The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club: April 2025

The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club: February 2018

The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club: April 2025

1 April 2025

Welcome to the Great British Chefs Cookbook Club! Find out how it works, how to get involved and what prizes you can win.

The Great British Chefs Cookbook Club: April 2025

Welcome to the Great British Chefs Cookbook Club! Find out how it works, how to get involved and what prizes you can win.

Even with the vast number of recipes available on the internet these days, there’s nothing quite like leafing through a beautiful book full of recipes. It’s a medium that’s stronger than ever before, with cookbooks topping bestseller charts throughout the year. If you’re anything like us then you’ll have shelves upon shelves of them in your home – some kept in pristine condition, others earmarked, stained and scrawled over after years of use.

It’s this national love for cookbooks that has prompted us to start our very own cookbook club. Each month we’ll select a cookbook that we think stands out from the rest and ask you, the Great British Chefs community, to cook a recipe from it. We’ll publish a small selection of recipes on our site so, even if you don’t already have the book, you can still get involved and see how your cooking compares to everyone else’s. Apply to join the Facebook group here and take a look at this month's book (and recipes) below. We've also included the winning post from last month's book, as well as some of our other favourite entries.

Apply to join the Cookbook Club today!

Click here to apply to join our cookbook club, meet like-minded home cooks and share your creations for the chance to win prizes. Please make sure to answer the two simple introductory questions to speed up your application.

This month's cookbook is Agak Agak

For April we'll be cooking from Shu Han Lee's Agak Agak. This Singaporean cookbook was listed as one of the five best food books of 2025 by The Guardian, who called its recipes 'simple yet superb'. The name comes from a Malay phrase meaning 'roughly' or 'approximately', and is associated with the sort of casual home cooking Shu Han Lee is celebrating in this book. Singapore is rightly known as one of the best places in the world to eat, and this book shows you how to bring some of the joys of hawker centres into your own kitchen. We hope you enjoy cooking from it!

Pandan swiss roll with whipped cream

Soto ayam with spring greens

Shu’s spicy late night special

Last month's winners

In March, you cooked dishes from The Changing Tides by Roberta Hall McCarron! Huge congratulations to March's cookbook club winner Gill who takes home a prize. Take a look at Gill's entry below, as well as those from our runners up!

Gill’s wild garlic soup with smoked haddock and almonds is our winner. We loved the story of a neighbour bringing some wild garlic and you looking up the ingredient! We really felt that encapsulated the joy of owning and collecting cookbooks - you have recipes on hand for any ingredient that may come into your home, even unexpectedly. It’s also the heart of seasonal cooking, using what you have, which is the message threaded through Roberta Hall McCarron’s beautiful book.
Anne knocked it out of the park with her slow roast lamb shoulder with lamb fat potatoes from The Changing Tides, the perfect Sunday lunch! Lamb is so wonderful at this time of year.
Yyvone made not one but four dishes and we wish we’d been invited round for dinner. Pork kofta with apple molasses, barbecued chicken with date molasses, tomato and watermelon salad and triple-cooked chips with savora mustard mayo. We love that you swapped thighs for wings 'as when it comes to BBQ the wing is king!' We agree!
Duncan made vanilla pannacotta with rhubarb and hibiscus consommé from The Changing Tides and it looks beautiful. What a lovely version of this classic springtime dessert.
And Marta made the same dish - equally beautifully presented! We’re such rhubarb fans and clearly you all are too!
Tracy’s Throwback Thursday dish of garlic clove curry from the Nutmeg Trail looks amazing (and perfect for fighting any late-spring colds!) Although it is time-consuming, here at Team GBC, we find the peeling of the garlic to be a very mindful task! And always worth it!
Another Throwback Thursday delight from Kim - and another use of spring’s gift of rhubarb! This is rhubarb baklava with burnt honey from New Classics by Marcus Wareing. Look at that cross-section. We were wowed!
We loved Lorna’s kedgeree from The Changing Tides and you should be very proud of those poached eggs!
Julie’s pappardelle with lamb shoulder ragout from The Changing Tides looks beautifully presented here, and the chive garlic flowers sprinkled on top are a lovely seasonal touch.

Make sure you post photos along with commentary of the dishes you cook this month in our Facebook group to be in with the chance of winning.