Any book by Damien Pignolet is worth reading. His second publication in the elegantly produced Lantern imprint moves from general cooking – his first publication was French (2005) – and offers a themed work on salads, or Salades, to give it its French title and presumed pronunciation ($59.95 hb, 240 pp, 9781920989552). There is no doubt about Pignolet’s culinary heritage, and, while there is a strong flavour of classic French dishes in Salades, many of them are given a new slant by Pignolet or have evolved over time in his Sydney restaurants, including the legendary Claude’s, in Paddington. His range is broader than Gallic: there are salads of Italian, Chinese, American, and modern Australian provenance. Unlike many themed titles, this one, refreshingly, does not pretend to be a ‘salad bible’. Moreover, it reflects Pignolet’s style of cooking, through his restaurants and entertaining: superb ingredients assembled with balance and refinement, backed by culinary knowledge and masterly technique.

As Pignolet explains, these are mostly salades composées. Don’t be misled by the assumption that the word ‘salad’ is a synonym for simple; and don’t expect to fling a few things into a bowl and dress them. You don’t need this book to explain how to do that, though there is a useful section illustrating a good range of salad leaves, in case you never tire of these. As is to be expected from a chef of Pignolet’s sophistication, many of these dishes are quite complex and time-consuming, and require planning. On occasion, they are quite expensive to prepare, and why not? Foie gras is worth it.

Recently, I made the more modest Chicken and Tarragon Mayonnaise Salad, enlivened with a carrot and celeriac julienne. It was a big success, and I will serve it again. The balance of flavours and muted colours was perfect. I didn’t feel the need to follow Pignolet’s directions and ingredients quite to the letter, and I had to extend the prescribed cooking times to avoid serving my guests rare fowl. Mostly, however, Pignolet gives just about the right mixture of direct instruction and practical advice, and demands a certain skill level from his readers. You may not want to peel walnuts, or at least not for a second time in your life, but at least Pignolet explains why you should if you don’t want a bitter flavour in your Waldorf salad. Finally, if you want to try Pignolet’s salades without cooking them yourself, you can always savour his food at Bistro Moncur, in Woollahra.

Tony Bilson’s Fine Family Cooking: Australia’s Original Master Chef ($39.95 pb, 256 pp, Murdoch Books, 9781741969894) is a reprint of a 1994 HarperCollins publication of the same name, originally published sans the unfortunate subtitle. The new edition cashes in on the hugely popular television program on which, we are told, Bilson appeared. In Fine Family Cooking, the legacy of the French culinary tradition is abundant; versions of many classic dishes will be familiar to lovers of French cuisine. Bilson gives many of them his own slant in this appealing collection. Any family that cooked and ate this food regularly would be dining finely indeed. One example: the delicious terrine of pears, in which pears are cooked in red and white wine, then layered in a terrine, with white wine syrup poured over and set with gelatine. Though graded as ‘complex’, this is not at all difficult to make.

Damien Pignolet, whose text is the more discursive, makes generous references to his sources – fellow cooks and friends – and both authors have a useful bibliography of influential publications. Not surprisingly, both of them list Elizabeth David’s indispensable fifty-year-old French Provincial Cooking (1960). Elizabeth David, still very much in print, has now been repackaged in a ‘best of’ illustrated version: At Elizabeth’s Table: Her Very Best Everyday Recipes ($49.95 hb, 383 pp, Michael Joseph, 9780718154752). Since this has been produced by distinguished publisher Jill Norman, who worked with David, published her work, and is herself a noted cookery writer, the selection is impressive.

Norman lists David’s superlative books, but one needs to go back to the original editions to gain a full sense of her literary and culinary style, and of the straitened period in which she was writing, and proselytising. 

Of the nearly 160 recipes in the new compilation, I have cooked a good third regularly. One of my favourites, Duck with Figs, is illustrated on the cover. Apropos which, although the photographs of the finished dishes are in perfect David taste, I am quite pleased that the dishes I have cooked over the years bear little resemblance to them. Unaccompanied text allows for much greater interpretative freedom. What a tyranny for creativity in the kitchen are photographs of finished dishes. Glamorous photography is too often a diversion.

Literary flair combined with culinary expertise is what is missing from so many of today’s cookery books. After all, being a fine cook does not automatically translate into being able to write about cooking. Good prose and a clear, instructive sense of the writers’ personality are what makes you return to cookery books again and again until they fall apart or dissolve in stains. In David’s case, two writers who influenced her style of writing – with its practical instruction, wit, flair, and blunt observations – are Eliza Acton and the French Mme Saint-Ange. Books by both are available in modern editions, and the latter’s La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange (1927) in a marvellous English translation.

Back to salads, or salades. Elizabeth David has this to say when discussing the practice of rubbing the bowl with garlic instead of including it in the dressing: ‘It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad.’