When in Rome ...

Caroline Stacey, 'Independent' food editor and winner of a 2002 Glenfiddich award, asks eight writers to choose inspiring cookbooks for self-catering holidays

Greece: The Greek Cook, by Rena Salaman (Aquamarine, £20)
Chosen by Fay Maschler, restaurant critic

"What's great about cooking in Greece is the ingredients: they're seasonal and unsullied by chemicals. Everything tastes very good: the potatoes are fantastic, broad beans are there for a brief period. It imposes constraints on your cooking which is a good thing." Of all the cookery books about Greece that Fay Maschler has tried, Rena Salaman's, whose most recent book is The Greek Cook (others, including Greek Cuisine, which Maschler also owns, are out of print) have proved the most reliable. "When you're cooking in Greece with the ingredients to hand, you want traditional recipes that taste as if they're made by a little old granny dressed in black, not someone's individual take on it," says Maschler. She has been returning to a house in the Pelopónnisos for 10 years. Kalamata, famous for its olives, is nearby, so the oil is wonderful. "It transforms whatever you cook. Mostly I cook out of my head. But I might look up avgolemono to get the proportions of egg and lemon right, and mayeritsa, the Easter soup, and there are very particular ways of making meatballs." Other surefire recipes include stifado with rabbit, and rich octopus stews.

In Greece, the best food isn't found in restaurants. "If you eat out as a tourist you get the same old formula. The interesting and good cooking is all in the homes where the grannies stick to doing things the way their mothers did."

Italy: Marcella Cucina, by Marcella Hazan (Macmillan, £16.99 - paperback edition)
Chosen by Christobel Kent, novelist

Christobel Kent's first novel, A Party in San Niccoló, is a mystery partly set in a Tuscan cookery school and will be published by Penguin next year. Kent spent six months living in Florence with her husband and four children two years ago, and subsequent holidays have given her more background material. Having first cooked her way through Elizabeth David's Italian Food, she knew before she left to live in Italy which of several well-used books she would pack. "I took Marcella Hazan and became immersed in Italian life. You can see straightaway how to make the most of being there with this book. She recreates vividly the Italian way of doing things but not in a patronising way. She tells you the names of the fish you might not recognise. Reading it is like being in an Italian market with the stuff in front of you," says Kent.

The recipes for vegetables, such as the fat spring onions, artichokes and broad beans which are hard to find in England, are inspirational. Recipes are easy and pictures include instructions for trimming an artichoke. Kent picks vignole, a Roman spring vegetable stew, as one of the Marcella Hazan recipes she's grateful for at a time when so much produce appears at once. Anna del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy (Pavilion Books, £29.95) is also a cherished cookery book. "But I seem to use it more here than I do in Italy," Kent concludes.

Northern France: French Provincial Cooking, by Elizabeth David (Penguin, £6.99)
Chosen by Michele Roberts, author of 'Daughter of the House' and a short-story collection, 'Playing Sardines'

Michele Roberts is half French, and still spends much of her time in the Mayenne region, just south of Normandy. Cooking plays an important part in her fiction. "I was brought up on Normandy cooking, and still have books that were my grandmother's," says Roberts. Her cooking still bears witness to this. "Because Normandy cream is so good, I make things like pork chops with apples in cider with cream; roast lamb with haricot beans and cream; and lamb in brandy and garlic."

One of the books she treasures is Livre de Cuisine by Madame Saint-Ange. "Written in the Twenties, for French homes, it's a wonderful book with illustrations." Although Roberts needs English language introductions to French cookery less than the rest of us, there is still one book in English she doesn't hesitate to recommend. Elizabeth David may be "an obvious choice but it's a very, very good book. It's particularly good for holidays because it covers many regions of France. She describes travels in France. It's a wonderful book just to read because it's full of stories, and it's witty. It makes good armchair reading." And Madame Saint-Ange is one of the sources cited by David. Another, more urban, but no less urbane French cookbook, available in translation, is Edouard de Pomiane's Cooking in Ten Minutes. "A work of genius aimed at working people, it's an enduring classic," Roberts enthuses.

South of France: Mediterranean Seafood, by Alan Davidson (Prospect Books, £17.99 - end of June)
Chosen by Carol Drinkwater, novelist and author of 'The Olive Farm'

"It's not exactly a cookbook, more like an encyclopaedia, but Mediterranean Seafood is so comprehensive. I don't use cookbooks, I make recipes according to instinct. But what's fantastic about this is that although it does have recipes, it tells you everything else; the history, the French, Spanish, Italian and Greek names for all the fish and ways to cook them. It gives you an idea of what everything is good for and what it tastes like, even what pans to use. It's fantastic to take to markets and fish shops."

Drinkwater, who as an actress had played Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small, bought her Provençal property in 1987, and her account of restoring the farmhouse and olive grove became The Olive Farm. "When I first came over here, I really started eating fish and I heard about the Alan Davidson book from friends in Devon. If there's a fish on a menu and I don't know the English word for it, I know I'll find everything about it here." Otherwise Drinkwater doesn't rely on cookery books. "I cook French food in the simplest way with the vegetables, salads and herbs we grow. And the olive oil." The cherries, pears, apples and nectarines, also grown in her garden, provide the puddings. Fig and plum jams and marmalade are made with their fruit. Drinkwater does own a copy of Elizabeth David's A Book of Mediterranean Food, "but I can't remember the last thing I cooked from it." f

Spain: Moro The Cookbook, by Sam and Sam Clark (Ebury Press, £25)
Chosen by Alastair Brown, managing director of Sierra Rica, Spanish chestnut and soup producer

"It's such an obvious choice, but Moro would be my first book," says Alastair Brown who set up Sierra Rica three years ago. "So many of the recipes are jewels." Not all contain chestnuts, although chestnut and chorizo soup and pheasant with chestnuts are two he's cooked several times. Brown shuttles between Britain and the south of Spain, where the company packs and markets organic chestnuts from ancient chestnut groves near the home he and his wife have restored. In Spain Brown admits he's most likely to cook when there are people to impress. "Men seize control of the kitchen when there's a big piece of meat or fish," he says. More summery recipes from Moro The Cookbook include the gazpacho: "fantastic because they're a little more generous than usual with the vinegar to give it bite." Hot chorizo with butter bean and tomato, and grilled chicory with sherry vinegar and jamon are two of the hit salads.

Brown has quite a collection of books on Spanish cooking. Maria Jose Sevilla's Spain on a Plate (BBC, £4.99), has lovely recipes: salmorejo is a Córdoban tomato and pepper soup like a thick gazpacho with sherry as well as vinegar. Kevin Gould's Loving & Cooking With Reckless Abandon (Quadrille, £16.99) has lots of chestnut recipes. And Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food (Penguin, £12.99) chronicles the cooking of Spain's Sephardic Jewish population.

Portugal: The Taste of Portugal, by Edite Vieira (Grub Street, £12.99)
Chosen by Lisa Fior, architect and founder member of the Muf art and architecture practice

"I've been going to Portugal since my father moved there when I was 11," says Lisa Fior. "That was the year before the revolution, and it's changed enormously. But though you can buy your bacalhau (salt cod) ready prepared in Carrefour [supermarket], the food is very much the same. There's no class distinction in Portuguese cooking, everybody eats the same food, and chic Portuguese still pride themselves on eating peasant food." Many of her most enduring culinary memories come from early visits: seeing octopus being flung against a white-washed wall to tenderise it; choosing a live chicken for supper.

But it's almost as cheap to eat out as it is to cook, and Fior's as likely to make Portuguese dishes back at home in London as she is in Lisbon. "I've wooed every boyfriend with octopus cooked very slowly in the oven with garlic and oil. When it's cooked, chop it up with raw onion and parsley and serve it cold. It's really delicious." This book has "really arcane" recipes like açorda (stale bread boiled up with seafood), or a breakfast of a glass of hot coffee with bread in it. "I've never eaten that nor made it," Fior admits. "I'm as likely to cook my Portuguese food in a virtual way; lying on the sofa reading recipes in February in London." But for cooking, or reading, The Taste of Portugal is the book that takes her straight there.

Ireland: The Café Paradiso Cookbook, by Denis Cotter (Atrium, £20)
Chosen by Tom Kime, freelance chef, consultant, writer and broadcaster

River Café and Rick Stein-trained Tom Kime has spent holidays in Skibereen in Ireland since he was a child. "The fish is beautiful and you have time on your hands," he says. As a result, he enjoys cooking most when he's over there. If he needs any guidance, he'll turn to Rick Stein's English Seafood Cookery (Penguin, £6.99). "It tells you how to cook prawns, for example. I'd keep it in the boat with me if I was out catching mackerel." Alan Davidson's North Atlantic Seafood (currently out of print, but Prospect Books is publishing it in the autumn) is invaluable, too. He rates The Richard Corrigan Cookbook (Hodder & Stoughton, £25) and has used Paul and Jeanne Rankin's Gourmet Ireland "but it's a bit fancy".

Kime's first choice is the Café Paradiso book, a collection of recipes from the restaurant in Cork. "It gives a more contemporary picture of cooking in Ireland, not necessarily the soda bread thing." Completely vegetarian, it uses organic seasonal ingredients. The market in Cork sells the wonderful produce that the cookbook draws on. "Café Paradiso has Spanish and Moroccan dishes like chickpeas with chilli, and they're done with vegetables grown in Ireland. It acts as a catalyst to get you thinking about what to cook, particularly if you're on holiday and want to look at pictures of the produce and be inspired. The photographs are really striking."

USA: How to Grill, by Steven Raichlen (Workman, £14.99)
Chosen by Richard Ehrlich 'The Independent' on Sunday's drinks columnist and food writer

A New Yorker living in London, Ehrlich keeps up with American cookbooks on regular trips to the US where he's spent holidays with (and cooking for) his family, everywhere from Lake Tahoe to Vermont. He's always surprised how few of the many fine American cookery books make it to the UK. Of those that are available the first that springs to mind is Chez Panisse Cooking. "But that's the West Coast and it isn't holiday cooking," he concludes. Better to buy Steven Raichlen's How to Grill. It's just available over here, but already thoroughly thumbed through by Ehrlich in a bookshop in San Francisco. "Wherever you are, you're likely to be barbecuing and this one is very American, where barbecuing is a high art," Ehrlich observes. And indeed this guide couldn't be more foolproof. The author has written several barbecue books, but this, subtitled The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques claims to be the first step-by-step guide to grilling. If you're on the East Coast, the How to Grill A Whole Lobster Two Ways could help those beach barbie fantasies come true. And, although the pictures verge on the explicit, How to Grill Chicken on a Beer Can shows how a succulent fowl can be the result of combining the not-always-guaranteed successful mix of guys, beers and a naked flame. There are even instructions for a flame-grilled chipotle crème brûlée.