditional German baking, recipes handed down through generations, and with a careful balance of sweetness, of nuts and dried fruits and buttery goodness, were a constant and a joy. After she moved to the US in 1978, and began her journey to becoming a food writer and educator, recreating those bakes, and helping others to understand and achieve fine results with her recipes, became central to her work

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The ckbk team's 2024 gift guide

For this year’s ckbk gift guide, we asked members of the ckbk team to each suggest both a favourite ingredient and a kitchen gadget that would make a great gift. Of course, it goes without saying that if you are looking for a gift for a food lover, the very first thing on your shopping list should be a ckbk gift subscription. For a strictly limited time, you can pick gift subscriptions half price with our BLACKFRIDAY24 special offer. So why not order a handful and cross several gifts off your list at once?

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Newsletter: 🍝 Fred Plotkin on his passion for pasta + recipes galore for Thanksgiving and Stir Up Sunday 🎄

For those of us longing to be festive, we officially announce that Christmas prep is on! In Great Britain the last Sunday before advent is Stir Up Sunday—November 24 this year. A Victorian tradition, this is the day to make those Christmas treats that need to be made well ahead—such as Christmas pudding, fruitcake, and the mincemeat for mince pies. Several weeks of maturing and being ‘fed’ regularly with spirits ensures they are at their tip top best when the time to serve them comes around.

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Behind the Cookbook: The Authentic Pasta Book

Fred Plotkin is an expert on both Italian opera and Italian food. His regional Italian cookbooks on the cooking of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and of Liguria have already delighted users of ckbk, and we pleased to also now make available The Authentic Pasta Book, his canonical work on real Italian pasta. Below Fred recalls the journey which led to the writing and publication of this much-loved work.

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Newsletter: 🥖🍞 A guide to good bread + two newly published books – The Spice Collector's Cookbook and Everybody Loves Chocolate 🍩

Everybody loves chocolate – we couldn’t agree more! In her new book Everybody Loves Chocolate: Delicious Recipes from Around the World, Australia-born food writer Jennifer Donovan takes an enthusiastic journey through Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, gathering chocolate goodness along the way. There is a chocolate recipe here for every person and every mood.

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Newsletter: 👩‍🎓👨‍🎓 ckbk in education - training the next generation + Scotland’s finest on publication day!🎉

After a decade at the forefront of the Edinburgh dining scene working under Tom Kitchin, Roberta Hall-McCarron and husband Shaun opened their first venue together.

Now, with flagship The Little Chartroom, sister restaurant Eleanore, and wine bar Ardfern, they run a culinary mini-empire in the Scottish capital’s quiet outpost of Leith.

You may also know Roberta and her exceptional food from her two appearances on Great British Menu. We are extremely pleased to bring you The Changing Tides, Roberta’s first cookbook, on publication day.

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A lifetime of learning: ckbk in education

ckbk has rapidly emerged as a valuable electronic resource for use in culinary schools, technical colleges, university programs, and even high schools.

ckbk’s vast array of recipes, background information on culinary history, in depth technical reference material and global scope have made it a valuable offering which enhances the learning experience of students. Read on to discover some of the ways ckbk is now being used in education.

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🍁🌞 Seasonal cooking, wherever you are in the world + the culinary magnificence of dates

Those of us in the Northern hemisphere are starting to feel the cold, and yearn for warming stews, and hearty suppers. But depending on where you are in the world, cooking for the coming season could mean a very different thing indeed. Perhaps you are just venturing outside, for grills and fresh sunshine-soaked days. Wherever you are, our trio of new books have something for you.

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Author profile: Radhika Howarth (author of Radikal Kitchen)

The latest ckbk author Q&A is with Radhika Howarth, whose new cookbook, Radikal Kitchen, has a unique format, following the journey of specific dishes and ingredients along the Silk Road, and other trade routes. Don’t miss a special bonus - a video showing how to make Radhika’s “radikal” version of the Indian-spiced South African classic dish, Bunny Chow.

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Consuming Passions: Dates

Dates may seem like just another unexceptional dried fruit, but they are a food with a long history. In this latest contribution to the Consuming Passions series Joel Haber, a food historian specializing in Jewish food, shows the many diverse ways in which this fruit can be enjoyed.

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Author Profile: Dipna Anand (author of Dip in Brilliant)

Dip In Brilliant is restaurateur Dipna Anand’s second cookbook, and it has recently been added to ckbk. Women In The Food Industry co-founder Mex Ibrahim spoke to Dipna about her inspiration for the recipes and the culinary adventures you will find in the book.  Dip In Brilliant showcases not only delicious Punjabi delights, but also some of Dipna’s quirky recipe creations and some of her mum’s magical recipes too.

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Behind the Cookbook: The Art of Parsi Cooking

Niloufer Mavalvala’s books have helped to bring Parsi cooking to much widespread attention. In this latest Behind the Cookbook feature, Niloufer tells ckbk about the origins of this unique style of cooking and how she came to write The Art of Parsi Cooking (just added to ckbk) and its followups.

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