Michael Wignall cookbook collects 70 dishes from The Angel

The Michael Wignall cookbook, a 420-page debut published by Jon Croft Editions, brings together 70 dishes built around the seasons and landscape surrounding his one-Michelin-star restaurant, The Angel at Hetton, in the Yorkshire Dales.

Wignall, born in Lancashire, trained early under Paul Heathcote before holding two stars at The Latymer at Pennyhill Park and maintaining two stars at Gidleigh Park in Devon. He has run The Angel at Hetton, currently rated one star, since taking it on.

The book follows a format increasingly common among high-end restaurant cookbooks aimed at fellow chefs and committed amateurs rather than casual home cooks: photographs and descriptions of the finished plates sit in the main body, while detailed working methods are collected towards the rear.

Intricate without appearing cluttered, with each component given room to register.

Sketches behind the plates

Alongside recipes, the book includes sketches showing Wignall's design process, tracing how a dish moves from an idea on paper to its final composition on the plate.

One reviewer of the finished book described the compositions as "intricate without appearing cluttered, with each component given room to register both visually and on the palate," a line that echoes how critics have written about Wignall's cooking for two decades.

Among the 70 recipes is a poached rabbit dish paired with Jerusalem artichoke, one of several game and root-vegetable pairings that reflect the moorland setting of the restaurant rather than a generic fine-dining repertoire.

A rare document from a two-star veteran

Chef cookbooks of this depth are relatively rare from cooks who have spent most of their careers outside London, and the release adds Wignall to a short list of regional two-Michelin-star veterans, including operators like Gary Usher, who have documented their techniques in book form rather than through television.

The book is priced at £65 and is available for collection directly from The Angel at Hetton, alongside standard retail and online distribution.

Wignall has not announced a second book, though the level of technical detail in this one suggests it was written as much for the trade as for readers cooking at home.