As with everything else, I’m an eclectic eater. I eat and can get excited about almost everything, with the exception of very hot dishes, as I simply cannot physically tolerate them (and anyway, I don’t see the point of eating anything I cannot properly taste). I like everything from Estonian bread and blood sausages to mango and lemongrass to tagines and baba ganoush to pancakes with bacon.

I have a cookbook collection to match (and I use most of them, although some only for inspiration), but few food writers capture my preferences/obsessions as precisely and completely as Diana Henry. She’s not the trendiest of cooks, but I’m always drawn to her recipes. Like me, she’s a fan of Middle Eastern and East Asian cuisines, but also of less obvious regions like Scandinavia, Caucasus and Central Europe.

In her Roast Figs, Sugar Snow she explores the cooking of the cold places of the world and it’s one of the best cookbooks for winter I’ve ever come across. Georgia, Northern Alps, Quebec, Russia and Sweden are some countries and regions represented in the book. Maybe because I come from a similar place myself, I felt an instant kinship with this book. I also learned that one can make mash out of parsnips or celeriac and it’s delicious. And that there is a dish called Peasant girls in a mist.

Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons goes south instead. It’s a book flavoured with rose water, lemon zest and cardamom, covering both sides of the Mediterranean. I’ve mentioned the Lavender, orange and almond cake before and it’s still my favourite cake, full stop. But there’s also ajo blanco, Moroccan chicken with tomatoes and saffron-honey jam and date-stuffed mackerel. And pomegranate. I know there’s a backlash against having pomegranate in everything, but this is one of the few issues on which I and Sali Hughes disagree. There can never be too much pomegranate.

Henry’s penultimate book, A Change of Appetite is a ‘healthy’ cookbook (I use quotation marks as I understand and agree with her reluctance to use the word), but not quite Gwyneth-level healthy.* I could cook these recipes on a regular basis, not only when I want to feel super virtuous. As one would expect, there’s sa lot of fish, chicken, vegetables, salads, porridges, etc, but all presented in a way that people who don’t run their own lifestyle empires can comprehend and get behind.

One thing all Henry’s books (and the recipes she does for The Sunday Telegraph) have in common is lots of flavour: spices, herbs, smoked stuff, salted stuff, flavoured waters, punchy dressings, intense condiments… This is definitely one reason her recipes click with me: as an example, check out these variations on cardamom. The other thing I love about her is that in addition to enjoyment, there’s always a story. Henry’s writing is evocative, making you dream of other places, other lives. And in a day and age where most recipes only evoke a perfect life devoid of refined sugars, dairy, gluten and physical inactivity, this is precious.

*I’m not saying this to diss Gwyneth. I own both of her cookbooks and her 10-hour chicken changed my life.
** The dish on the cover photo is a simplyfied version of Henry’s yoghurt-with-apricots-and-honey-and-saffron-syrup-etc, minus the syrup, as it turned the yoghurt completely unphotographable as soon as it was added.