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My husband loves anything I make from my Jamie Oliver cookbooks. I own three: 5 Ingredients, Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes, and Everyday Super Food. If I were to add one or two of his cookbooks to my shelf, which do you recommend? We try to eat fish 2-4 times a week, vegetarian 1-3 times a week, and red meat 1-2 times a week, so a book with a mix of all or a focus on one of those would be great. 

Comfort Food is my favorite for one very simple reason: it has the best Yorkshire Pudding batter recipe I've had. It's part of the "Double Whammy Toad-in-a-hole" recipe.

And here's a tip. It's even better if you make the batter the night before (and refridgerate it). The flour fully incorporates and once you whisk it again, you have the silkiest batter. It also makes for a much quicker to the table brunch. And the sauce recipe to go with the Toad-in-a-hole is great too. I live in the United States, where it can be tricky to find HP Sauce for the sauce. In a pinch, A1 Steak Sauce is similar-ish, but use half as much.

I own Jamie's Dinners, Comfort Food, Save with Jamie, JO's Christmas cookbook, Cook with Jamie , Happy Days with the Naked Chef, Jamie's Food Revolution, Jamie Cooks Italy and Jamie's Meals in Minutes.  There are great recipes in all of them with lots of household favourites on repeat......so very hard to recomment 1 or 2 but I'll try.   One thing I do like is that I can pretty much always get all of the ingredients - there are only 2 grocery stores in my small town so some authors/books just don't work for me...yes I order things online but there is a limit to how often I will do that and it doesnt help for fresh items or "tonight's dinner"!  Also - all his books seem to have good sized fish chapters.

Food Revolution (also published as The Ministry of Food) has lots of great ideas including pages where he takes a basic idea (ie carrot salad) and ups it in steps - he calls these pages "Evolution... salad" recipes.  Another example is a basic stew procedure and then gives opitions such as chicken & white wine, pork & cider, beef and ale etc.  This is followed with ways to dress your one pot up with different toppings.  And hands down my favourite chapter is the curry chapter - homemade curry pastes and a wide variety of curries in which to use them.  

Save with Jamie resonates with me as I cook for 2 but do like to prepare roast chickens and beef etc.  He starts with a "mothership roast" and then provides LOTS of different ways to use the leftovers.  I make lots even with out the specifc "leftover" meat on hand.  There is also a great veg chapter and pages with tips for using up / preserving various fridge & pantry items.  I got lots of good ideas from this one.

Tough call re: Jamie's Dinners, Comfort Food and Cook with Jamie - all 3 are great books....Comfort Food has lots of bigger projects (this is where I learned to make pasta from scratch), Cook with Jamie is full of recipes that helped me learn some new techniques and Jamie's Dinners provides lots of good weeknight options (incuding my gold standard chicken pot pie :)

I checked with EYB notes and the title on my shelf with the most comments is Meals in Minutes.....it turns out that this is not really my style of cooking and if you are not making the entire meal then you have to keep scanning through the recipe to pick out the specific ingredients / steps you need.  If you like his current TV shows (15 minute and 30 minute meals) then maybe....

Note to Fyretigger - my favourite Yorkshire pudding is from JO's Christmas book...worked perfectly the 1st time and every time since :)  I just read the "double whammy toad in the hole" recipe and am thinking of how to cut it back to make a great Sunday dinner for the 2 of us!

I have quite a few of his books, and my favourite one is Jamie at Home. In this book, each section is based on an ingredient from the author’s veg garden (Asparagus, beets and carrots, leeks, etc) or a specific theme or technique (Pastry, barbecue, winter salads, etc). The recipes are diverse and original, and include lots of meat entrees as well as vegetarian choices. There was a tv program (of course) which ran for 2 seasons. I enjoyed it so much that I bought it on DVD. I’ve cooked a lot from this book, and enjoyed everything I’ve made so far.

Thank you Fyretigger, averythingcooks, and eliza for your helpful suggestions. I took some time and browsed through the books you recommended in the EYB library. I ordered three: Jamie at Home, The Naked Chef, and Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food.

Eliza, Jamie at Home will be especially good because we like and eat specific vegetables most every day and get tired of them the same old way.

Averythingcooks, I appreciate your specific notes on the books you own like Food Revolution, which sounds similar to what Mark Bittman does in a couple of his cookbooks. I may order Save With Jamie. We're pretty much staying in place for the duration of the pandemic. So, making something from leftover meat sounds very appealing. I like to cook but some days.... just don't want to start from scratch.

Fyretigger, I'll have to try the Yorkshire pudding. I've never eaten it but my husband has. He said his mother (from Benfleet, England) used to make it when he was a child and he didn't much like it. Maybe I can change his mind with JO's version! 

This sounds very interesting.  I found it in JO's site of recipes.  BTW, I finally purchased HO sauce from Costplus Worldmarket nearby and made full English breakfast to use the sauce few weeks ago. I was skeptical at first using the sauce with eggs, bacon and sausage but it certainly goes together.   

Rinshin - this made me smile because in our house ........there is NO bacon / sausage and eggs plate WITHOUT HP sauce ;)

Haha, my husband needed "proper" nodging to put on HP sauce.  He normally uses no sauce with eggs or western style steaks.  But, he was ok with it after taking a small bite.  I am much more of a risk taker LOL.  

I even made English style beans using a recipe I found from Australian blogger.  Since I don't know what it should taste like, I think it was ok and went well with grilled tomatoes and button mushrooms I made for the breakfast.  Next time, a little more softer bean texture for me.   

LOL, it is a challenging recipe to cut down... awkward quantities for the math. For cooking for 2, I guess I would reccomend a typical layer cake pan (about 8 inches), and cut the recipe down to 1/5th or 1/6th.

I've only ever done a half recipe myself and I cooked it in the large size popover pan. If I remember right, I think a half batch made a dozen toad-in-a-hole (half a sausage in each), and then 2 or 3 straight Yorkies.