Cookbooks divide into two categories, reference and lifestyle: to the first, you will turn when you're in the mood for a quiche, any quiche, or you want to know what to do with brisket; to the second, when you wish to be the sort of person who cooks that sort of thing. It sounds like I'm making a value judgment, which I'm not: some of my favourite recipes come from lifestyle cookbooks, and it's possible for some authors, mainly home cooks, to turn their hands to both (for instance, Nigella Lawson's How to Eat is a reference book, while her Forever Summer with Nigella is not). It's possible for some authors, mainly serious chefs, to produce books that are neither, but this isn't the time to start slating people. Soon it'll be Christmas.

Once in a decade, probably, a book comes out that is both: that has hundreds of recipes, tested by normal people rather than other chefs, with regular rather than esoteric ingredients, but is also idiosyncratic and inventive, and could only have been written by that person. I commend to you as this rare all-rounder Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet (Fourth Estate, £25), a very generous compendium (300 recipes, maybe?) of everything you can possibly do with every possible kind of flour. His particular schtick is to recognise the things professionals do better than home cooks  how do American diners make such great cheesecake? How does a shop-bought chocolate cake get that moist crumb? Tapioca, thanks for asking. How do they make biscuits so squidgy on station concourses?  and then replicate the methods. He has plenty of his own ideas also, and a chemist's curiosity. I tried a couple of the more unusual moves  starting cupcakes with a meringue mix  and fed the resulting blueberry cakes to my mother-in-law. I saw it flit through her eyes: "How does she bake like this, when she's not even a Christian?"

The big news for foodies was Ferran Adrià's The Family Meal (Phaidon, £19.95), in which he descends from Mount El Bulli to explain to regular people how to cook regular food. The layout is gorgeous and nostalgically arty, the recipes are arranged into 31 chic menus, but many of the photographic demos are pretty basic: accomplished maintenance cooks (that's what Italians call it when you cook all the time but only for your spouse and ungrateful children) would be miffed, I think, to be given a book in which they were shown, pictorially, how to liquidise a soup with a stick blender. Conversely, I've heard pros complain that you need quite a bit of expertise, since many of the recipes give quantities for two, four, six or eight, but don't alter the timing; you could, with insufficient experience, end up cooking three mushrooms for an hour and a half. But still, it's a big, bold monster and an adornment to the kitchen.

I love the way Valentine Warner writes. He reminds me of my dad, even though I'm sure he's younger than I am; blokey, carnivorous and a bit of a show-off, he's the kind of person who bones a chicken just for kicks and thinks they sell rabbits in Costcutter. Some of the ideas in The Good Table (Mitchell Beazley, £25) are a bit cheffy; I worry about any recipe that runs over two pages and/or involves more than three animals. But at its best, this is professionalism made DIY-possible; it looks beautiful and I salute it. Lucas Hollweg's Good Things to Eat (Collins, £20) is similar in sensibility, a bit simpler and less intimidating, with a very sweet tooth (a whole chapter for peaches and plums, I ask you).

There's a heap of intensely Scandinavian breakfast recipes in Signe Johansen's Scandalicious (Saltyard, £20) (a muesli for summer, a porridge for winter, and a social-inclusion programme for isolated quince), but I fell for the dinner course: four racy soups, including a zingy beetroot and ginger, and a number of piquant fish recipes. If I had any criticism, it would be a mild one, and summed up by this recipe: moose with chanterelles and lingonberry sauce.

Jennifer McLagan's Odd Bits (Jacqui Small LLP, £20) was my "oh wow" moment; this really is a lifestyle choice, for people who want to eat, and be seen eating, pig's tails  the subtitle is How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. If you can find me a book that has more recipes for testicles  well, there isn't one. Unless Testicles for All Seasons came out and I missed it. Tongue hash, confit of gizzards, Calvados tripe: I'm telling you all this for comic effect, but I wouldn't give it shelf space if there weren't also many sensible yet unexpected recipes for the cheap and tasty end of the beast: liver, kidneys, shanks and hocks.

Jamie's Great Britain (Michael Joseph, £30) looks incredibly tame by comparison, and persistent Jamie fanciers might feel that they've read a lot of this, at least in principle, before. But it has nice production values, a feelgood atmosphere, some cute, pubby ideas (smoked trout pâté with mini Yorkshire puddings  how happy would you be, if you went to someone's house and they presented that? Yes, very). He's reaching that point  let's call it the Stephen Fry Tipping Point  where he can do no wrong, and I'm glad of it.

 Which food books would you give as presents?