books
Cook As You Are: Recipes for Real Life, Hungry Cooks and Messy Kitchens
Serpent's Tail, out now!
Cook as You Are celebrates the messy, unglamorous, delicious realities of home cooking today. Across 100 original recipes, I explore how real home cooks – no matter their age, budget, ability or background – can find joy in the ordinary rhythms of cooking, from cobbling together weeknight ‘cupboard dinners’ from storecupboard staples and leftovers to rejoicing in the glory of carbs. Interspersed with reflections on the pleasures of food, these recipes capture the moments that really make cooking special. Covering everything from the miracle of custard powder to (super)malt loaf, from microwave cooking to roasting tin meals, these are recipes for real life. This cookbook isn’t for the fantasising, when-I-have-a-stand-mixer-and-a-kitchen-island you. It is for you, right now, just as you are – in a too-small kitchen and with washing-up still to do. Cook as you are.
Buy Cook As You Are on Bookshop.org
This is a 10-recipe mini easy-read cookbook, featuring recipes adapted from Cook As You Are. Every recipe has step-by-step photos and simple instructions. This booklet may be useful if you have certain learning disabilities because the easy-read recipes have simple instructions and lots of photos. You might need the help of a friend, family member or carer so that you can cook safely and happily. All of these recipes have been adapted from my cookbook, Cook As You Are. The physical book is now sold out, but you can download, print and distribute the book for free using the download link below.
Breaking Eggs: An Audio Guide to Baking
Hodder and Stoughton, 2021
In this exclusive audio experience, Ruby Tandoh will guide listeners through the foundations of baking in real time, providing step-by-step instructions alongside musings on food and life.
From no-frills butter cake to vanilla custard buns, Ruby will provide careful and clear instructions that explain what each step should look, feel and smell like. And if you're worried about keeping up, don't! In the pauses between steps, those moments where your fingers are enmeshed in dough or batter, she'll talk you through the emotive quality of food and its place in our lives.
Eat Up!: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want
Serpent's Tail, 2018
TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
Think about that first tickle of hunger in your stomach. A moment ago, you could have been thinking about anything, but now it's thickly buttered marmite toast, a frosty scoop of ice cream straight from the tub, some creamy, cheesy scrambled eggs or a fuzzy, perfectly-ripe peach.
Eating is one of life's greatest pleasures. Food nourishes our bodies, helps us celebrate our successes (from a wedding cake to a post-night out kebab), cheers us up when we're down, introduces us to new cultures and - when we cook and eat together - connects us with the people we love.
In Eat Up, Ruby Tandoh celebrates the fun and pleasure of food, taking a look at everything from gluttons and gourmets in the movies, to the symbolism of food and sex. She will arm you against the fad diets, food crazes and bad science that can make eating guilt-laden and expensive, drawing eating inspiration from influences as diverse as Moonlight, Rihanna and Gemma from TOWIE. Filled with straight-talking, sympathetic advice on everything from mental health to recipe ideas and shopping tips, this is a book that clears away the fog, to help you fall back in love with food.
Flavour: Eat What You Love
Chatto & Windus, 2016
Over 170 recipes - sweet and savoury - for every day, every budget, every taste, in a cookbook that puts your appetite first from the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of Eat Up. Organised by ingredient, Flavour helps you to follow your cravings, or whatever you have in the fridge, to a recipe. Creative, approachable and inspiring, this is cooking that, while focusing on practicality and affordability, leaves you free to go wherever your appetite takes you. It is a celebration of the joy of cooking and eating.
Ruby encourages us to look at the best ways to cook each ingredient; when it's in season, and which flavours pair well with it. With this thoughtful approach, every ingredient has space to shine; including store cupboard staples. These are recipes that feel good to make, eat and share, and each plate of food is assembled with care and balance. Including Hot and Sour Lentil Soup, Ghanaian Groundnut Chicken Stew, Glazed Blueberry Fritter Doughnuts, Mystic Pizza and Carrot and Feta Bites with Lime Yoghurt, this is a cookbook that focuses above all on flavour and freedom - to eat what you love.
Crumb: The Baking Book
Chatto & Windus, 2014
Crumb is about flavour, first and foremost – a celebration of the simple joy of baking. Ruby’s recipes delight in new tastes and combinations, as well as the rediscovery of old favourites, to create food that is exciting without ceremony or pretence. In a delicious blend of practicality and creativity, Ruby encourages novices and seasoned bakers alike to roll up their sleeves and bake – even if they don’t have the proper equipment or know-how.
From Lemon & Marzipan Cupcakes and Rye Caraway Bagels, Rose & Burnt Honey Florentines, Croissants and Custard Doughnuts, to Butternut Squash & Mozzarella Tartlets and Sticky Toffee Pudding, these are recipes that will quickly become some of your best loved.
With writing to be savoured as much as the recipes, tips and techniques to guide you and plenty of ideas for variations, this is a baking book to be inspired by, to read and cherish.
anthologies and zines
In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life
Daunt Books Publishing, 2020
In these thirteen original essays, writers consider the subjects of cooking and eating and how they shape our lives, and the possibilities and limitations the kitchen poses. Rachel Roddy traces her life through the cookers she has known; Rebecca May Johnson considers the radical potential of finger food; Ruby Tandoh discovers other definitions of sweetness; Yemisí Aríbisálà remembers a love affair in which food failed as a language; and Julia Turshen considers food's ties to community.
The Best American Food Writing 2019
Hodder Mifflin Harcourt, 2019
Whether it's the dizzying array of Kit Kats in Japan, a reclamation of the queer history of tapas, or a spotlight on a day in the life of a restaurant inspector, the work in The Best American Food Writing 2019 will inspire you to pick up a knife and start chopping, but also to think critically about what you're eating and how it came to your plate, while still leaving you clamouring for seconds.
Do What You Want
Self-published, 2017
Do What You Want is a one-off magazine, curated and edited by Ruby Tandoh and Leah Pritchard. It features writing from actress Mara Wilson; food writers Diana Henry, Tejal Rao, Bee Wilson, Heather Havrilesky, Laura Snapes, Esmé Weijun Wang, performance artist and poet Travis Alabanza, and illustrations from Laura Callaghan, Rose Blake and Jules Scheele. The print run raised over £24,000 for charities as diverse as Mind, Beat, Bipolar UK, Survivors UK, Merseyside Youth Association, Brixton Soup Kitchen, Voice for Domestic Workers, and Samaritans.