A few weeks ago, the British Library's food season assembled a panel of literary luminaries - novelist Michèle Roberts, biographer Francesca Wade, writer Eli Davies, and food writer Rebecca May Johnson - to discuss women's culinary lives and the kitchen as a hotbed of creativity, resistance, and intellectual ferment. Your correspondent couldn't attend, but word has it the discussion was brilliant, and we can only hope someone remembered to hit 'record.'

Happily, all four authors' recent books have been devoured (metaphorically, mostly). Davies' The Spinster Cookbook offers perceptive and funny takes on shopping and cooking for one in a society that assumes you come with a plus-one. Wade's Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife dives deep into the making and remaking of Stein, leaving readers to decide whether she was a genius or the high priestess of unintelligibility - perhaps both. May Johnson's Small Fires is welcoming, challenging, and drenched in tomato sauce. And Roberts' slim second cookbook, French Cooking for Two, provides the inspiration for Roddy's latest homage: a chicken sauté with tomatoes and mushrooms that proves this Napoleonic classic can be both simple and stunning, if you just stop overcomplicating it.