Diana Henry Books In Order

Publication Order of Cookbooks

Diana Henry
Diana Henry was born in 1963 in Northern Ireland, where she also grew up. She was interested in food from an early age, cooking meals for her friends at the age of 12 or 13, she’s said that she did not fully discover cooking up until she went to France as an exchange student at the age of 15, where she stayed with this family that introduced her to good everyday food and olive oil.

She’s said that she never intended on becoming a food writer, having planned on becoming a lawyer or an actress. Her early career was as a TV producer, working on food programs like “TV Dinners” presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

During her weekends she began cooking from books by Julia Child and Claudia Roden, going food shopping on London’s Edgware Road. Diana’s said that food shopping in London that it was all there, you may as well have been going to Cairo or something.

She decided to become a food writer after she had her first child in 1998. She has since become one of the UK’s best loved food writers. Her writing has been featured in magazines such as: BBC Good Food, Waitrose Food Illustrated, Country Living, Red, and House and Garden. She is also a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4. She’s also got a series of popular podcasts, where she interviews other prominent names in the world of food.

Diana received a James Beard Award in 2016 for “A Bird in the Hand”, a cookbook of chicken recipes. She won the Guild of Food Writers “cookery journalist of the year” in 2007, 2009, and 2015 for her column in Stella magazine. Diana won the Evelyn Rose Award for Cookery Journalist of the Year in 2015. “How to Eat a Peach” won the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year 2018. She won the Fortnum & Mason Cookery Writer Award in 2019, for her Stella column.

“A Bird in the Hand: Chicken Recipes for every mood and everyday” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2015. Chicken takes center stage.

Chicken is one of the most popular foods that we love cooking and eating: quick, comforting, casual, and celebratory. Plundering the globe, there’s no shortage of brilliant ways to cook it, whether you need just a quick supper down on the table after work, a feast to nourish friends and family, or something for a lazy summer barbecue.

From fast Vietnamese lemon grass and chili chicken thighs and a smoky chicken salad with roast peppers and almonds, all the way through to a total feast with barley, pomegranate, and feta stuffed roast chicken with Georgian aubergines, there’s no eating or entertaining occasion that’s not covered in the book. Diana offers a host of new, simple, and not-so-very-well-known dishes, all starring the bird everybody loves.

“Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavours” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2016. Nobody is better than Diana Henry at turning the everyday into something special. Here’s a superb collection of recipes that you’re able to rustle up without any fuss, yet will still knock your socks off with their flavor.

Peppered throughout the book are these ingenious ideas like no-hassle starters and sauces sure to lift up any dish. From Caraway and Sour Cream, Turkish Pasta with Carmelized Onions, Yoghurt and Dill and Paprika baked Pork Chops with Beetroot, to Parmesan-roasted Cauliflower with Thyme and Garlic, Diana takes the sort of ingredients we’re most likely to find in our fridge and cupboard, or be able to pick up on the way home from work, and provides recipes which are sure to become your friends for life.

“How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories, and Places” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2018. Diana started a menu notebook (an exercise book that was carefully covered in wrapping paper) when she was 16. Planning out a menu is still her favorite aspect of cooking.

Menus can create some very different moods: they can take you places, from an afternoon spent at the seaside in Brittany to a sultry evening eating mezze in Istanbul. They also have to work as a meal which flows and as a group of dishes that the cook is able to manage without ever getting totally stressed. The 100 recipes and 24 menus in this book reflect the places that Diana loves, and dishes which are true favorites.

The menus have been introduced with some personal essays in Diana’s well known voice about journeys or places or particular times and each explain the choice of dishes. Each of the menus is a story in itself, yet the recipes can also stand on their own.

The book’s title refers to how Italians end a meal during the summer, when it is too hot to cook. The hostess or host just sets a bowl of peaches on the table and offers glasses of chilled moscato (or even Marsala). Guests will then slice up their peach into the glass, before they eat the slices and drink the wine.

It says something important about eating: generosity and simplicity, and sometimes not cooking are what it is about.

“From the Oven to the Table” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2019. Diana’s favorite way to cook is to just throw some ingredients into a roasting tin or dish, slide them in the oven and allow the heat behind that closed door transform it all into burnished and golden meals. Many of the easy-going recipes in this wonderfully varied collection are cooked in just a single dish; some are ideas for simple accompaniments which can be cooked on another shelf at the same time.

From fast after-work suppers to feasts for friends, these dishes are modern and vibrant and focus on veggies, grains, and pulses just as much as fish and meat. With recipes like Roast Indian-spiced Vegetables with Lime Coriander Butter, Chicken Thighs with Miso, Sweet Potatoes & Spring Onions, and Roast Stone Fruit with Almond and Orange Flower Crumbs, she shows you how the oven is the most useful piece of kit that you’ve got in your whole entire kitchen.