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This is a bumper year for cookbooks. Every chef and cookbook author worth his or her salt has produced an interesting book. Here are some worth looking at.

CANADIAN

The appeal of Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes, by Jennifer McLagan (McClelland & Stewart, $37.95), is the superb research McLagan has done on the area of fat. She explodes myths and talks history, facts and fiction with passion. Her thesis is that fat gives irreplaceable flavour to food and anyone who cuts fat from their diet loses taste and pleasure. But the book is more than that. It gives you the building blocks to understand the place of fat in our diet. It tells of cultural associations with fat and gives lots of tips.

Some recipes are unusual. This is the first time I have seen a recipe for chicken skin cooked in chicken fat (called gribenes), a special treat from my childhood, as well as a biscuit made with duck fat that was delightfully light but tasty. I cannot say that I always agree with her, but I hugely enjoyed reading the book, and controversy is always a flavour-enhancer.

The latest project from Canadian food luminary Rose Murray is A Taste of Canada: A Culinary Journey, by Rose Murray (Whitecap Books, $34.95). The book explores Canada from coast to coast through recipes, information and essays. Murray has put together menus from the different provinces as well as touching on their culinary history. The recipes are excellent and work well, but what I miss in this book is more of the well-informed Murray herself. How does she feel about "our unique palate"? I would love more information on our culinary traditions and why some of the recipes chosen show off a particular style or locality. However, you may not find a better book this year in terms of recipes that please and, even without some of the background, give flavour to our tables.

The concept of Friday Night Dinners, by Bonnie Stern (Random House, $50), is based on the Jewish tradition that families dine together on a Friday night and share stories and experiences from their week. But don't be thrown off by the title. Stern's dinners are suitable for any night of the weekend. The book is menu-driven and kosher-style, and has a Mediterranean slant. I liked the fact that it is Stern's most personal book. We learn about her family and her life, and she has illustrated the menus with personal stories that are appealing. Stern is always reliable as a cook and writer, and her recipes deliver. To keep it in the family, her son, Mark Rupert, took all the photographs.

The beautifully illustrated The Main, by Anthony Sedlak (Whitecap Books, $29.95), channels Sedlak's TV show The Main, which focuses on main courses. It is the perfect read for the condo-dweller or first-time cook who wants to make uncomplicated, tasty recipes. There are no surprises, no unusual ingredients, and few pots to wash. The recipes are grouped under ingredients with lots of hints and tips to put a meal together. They are fun, homey and not difficult. Good hamburgers, fish and chips and red-wine-marinated flank steak are examples of the fare.

THE CLASH OF THE TITANS

This is the year of the famous chef-driven books. Four chefs from the best restaurants in the world have weighed in (literally) with tomes to salivate over. All beautiful, although not necessarily books to cook from. However, Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck Cookbook (Bloomsbury, $259.99) is the most tempting for me.

Blumenthal writes with conviction and passion. He explains the story behind every dish, warming your sensory palate so you can practically taste the food. As a home cook, you could accomplish portions of the recipes, but the book is not a how-to guide The final part explains the science behind the food. A great read, it is the most literary of all these books; Blumenthal's autobiography in the beginning is fascinating, and if I could choose a chef for my table, it would be this obsessive, creative genius.

A Day at El Bulli, by Ferran Adria (Phaidon, $49.95), is magnificently photographed, giving you a sense of the tension and joy that is the centrepiece of a great restaurant. Complete with essays on all aspects of the restaurant, cooking and the art of science, it also includes recipes. It is a magnificent coffee-table book.

Alinea, by Grant Achatz (Ten Speed Press, $56.95), is cool, and the most artistically photographed of all; each dish is a painting on a plate, or sometimes a pillow or even a stick. Essays by food luminaries like Jeffrey Steingarten and Michael Ruhlman define the principles of Achatz and the experience of eating in the restaurant. Achatz and his approach are included, and Achatz himself provides his 10 principles of cooking. Included is an ingredient glossary, along with the chemistry needed for many of the recipes. A website is set up to explain principles to people who buy the book and give help with recipes.

Thomas Keller's Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide (Artisan Press, $95) is a chef's book. His understanding and explanations of how to use sous vide in the kitchen are outstanding. The most dedicated home cooks could acquire the apparatus, but essentially this is a book for chefs who want to hone their techniques.

Digesting any of these books lets the reader in on the secrets of a great restaurant. Following it up by dining at the restaurant would be the experience of a lifetime.

FRENCH CONNECTIONS

Two masters of French Cooking have weighed in this year with tomes written for the North American audience. The Complete Robuchon, by Joel Robuchon (Knopf, $40), can grow on you, and although initially I was underwhelmed by master chef Joel Robuchon's new book, the more I cooked from it, the more I appreciated its simplicity and fine tastes. It has more than 800 recipes and explores his cooking techniques in a straightforward style. The recipes are appealing and can be accomplished by a moderate cook, although there are some essays on techniques and products in which I would have liked more information. I did find the book a bit soulless. I have no more idea of Robuchon's personality than I had before. However, if you are a Robuchon groupie and love his restaurants or love good, updated French cooking, this book will give you the flavour of his world.

Sophie Dudemaine is a bestselling French cookbook author who also has her own popular TV show. In Ducasse Made Simple by Sophie: 100 Recipes from the Master Chef Simplified for the Home Cook, by Alain Ducasse, Sophie Dudemaine and Linda Dannenberg (Alain Ducasse Books, $39), chose more than 120 Ducasse recipes and edited them to make them accessible to the general cooking public. Think Rachael Ray dumbing down Hubert Keller. Linda Dannenberg, no cooking slouch herself, adapted them for a U.S. audience. Curiously, canned and frozen ingredients are used to save time, but the recipes work and are fairly easy and approachable. Those we tested certainly produced good flavours, but without the finesse or layered textures of Ducasse's cooking. For an easy approach to a master's recipes, this book is for you.

AMERICAN

Urban Italian, by Andrew Carmellini and Gwen Hyman (Penguin Books $38.70), came as a surprise to me. I did not know Carmellini and although I had been to his restaurant, A Voce, in New York, I might have passed by this one by except that the recipes came off the pages invading my senses. He has since departed the restaurant. His recipes gave me my favourite tastes of this review, and his ease of preparation made it a winner in my kitchen. Carmellini is a U.S. chef who travelled in Italy and wrote this book, along with his Toronto-born wife, while he was waiting for his restaurant to open. The book is funny, full of stories and tales of kitchens and chefs, and his recipes are delightful and fresh-tasting. His Zucchini Bagna Cauda is superb, full of flavour, and has that incredible umami taste. His use of casual timing for the recipes is very helpful to the home cook.

The doctor is in! If baking has you throwing up your hands, Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking With Over 200 Magnificent Recipes, by Shirley O. Corriher (Simon & Schuster, $47), is the book for you. Corriher is a biochemist, cook and author of the iconic Cookwise, gives us the tools to understand the art. Her No. 1 lesson - appreciating the chemistry in baking - makes everything much easier to accomplish. Her experiments and her research are the anchors of this book. Each chapter is developed around a specific baking technique, such as leavening or pies. At the same time, her charts and "what the recipe shows" segments let us peek in for quick answers. We loved her truly fudgy brownies and she has the largest selection of pie crusts I have ever seen.

My major complaint is the constant use of shortening - full of trans fat - which she says makes pie crusts better. If you must, look for organic.

With the economic meltdown, more people will be investing in home cooking. Martha Stewart, who brilliantly invents herself time after time, seized this opportunity by producing the excellent Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook (Clarkson Potter, $52) to help newcomers and the more proficient to learn how to manage in the kitchen. To her credit, she does not try to cut corners or take the easy way out. From holding a knife properly to cutting an onion or making a pie crust, the techniques are accurate, well explained and well photographed. You cannot go wrong by making her salad dressing or following her technique of learning how to sauté or roast.

The book is divided into sections, and every recipe we tried worked well. We loved the perfect Rustic Apple Tart with its flaky crust and mounds of juicy, cinnamon-flecked apples.

Outside the true cookbook genre, Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin, by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreño (Knopf, $27.95), has recipes delivered with an "up yours" attitude that is very refreshing. Although it has recipes, it is as much a memoir and philosophical treatise on Shopsin's life and attitudes.

Kenny Shopsin has a restaurant in New York where he handpicks his customers. He has his rules: no allergy issues, no making changes to the dishes on the menu, no parties larger than four. If he doesn't like you, he throws you out. But those who get along with him love him and love his food.

Once you've waded through all the do's and don'ts, his warmth and humanity come through. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld used Shopsin's as a blueprint for episodes on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Remember the "Soup Nazi"?

Even the recipe titles have flavour in this book. With trepidation, we tried the mac-and-cheese pancakes and loved every bite of them. This is a book for people looking for fun in their reading and in their kitchen.

In A Platter of Figs (Artisan $39.95), David Tanis has turned out a practically perfect Alice Waters redux cookbook - which is not surprising, since Tanis is head chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., six months of the year (he lives in Paris the other six months). This book reflects the simplicity with which he cooks fine foods. With lovely pictures and finely tuned recipes, this book is great for dinner parties as most recipes serve a lot of people.