This year Lunar New Year falls on February 17, and heralds the Year of the Fire Horse. Celebrated in countries with a lunar calendar, this important festival has feasting at the heart of it, with traditional dishes including a whole steamed fish, for abundance. Find all you need for your Lunar New Year celebrations in these four cookbooks packed with Chinese and Southeast Asian recipes.
In 2026, Brits will celebrate Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day) on Tuesday, February 17 – the same day many other countries celebrate Mardi Gras. If you're feasting with pancakes, why not get creative with that batter? From Eleanor Ford's Golden Lace Pancakes served with a sumptuous Sumatran Lamb Korma, to Karen Morgan's dramatic layered Crêpes Mille-feuille, these recipes will give you inspiration for Pancake Day and beyond.
Don't forget that you can still enjoy Pancake Day, even if you are avoiding gluten. Check out the many recipes in our Gluten-Free pancake collection.
Curated collections from ckbk's editors
Love makes the world go around, it gives us happiness and hope, and as Bad Bunny showed us all at the weekend, that is in no way restricted to romantic love. February 14 is the annual day of love. We need it all year round, but we also need all the love we can get. So let’s seize the day and celebrate our loved ones—our lovers and our Galentines, or anyone else you feel could do with a cuddle. Food is a love language we all understand, and making food for your beloveds is a special thing to do, a special thing to share.
To welcome the Year of the Fire Horse, which begins on February 17, we’re diving chopsticks-first into the delicious traditions of Chinese New Year with Judi Rose, author of To Life!
Mustard oil is to Bangladeshi food what olive oil is to Italian food. As a person of Bangladeshi origin it is almost unthinkable not to include mustard oil in my cooking repertoire and belongs to the far end of the spectrum of cooking oils—intense and bold in flavour, it has a high smoking point and also features heavily in Indian regional cooking such as Punjabi, South India and West Bengal.
Classic Thai Cuisine by David Thomson is our #ckbkclub book of the month, and we offer ideas for cooking with venison and a collection of snacks for watching the Superbowl (and/or the Winter Olympics!)
Australian chef David Thompson’s critically acclaimed cookbooks on Thai cuisine, together with his hugely successful high-end Thai restaurants, have been instrumental bringing the range and diversity of Thai cuisine to an international audience. This week we are delighted to add David’s first cookbook, Classic Thai Cuisine, to ckbk’s collection. In this latest author profile, fellow Australian chef and long time friend Roberta Muir talks to David about his career, his influences, and the in depth research which has gone into his cookbooks.
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