Introducing the gang

These are my cookbooks.

Not a vast collection, I'll grant you, and most of them are a little grubby and food-spattered from living on the worktop where all the dinner prep takes place.

Some would say a cookbook with stains is a cookbook that's been used well. That may be true, but the simple fact is this: I don't use my cookbooks anywhere near enough. I love whipping up something tasty in the evening, and I'm lucky enough to work from home, giving me time to shop and prepare in between stints at the translation coalface - but I tend to fall back on the same half-dozen staple meals, time and time again, while all those lovely books just gather dust.

So my New Year's resolution for 2016 is a simple one. I'm going to use the power of chance to force me to make better use of my cookbook collection. Because I'm not only a keen chef, but also a total nerd, once a week I'll be using random.org to select a book from the pile above - I've numbered them from left to right - and then a page from that book (and, if necessary, a recipe from that page).

Whatever the finger of fate may land on - starter, main course, dessert, soup, salad, wedding cake, rabbit soufflé - that's what I'll be making that day. I'll then document the results here - including feedback from my long-suffering better half who'll be enjoying/enduring the fruits of my labours...

It should be a fun ride. There's a wide old range of cookbooks on that worktop, from reasonably well-thumbed favourites like the BBC Good Food pocket books and reliable Indian and Chinese collections, through to barely-touched eBay purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time (The Microwave Gourmet, seriously?). In and among the weekly posts, I'll be looking at some of them more closely - like all the best books, many come with stories attached.

You might also be able to spot three cardboard folders in there. They're full of recipes I've printed out from the internet, gathered from friends etc. over the years. Each of them counts as a separate book for the purposes of the challenge, giving random.org a grand total of 20 books to choose from.

Just one last thing. There's one book that isn't pictured above: that's The Silver Spoon, and it sits on top of the microwave instead because it's blooming enormous. It's the absolute Bible of Italian cookery and I love it to bits - but again, I've done far more reading of it (and what a glorious, illustrated read it is) than I have actually cooking from it. So it becomes book #21 in the Random Kitchen pool - and I'm secretly hoping it gets chosen more than a few times.

So that's my weekly challenge. It'll be nerdy, it'll be tasty, it'll probably be a rod for my own back more often than not - but I think it'll be good fun too. Watch this space!