BIG FAT XMAS COOKBOOKS; When you're showing off in the kitchen it's now the size of your book that matters. Nick Curtis finds it difficult to lift and blend.

Byline: Nick Curtis

Last year it was all about celebrities: Gordon, Jamie, Hugh and Nigella. this year, it's size that matters. Just take a look at the monolithic -- and gorgeous -- culinary tomes coming to a Waterstone's near you.

there's I Know How to Cook, the first English translation of Ginette Mathiot's 1932 "bible" of French home cooking: 1,400 recipes, 976 lavish pages, weighing 2.4kg; there's Vefa's Kitchen, a 2.7kg, 704-page guide to Greek food, and the spanish compendium, 1080 Recipes, contains exactly that number of Iberian menus in 976 pages, illustrated with gastroporn photos. It weighs 2.4kg.

Most lone chefs can't compete. River Cottage Everyday, the latest tV spinoff from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, is a mere 416 pages and 1.4kg; Michelin-starred Marcus Wareing only manages 280 in his 1.2kg Nugmeg and Custard.

the chefs who made their names by going to extremes, however, were never likely to shy away from a challenge. Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck Cookbook is 500-plus pages of autobiography/recipe book/science lesson, weighs 2.7kg and comes with an eyewatering [pounds sterling]125 price tag. (the books listed above cost around a fifth of that.) But spaniard Ferran adria, regularly credited as the best chef running the best restaurant in the world, trumps him: his 528-page a Day at El Bulli weighs in at a massive 3.2kg. that'll strain your whisking wrist.

these are not just cookery books but objects of desire. "Few of us actually need more cookbooks," says Bloomsbury's Richard atkinson, editor of Blumenthal's book, "but perhaps we collect and covet them because we aspire to the lifestyles they project. Heston is famous for pushing food to its boundaries at the Fat Duck, and it felt right to try to push his cookbook to the boundaries, too." (He also points out there is a smaller and cheaper version of the book available.) But the real masters of the gigantism game are Phaidon, starting with their English translation of the Italian "bible" silver spoon in 2005, and continuing with Vefa, Mathiot, 1080 recipes and adria. "as many recipes as possible, from all possible regions, all the authentic tastes of a country," says Phaidon's editorial director Emilia terragni, calling from switzerland. "Books should be useful but also beautiful; a friend in the kitchen," she continues. a friend attractive enough to compete as a gift in the competitive Christmas publishing market.

Yet mammoth cookbooks may already have reached the upper limit of their optimum size ... "a cookbook," says terragni, "is no use if you can't hold it in your hands." Quite.