These 5 chefs put their most inspiring food ideas between the leaves of a good cookbook

Even as the rest of the global book publishing marketplace contracts, our appetite for cookbooks grows year on year with publishers responding by increasing the number of cookery titles and the productions budgets allotted to those titles because they are very, very big business indeed. 

Such big business, in fact, that there are test kitchens in Britain and the US dedicated to developing recipes for publication, and it is even rumoured that some of the international household names see the recipes in their books for the first time when they turn up at their own launch party.

But what is it like for the Irish cookbook authors? We talk to four of the best-known authors and to Kristin Jensen, Ireland’s top cookbook editor.