The Big Fat Duck Cookbook
By Heston Blumenthal
Bloomsbury Publishing £100, 532 pages
In this grand tome, lavishly illustrated by Dave McKean, chef Heston Blumenthal spills the beans on the weird and wonderful dishes served at his Fat Duck restaurant. The book may be heavy, both literally (approximately 5kg) and figuratively (with plenty of science and recipes of vast complexity) but it reads like a fairytale.

A Day at El Bulli: Exclusive Look Behind the Scenes at the World’s Best Restaurant
By Ferran Adrià, Juli Soler and Albert Adrià
Phaidon Press £29.95, 632 pages
The plethora of photographs in this book are engaging, yet it’s the inserts explaining El Bulli’s credo and creative methods that really seize the attention. Proof, if more was needed, that El Bulli is not just a restaurant but a factory for ideas, and one of the most interesting cultural experiments of our time.