Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith is the winner of The Guild of Food Writers' Best Broadcast or Podcast Award 2022, and was shortlisted for Fortnum and Mason Best Podcast 2022 and 2024. It's about all of life from climate change to culture and politics to people through the prism of food. It's for foodie book lovers who want to hear something more profound about the way we live, making the link between delicious food and the impact of food production on the land - through books. Hear how A- ...
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This week, Gilly has her hands on on the brand new, much awaited book from Ottolenghi, Comfort. Written by the 'four hungries', Yotam, his original co-writer Tara Wigley, Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller, these are the foods that provide a comfort blanket for them, and mark a departure from the big Ottolenghi books of the past. In a deliciously raw,…
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This week, in the last of our summer holiday specials, we head to the Good Kitchen in Sicily with community chef and adventurer in all things good, Danny McCubbin. His story is one of a leap of faith, driven by a sense of purpose coursing through his veins and cultivated by his 17 years working with Jamie Oliver, including mentoring chefs at Fiftee…
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This week’s we’re off to the Med – yup, all of it - with chef, Ben Tish. Ben’s latest book Mediterra follows his deep dive into bits of the Mediterranean; Moorish looked at the influence of the moors over hundreds of years on food of the Med, while his book Sicilia was a visceral guide to the street and home food of Sicily. This time, he covers the…
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This week, Gilly is with Meera Sodha, author of Made In India The Times’ book of the year in 2014, Fresh India, which won the 2017 Observer Food Monthly's Best New Cookbook Award, East which drew from her Guardian’s New Vegan column, and now Dinner, with a rather different story. This is about the food that helped her recovery from burn out, scribb…
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This week, we’re back at Rockwater, Hove talking LIVE with Melissa Hemsley, food writer of six best-selling cook books, including her latest, the Sunday Times bestseller, Real Healthy. A delicious reminder of how to unprocess our diet with easy, everyday recipes, the book is an antidote to ultra processed foods. Gilly chats to Melissa about everyda…
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Diana Henry: Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons
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This week, we’re going back to London, 2002, a time before pomegranate molasses, when Nigella and Jamie were first on the telly and Ottolenghi had yet to chuck his flavour bombs into the salad bowl of British cuisine, to the publication of the very first Diana Henry book, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. Click here for Gilly's previous chats with Diana…
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This week, in the very first Cooking the Books LIVE at Rockwater in Hove, an audience with Guardian Feast columnist, Rachel Roddy. Rachel is the author of three books about her life in Italy including the multi award winning Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome which was first published in 2015 and now reissued in 2024. It’s the …
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This week, as the schools get ready for the long summer holidays, Gilly is with the woman everyone needs to pop in their suitcase if they’re heading to France, Carolyn Boyd, author of Amuse Bouche, How to Eat Your Way around France. Carolyn has guided Gilly through the best food destinations – and therefore THE best destinations in France for the l…
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This week, we’re off to Seoul with British-Korean writer, Su Scott. Su has lived in Britain longer than she lived in Korea where she grew up, and has raised her own daughter in London. But her latest book, Pocha tells the story of the country she left behind, her family and the food they shared, often in the pochas, the covered markets and food sta…
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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: How to Eat 30 Plants A Week
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This week, as the UK (and France) go to the polls, Gilly chats to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about the best way to support the NHS, his latest book How to Eat 30 Plants a Week. Last time we met to talk about the River Cottage’s Good Comfort, his message was to swap out the less healthy ingredients for more, eating healthily not by taking stuff out…
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Chris Van Tulleken: Ultra Processed People
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This week in an extra episode in the run up to the UK General Election to remind everyone why we must get the next government to fix the food system, Gilly meets Chris Van Tulleken, TV, radio and infectious diseases doctor who catapulted the term ultra processed food into the public consciousness in 2023 with his book Ultra Processed People. Now ou…
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Giulia Crouch: The Happiest Diet in the World
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This week, we’re with Giulia Crouch to look at the diet of the Blue Zones that will make us not only live long and healthy lives, but is the Happiest Diet in the World. A little known fact: the very first book Gilly wrote back in 1993 on the back of a Channel 4 series called Food File was The Mediterranean Health Diet: the delicious way to lose wei…
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This week, we’re with Irish chef, Anna Haugh to talk about her first cookbook, Cooking with Anna. Anna is a massive part of the story of British food culture, leaving Dublin as a young woman to cook in the steamiest kitchens in London – Shane Osborn’s Pied a Terre, Philip Howard’s The Square and Gordon Ramsay’s London House. But in 2019, she opened…
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This week, we’re talking to friend of the show, Mark Diacono about his latest book, Vegetables. This is a book packed with ideas about how to get more from food from the land, a journey through the seasons which Ottolenghi calls 'simple, soulful, seasonal.' Bee Wilson calls it 'joyful', and Julius Roberts says it's 'an inspiring veg bible'. But for…
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The Guild of Food Writers Awards 2024
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In this special extra episode on the morning after the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2024, we leaf through some of the best food writing of the year in four of the 16 categories to explore what judges Laura Nickoll, Lyndon Gee, Kalpna Woolf and Fliss Freeborn were looking for in their shortlists. Click here for the Awards brochure and the full set o…
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Fuchsia Dunlop: Invitation to a Banquet
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This week, we’ve been invited to a Chinese Banquet with the word on Chinese food, Fuchsia Dunlop. Her multi award winning book, Invitation to a Banquet is a huge and deep dive into Chinese life through the prism of food. After 30 years of writing about Chinese food culture, she has a seat at the table most of us can have no idea about. Click here t…
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This week, we’re off to the jungles of Colombia and... London with Modern Medicine Woman, Frankie Paz Her book Plant Feasts is about how to live in the concrete jungle or the madness of modern life with the wisdom of the ancients. It’s about slowing down and finding how to live – how to really live by connecting with friends, family and nature – ev…
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This week, we’re off on an Italian road trip along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea with Amber Guinness and her latest book Italian Coastal. We first met Amber a couple of years ago on Cooking the Books when she told us about her book A House Party in Tuscany, the story of restoring and reclaiming her childhood home. This time, she takes us to some …
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Yasmin Fahr: Cook Simply, Live Fully
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This week, we’re off to Menorca on a bit of an Eat Pray Love story with New York Times journalist, Yasmin Fahr. Her latest book, Cook Simply, Live Fully is about the options in life. It’s about cooking consciously, taking time to think about what you really want to eat, and being a little kinder to yourself – and the planet. Following your nose, tu…
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This week, Gilly catches up with the queen of Turkish cuisine, Ozlem Warren. We’ve met Ozlem already on Cooking the Books to talk about her 2020 book Ozlem’s Turkish Table, but this time she’s talking about the side of Turkish cuisine that perhaps we don’t know so well, the vegetables, the sebze, inspired by thousands of years of diverse food histo…
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In this extra, special episode, Gilly is with Angela Clutton, who, with Itamar Sulovitch from Honey and co and Leyla Kazim from the Food Programme, was one of the three judges of this year's Fortnum and Mason Awards. By the time you hear this, the glitz and glamour of these Oscars of the food world will be over for another year. The mass of talent …
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This week, Gilly is with award winning travel writer, Caroline Eden. Her Cold Kitchen in Edinburgh is where we find her comfort cooking up the recipes she remembers from her travels. Her memories take us on the Trans Siberian Railway, through the dark back streets of a winter in Istanbul and the political chaos of a coup in Kyrgyzstan, and remind u…
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This week, Gilly is with Georgina Hayden, our favourite Cypriot food writer to talk about Greekish, her everyday recipes with Greek roots. This is about the mash up of all that she is – North London, 2nd generation Greek Cypriot, who with full support from her yiayia, her grandmother, has cooked up a whole story of her family life in the kitchen. G…
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Kevan Roberts: The School of Artisan Food
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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…
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This week, Gilly is with Nicola Lamb, one of the nominees of this year’s Jane Grigson Trust Award for best debut food writer. Her book Sift 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 …
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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 …
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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…
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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 into Gilly's Substack to…
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Rebecca Sullivan: First Nations Food Companion
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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 …
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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 …
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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 ass…
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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…
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Karen Newby: The Natural Menopause Method
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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 …
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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…
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Lynn Cassells: Our Wild Farming Life
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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 call…
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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 Hosted on Acast. Se…
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The Official 2024 Veganuary Cookbook with Toni Vernelli
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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 sak…
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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 …
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Kevin Geddes: Keep Calm and Fanny On
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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, but Kevin Geddes, author of Keep Calm and Fanny On and 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 Part…
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These Delicious Things: a charity cookbook for Magic Breakfast
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This week, Gilly is with private chef, Jane Hodson, food writer, Lucas Hollweg 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…
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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 Lane which 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 Brit…
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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…
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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 trad…
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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 …
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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 …
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This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, the author of First Bite and 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 ju…
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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 Dish is 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…
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