Naidoo used the four seasons to dissect every stage of her cultivating experiment, from planting tomato seedlings to flea beetles attacking the eggplants, to feeling melancholy during the more dormant winter months (her solution was to grow mushrooms and then include the recipe for her mother-in-law’s beloved chicken and mushroom pot pies).

For Delia, sharing his family stories just seemed a natural way to connect readers to the recipes. “A lot of the cool recipes that I really love have got a story.” .

His rabbit stew recipe, for example, is accompanied by the childhood memory of his father taking him to his nannu’s (grandfather’s) house, where rabbits were killed in the backyard and cooked with home-grown vegetables in red wine and spices. “If you can read the story and understand it, you understand the emotion of the dish. And food’s emotional. It’s tactile,’’ Delia says. “I want people to understand that and that’s why it’s important my story’s in there.”

As publishing director at Hardie Grant, Paul McNally is constantly searching for stories like Delia’s. “I’m certainly more interested in books with a personal voice behind them,” he says. “It gives people some context about the recipes.”

Of the 10 or so cookbook submissions that arrive on his desk each week, McNally says an increasing number are themed around “recipes from my grandmother” and the like. “Chefs, home cooks, or whoever is pitching the book are certainly aware of the way books are moving and understand that there needs to be a personal touch in there. Otherwise it’s just anonymous recipes,” he says.

McNally attributes the shift to the myriad ways foodies can now access recipes, including specialist websites. “People really want more than just recipes now – they can get that from the internet,” he says. “They want to know the personalities behind the recipes and the reason why.”

Veteran food and wine writer Rita Erlich thinks food memoirs have also been spurred on by television’s incessant culinary offerings. “We’re now used to seeing a much more personal side of people, however massaged and organised those television series are,” Erlich says. “It’s much more conversational than a list of recipes and much more engaging. It’s a way of establishing a relationship and saying, ‘You’re not just cooking my recipes; I’m there with you and you can find out more about me’.”

Erlich cites Madeleine Kamman’s When French Women Cook as one of the original food memoirs. Published in 1976, it combines 250 recipes with individual chapters dedicated to the French cooks who shaped her career. McNally mentions the 1960 classic, French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David, as an even earlier version, albeit without the drool-worthy images that are now splashed throughout modern food memoirs.

Continuing the French theme, Erlich collaborated this year with acclaimed Melbourne-based chef Philippe Mouchel, for his memoir, More Than French: Recipes and Stories.

“Given the influences in Philippe’s life and the countries where he’s lived, any book about his food would be a culinary biography,” she says. “The stories were really important to him and, we thought, of great interest to everyone. Nobody just appears as a fully-formed great chef.”

While Mouchel relied on Erlich to turn his observations into stories, Naidoo found her passion for food and writing to be the perfect marriage. “Food’s just a lovely conduit for wonderful stories of culture, friendship, love and travel,’’ she says. ‘‘Nearly all my best memories involve food.”

Delia, by contrast, laboured over the words himself – a daunting task for someone who left school early to become a chef. “I really enjoyed writing the stories. I read over and over them, trying to perfect it,” he says. “Thinking back now, there’s more I could have written. But I guess that leaves room for another one.”

FOOD MEMOIRS WITH A DIFFERENCE

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes, by Elizabeth Bard (HarperCollins)

American journalist and art historian Elizabeth Bard penned this food memoir after simultaneously falling in love with French cuisine and a Frenchman. Described in the blurb as “part love story, part wine-splattered cookbook’’, the award-winning Lunch in Paris covers Bard’s gastronomic experiences, from the good (discovering chocolate shops) to the bad (gutting fish). Her passion for cooking – her website is entirely food-based – is evident in the book’s recipes, which range from summer ratatouille to coconut macaroons.

A Year in the Village of Eternity, by Tracey Lawson (Allen & Unwin)

UK journalist Tracey Lawson spent a year in the central Italian village of Campodimele to discover why the villagers lived such long lives. Fluent in Italian, Lawson breaks her book into chapters based on each of her 12 months living in the Aurunci Mountains, focusing on the locals’ cooking and eating habits. Naturally, the accompanying recipes are a simple, wholesome affair – think lasagne, and potato-based dishes, high in olive oil and low on fuss.

Mourad: New Moroccan, by Mourad Lahlou (Hardie Grant)

Mourad Lahlou, chef and co-owner of a San Francisco Michelin-star restaurant, weaves his reflections on his Marrakech childhood with more than 100 Moroccan recipes. His memoirs paint a picture that perfectly complements the recipes, and the photography is so sublime, it’s a cookbook that could take pride of place on any coffee table.

Indochine, by Luke Nguyen (Murdoch Books)

This is Luke Nguyen’s third food memoir, and the co-owner and chef at Sydney’s Red Lantern has obviously found a successful balance between Vietnamese recipes and personal stories. This time, the yarns (so detailed that at times the book resembles a travel memoir) centre on his discovery of the French influence on his homeland, and the subsequent arrival of French-Vietnamese cuisine.