Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, Gilly is off to stunning Welbeck country estate in the heart of Nottinghamshire to the School of Artisan Food to meet head baker, Kevan Roberts.

His book Baking Sourdough takes us on a sensory journey to the roots of traditional bread making, and as the School prepares for this years’ summer school courses, Gilly finds out why sour dough and artisan food matters so much.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from the School of Artisan Food.

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This week, Gilly is with Nicola Lamb, one of the nominees of this year’sJane Grigson Trust Award for best debut food writer.

Her bookSift is an extraordinarily accomplished first book by a pastry chef trained in London and New York by the best - Ottolenghi, Dominique Ansel and Little Bread Pedlar. Her Substack, Kitchen Projects was praised as an ‘incredible resource’ by The Observer, and her recipes have been featured in Serious Eats, The Guardian, Olive, Vogue, and ESMagazine and she hosts sell-out pastry parties with her pop-up bakery, lark!

Check out Gilly's Substack for a recipe from one of her food moments.

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This week, Gilly explores art, philosophy and food with third generation British-Chinese photographer and Instagram superstar, Michael Zee

His Symmetry Breakfast account  featured his photographs of symmetrical breakfasts every day for 10 years and has 667k followers. In his latest book Zao Fan, Breakfast of China, it's with his anthropological eye that he looks beyond the dishes to place, people and home.

Check Gilly's Substack for recipes and photography from Michael's book.

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This week we’re off to North Macedonia via Crawley with Spasia Dinkovski 

Spasia’s book, Doma, meaning home, is one of Gilly's favourite journeys, back to where it all started. She may have been born in Crawley, but her heart, she finds out through her cooking and her writing, is with the women who fed her soul in Macedonian summers.  

Already spotted as an Observer Food Monthly Rising Star, she took an Instagram lockdown hobby and made it into a supper club and shop in South London called Mystic Burek. The book is a story of a second generation immigrant ,inspired, like so many writers who come on to this show and  to Gilly's How to Cook a Book retreats, by her grandmother, her baba.

Click here for Gilly's Substack and some Extra Bites of Spasia.

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This week, Gilly takes us back to last week's Jane Grigson Trust Awards for debut food book writers to meet the winner, Chris Newens. He may still be writing his book, Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals, but Gilly helps him unpack four food moments which open a door on Parisian food through its 20 arrondissements.

Check intoGilly's Substackto listen to chair of The Jane Grigson Trust, Don Sloan explain what the judges were looking for in this year's nominees.

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This week, Gilly Zooms over to the Clare Valley just outside Adelaide in South Australia to catch up with food writer, TV presenter, sustainable living advocate, urban farmer, entrepreneur and the queen of Granny Skills, Rebecca Sullivan to talk about her book, with partner Damian Coulthard, First Nations Food Companion.

Gilly first met Rebecca in 2016 at a conference at the University of California in Berkely about the role of food In the health of everything that we care about. Although Gilly had written a lot about Australia over the years by then, what Rebecca told her over several glasses of wine one evening about the epiphany that led to the creation of her nations company, Warndu,blew her mind.  

Pop over to Gilly's Substack to find recipes from Rebecca's food moments by clicking here.

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This week, Gilly is discussing Easy Wins with the award-winning and best-selling queen of vegetarian food, Anna Jones. Her latest book is packed with stunning recipes and ideas for getting so much more taste and less waste on our plates.

Easy Wins has 125 brand new recipes around 12 hero ingredients, all designed to make our lives easier. But with two small kids, that can’t be an easy win for her. Gilly finds out how she does it.

Do head to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to get a taste of some of Anna’s recipes.

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This week, Gilly is with Angela Clutton to talk about her latest book, Seasoning.

This is so much more than a bit of salt and pepper. It's about how climate is changing our seasons with its earlier springs, longer summers, warmer, wetter winters and the role we play.  It has all the hallmarks of a modern classic, a book packed with the rigour we associate with Angela’s award-winning writing but brimming with flavour and delicious ideas to reduce our waste and get more – much more – out of the here and now. 

Click here for Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack

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This week, Gilly is with Charles Clover, author of Rewilding the Sea to dive deep into the world behind our fish.

Charles is a seasoned environmental journalist, super campaigner, co-author of King Charles’ Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate.  And as co-founder of Blue Marine Foundation, he’s bringing life back to our oceans.

Margaret Atwood calls his book a 'game changer,' Isabella Tree says 'it’s desperately needed', George Monbiot says ‘what if our seas became productive again with giant sturgeon, halibut and skate – it’s closer than you think.’

Head over to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to hear Charles tell us another of his massive wins for the sea, this time in Dogger.

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This week, Gilly is with nutritionist, Karen Newby hot on the heels of an Instagram live with the Queen of the Menopause, Davina Mcall, on her new book The Natural Menopause Method.

It’s a book for our times. Since Davina’s documentary about HRT, everyone’s talking about menopause. Karen's book is all about food, but it’s not a recipe book. This is about arming women with the information we need to dodge the drug industry, understand how food heals and to live in harmony with one of the natural events in our lives.

Head to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to watch Karen make a simple minestrone soup rich in collagen – although she does drop her phone into it.

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This week, Gilly is with one of the main players in the story of modern British food, Michel Roux Junior

His Mayfair restaurant, le Gavroche is a London legend, and its closure last month  57 years after his father and uncle, the Roux Brothers changed the game in British food, is a milestone in the way we eat.  At 63, he’s ready for the next chapter, and he’s marking it with his latest book, Michel Roux at home. I asked him how he’s feeling.

Head to Gilly's Substack Extra Bites for recipes from Michel's food moments.

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This week, Gilly is with Ashia Ismail- Singer to talk food identity and how food culture travels across borders. 

Her books Ashia’s Table and Saffron Swirls and Cardamon Dust, and her 3rd, The Laden Table which comes out in April, are about her Indian food culture, born in India, brought up in Malawi and the UK and fused with the best of New Zealand.

Check for the recipes from Ashia's food moments on Extra Bites onGilly's Substack

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This week, Gilly is with the word on Omani food, Dina Macki.

Her first book, Bahari: Recipes from an Omani Kitchen and Beyond is out today, but it’s been a long time coming; the Jane Grigson Trust Award which she won in 2023 is the annual pointer to the best of the brand new food writers before their books are even finished, and the world has been longing to see what the fuss is all about. 

Born and brought up in an Omani community in Portsmouth, she tells us how learning about her own food culture has taught her about herself, and shows us around a country which has become so much more than a homeland.

Click here for Gilly's Substack to find the recipes behind the food moments.

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This week, as part of a new season for the New Year on how to live, be and do better, Gilly is with plant-based chef and author, Gemma Ogston to talk about how to get well enough to be your best self.

Gemma's journey through dis-ease led to a career in addiction counselling and nourishing DJs and 24 hour party people back to health in her temporary home in Barcelona. Her simple guide to wellness in her second book, The Healing Cookbookis about long term health, and has catapulted her to fame on Saturday Kitchen and This Morning with its immunity boosting shots and medicinal mushrooms to help us supercharge our every day lives.

Do head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from Gem where you’ll find some of the recipes they discuss on the show. 

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This week, Gilly is with Lynn Cassells who with her partner Sandra Baer are two of the most inspiring women you’re likely to hear on Cooking the Books this year. 

Our Wild Farming Life is their story of following a dream, moving from South East England to the Scottish Highlands to regenerate an 150 acre farm. It was more than a dream – it was a calling to reconnect with the land, to find out what role people can play in nature, and to tell their story to people who are aching to know the answer. it started with a mind map around a kitchen table. and Gilly began by asking Lynn if she looked back at it now, would she have followed the same path. 

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This week, Gilly is with food writer and photographer, molecular biologist, multiple James Beard award-winner, Nik Sharma. His latest book Veg-Table is all over the Best of the Year lists for his original scientific take on vegetables which has opened up a whole new way of eating.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Nik's Extra Bites

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To kick off a brand new year of life through the prism of food, Gilly is with the Head of Communications and Marketing at Veganuary, Toni Vernelli to talk about the 2024 edition of the Official Veganuary Cookbook.

It's 10 years since Veganuary first made January its own, encouraging people all over the world to try out a meat free month for the sake of our own health and that of the planet. And it’s been a phenomenal success with only two countries in the world - North Korea and the Vatican City - NOT signed up for this year's month long meat free pledge. Gilly finds out the secret of its success.

Do head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from the Veganuary crew. And if you want more plants in your life, do listen in next week to Nik Sharma on his latest book Veg Table.

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This week, Gilly is with Alex Jackson, Noble Rot chef, former restaurateur at Sardine and author of Frontieres.

He talks about his long love affair with France, and particularly with its food, but it’s the edges that we’re after here, The Italianness of the French Riveiera , the spices of  Provence, melting pot of Marseille. It’s about an adventure in French cooking through the prism of the others that make modern France French.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Alex's Frontieres.

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This week, Gilly's with a man after her own heart. There are very few people who write about TV chefs and their place in British food culture, butKevin Geddes, author of Keep Calm and Fanny Onand Gilly, who wrote Taste and the TV Chef(2020) are two of them.

Channel 5 is showing an hour long documentary on December 28th called the 70s Dinner Party in which Gilly joins Dr Annie Gray to talk about the social history of the TV chef. She and Kevin celebrate by diving deeply into the '70s food world through the prism of Fanny Cradock, and find much more than green mashed potato and mince meat omelette.

Head to Gilly's Substack for some Extra Bites on the Channel 5 show.

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This week, Gilly is with private chef, Jane Hodson, food writer, LucasHollweg and probably the most influential of social media food influencers, photographer Clerkenwell Boy to discuss These Delicious Things, a charity cookbook featuring recipes and childhood food memories from the likes of Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Stanley Tucci. 

The idea began when Jane and Lucas, hunkered down on a winter’s night, as Jane writes in the introduction, wondered if a collective memoir, featuring the shining lights of the British food scene could raise money for the charity Magic Breakfast. With the help of Clerkenwell Boy’s contact list and influence, it’s become the best anthology of its kind that sets a new standard in charity fund raising. 

Click on the link to Gilly's Substackfor more delicious things in Extra Bites, andhere to buy it.

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This week, Gilly is with Dina Begum, whose book, Made in Bangladesh celebrates the food and folklore and of the old country which she left when she was four years old.

It was first book, Brick Lanewhich first opened the door on what was happening in the kitchen of our East End curry houses, and propelled her into pole position as authority on British Bangladeshi culture. Gilly explores with her why she chose to take us back to Bangladesh and what she wanted to find.

Check into Gilly's Substack to watch Dina's mum make paan.

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This week, Gilly is on Hove seafront with an old friend of the podcast, Joe Woodhouse to talk about More Daily Veg.

A lot has happened since they first met on Zoom to talk about his first book, Your Daily Veg. While the Ukraine war has rocked his family life – his wife is the Ukrainian food writer and Cook for Ukraine champion, Olia Hercules, their three year old son, Wilf was diagnosed with a mild form of autism, and vegetables have actually landed properly on the British plate. Gilly catches up with him on a bench over looking the sea to ponder on the enormity of it all 

Head to Gilly's Substack to see what Joe has cooked up for us over on Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is talking to Alexina Anatole about the least pleasant of our five tastes: bitter. Or is it?

Alexina's series of cookbooks on the five tastes: Bitter, Sweet, Salty, Sour and Umamia is a step-by-step exploration of flavour, and an impressive start to a what looks like a masisve career for this bright young spark who swapped the trading floor for Masterchef in 2020.  

In the first book, Bitter, she sets out to tame bitterness, showing us how to soothe it with dairy, balance it with sweetness and distract it with acidity. But Gilly quickly became much more interested in this super-driven polymath of a woman who has everything food TV needs right now.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack to hear more of Alexina's hidden talents.

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This week, Gilly is with Russell Norman, the award-winning restaurateur, writer and broadcaster who brought Italy to the British high street, first through Polpo, the book and chain of Venetian style restaurants which gave us small plate food culture, and now Brutto, the Florentine trattoria next to London’s Smithfield market.

Brutto, the book, is about much more than the recipes of the restaurant. It’s an ode to Florence where we find what Russell calls the 'ugly but beautiful' food that the Tuscan capital is really all about.

Don't forget to head to Gilly's Substack to see what Russell has cooked up over on Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is talking about what home means to Irish TV chef, Donal Skehan.

Donal has moved a lot in his massive career on TV, from Eurovision to Saturday Kitchen and on to Food Network in LA. Now, with wife Sofie and their two young boys, he’s come home to Ireland. His 11th cook book, Home Kitchen, is a meditation on home, nostalgia and who he is now as a food writer.

Check Gilly's Substackfor Extra Bites from Donal

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This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, the author of First Biteand The Way We Eat Now, Bee Wilson.

After years of writing about the psychology and history of food, this is Bee’s very first cook book. It’s packed with recipes for an easier life in the kitchen, as the sub title suggests, but the Secret of Cooking is not just a treasure trove of simple dishes, but how food can heal, as Bee learnt from her own experience after her husband left her in the summer of 2020.

Head to Gilly's Substackfor Extra Bites from Bee

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This week, Gilly is digging deeply into the construction of identtiy through the food with multi award-winning Russian writer Anya von Bremzen.

National Dishis a fascinating book which explores how certain foods become the cultural signifiers of France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey. Mixing academic rigour with chats at bars and cook ups in local kitchens, she stirs up a load of our assumptions, but does she find the answer?

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This week, while Gilly is talking about the roots of Italian cuisine, Cucina Povera

Giulia Scarpaleggia began her food writing career as a blogger and photographer before becoming one of the most respected writers on Italian food. Her book Cucina Povera is all about her respect for the inguity of peasant cooking which reveals the soul of Italian food at its best.

Head to Gilly's Substack to hear why Giulia loves British food writers so much.

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This week, Gilly's with the king of Tik Tok, the idol of Insta and star of channel 5’s A Taste of the Country, Julius Roberts.

His debut cook book The Farm Table is a beautifully written story of a young man following his dream from cheffing to farming, with goats who think they’re dogs, pigs begging for a tummy tickle and an idyllic walk through the seasons. An audience of 500k on both Instagram and Tik Tok has followed his insipring journey to find himself, while he’s become one of the most compelling advocates for modern British food and regenerative farming. Give that man a Netflix show, and he will save the planet. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for an Extra Bite of Julius.

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This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, Diana Henry.

The new edition of her 2005 book Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is a lyrical walk through the autumn leaves and winter wonderlands of her favourite food places in the world as she shares the delicious finds that have made her one of Britain’s most well-respected and award-winning food writers.

It’s a book that makes you feel warmed to your bones. But Diana has been dogged by depression for years, and has faced some major life challenges recently, including cheating death. Gilly was fascinated in how she created such a work of joy, and the dichotomy of pleasure and pain.

Head over to Gilly's Substack to find Diana's personal photos from her trips for Roast Figs, and to hear an early interview for The Write Songs which Gilly did with Diana in 2017.

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This week, Gilly is at Knepp with the queen of wilding, Isabella Tree.

The Knepp estate is an extraordinary pioneering wilding project to restore nature which Isabella captured so beautifully in her 2019 book Wilding.  Chris Packham called it ‘A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land'. Now, The Book of Wilding breaks that story down into encyclopaedic form for everyone to refer to, however big or small their garden.  

And if you’d like more from Knepp, head over to Gilly's Substackto hear her 2019 interview with Isabella at Knepp where they were joined by that majestic red stag.

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This week on Cooking the Books, Italian-Kiwi gardener and cook, Bri DiMattina tells us how she’s grown a food forest using permaculture principles in her garden in New Zealand.

Her book Nostrana, meaning ‘home grown’ is also an extraordinary story of Italian food heritage in New Zealand. It’s the legacy of her grandparents growing a new world for themselves and their fellow Italians during the economic migration in the early 1900s. But as Bri celebrates its publication in the UK - and Nigella's pick in her Cookbook Corner - she tells Gilly how her Instagram page @iatemygarden was never meant for the book shelves.

Check out Gilly's Substack for much more on Bri's permaculture principles than you'll find in the book!

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This week, Gilly is with Conor Spacey, chef, culinary director of Food Space Ireland and one of the movers and shakers behind the Chefs' Manifesto, a community of over 1000 chefs in 110 countries making real change in the world of food

His book Wasted is packed with recipes for the kitchen waste we all have in our homes, and it’s ingenius. Check Gilly's Substack for a chocolate cake recipe made from stale bread!

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This week, Gilly is with Adriana Cavita, the brilliant Mexican chef and, now author of Cocina Mexicana, whose journey from her grandmother’s street food stall to top international restaurants like Pujol and El Bulli has brought the real flavours of Mexico to London. 

Have a listen to the resilience of this woman – she’s like a hurdler, jumping the barriers of gender, language, money and envy to open her own restaurant in London. She says that this book is for all the women of her home country, for women everywhere whose struggle can lead to such massive change in the world. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for more from her guests in Extra Bites.

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This week, Gilly is with the Indonesian chef behind her last sell out supper club, Petty Elliott. Her book, The Indonesian Table is a seminal work on the food of this archipelagic state of 17000 islands. We might think we know the flavours of Bali, Java, maybe even Sumatra, but Minangkabau? Manado? Banda Island? Probably not.

Petty brought Indonesian food to a hungry public for the first time 20 years ago as a food journalist and chef, and has been cooking for some of the most influential people in the world since. Gilly met her at the British Library to talk about her book, why she chose this most hallowed of literary venues and being a card carrying member of this very British institution.

Check Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Petty and her Indonesian Table

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This week, in the last of this mini series on Matrescence, Gilly is with Helen Rebanks, farmer, businesswoman, teacher, conservationist and a working mother of four.

She's also wife to Britain’s most famous farmer, James Rebanks whose phenomenal success with his books The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral (as featured on Cooking the Books), changed the way we look at farming. 

Now Helen tells the story of The Farmer’s Wife and looks at the values of an old fashioned way of life rooted in hard work and mothering her children on a farm in the Lake District.

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This week, Gilly is with Emiko Davies, the Australian born, half Japanese writer on Italian food who lives with her family in Florence to talk about Japan.

Her book Gohan is the story of her childhood food, fed to her by her Japanese mother in Australia and by her grandparents in Japan. It's the Japanese word for rice, but it also means ‘family meal’ and for Emiko, the only word as the title for her latest book. As she explores who she is through her food, we learn how mothers can hold the key to a child's sense of self, and how complicated - and how simple - that can be.

Click here for more information on Matrescence, and head over to Gilly's Substack to hear more from Emiko on Matrescence

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This week, in the third in a special series this summer on Matrescence, Gilly is with Tara Wigley, co-author of the award-winning Falastin, in-house writer of Team Ottolenghi, Yotam’s co-author on eight of the biggest food books, including the million-seller, Ottolenghi Simple.. and mother of teen twins and a tween.

Her hilarious and often biting ditties on Instagram have won her a new audience which is interested more in her own voice; when she asked Gilly what she thought of an early idea of a book version, she knew it would be a shoo in. How to Butter Toast is a recipe book without recipes, a rhyming route through the how-tos of cooking, but as Gilly finds out, it's also about putting form to an often chaotic life at home!

For more information on Matrescence, clickhere.

And head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites.

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This week, in the second in a special series on matrescence, Gilly is talking about morning telly, cook hacks and motherhood with TV chef, Shivi Ramoutar.

Shivi is the Caribbean Queen of Morning TV. She’s the chef on Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show, she was the TV Chef on Garraway’s Good Stuff and cooked with the Kemps on Martin and Roman’s Weekend Best. She's a  regular guest on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, and ITV’s This Morning and has even appeared on Celebrity Mastermind. Her latest book Cook Clever is packed

with cook hacks for her massive audience.

And as a mother to 7 and 4-year-olds and a 9 month baby, she has plenty to say about matrescence. As we aim to explode the word into the national conversation to describe the process of mothering that really never stops, she tell us how's she's getting on.  It’s estimated that perinatal mental health problems alone cost the NHS and social services around £1.2 billion annually, and Shivi is only too ready to share her journey so far. 

For more information on Matrescence, click here.

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This week, Gilly's at the home of award-winning recipe writer, author and YouTuber, one of Bake Off’s most celebrated winners and mother of 2, Chetna Makan to talk about her new book, Chetna’s Indian Feasts.   

But in this first episode of a special series this summer, we’re talking about food through the prism of matrescence, the raw ingredients which make up the heady mix of motherhood and provide the recipe for life. Like adolescence, matrescence shows us a picture of process, and with it an implicit understanding of what that means. Just as adolescents are always adults in training, so matrescents are mothers in training, and that never stops.

The word was coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 to describe the experience of half the global population but which is barely known, barely discussed, barely acknowledged. On the contrary, we’re supposed to know it all the minute we give birth.  It’s estimated that perinatal mental health problems alone cost the NHS and social services around £1.2 billion annually. Imagine the impact on families and wider society of way post natal mental health issues – the massive lows that come with the roller coaster of emotions of motherhood – at all ages and stages.

The aim of this Cooking the Books series is to introduce the word into the national conversation.  Chetna is the first of four writers, mothers, matrescents who have much to say on the subject throughout the whole of August. For more information and where to get help, click here.

Check Gilly's Substackeach week for Extra Bites from each guest.

And if you'd like support with your own matrescence, click here for information

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This week, Gilly is with Maria Bradford, author of Sweet Salone, the first book to tell the story of the food from her homeland of Sierra Leone. 

Maria came to the UK as a student and grew up with her guardian in a village in Kent, far from the colourful food culture spreading through London’s West African communities. But it was her sense of being different that has led to her becoming the word on Sierra Leonian food. Here she goes back to find the food that it took a lifetime to realise was such a big part of her sense of self.

Check Gilly'sSubstackfor Maria's Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is with Syrian chef, restaurateur and charity pop-up king, Imad Alarnab, whose story has become a symbol of hope for so many migrants fleeing their war-torn homelands.

His book, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is so much more than a book of recipes from Syria. It’s the story of gritty determination to make a better life for his family, of meeting angels even  when he was in the depth of despair, and the extraordinary healing that food from home can provide.  

Head over to Gilly's Substack to hear her very first podcast series Jaibli Salaam which tells the story of six Syrian families in Brighton through their food and music memories.

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This week, Gilly is with cook, gardener and beekeeper, Amy Newsome. Her book, Honey: Recipes From a Beekeeper's Kitchen takes us through the beekeeper’s year, arguing the case for less but better honey from inside the bee hive. Her holistic approach takes us from terroir to table via a garden designed for bees, while her four food moments capture the alchemy a pot of honey can achieve.

Check in to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Amy and her honeybees.

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This week, Gilly is with the woman who cooked for Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, the late Queen and the leaders of the Western world at the G7 conference in 2020. But as she opens up about what drives her, she reveals that she didn't always feel such a superwoman.

Her restaurant Emily Scott Food, perched on the beach at Newquay, has settled into the excellence of the Cornish food landscape now and as she finds more time to write, she reveals in her second book,Time and Tide, much more of her inner and outer world on the Cornish coast

Her food memories take her through her early tricky relationship with food. And as she explains her process of writing, we get a sense of how this newer career has given her a sense of calm she’s been chasing much of her life. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Emily reading an extract from Time and Tide.

#emilyscott #emilyscottfood #timeandtide #eatingdisorderrecovery #anorexia 

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This week Gilly is with journalist and author, Clare Finney whose new book, Hungry Heartis a memoir which unravels a tricky relationship with food. 

As she explores her own story with food, she unravels the complexities of British food culture in conversation with famous friends, Diana Henry, Bee Wilson and Gurd Loyal, academics and school friends.

Head over to Gilly's Substackfor Clare's Extra Bites.

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This week, Gilly is with chef, restaurateur, journalist and award winning writer, Ravinder Bhogal.

Her latest book, Comfort and Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen celebrates the legacy of her grandfather and the life he built, ground up, for her family in Kenya

Her writing is surely some of the best in Britain today, and her poetic meditations on where we are with an increasingly plant focussed food culture combined with the stunning photography by Kristen Perers, are deeply seductive. This is a gamechanger in vegetarian cook books.

Check Gilly's Extra Bites on Substack to hear Ravinder reading one of these beautiful essays.

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This week Gilly is going fishing with Jenny Jefferies, author of For the Love of the Sea, who has made it her mission to give a voice to the hidden fisherfolk of Britain, capturing the detail of their daily work, their passion and their massively important contribution to our economy. 

Gilly and Jenny discuss sustainability, politics and why an island nation has such a problem with seafood.

Head over to Gilly's Substackto find Jenny's suggestion of how to write to your MP to fight for the future of our fishing culture.

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This week Gilly is with Jenny Chandler whose book A Good Appetite is all about eating for planet, body and soul.

It's a subject particularly close to Gilly's heart; her award-winning book Taste and the TV Chef looked at the influence TV chefs have had and could have in changing the way we eat. Her podcast for Leon How to Eat to Save the Planetand her work forCompassion in World Farming, theFood Foundation and Cooking the Books itself itself are all rooted in the interdependence between where food, health, soil and planet.

Expect then, a good old rant about where we are in the race to save the planet, our junk food culture and an unconscious sleepwalk towards doom! Happily, Jenny has a more upbeat approach!

Check Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites each week.

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This week, Gilly is with James Whetlor, former chef at River Cottageand The Eagle in Farringdon with a whole new take on the barbecue.

For festival goers, upcycling hobbyists and outdoor cooking fanatics, James has come up with genius ways to easily build your own. Before she traces the fascinating dark history of the barbecue with James, Gilly asks why a man who admits he can’t even put up a shelf decided to write The DIY BBQ CookBook.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites every episode.

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This week, Gilly is with Niki Segnit,  the award-winning author of The Flavour Thesaurus, Lateral Cooking, and now The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours, 

The original Flavour Thesaurus published in 2011 has been called “a masterpiece” and is widely seen as a modern classic with its flavour pairings format inspired by Roget’s Thesaurus.  This sequel is all about plant-led pairings, giving us imaginative and ingenious ideas to make our plant forward diets so much more exciting.

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This week, Gilly is with Iranian food writer and photographer, Saghar Setareh whose debut book Pomegranates & Artichokes is the story of two food cultures that share so much in common but which are worlds apart.

Saghar was born in Tehran and moved to Rome in 2007 to study at the Fine Art Academy. But by 2009 protests against the new regime broke out in all the major cities and led to what has become known as the Green Revolution or Persian Spring, and suddenly Saghar found herself unable to go home.  

Gilly asks her about her dedication in the book to those who dare to live a life. to those who move ‘braving the seas and the mountains, the men and their borders’.

Head over to Gilly’s Substack as she takes Saghar’s orange rice cake to Claudia Roden whose legendary orange and almond cake is Saghar’s inspiration.

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This week Gilly is with former lawyer, Jennifer Medhurst, aka The Imperfect Nutritionist.

And while there's plenty of talk about gut health, this episode focusses on mental health and exhaustion after the interview took an unexpected turn.

Gilly asked Jennifer about a rather throwaway line in the introduction to her book about her own recovery from a long illness, and opened a fascinating discussion about the impact of diet on stress and mental health.

For all those suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, long covid, or just life exhaustion, this is for you.

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This week, Gilly is back with MasterChef winner, author and doctor, Saliha Mahmood Ahmed.

She’s a historian, a TV chef and a gastroenterologist with a kitchen clinic, and she’s on a mission to prescribe food to fix our obesity crisis. Gilly first meet Saliha on the delicious. podcast when she took her through the fascinating history of food in the Mughal empire in Khazana. They met again for Foodology,  her often hilarious handbook to healthy eating, and now she’s back with The Kitchen Prescription, her no-nonsense doctor’s guide to the gut.

Check Gilly's Substack for Saliha's video on how to make her prebiotic tabbouleh in Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is with honey sommelier and bee champion, Sarah Wyndham Lewis. 

Her book, The Wild Bee Handbookis a fascinating insight into the world of the 'other' bees, the ones that don't make honey but go almost completely unnoticed. Their role in the protection of the planet is mighty, and as the unsung guardians of biodiversity, we all need to know much more about them and what we can do to protect them against the risk of extinction.  

Click here for Sarah's bee friendly recipes on Gilly's Substack

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This week Gilly is with chef, TV presenter and now, finally author, Andi Oliver. 

She’s one of the most successful black women on British TV, a respected pundit on Caribbean cooking on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and rocking it in the best frocks on the telly in the Great British Menu. And after her return to her ancestral home of Antigua with her daughter Miquita for the BBC,  she’s rethinking her connection with who she is. Her mix of musings and recipes from her trip though the Caribbean are captured in her first book, The Pepperpot Diaries, a stirring together of her stories and complex layers of identity. 

And as she and Gilly contemplate what it means to be 60, she tells us what it’s felt like waiting to exhale.

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This week, Gilly is with Rupy Aujla to talk gut health, flavour and his latest book, Dr Rupy Cooks

He’ s a best selling author,  a BBC presenter, a podcaster - his podcast The Doctor’s Kitchen is massive, his Instagram following is in 6 figures and somehow he manages to make it to work as a GP.  If anyone can change the narrative about why heatlhy eating is so important for the whole of society, it’s Dr Rupy.

And of course, it all starts in the gut. For two of the recipes from his four food moments, go to Gilly's Substack for some Extra Bites, and to hear Rupy on the latest episode of the Food Foundation Podcast on 5 years of the Sugar Tax, click here

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This week, Gilly is going to Pakistan, through the memories of food writer and writing coach, Sumayya Usmani 

Her memoir,Andazatells the everyday stories about life and food in Karachi. It sees the kitchen as a place where young Pakistani girls learn much more from their mothers and grandmothers than how to make a recipe, but how to feed, how to nurture and how to connect.

For Extra Bites accompanying Cooking the Books episodes, go to Gilly's Substack

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This week Gilly is with Turkish food writer and chef, Ozlem Warren 

Ozlem found fame as a blogger after moving here in 2009, and her supper clubs, meze nights and her book, Ozlem’s Turkish Table have made her the name in Turkish food.

But since her home town of Antakya  was devastated by the recent earthquake, she’s raised thousands for the relief effort with the help of food influencers like Melissa Thompson, Ravneet Gill, Ixta Belfrage and Clerkenwell Boy, as well as a Cooking the Books fundraiser supper club. Gilly catches up with her after an emotional journey back to Turkey, not least because of the death of her mother. 

To donate to the Disasters and Emergencies Commission Turkish and Syrian relief fund, clickhere

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This week, Gilly is gardening with teacher, podcaster and Telegraph columnist,Sarah Raven

Sarahhas seen massive changes in how our gardens grow over her 25 years as a gardening pundit.  For anyone interested in food and the planet, growing, even if it’s just a few herbs on the window sill, seems a no-brainer.  Her latest book A Year full of Veg gets to the heart of that relationship and how to grow your own kitchen garden.

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This week, Gilly is exploring the secret kitchens of Britain’s Desi kitchens with Britain's Best Home Cook finalist, Sarah Woods.

Her book Desi Kitchen is part of the current crop of second generation Indian cookbooks which are hitting the shelves right now. But Sarah’s tells the story of the communities in which Desi people from the Indian Sub continent have enriched so much of Britain with their food and spiritual cultures.  

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This week, Gilly time travels through the centuries with Belgian writer Regula Ysewijn to explore the rich history of the food from her homeland.

An anglophile who binged on Bronte and Austen since she was a child, Regula has spent much of her food writing life focussing on British baking. She’s a consultant for the National Trust and even wrote the Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook. But in her book Dark Rye and Honey Cake, she’s going home to Belgium, the long way. As she digs deep into the food of the ancient Dutch language low countries, she traces the influence of their festival baking on the food culture in modern Belgium. 

And head over to Substack for some Extra Bites from CTB guests each week.

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This week, Gilly is Zooming into the 17th-century Palazzo home in Venice of Skye McAlpine. 

The daughter of Lord Alistair McAlpine, one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest advisers, Skye grew up in Venice where she now lives with her own family. A classics scholar with a PhD in ancient love poetry, she’s an expert on how Greeks and Romans understood love. And in her latest cook book, A Table Full of Love, she writes a culinary love letter to the friends and family whose recipes she’s gathered over time, whisking in memories and a dash of affection.

If the first two books were about Venice and friends and mismatched but beautiful China collected in flea markets, this is a deeper read about memories and feelings in the language of love.   Or is it?

Follow Gilly @foodgillysmith on Instagram, and on Substackeach week for a little Extra Bite from Gilly's guests.  Come to Venice with Skye in this week’s post.

If you'd like to learn how to really say something, you can join Gilly's podcasting course at Use the promo code GILLY_4-PROMO

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This week, Gilly chats to a new voice in food writing, Gurdeep Loyal. Diana Henry calls him 'amazing, original, boundary breaking, a genius with flavour’. He's a cool hunter, a podcaster and writer and his debut cookbook Mother Tongue has exploded a whole new way of thinking about Indian food.

Since he won the Jane Grigson Trust award in 2020 for his proposal for Mother Tongue, the food world has been salivating as we wait for the arrival of the final book. Anna Jones says ‘every so often a rare cookbook comes along which brings something completely new and fascinating to the world of food.’ Claudia Roden says she’s thrilled 'to be drawn into Gurdeep’s extroarindary diaspora and fantastic world of flavours.' Felicity Cloake says he’s 'a Willy Wonka wizard of flavour.'

Follow Gilly on Instagram @foodgillysmith, and you can also find a little surprise over on Substackeach week as she asks her guests for a little extra something. Gurdeep has not only created a special Cooking the Books Spotify playlist, but written beautifully on her Substack about his choices. It’s a must read and listen.  

And if you'd like to learn how to podcast and really say something, you can sign up for her Domestika course. Use the promo code GILLY_4-PROMO

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This week, Gilly has lunch with one of Britain’s most respected and original voices in British food writing, Elisabeth Luard.

A well-known writer, botanical artist and broadcaster, her many books have brought us stories of her family life in Andalucia in the 1960s set among the history, landscapes and culture of Europe. European Peasant Cookery was first published in 1986 and reprinted again at Christmas, and  is seen as one of the most important books in modern British food writing. Tom Parker Bowles in the Mail on Sunday called it 'one of the great cook books of all time.'  

The 500 recipes tell much more than how to boil a lobster or salt a cod - they remind us of a way of life that Europeans had been living for centuries. Gilly takes her back to that life in Andalucia in the ‘60s to relive some of her favourite memories, and to discuss the legacy of the book at a time when the resilience skills of the peasant have never been so important.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Elisabeth's Extra Bites

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This week, we’re celebrating three years of Cooking the Books with its very first guest, Olivia Potts and her latest book,Butter: A Celebration.

Her journey from barrister to butter, her latest book is told with what Nigella calls 'her devilish wit', both in her award-winning memoir,A Half Baked Idea and now in a book that has GONG written all over it:Butter: a Celebration.   

She’s the host of the Spectator podcast, she writes for the Spectator magazine as well as running a successful catering company with her kitchen wife, best friend and fellow food writer, Kate Young. And here she talks about the enduring allure of one of the most versatile ingredients in the larder.

Check out Gilly's Substack for extra content from Cooking the Books guests each week

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This week, Gilly is talking revolution in the bakeries of Europe with Berlin's Fine Bagels baker, Laurel Kratochvila.

Her book, New European Baking is part guide book to the coolest city bakeries in Europe, part celebration of the return to craftmanship. As she takes us from Boston to Prague, Lisbon to Warsaw and Hackney, we join her in sniffing out the best brioches, challahs and breads of every shape and hue to meet eleven bakers who are riding the New Wave of baking.

Check out Gilly's Substack each week for the podcast's Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly's talking about food and identity, folklore and First Footers with The Hebridean Baker.

Coinneach Macleod has cooked up a magical story of the Outer Hebrides, packed with ancient myths and recipes, and captivated a massive Tik Tok audience. She asks him how he did it, why people are so attracted to story and why Hebridean mothers smash their newly-wed daughters over the head with a piece of shortbread!

Check out Gilly's Substack for extra Cooking the Books content each week, including Coinneach singing her a Gaelic love song!

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This week, Gilly's talking food and class in Jeremy Lee’s book Cookingwith 17-year-old food campaigner at the Food Foundation, chair of Bite Back 2030, and Youth Member of parliament for Winchester, Dev Sharma. 

Jeremy Lee is one of the handful of chefs who’s cooked his way into the history books of modern food culture. His journey has taken him through the kitchens of some of the most influential London restaurants of our time: Conran’s Blueprint Cafe, Alistair Little’s Frith Street to the legendary Quo Vadis. 

Here, Gilly finds out what that all means to a teenager from Leicester who’s already a food legend himself. 

Dev’s campaigning work to end child food poverty has won praise from Jamie Oliver who says his work is ‘truly incredible’; Emma Thompson called him absolutely extraordinary as she watched him address ministers about food poverty. Jeremy Vine says he’s Prime Minister material. It’s won him a scholarship to Winchester College and a dream of Cambridge university, where food has a very different meaning.

Gilly asks him to choose four moments from Jeremy’s Lee’s book to help us understand the role of food in Britain in 2023

To hear more about Dev's work for the Food Foundation, listen here.

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Tthis week, Gilly's off on her Zoom travels again, this time to the complex and multi cultural flavours of Romania.

Irina Georgescu has become the voice of Romanian food in the years that she's lived outside it.. She believes that there is no better way to tell the tale of a nation than through its food, and in her latest book, Tava, she unpicks the rich fabric of its political, spiritual and culinary past to understand its present.

Follow Gilly on Substack where you can find a post from her book Taste and the TV Chef about how the Communist regime Irina describes in Romania affected Hungary too. Read the extraordinary and little known story of how entrepreneurial TV producer, Marcel Lissak created a copycat Jamie Oliver to teach Hungary to eat again after the #GoulashRevolution

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This week, Gilly is at the home of the queen of food writing, the original collector of Middle Eastern and Jewish food and grande dame of food and identity, Claudia Roden.

As they celebrate 25 years of Claudia's internationally acclaimed Book of Jewish Food, they discuss the foods in our repertoire now that have been hidden in the kitchens of the Jewish diaspora for centuries - until Claudia wrote them into our world. The influence of the book is a phenomenon; from Alistair Little to Sam and Sam Clark at The Eagle and then at Moro, to Yotam Ottolenghi's 'veg forward' revolution in the early 2000s, Roden's collection of stories and recovered recipes are at the heart of modern British food culture.

In this extended Holiday special, she talks about all the things that are good in life – beautiful recipes passed down through matriarchies, storytelling that binds communities and the universal pleasure of food that matters.

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This week, Gilly is talking Christmas wines withCindy-Marie Harvey whose beautiful book, Watercress, Willow and Wine tells the story of the English vineyards which are creating a revolution in wine.

Climate change has not just warmed the soils in England, but also focussed a new movement of sustainable producers to think laterally about how local wine pared beautifully with local, seasonal food can help to save the planet.

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This week, Gilly is off to find Christmas – and a whole lot more - in Africana, the debut cookbook from the new voice in pan African food, Lerato who whisks us off on a tour of the latest obsession in culinary cultures.

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This week, Gilly is with the queen of the Fowl Mouths supper club, BBC Good Food contributor, co-director of the British Library Food Season and now, author, Melissa Thompson.

Her debut cookbook, Motherland is the story of the Jamaica that was her father’s family home. As she traces its history through its food, she uncovers the stories of its people, its struggles and its resourcefulness - as well as its delicious food.  

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This week, Gilly is with chef Tim Andersonwho holds a unique position as cultural commentator on Japanese food culture in Britain. He's a chef, a Masterchef winner, the author of six books on Japanese food and a regular on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, yet he grew up in Wisconsin. Gilly digs deep to draw a line between the dots as they discuss his latest book Japanesy: Bowls and Bento.

Through Cooking the Books' four food moment format, Tim explains his love of conbini, the Japanese convenience store where all of life can happen, and how to recreate it in your own home.

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This week, Gilly meets travel writer, Sylvie Bigar whose article about the rich history of the South West French cassoulet inspired a personal investigation into her often toxic family history and her own love affair with food. Cassoulet Confessions is a food memoir which takes us deep into where a love of food can come from, however dark the path.

A New Yorker brought up in a 'mini Downton Abbey' on Lake Geneva, Sylvie's story is of class, nostalgia and dysfunctional family life. As we follow her across the history of both family and what she finds under the crust of the mystical cassoulet, we get a tale of two sittings – the folklore and status of the cassoulet itself, and a potent dish of family secrets and hidden heritage. 

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This week, Gilly's with Prue Leith to talk about her new bookBliss on Toastwhich elevates the simplest of pleasures into the most delicious meals.

Her journey in food makes her look like a gourmet version of the Bisto kid, sniffing her way from her Michelin restaurant in London’s starched 60s through, to taking on the catering at British Rail, through Leiths School of Food and Wine to Bake Off, aged 82.  And she’s written 12 cookbooks and 7 novels. Gilly asked her to put her novelist hat on and take her back to the Paris of the late ‘50s where she was an au pair, and ask that young woman what she thinks of her latest book.

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This week, Gilly is slowing right down for a meditation on cooking and eating in An Everlasting Mealby former chef atChez Panisse, Dan Barber’s researcher and Vogue journalist, Tamar Adler. 

The book which first came out in 2011 has clear echoes of Tamar’s hero, MFK Fisher with its poetic message of resilience and personal power, and its gentle humour is particularly resonant in these challenging times.  Her former boss,Alice Waters writes in the introduction: ‘It’s a beautifully intimate approach in cooking as a narrative that begins not with a list of ingredients or a tutorial on cutting an onion but with a way of thinking. It’s a book to sink into and read deeply’.

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This week Gilly is talking the culture and politics of food with Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall. His latest River Cottage book,Good Comfort is about tweaking our favoruite recipes with healthy extras, saving the pennies and losing a few pounds. 

It’s also about food memories and generations of family recipes, rooting those cottage pies and weekend pancakes in who we are. And as we navigate our way through a douuble whammuy of climate and obesity crisis, it couldn’t have come at a better time. But as we chatted on the day Liz Truss was just about to step down at PM, I suggested  that he cou;dn’t have known that the cost of living was going to add to those massive challenges

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This week, Gilly is talking about Italy through the stories of its Pasta Grannies with Vicky Bennison

Vicky won a James Beard award in 2020for her first Pasta Grannies book based on the super homey Youtube series which has won the hearts of millions of viewers. Her work in international development in countries like Russia, South Africa, and Kazhakstan has given  her an anthropological lens through which to look at the role of the nonna.

She introduces us to four of the Pasta Grannies through her food moments, and explains why their stories tell so much more than how to knead the dough.

And if you fancy learning to cook, Leiths is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly has been doing over over the last 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout

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This week, Gilly is at the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen in North London. This is the hub where the Ottolenghi books and recipes are born to talk, and Gilly's here to talk about Extra Good Things, the latest book afterShelf Lovefrom the OTK stable.

Gilly chats to Noor Murad and the team of international chefs and writers who make the magic happen: Gitai Fisher, Verena Lochmuller, Chaya Pugh, Jens Ferdinand and Clodagh McKenna

Noor is the lead guitarist in this fabulously international band and the voice in Extra Good Things which sets out to future-proof our cooking with pickles, sauces and pastes to flavour bomb our leftovers. With the climate and cost of living crises forcing us to build our resilience skills, it couldn’t come at a better time.

And if you fancy learning to cook, Leiths is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly has been doing over over the last 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking  Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout

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This week Gilly is with Urvashi Roe whose journey from Gujerat through London’s estates to Bake Off and her first book, Biting Biting celebrating the snacking culture of her Gujerati family is a fascinating story of modern Britain. 

And don't forget that Leiths Online is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is on, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking , click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout.

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This week, Gilly puts Jamie Oliver’s new book One: Simple One-Pot Wondersto the test with 20 year old Food Foundation food ambassadors, Rabiya and Jani who work with her on the Right2Food podcast. 

Rabiya and Jani are part of a team of young people from across the country who report for the Food Foundation’s podcast from the front line of food insecurity, having grown up in Huddersfield often not knowing where their next meal came from.  Now students – Rabiya of Law at Lancaster and Jani of Sport Therapy at Loughborough, they’re having to pull their resilience skills out of the bag to deal with the cost of living crisis. Gilly asks if Jamie’s book could help.  

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This week, Gilly is talking about Spice, the latest book from award winning food writer and Cooking the Books regular,Mark Diacono. In a series of four food moments, Mark introduces us to spices from cultures which we may yet have discovered, and explains how an explosion of flavours as a child led to an endless appetite for new culinary adventures.

 And don't forget that Leiths Online is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is on, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking , click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout: 

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This week, Gilly is in reflective mood with Sam and Sam Clark, the husband and wife chef team who have given us 25 years of Moorish cooking at Moro to talk about the publication of their latest book, Moro Easy, and the legacy and influence of cook books 

Sam and Sam are among the most influential chefs in modern British cuisine, bringing delicious, rustic Moorish cooking to Britain back in the 1990s. We met on the morning after the Queen had died, while the media was having a field day discussing who we are at the end of the Elizabethan era. We joined in, and went back to the '90s, to Cool Britannia when Britain was just waking up to how food, like music and fashion was about much more than what we were eating, to discuss who we are now.

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This week, we’re eating to save the Planet with Philip Lymbery, global CEO of Compassion in World Farming.

Philip is one of the most important campaigners against factory farms where the animals whose meat most people eat are confined and never see the light of day. He and Gilly have worked together on his podcasts Stop the Machine and the Big Table and he’s appeared on the delicious podcast and on Right2Food, the voice of the Food Foundation in a bid to change the way we eat.

He’s painted an apocalyptic vision of its impact on the planet in his books Farmageddon and Dead Zone: where the wild things were.  In his latest book, Sixty Harvests Left, he picks up the soil where the animals once grazed, naturally fertilising the land and providing rich pickings for the bugs and worms and shows us what our junk food culture has done to it.. But it’s not too late – not quite – if we change the way we think about the food we buy everyday. Essential listening.

And don't forget that Leiths Online is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is on, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking , click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout: 

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This week, we’re talking about cooking in schools again. But this time, we’re travelling back in time to the early 1970s when a young Jenny Ridgwell, clad in mini skirts, knee high boots and tank tops was teaching an unruly bunch of London kids to cook.

Jenny has since written many cookery text books and founded The Nutrition Program, an online analyst of recipes and meals, but her memoir, I Taught Them to Cook, is a hilarious romp through  a year in 1970s London as she negotiates the classroom and a life of a young singleton. It also pulls focus on what food was then and is now. Prue Leith called it a  light hearted testament to the importance of food, education, and a sizzling expose of the blindness of the powers that be.’  

And if like me, you'd like to learn to cook properly, you can get 10% off the Essentials online course that I’m doing at Leiths online. Go to  leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.

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Just before we dive back into  a new series of food after the summer break, we’re back at WOMAD’s World of Words tent where Gilly chatted to Wellcomeprize winning neurologist , Suzanne  o'Sullivan about her astonishing book The Sleeping Beauties.

It’s her investigation of mystery illnesses, a wave of ‘mass hysteria’ in communities across the world. Terrifyingly, it’s affecting a growing number of people, usually children or adolescents and mostly girls who’ve lost hope for all sorts of sociopolitical reasons. From Cuba to Kazakhstan, Guyana to the most famous Swedish asylum seeking girls who have been asleep for years, o'Sullivan explores how powerfully the body can communicate distress when no-one listens. This is a trip deep into the human psyche via misogyny, cultural imperialism and more than a little voodoo.  And not a single mention of food in the hour of chat! 

If you'd like to join in on my adventures in cookery, follow me @foodgillysmith on Instragram, and sign up! You can get 10% off the Essentials online course that I’m doing at Leiths online. Go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.

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This week, Gilly is with Gelf Alderson, executive chef at River Cottage and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s main man to talk his new book Great Salads.

You know you’re going to get quality food chat when it comes from River Cottage, and after playing captain’s mate there for the last 10 years, Gelf is still pulling rabbits out of the bag. Literally. Gilly asks him what makes a River Cottage chef then, now and as we continue to look for ways to eat amazing food to save the planet.

Don't forget that Leiths Online is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is on, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking , click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course, sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with Amber Guinness whose book A House Party in Tuscany captures the spirit of her parents who lovingly restored Arniano,a  humble ruin of a farmhouse they found back in 1989 and where they raised their daughters.

But this was no ordinary restoration; Tatler lists it among the ‘interior’ wonders of the world, which Amber has now turned into a retreat for artists where the stylish hosting is in the image of her parents. Her book is the story of the house, her family and their eye for beauty, with stunning food conjured up like a dream from the Tuscan countryside peppered throughout the memories.

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This week, Cooking the Books is off to South West France to hang out with Debora Robertson whose latest book Notes from a Small Kitchen Island is a celebration of hosting, of feeding friends and living life beautifully.  

Debora is the Telegraph columnist who shows us how it’s done. She’s the 'how to' guru, the doyenne of the declutter, the dog mother of canine cuisineand queen of cooking for cats. But she tells us that her Girl Guide ability to do things well comes from a rich family tradition of using your hands to'dignify your life, to give it meaning and grace.'

Don't forget that Leiths Online is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is on,  go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking , click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course, sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly chats about the Great British breakfast with Guardian writer, author and culinary detective, Felicity Cloake.

Her latest book Red Sauce, Brown Sauce is her second foray into food-as-national-identity by bike; she toured France for her last book One More Croissant for the Road and found much more than a tasty bite in both. After years of Brexit, Covid conspiracies and partygate, Britain is a divided nation, and Felicity has prised it open even further as she investigates the biggest divide of them all: red sauce or brown. But her 2,388km cycle around Britain over 7 weeks which took her deeply into British food is a fascinating (and often hilarious) snapshot of Britain as she finds a country in transition with a food culture slipping right now into the pages of history.

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This week, Gilly digs deep into the roots of Jamaican food culture with Riaz Phillips, winner of this year's Jane Grigson Trust Awardfor West Winds, recipes, history and tales from Jamaica.

Riaz was a Young British Foodie award winner in 2017 for his self-published book Belly Full, a guide and history of the Caribbean eateries which have shaped the landscape of food in the UK since the Fifties. By 2018 he was on the Observer Food Monthly's annual list '50 Things we Love'. Since then, he's become thecultural commentator on the role of Jamaican food in modern British culture while thinking deeply about his own place within it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with Olia Hercules, the award-winning food writer who put the food of her home country of Ukraine on the map, and has since found herself fighting to keep its stories in the headlines as Russia razes it to the ground.

With her Russian food writer friend, Alissa Timoshkina, she has raised millions through their #cookforukrainecampaign. It has inspired thousands of pop ups all over the country, not just to raise money but to keep that rich food culture alive in our hearts and minds.   

She wrote her latest book, Home Food: Recipes to Comfort and Connectin Lockdown just after giving birth to her second child, which is no mean feat, but could have no idea at the time that she would launch it in a war zone. Here she tells us about her mission to tell the story of her homeland, and about herPatreon channel which she has created to support and rebuild Ukraine.

Leiths is offering a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Leith's Essentials online course that Gilly is doing over over the next 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking  Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.  Check the show notes for all those details. And you can follow my adventures in cookery at Foodgillysmith on Instagram.   

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with early food blogger and publisher of Pit Magazine, Helen Graves whose book Live Fire is about so much more than a summer BBQ. in her homage to live fire traditions, Helen takes us through her London, and the wonderfully diverse cultures which cook over open fire.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is celebrating the poetry and timelessness of the great outdoors with award winning author and chef, Gill Meller.

 Outside is Gill's latest cook book which takes us to the elemental beauty of his home on the Jurassic coast on the Dorset and Devon border, just down the road from River Cottage where he has worked as a chef and tutor. His previous books Gather,TimeandRoot, Stem, Leaf, Flowerhave all captured this slice of Heaven, but Gill says that cooking outside doesn’t just have to be in the most beautiful place in the world; this is about slowing down anywhere and enjoying the magical simplicity of being outdoors.

If you fancy joining Gilly in learning to cook at Leiths, you can get a discount for Cooking the Books listeners. To get 10% off the Essentials online course, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with the winner of Channel 4’s Great Cookbook Challenge with Jamie Oliver, Dominique Woolf.

She’s a publisher’s dream – a busy mum juggling three young kids in the kitchen and cross platform ideas sizzling away on every burner, a Thai mum and aunty whizzing up sauces that really do transform every dish and a new bookpacked with super easy Pan Asian cook hacks. This is a woman to watch; she’ll have her own TV show before you can even say Saturday Kitchen.

For transcripts, go to GillySmith.com

To get 10% off the Essentials online course that Gilly is doing over over the next 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, in a special extended episode, Gilly is on stage at the British Library in London whose Food Season has been tantalising food fans with a whole month of talks inspired by the cookbooks, recipes and culinary stories in its collection. Speakers have included Jessica Harris, Angela Hartnett, Dan Saladino, Alice Waters, Felicity Cloake, Frances Moore Lappé and Henry Dimbleby.

Gilly's panel of experts explore 13th century Moorish cookery through an extraordinary story of a recently discovered mis-filed manuscript. Come and sit with the sold out audience as Polly Russell, curator of the Food Season introduces Sam and Sam Clark of Moro to the stage with Arabic scholar Nawal Nasrallah and the Curator of Arabic Scientific Manuscripts, Bink Hallum to time travel to Moorish Andalucia and taste 800 year old recipes cooked up Moro-style.

To get 10% off the Leith's Essentials online course that Gilly is doing over over the next 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout:  

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar. Enter code GILLYSGIFT and click redeem.  

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with Joe Woodhouse to talk about cookery courses, food photography and launching your very first book in the middle of a war when your wife is Ukrainian food writer, Olia Hercules.

His book Your Daily Veg has been lauded by Nigella, Anna Jones and Cooking the Books favourite, Rachel Roddy, and is packed with recipes inspired his career to date styling and photographing food from all over the world, but also by a lifetime of being a vegetarian.

To get 10% off the Essentials online course that I’m doing over over the next 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout: 

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar and enter code GILLYSGIFT 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Gilly is with the woman who made Cooking the Books happen in the first place! When Melissa Hemsley said yes to her invitation to be on a brand new indie podcast two years ago and before they'd even met, the rest of the A-listers flooded in. And that’s because she’s not just the best-selling green queen of Eat Happy and Eat Green, but one of the most generous, genuine and well-respected members of the food community. 

Her latest book Feel Good is what makes her so compelling as a read, both in her books and on her social media. Mental health, grief, joy and purpose, Melissa-shaped, coming your way.

To get 10% off the Essentials online course that I’m doing over over the next 6 months, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

Click ‘enrol’ on course page and apply the code: GILLY10 at checkout: 

And if you fancy a Free Hollandaise mini-course – Sign up for a Workshop account or login at: app.workshop.ws/profile and click ‘Redeem Coupon’ on the sidebar and enter code GILLYSGIFT 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.