Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, we’re with British-Caribbean writer, Keshia Sakarah whose debut cookbook, Caribe was shortlisted with Irina 

Janakievska and Dina for the Jane Grigson Trust Award in 2023. It's a history of Caribbean cooking with 125 recipes from 23 nations - from Montserrat to Haiti, Antigua to Guadaloupe, capturing the cultures through food in what this Leicester born young writer calls 'resistance through retention'.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Keshia.

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This week, Gilly is with the British Iranian/Pakistani human rights activist and food and travel writer, Yasmin Khan to talk about her latest book, Sabzi.

Sabzi, meaning greens and herbs in Persian, the language of her mother, and vegetables in Urdu, the language of her Pakistani father, is about how to reduce the amount of meat in our diet with delicious recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia. It’s as political and environmental as we’d expect from Yasmin, but it’s also a book about her ancestors and the food from their l...

In extra episode from Groundswell, the Regenerative Agriculture Festival that Sheila Dillon calls 'the Glastonbury of Food and Farming', Cooking the Books Live discusses the influence of cook books and books about food on changing the way we eat and buy our food

In front of an audience of farmers and food businesses, pioneers and innovators who are changing the way we eat, Gilly asks a panel of writers with influence, Thomasina Miers of Wahaca, Amelia Christie-Miller of Bold Bean company, Alice Robinson of British Pasture Leather and David Finlay of The Ethical Dairy what a...

This week, we’re back at Rockwater in Hove for Cooking the Books Live with Gurd Loyal.

Regular listeners will know that Gurd is probably the writer who Gilly think's best uses the lens of food to examine life. His first book, Mother Tongue won the Jane Grigson Trust award for Best Debut, and he has become the word on Third Culture food, prising open the liminal spaces between where we come from and who we can be.

His second book, Flavour Heroes is a lighter read, a pantry book giving us technicolour wa...

This week, we’re with Guardian columnist and author Felicity Cloake as she cycles through America in search of its food culture.

Peach Street to Lobster Lane is her great American road trip – on a bike. It’s the off-road trip that’s about getting to the heart of American cuisine via a glimpse into everyday life that you just can’t get by car.

The story she finds is about immigration, colonisation and enterprise, from tex mex to creole, fried chicken and real bbq, Chicago deep pan pizza, lobster rolls, clam chowder, Boston bake...

This week, we’re exploring the story of Ukraine with its most famous defender and cultural protector, Olia Hercules in her first memoir, Strong Roots.

It’s the story of Ukraine that history can never tell, through the stories of its people - and in particular, Olia’s people, through four generations of her family.  Nigella calls it 'breathtaking', Caroline Eden calls it cinematic, Elisabeth Luard says: ‘Here, in all its beauty and sorrow, is the story of Ukraine as it is, and was and surely will be again.’

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for...

This week, we're with award-winning psychologist, and graduate of Gilly's How to Cook a Book food writing retreat, Andrea Oskis.

Her first book is a series of tales from her clinic exploring how the food we eat reveals who we are – and how we love. Its title? The Kitchen Shrink. Genius.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Andrea.

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This week, Gilly is confronting her biggest summertime phobia with Tom Kerridge and his latest book, The Barbecue Book.

He’s the man with the Midas touch – he turned the Hand and Flowers from a rundown pub in Buckinghamshire into the first and only 2 star Michelin pub in the world.  He’s the chef who lost a stack of weight and turned his diet story into books and telly which helped millions of others do the same. He’s the boy who grew up on free school meals who launched Full Time Meals with Marcus Rashford in 2021 and...

This week, we’re back with one of Gilly's favourite guests on Cooking the Books, Bee Wilson and her latest book, The Heart Shaped Tin.

It’s a book about love and loss, and the magical thinking that so many of us transpose onto everyday objects, often found in the kitchen. As she navigates her way from the despair of a broken marriage to a gloriously happy present via the death of her mother and the inevitable life changes that happen as children grow up, she gathers stories and explores the psychology about our relationship with thin...

This week, we’re basking in the evening sunshine at Cooking the Books Live at Rockwater, Hove with Noor Murad.

Her debut cookbook, Lugma is her twist on the familiar, to use an Ottolenghi term, of the food from her homeland, Bahrain.

It’s the very first international cookbook of Bahraini recipes, but reflects her own experiences of growing up there, the mix of Persian and Indian flavours infused with her own half Britishness and a brash of new York where she worked before landing in the bosom of the Ottolenghi family.

This week, we're with Malaysian Scottish chef, restaurateur and now food writer, Julie Lin and her debut cookbook, Sama Sama

Sama Sama meaning Same Same is all about food and identity. It’s a book that has been simmering for years as Julie explores her same-same notions of home and all the ingredients of belonging that have come together in the hashtag third culture food.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Julie.

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This week, Gilly is with the queen of communal living an icon of bohemian anti-capitalism, Rosie Kellett.

An actress, a baker with Meringue Girls and Claire Ptak’s assistant at Violet Cakes – which included working on Harry and Meghan’s wedding cake, it was moving into a Carpet Warehouse  in London that shot her to fame on Instagram. The idea of sharing the cost of living with her ware-housemates, cooking and eating communally – as well as the supper clubs with Italian housemate, Virginia - hit home to so many that publishers were queuing up to sign her.  

This week, in a special extra episode to coincide to the minute with a fascinating new way of publishing, I’m with content creation queen, Masterchef judge and co-presenter of The Food Programme, Leyla Kazim

Leyla’s debut Pathways is not one but two books about her massive life change to become a farmer in Portugal. It’s a memoir/manifesto/guide to living a purposeful life. Published by The Pound Project, it goes on sale for three weeks only, from 7pm on May 6th - 27th May. She’s in good company - Jess Phillips MP, Dolly Alder...

This week, we’re talking about the dirty rotten scoundrels who run our global food industry with Dr Stuart Gillespie

Stuart’s book Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet gives us the back story of a food system driven by greed and exploitation. But it suggests how to transform it into a food system fit for the future which prioritises global health and justice. And it starts with really understanding that the food system isn’t broken—it’s functioning exactly as designed.

Pop over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bite...

This week, we’re digging deep – culturally and politically - into our connection with the land in Poppy Okotcha’s A Wilder Way, how gardens grow us.

Poppy is this year’s winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Sous Chef Award for New Food Writers for her memoir – and very practical handbook – about putting down roots and growing a garden while reconnecting with Mother Earth’s infinite power to restore life.

Her beautiful book is a wonderful wake up call to remind us of what’s under our feet, threaded through with fables and folklore from...

 This week, we're walking the Green Mountains of Armenia and Georgia with food and travel writer, Caroline Eden

The last time we met on CTB, it was to talk about Cold Kitchens, her dream of journeys past during Lockdown, as she tried to make sense of a changing world. This time, she’s putting one foot in front of the other to process the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on this still largely unknown part of the world, her signature edible postcards a wake up call to the sensory adventures of the Caucasus in the...

This week, we’re back at River Cottage with bee queen, Rachel de Thample 

River Cottage Handbook No 19: Bees and Honey is the latest in the practical guides to everything we need to know to live a sustainable life. Rachel and Steve Minshall take us through everything from caring for bees to honey recipes for soothing and healing, but as a former chef, commissioning Editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated and Head of Food for the organic box scheme Abel & Cole, Rachel has carved a niche as a writer who is all about the role of nature and...

This week, we’re off on our travels again through Eastern Europe, this time with Irina Georgescu as our guide along the lesser known banks of the Danube.

Irina has become the word on Romanian food, and from her home in Wales, she’s committed to exploring her homeland through its food history. Her last book, Tava: Eastern European Baking and Desserts from Romania and Beyond won a James Beard Foundation award in 2023. In Danube, she finds publishing gold in everyday recipes from a part of the world most of us still haven’t discovered. 

Pop...

This week, we’re visiting the kitchens of everyday India to find the food behind closed doors with chef, food writer and broadcaster, Roopa Gulati,

Brought up in Cumbria, Roopa spent 20 years as a chef in Delhi before she came home to advise on Rick Stein’s India series for BBC2. She's a woman who knows how to find the story in everyday food, and Indian Kitchens is an extraordinary story behind the recipes of 12 different communities to find the food that makes up a nation.  

Bee Wilson raves about it, Tom Parker Bowles ca...

This week, we’re back at Rockwater, Hove with River Cottage writer, Lucy Brazier telling a live audience about her memoir, The Honesty Box.

It’s a highly moving and very funny diary about healing a broken marriage and growing enough vegetables to fill her new distraction, an honesty box. But the rickety old receptable outside her garden gate is also a metaphor for the treasure trove she finds as she lifts the lid on the mental health crisis her husband – and the rest of the family – have been living with.

We begin with a qu...

Laurie Woolever is back on the pod, four years since we last met her to talk about the last book she wrote with the late, great Anthony Bourdain.  

This time she’s telling her own story in Care and Feeding: A Memoir which paints a vivid picture of a bright, sensitive woman beset with anxiety trying to find her way into food writing in a world of celebrity chefs and toxic masculinity in turn of the century New York.

Her work as a food writer for chef, Mario Batali and at Art Culinaire, the...

This week, as Trump tramples over the future of Eastern Europe – and indeed the rest of Europe, we’re with Siberian-born food writer and co-founder of #CookforUkraine, Alissa Timoshkina.

Her latest book, Kapusta: Vegetable-Forward Recipes from Eastern Europe is a celebration of the humble cabbage (and four other vegetables) in the everyday kitchens of Eastern Europe. Her co-founder of CookforUkraine, Olia Hercules calls it ‘A rare cookbook that engages our thinking and delights our senses’ and Nigella has already propped it up in her Cookbook Corner.  

In a world that is in such turmoil at t...

This week, we’re back with our favourite doctor, Saliha Mahmood Ahmed and her latest book, The 20 Minute Gut Health Fix. 

Saliha is a specialist registrar in gastroenterology with a Masters in Nutrition,an award winning food writer and the 2017 winner of MasterChef. She’s been on this show to talk about Foodology and The Kitchen Prescription, but since we last met, beans have made it back into the mainstream. Gilly finds out if we're on our way to gut health.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Saliha including a recip...

This week, Gilly puts her pack on her back and heads to Thailand, Baja California, Sri Lanka and Mexico with holistic chef Samantha Dormehl to explore her Wanderlust Kichen.

The book is a spiritual guide to healing recipes from around the world, and the result of years of travelling, eating with locals, cooking in their kitchens and slowing right down to experience the wonders of the world through eating together.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Sam, and a recipe from the book.

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This week, we’re celebrating CTB’s fifth birthday with another in our series of Live events at Rockwater in Hove, this time with Claire Thomson.

The Five o clock Apron, as she’s more commonly known was with us to talk about her latest book One Pan Beans, the 10th in her series of how to cook books. In front of an audience of super-fans, she told us how to elevate the simplest of ingredients - beans, chickpeas and lentils - into fabulous weekday meals and weekend feasts.

Pop over to Gilly's Substac...

This week, Gilly finds out what happens when life falls apart, and grows again, with Kathy Slack’s Rough Patch

Kathy was a high flying executive living the dream in Adland... until it became a nightmare. Burn out gave way to clinical depression and a very dark place indeed. Ultimately hers is a story about nature, dogs and how growing veg saved her, but she doesn’t pull any punches, and trigger warning, she and Gilly do talk about how depression can lead to suicidal thoughts, although thankfully not in her case.

Pop over...

This week, Gilly's with Niloufer Mavalvala to discover the food of the Zorastrians in the fourth of her compendium, The Route to Parsi Cooking.

This is about food without borders, a cuisine which is under threat as so many are when their people are displaced. But as we hear so often on this show, they can also become the roots to a culture. With only about 200k Zoroastrians living around the world, Niloufer tells Gilly why she has  taken it upon herself to revive this ancient cuisine.

Click here for Extra Bites of Nilou...

This week, Gilly is talking vegan baking with Philip Khoury. His book, A New Way to Bake reimagined recipes for plant based cakes, bakes and desserts won the debut cookbook award last year at the Fortnum and Masons. But his day job as head pastry chef at Harrods has given him an opportunity to turn up the dial on veganism at the top end of London’s food scene. 

Check into Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Philip.

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This week, Cooking the Books Live is back at Rockwater, Hove in the first of a series of second Tuesdays and a rather fabulous food book club. And who better to start with but Brighton’s favourite novelist, Josie Lloyd and the inspiration for her latest murder mystery, Mrs Isabella Beeton.

Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency is a classic whodunnit, but it’s the protagonist, Alice Beeton’s distant ancestor who haunts the story with recipes from her 1861 masterpiece Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management peppering the plot. Click here for Extra Bites of Josie, including the Q&A...

This week, as the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference open their doors to discuss the role of farming in modern British life, Gilly talks sustainable meat with Pipers Farm’s Abby Allen.

The Pipers Farm Sustainable Meat Cookbook came out in 2022 but is one of Gilly's favourite reads and recipe resources. It’s a manifesto for the role of family farms in climate change and a reminder of all the principles that guide Gilly's world, with some of the most delicious ways to enjoy the food that comes from them. Abby and her...

This week, Gilly is with Julian Baggini, the author of over 20 books about philosophy for a general audience. But it’s what he says about food that had Dan Saladino of BBC's The Food Programme voting How the World Eats, a Global Food Philosphy his best book of 2024.

Gilly finds out what a philosopher can do to help us out of the mess of our global food system.

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

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This week, Gilly is with Kate Hall, the author of The Full Freezer Method: Five Steps to Transform How You Shop, Cook and Live. 

She’s all over morning telly and the nationals as the Freezer Queen giving tips from her fantastically useful book which really could help us save waste; as she points out, 70% of global food waste comes from the home.

But this isn’t just about batch cooking and having an endless supply of ready meals; this is a whole new way of thinking about how to use your freezer.

...

This week, Gilly is with Richard Hart, former head baker of iconic bakery, Tartine in San Francisco, the Londoner whose bakeries across Copenhagen began with a test kitchen at Noma, and the man who taught Marcus from the Bear how to bake.  

His book, Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking is more of a love letter to bread than an instruction manual. It’s a read that makes your heart rate drop, the descriptions of dough making a metaphor for all that is wonderful in life. You can hear the collaboration with his wife, Henrietta Lovell, aka the...

This week, Gilly is with Irina Janakievska, a North Macedonian born former lawyer turned chef who trained at Leiths and worked in the Ottolenghi test kitchen before becoming a runner up for the prestigious Jane Grigson Trust award for her debut cookbook, The Balkan Kitchen.

It’s massive book reaching deep into the history, peoples and geo-politics of the Balkans, but also into her own family story and her exploration of her own identity through recipes from all Balkan kitchens. 

Most of all, it’s a love letter to Balkan cuisine – one of the most...

This week, Gilly is with Claire Dinhut aka Condiment Claire.

Claire is  a culinary history cook and the author of The Condiment Book. A dual national of the US and France, she splits her time between LA and her family home, a mill in the French countryside where the rituals, traditions and flavours of both have inspired her till-side treasure, The Condiment Book which is bound to fly off the shelves this Christmas.

Check out Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites of Claire who’s taken us to that mill house in France...

This week, you may be surprised to find a fashion designer on the show. But Alice Robinson is not what you might imagine. 

She’s only just left the Royal College of Art, but her work has already been featured in the V&A ‘s Food: Bigger than the Plate exhibition. Her first book Field, Fork, Fashion has had her on Radio’s 4’s Start the Week to discuss our connection with the countryside - with James Rebanks among the other guests.  

She is an extraordinary advocate of our connection with the land and prods us to th...

This week, Gilly's with Jon Watts, the author of the instant Sunday Times Bestseller Speedy Weeknight Meals .  

He's a chef with 885k followers on Instagram, but it all started when as a teenager serving a six and a half year sentence for GBH in a young offenders institution, he was given a job on day release at one of the early Jamie Oliver restaurants.

Now in this mid 30s, he says that it was the Duke of Edinburgh's Award which taught him to cook in prison that changed his life - he was the f...

This week, Gilly is with new kid on the block in cookbookland, Emily Roz.

Emily is a trained chef, a recipe developer, and the content creator behind Myriad Recipes. Her “Around the World in 80 Dumplings” series went viral, gaining millions of views.

They caught up to talk about The World is Your Dumpling, which has over 80 recipes celebrating the diverse flavours and textures of dumplings from just about everywhere across the globe. Iasked her if writing about dumplings was a great excuse to travel the world through the lens of dumplings.

Chec...

This week, Gilly is with another changemaker, Elliot Webb, the author of Growing Mushrooms at Home: The Complete Guide to Knowing, Growing and Loving Fungi on the awesome world beneath our feet.

The founder of Urban Farm It is a passionate grower and educator of alternative agriculture based in the UK.  His goal is become a leader in the global movement to a more sustainable and self-sufficient society by positively disrupting current food production culture. Gilly asks him to dig deep into the history and science of mushrooms to find out why so many people so intere...

This week, Gilly's with the man who’s on a mission to put flavour in the heart of a revolution in the food system. Franco Fubini is the CEO and founder of sustainable food distributor, Natoora. He’s also one of the judges of The Food Planet prize for innovation in food, and now, the author of In Search of the Perfect Peach.

His philosophy is simple but its impact could be massive - He believes that our everyday food choices can and should make  our diet healthier, tastier with a massive impact on the farmers, the soil...