Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

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 Handbook is 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, Andaza tells 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, click here

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

Sarah has 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 Substack each 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 Substack each 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 Cooking with 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 with Cindy-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 Anderson who 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 book Bliss on Toast which 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 Meal by former chef at Chez 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 2020 for 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 after Shelf Love from 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 Wonders to 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 Wellcome prize 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. 

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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 cuisine and 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.  

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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 Award for 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 the cultural commentator on the role of Jamaican food in modern British culture while thinking deeply about his own place within it.

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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 #cookforukraine campaign. 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 Connect in 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 her Patreon 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.   

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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, Time and Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower have 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.  

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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 book packed 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.  

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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.  

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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 

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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 

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This week, Gilly's talking about The Year of Miracles by Ella Risbridger. Like her first book, Midnight Chicken  and other recipes worth living for, it’s part memoir, part recipe book and reads like a novel. And despite not meaning to be a book about grief, it’s soaked in it. In a good way.  Ella describes grief 'like an anvil crashing through the floor revealing a whole new level where you can live', and where she lives is a really interesting place which questions a whole way of being. A fascinating insight into writing, grief and queerness from a writer the critics have called 'the new Nigella'.

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 

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This week, is all about The Food Programme, the Radio 4’s mighty series which has been examining our food, its culture and its politics for 43 years, and its first BBC book by Alex Renton taking us through 13 Foods that Shape our World.

Sheila Dillon, presenter of The Food Programme for much of that time has written the foreword. Gilly first met her back in 2017 for the delicious. podcast when the Food Programme was under threat from Radio 4. A mass outpouring of love for the show, new presenters, and now, a book, are just some of the results of that enforced rethink.  

Before Gilly chats to Alex about his four food moments from the book, Sheila reveals her own existential pondering, and a surprising fragility considering her role as doyenne of food in Britain.

And if you've been following Gilly's adventures in cookery @cookingthebookswithgillysmith, you can join in. To get 10% off the Essentials online course, go to leithsonline.com/courses/essential-cooking 

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

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

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This week, Gilly meets the judges of this year's Fortnum and Mason Awards (who shortlisted Cooking the Books for Best Podcast!) to discuss the food books nominated for these Oscars of the food world.

The judges this year are three brilliant food writers, all of whom have been on Cooking the Books and were the pick of the best in 2021; Mark Diacono whose book Herb was on the shortlist, Georgina Hayden who won best Cookery Writer and Tara Wigley who, with Sami Tamimi, won best Food Book for Falastin.

Get your shopping list ready for the best books of the year, and hear what the judges were looking for in the best podcast...

Y0u can read the transcript here

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This week Gilly is with Al and Kitty Tait, the dad and daughter team behind The Orange Bakery.

Kitty was just 14 years old when crippling depression didn’t just change her life but her family’s too. Baking bread was just one of the many things they tried to get her back, but it worked. And some…Just three years later The Orange Bakery is already a thriving business run by Kitty and her dad, Al , and their beautiful book,, Breadsong tells the story.

You can read the transcript here.

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This week, a subject very close to Gilly's heart and the work she does on the Food Foundation’s award-winning podcast, Right2Food – how to change British food culture through children. Chefs in Schools is a charity which teaches kids from the very youngest age to love food by growing it school gardens and eating the kind of dishes that makes most kids run screaming.

Co-founder, Nicole Pisani is a chef who has worked in top kitchens around the world from Rene Redzpei’s Noma to Ottolenghi’s Nopi and, with food writer Joanna Weinberg, has written the book, Feed Your Family which tells its story and shares the recipes which are feeding tens of thousands of British children a whole new way 

Click here for the transcript.

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This week as it's Lent, we’re off to fast in Cyprus with Georgina Hayden, and to find a host of vegan gems in the traditional fasting food from religions and cultures of the Eastern Med and Eastern Europe.

Her book, Nistisima borrows the vegan dishes from the Greek Orthodox Church which frames her family life, as well as the rituals around Ukraine, Russia and Serbia where fasting is a rich vein of inspiration for meat and dairy free recipes. But it’s about much more than food; it’s how family, festival and ritual creates a food culture which connects us with where food comes from and why, as Socrates says, we eat to live. We began by discussing just how hard it is to find a gap in the book shelves these days, and what it takes to get a book deal.

You can read the transcript here

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This week Gilly is with multi-award winning food writer and explorer, Eleanor Ford whose latest book The Nutmeg Trail takes us on an adventure to exotic islands and across trade routes to show how the intoxicating power of spice has changed the world. 

Eleanor is also the author of Fire Islands which won The Guild of Food Writers' Best International or Regional Cookbook 2020, the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award for best Food or Drink Book 2020 and two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2020. Her first book, Samarkand with Caroline Eden won the Guild of Food Writers Award for Food and Travel in 2017. In short, settle yourself in for some top quality listening.

You can read the transcript by clicking here

And if you want to try ten of the recipes from The Nutmeg Trail, CKBK, the Spotify of cookbooks is offering CTB listeners 25% off its subscription. Just click here

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This week, Gilly is with Kalpna Woolf, founder of the Bristol charity 91 Ways which brings together the 91 languages spoken in her hometown of Bristol in a series of pop up peace cafés. Her book Eat Share Love  features the recipes shared over the supper clubs where back story is the main ingredient.

She's been awarded The Guild of Food Writers Inspiration Award, BBC’s Food and Farming Food Hero Award and the Asian Women of Achievement Award and is one of the 20 people listed by Waitrose Food Magazine’s Making the World a Better Place to Live and Eat in 2020. And as Head of Production at Factual and Natural History at the BBC, she oversaw all the best in TV storytelling, including Frozen Planet, Planet Earth and TV chefs from Rick Stein and Nigel Slater to the Hairy Bikers.

You can buy the book directly from 91 Ways here

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This week, Gilly takes us to Tibet with Yeshi Jampa and Julie Kleeman, the husband and wife team who brought the Himalayas to Oxford through their legendary restaurant and food stall - and now, book - Taste Tibet.  Yeshi grew up in Tibet, herding livestock on the high reaches of the Tibetan plateau and learning to cook inside a yak hair tent at a young age. When he was nineteen, Yeshi walked across the Himalayas to northern India, where he eventually met and married Julie a travelling scholar and adventurer. Together, they own and run the Taste Tibet restaurant and festival food stall, a Guardian and BBC Good Food Top Ten pick, and a finalist in the Best Street Food or Takeaway category in the 2021 BBC Food and Farming Awards

Taste Tibet is also available in full online at the Spotify of recipes here, ckbk.

Get 25% off ckbk membership with code COOKINGTHEBOOKS.

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After spending the last couple of months hearing the voice of Yemisi Aribisala introduce the best food books of 2021 in a special series with the Andre Simon awards, this episode is all about her book Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds.

It won the Andre Simon’s John Avery award in 2016, possibly because of its use of food to prod under the skin of Nigerian life and poke at the politics and culture of her homeland. But in a country which doesn’t really like to talk about what they’re eating, Gilly finds a much more complex relationship, not just with food but with language and expression of pleasure.

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In the last of the Andre Simon Shortlist Special series, we meet Yasmin Khan whose book Ripe Figs transports us across  the East Mediterranean, tasting the best food in Greece, Turkey and Cyprus in the company of refugees and activists. As  they chop and chat about borders, memory and identity, Yasmin shows us how food can give dignity and humanise people in the harshest of circumstances.

Plus, food assessor, the author Yemisi Aribisala explains why she chose Ripe Figs to be among the final seven best food books of 2021.

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In the 5th episode of this special series celebrating the Andre Simon Awards 2021, Gilly discusses Mandy Yin’s shortlisted book Sambal Shiok with Singaporean writer, Sharon Wee while Mandy is on maternity leave. Sharon's 2012 book, Growing up in a Nonya Kitchen was a victim of plagiarism last year, which shook the global food community. But she hit back and is now working on a revised version which will be out later this year. You can hear her episode of Cooking the Books here.

As she compares the Singaporean Nonya kitchen with Mandy's Malaysian, she reveals some of the rich cultures which make up one of the most delicious cuisines in the world. But not before food assessor for the awards, Yemisi Aribisala tells us why Sambal Shiok is one of the best food books of 2021.

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The third in this special series celebrating the Andre Simon Awards 2021 in which Gilly meets the authors shortlisted for the prestigious food book gong with an introduction by food assessor, the Nigerian born author Yemisi Aribisala whose memoir Longthroat: 

Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds won the Andre Simon’s John Avery award in 2016.

Four out of seven on the shortlist have already appeared on Cooking the Books, and this week, you’ll get a chance to listen again to Dee Rettali tell Gilly how Baking with Fortitude, the name of her book as well as the story of her life,  is about so much more than bread and cake.

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The second in a special series in conjunction with the Andre Simon Awards 2021 .Each week, we'll start with an appraisal of each shortlisted author by this year's food assessor, the award winning Nigerian author, Yemisi Aribisala. Her book Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex, and the Nigerian Taste Buds, which won the John Avery Award in the Andre Simons in 2016, uses Nigerian food as an entry point to think more deeply and understand culture and society. 

This week, Yemisi describes the storytelling style, rigour and 'good heartedness' that defines Guardian food columnist Rachel Roddy's work, and her latest book, The A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shares, Sauces, Recipes, before we return to Rome during Lockdown when Gilly and Rachel first met.

You can also find CTB on Food FM, the online radio station and global podcast platform which aims to change the world through food. 

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In a special series celebrating the Andre Simon Awards 2021, Gilly celebrates the authors shortlisted for the prestigious food book prize.

Each week until the Awards themselves on March 8th, we meet the seven authors with an introduction by food assessor, the Nigerian born author Yemisi Aribisala. But first, we kick off with Dan Saladino whose book Eating to Extinction was one of Cooking the Books pick of the year in 2021, and meet trustees, Xanthe Clay and Sarah Jane Evans to chat through the shortlisted authors.

Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith is now on FoodFM, the online radio station and podcast platform which aims to change the world through food.

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This week Gilly's talking about something probably quite new to foodies, Biblical Cuisine with Ruth Nieman who has become the go-to expert on Israel’s ancient foods and recipes. Her first book, The Galilean Kitchen captured the oral recipes passed down through the matriarchs of the Druze, Muslim, Christian, and Bedouin communities in Northern Israel and won a Gourmand Award. Now her latest, Freekeh: Wild Wheats and Ancient Grains is longlisted for an Andre Simon Award.   Taking the meat out of some of the most unchanged recipes in living history, it has led to a fascinating contribution to the vegetarian canon.

Cooking the Books is part of The Food FM family.

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This week, Gilly is with 2013 MasterChef finalist, Saira Hamilton whose latest book takes us deep into the little-known food culture of Bangladesh. My Bangladesh Kitchen is full of food stories, poets and mystics and nostalgia for the country of Saira’s ancestors, But Bangladesh is also one of the fastest growing economies in the world as we find out as Saira explains the changing face of her family home.

Cooking the Books is now part of the Food FM family.

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This week, Gilly is with the Flava brothers, Craig and Shaun McAnuff whose Caribbean recipes, inspired by their Jamaican grandmother, are all about traditional values – family, morals and community purpose. It was at her house in Croydon that they started filming their Youtube videos. They got a million views in a week.  But as they explored more about their heritage, they found that the Rastafarian Ital food philosophy had a great contribution to make to the growth of veganism and have shared it in their latest book, Natural Flava.

Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith is now on FoodFM, the online radio station and podcast platform which aims to change the world through food.

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This week, Gilly is with Julia Georgallis, supper club host, industrial designer and author of How to Eat your Christmas Tree who tells us how to have a super-sustainable - and delicious - Christmas.

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This week, Gilly is with James Beard award-winning author, Rowan Jacobsen whose book The Truffle Hound is a fabulous romp across the world in search of truffles. But it’s much more than a story of derring do and great dogs; it’s a love letter to truffles which have so much to say to humanity about everything from the health of the environment to how get more out of life. Who’d have thought that this wonderful fruit which lives in the shadows could bring so much light to a world losing its way? 

And you can buy the book by clicking here

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This week, Gilly is with New York food writer, Sharon Wee whose book Growing up in a Nonya Kitchen tells the story of Peranakan cuisine, a largely unknown type of cookery from Singapore, Malaysia and Malacca which was part of a craft culture binding Chinese women, including Sharon’s mother, into the fabric of a very particular lifestyle.

Sharon’s book which first came out in 2012 in Singapore has become much better known as the subject of plagiarism in an astonishing story that has gripped the food community over the last few months.  She’s not allowed to talk about it for legal reasons, and Gilly is much more interested in a food culture that was part of her early childhood in Penang, so here's the story of the nonyas and the babas and a little known cuisine.

"

If you'd like to get online access, ckbk has a 50% Black Friday offer on annual subscriptions, giving unlimited online access to more than 500 cookbooks including Growing up in a Nonya Kitchen: https://app.ckbk.com/subscribe

You can access the book online, and pre-order a print copy, here: https://app.ckbk.com/book/9814346365/growing-up-in-a-nonya-kitchen  

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This week, Gilly is with Luca Iaccarino, Italian food critic and journalist for Italy’s most respected newspapers la Republica and Corriere della Sera. But he’s also the co-creator of Buonissima, Turin’s most spectacular food festival featuring some of the best chefs in Europe. Gilly went to meet him by Interrail to the home of the Slow Food Movement, to explore Buonissima, meet Ferran Adria and inhale the truffles of nearby Alba. But beyond the storytelling and the glamour, Luca's new book pokes under the skin of Italian food culture and reveals a much more nuanced take on Italian food culture.

For more information about Cooking the Books, including the Supper Clubs, go to Gilly Smith, and follow me oninstagram @foodgillysmith and @cookingthebookswithgillysmith.

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This week, Gilly is with Clare Finney, author of The Female Chef. The book - and the chat - is a wonderfully multi-layered exploration of what it means to be a woman in a professional kitchen in 2021. With interviews from many of Britain’s biggest names in food, including Thomasina Miers, Zoe Adjonyoh, Andi Oliver and Ravinder Bhogal, and with a foreword from Sheila Dillon, it moves the conversation on from the hugely important subject of equality in the workplace to examine the many and nuanced notions of femaleness.

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This week, Gilly is with vegan queen, retreat chef and recipe consultant, Bettina Campolucci Bordi whose new book Celebrate is about flavours from around the world, influenced by her own peripatetic childhood and Skandi/Bulgarian parentage. But more, it’s all about wellness and conscious cooking, dressed up for a great big party.

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This week, Gilly is with Dan Saladino, co-presenter of Radio 4 and BBC Sounds’ The Food Programme whose whopping 400 page debut, Eating to Extinction is a story of the world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them It’s a sweeping story of our relationship with food, of loss of diversity and its impact on humankind, our gut and our planet, woven through with wonderful tales of resilience and know-how of the food heroes, farmers and growers who hold the key to our future.

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This week Gilly is at the Abergavenny Food Festival with Financial Times restaurant critic and Kitchen Cabinet panellist, Tim Hayward. His latest book, Loaf Story is a love letter to bread, but tells a story of Britishness and class. 

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This week, we're staying in the Mediterranean as Gilly sniffs the lemons of the Amalfi coast with everyone’s favourite Italian, Gennaro Contaldo.

Since Gilly first met Gennaro, the conversation about food has changed: veganism, eating less but better to save the planet, regenerative farming for soil health, it’s a whole new language. But, as Gennaro shows us in his latest book, Limoni, it’s actually the very essence of the Mediterranean Diet. 

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This week, Gilly is with GP, Dr Simon Poole whose latest book The Real Mediterranean Diet shares the latest science behind the world’s oldest and healthiest diet.

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This week, Gilly is with Kylee Newton whose fermenting and pickling masterclasses were featured in the Guardian and The Times.  Formerly a fine purveyor of presrves and pickles, her brand Newton & Pott has morphed from production to media as Kylee’s latest book The Modern Preserver hits the shelves.   

A serial entrepreneur and all-round creative, her story of making it up as you go along will be familiar to many listeners who’ve always wanted to turn their hobby into their world.

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This week, Gilly Smith talks to scientist, Guardian food writer and finalist for a James Beard food photography award, Nik Sharma. He argues that his Flavour Equation is about the emotion, sight, sound, mouthfeel, aroma and taste of food which add up to the only way to eat.

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This week, we’re on a bit of a summer special when Gilly is in the hot seat for a change. Food writer Bee Farrell chats about her book, Taste and the TV Chef, which recently won a clutch of awards including the International Impact Award. Bee is currently doing a PhD in the anthropology of food in the C21st and is fascinated with the rituals and performance surrounding eating, regenerative gastronomy and food storytelling, and asks Gilly if influencers really can save the planet

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This week, we’re off to the Baltic with Polish food writer, Zuza Zak whose latest book Amber and Rye takes us to Estonia, Lativia and Lithuania, an arty new Europe where food has so much to say. 

Zuza tells Gilly how her trip to the Baltic cities of Vilnius, Tallinn and Riga was a journey back through her childhood memories to a place made magical through separation and storytelling.  Through Lithuanian and Greek mythology, traditional dishes and a renaissance in food culture, we go deep into this magical world and find something rather precious.

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This week, Gilly is Zooming down to Cornwall to meet the woman of the moment,Emily Scott, one of only two British chefs chosen to feed the leaders of the Western World at this summer’s G7 summit. Her debut cookbook, Sea and Shore is an ode to the simple life, something she's finally managed to balance with feeding Joe Biden.

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This week, Gilly Smith is off to Vietnam through the memories and food of film maker, supper club host and food writer, Uyen Luu to talk about her new book, Vietnamese.  Uyen arrived in the UK aged 5 with her mother and brother, part of a mass exodus of over 800,000 boat people who fled Vietnam between 1975 and 1995. By 2010, she would become the word on Vietnamese cooking and a contributor to Observer Food Monthly after huge success with her London supper clubs.

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This week, Gilly is zooming into Manhattan with Bill Buford, the former fiction editor of The New Yorker and author of Dirt to hear how he uprooted his family and immersed them for five years in an epic adventure in French cooking. Through his four food moments, he tells her how he went in search of the roots of great French food and found the heart of food culture in Lyon, gastronomic centre of the world.

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This week, Gilly is in the Syria of Anas Atassi's childhood which inspired his book Sumac. He and his family left the country before the war began in 2011 which has left more than 380,000 people dead and devastated its ancient cities and their cultural heritage. But as Syrian refugees spread across the world, its food has become its identity, and as Anas takes us through the food from the old country, he tells us why it matters so much.

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This week, Gilly Smith remembers the late great Anthony Bourdain, surely the most exciting storytelling in food who shocked the world by taking his own life in 2018. His assistant, lieutenant, gate-keeper and co-author is Laurie Woolever who had just begun to put together their next book, a travel guide to some of Bourdain’s favourite cities. As she talks through her four food moments from World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, the book that it became, we journey into the mind of a man who had so much to say about food and the world. 

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This week, Gilly is walking through the back streets of old Bombay with Naved Nasir, executive chef at Dishoom to find the Irani Cafes which inspired the book and the restaurant chain, and to talk about nostalgia, cultural appropriation and how to save a restaurant in a Pandemic.

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This week, Gilly is with Durkhanai Ayubi whose book Parwana tells the story of her family’s memories and recipes from her native Afghanistan set against a sweeping history of a country ravaged by power plays and unwelcome international interference. 

To access the recipes from Parwana as well as a curated collection of hundreds of the world's greatest cookbooks with over 87,000 recipes, CKBK  is offering listeners a 25% discount if you use the code cookingthebooks on checkout.

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This week, Gilly is at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, chef Dan Barber's restaurant deep in the countryside of New York.  In his 2014 book, The Third Plate, Dan wrote a new manifesto in food, taking us right back to its roots to tell a story which has changed the way many chefs all over the globe are thinking about the way we eat.

And this month at the top of the show,  we’re finding out about SuperLooper, the children’s clothing rental business that could save the planet.

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This week, Gilly is with Sam Gates’ whose Batch Cook Book went straight to number one on Amazon when it came out at the end of last year. It's a sure sign that people are desperate for tips on how to get the most out of their Lockdown cook ups but also, perhaps it's an indicator of an interest in reducing waste.

Plus the last of the soundbites from this year’s online version of the Oxford Real Farming Conference which you can now watch for free at orfc.org.uk, Dr Vandana Shiva, a modern day revolutionary who takes on the biggest companies in the world in her fight against Big Tech in the food industry. 

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This week, as we head towards Blue Monday, the day when the credit card bills hit the door mat and midwinter can feel very bleak indeed, Gilly meets Razzak Mirjan whose recipe book From Beder’s Kitchen raises awareness around mental health as a tribute to his brother, Beder who took his own life. Razzak and chef,Tom Cenci talk about food and mood, mental health in the professional kitchen and the outpouring of love from the food community for the project.

And listen in to Anna Lappe at the top of the show. Anna is one of the most influential and inspiring speakers on climate and food in the world, and previews her talk at this year’s online version of the Oxford Real Farming Conference: Spinning Food: PR Tactics Industry Uses to Shape the Story of Food. You can watch the whole conference after Jan 13th on the ORFC youtube channel or by going to orfc.org. And do find out all abhut Anna and her extraordinary work at annalappe.com

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This week, Gilly talks to Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone, two former restaurant owners from the Wirral who have made simple, healthy food accessible to millions of people who never learned to cook. What started as a WeightWatcher’s blog has became a triple whammy cookbook sensation, and here they take us through their four food moments from the latest in the series, Pinch of Nom: Quick and Easy.

And throughout this season, we'll hear from the Oxford Real Farming Conference where the most inspiring speakers in the world on food and climate like Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Guy Singh-Watson and Anna Lappe join the dots of an increasingly food-shaped world.

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This week, Gilly is off to Indonesia with Australian caterer and food writer, Lara Lee to explore food and identity in her debut cook book, Coconut and Sambal.

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This week, Italian food expert, Christine Smallwood takes Gilly Smith through the markets and osterias of Puglia to the cool new restaurants of Milan and childhood memories of Ischia as she discusses the place of the vegetable in Italian cuisine.

This season is sponsored by Odysea whose range of Mediterranean foods are just what we need to get through a COVID winter. This week, home mixologist and Bake Off star, Tom Gilliford talks us through why molasses are a delicious alternative to refined sugar in your cocktails this Christmas.

Music by Willy Zygier

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This week, Gilly Smith chats to Pie Man, Calum Franklin about the four food moments in his new book The Pie Room. We learn how he pulled out pies from the depths of British culinary history and turned them into a story that has captivated his 120k followers on Instagram, had super star chef Thomas Keller send his teams over from California to watch and learn and beaten Jamie Oliver to the top spot on Amazon Books.

This season is sponsored by Odysea whose range of Mediterranean foods are just what we need to get through a COVID winter. This week, Susana Perez of Susana and Daughters on the Cowdray Estate tells us about the health properties of kefir, and we learn about the goats from the foothills of Menikio mountain in Northern Greece who produce the milk for Odysea's kefir.

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This week, Gilly Smith talks to Tom Kerridge about the four food moments from his brand new book, The Hand and Flowers Cookbook. Expect insider tips on getting a first Michelin star, Instagram’s influence on curious young chefs and for a masterclass in Elizabeth David’s original crème brulee. 

This season is sponsored by Odysea whose range of Mediterranean foods are just what we need to get through a COVID winter. This week, honey sommelier, Sarah Wyndham Lewis at Bermondsey Street Bees tells us about Odysea's raw honeys, Pine and Fir Tree and Greek Oak Tree raw honeys which have both been certified as high sources of the mineral manganese which boosts the metabolism and keeps your bones in good nick.

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This week, Gilly is transported to Burma and the deeply exotic hills of the land of rubies through the childhood memories and family stories in MiMi Aye's beautiful book, Mandalay.

This season is sponsored by Odysea whose range of Mediterranean foods are just what we need to get through a COVID winter. This week, we learn about Odysea's Extra Virgin Olive Oil, produced from polyphenol rich olives from groves in Messinia in the Kalamata region, where the olives are still harvested by hand. The oil is cold extracted within hours of the olives being picked to ensure the flavour and health benefits remain. Served with food, the pepperiness and the slightest almond skin bitterness is a delicious and vital part of your healthy diet.

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This week, Gilly Smith is back in the Mediterranean – virtually of course - with Theo Michaels whose latest book Rustica explores the recipes of his family's village life in Cyprus.

It's all sponsored this month by Montezuma’s, Britain’s greatest little chocolate company who believe that their beautifully produced and packaged chocolate is positively good for the planet. The ethically-sourced ingredients in their bars, buttons, bites and truffles are all free from gluten, GM, colourings and preservatives and every product is also delivered in packaging that’s either recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable, making this a chocolate company with a conscience.

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This week, Gilly escapes to the Cornish countryside (virtually, of course) with TV presenter and eco chef, James Strawbridge whose BBC series It’s Not Easy Being Green with dad, Dick Strawbridge of Escape to the Chateau fame, was way ahead of its time. 

It's all sponsored this month by Montezuma’s, Britain’s greatest little chocolate company who believe that their beautifully produced and packaged chocolate is positively good for the planet. The ethically-sourced ingredients in their bars, buttons, bites and truffles are all free from gluten, GM, colourings and preservatives and every product is also delivered in packaging that’s either recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable, making this a chocolate company with a conscience.

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This week Gilly is with the food writer who has sold more food books than anyone else in the UK after the Pinch of Noms, Jamie Oliver, Mary Berry and Joe Wicks.  Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin series does just what it says; it roasts in one tin the kind of inspiring and easy flavours that look and taste so good that the country can’t get enough. She gives Gilly her four favourite food moments from the latest in the series, The Roasting Tin Around the World.

CTB is sponsored this month by Montezuma’s, Britain’s greatest little chocolate company who believe that their beautifully produced and packaged chocolate is positively good for the planet. The ethically-sourced Fair Trade ingredients in their bars and buttons are all free from gluten, GM, colourings and preservatives and every product is also delivered in packaging that’s either recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable, making this a chocolate company with a conscience.

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This week, the king of vegetables, Yotam Ottolenghi and his test kitchen princess, Ixta Belfrage teach us some of the secrets of the alchemy behind the recipes in their latest book, Flavour

CTB is sponsored this month by Montezuma’s, Britain’s greatest little chocolate company who believe that their beautifully produced and packaged chocolate is positively good for the planet. The ethically-sourced ingredients in their bars, buttons, bites and truffles are all free from gluten, GM, colourings and preservatives and every product is also delivered in packaging that’s either recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable, making this a chocolate company with a conscience.

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This week, in the last of our summer holiday listens, Gilly Smith saddles up for Felicity Cloake's four food moments in her book One More Croissant for the Road, and a deep dive into the best of French gastronomy...by bike.

This month Cooking the Books is sponsored by Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods retailer. With 7 stores across London, they offer a huge range of products that lead the way in quality, specialty and vegan diets. Head over to @wholefoodsuk or check out @alexandradudley for more information on the Mindful Moments campaign. 

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This week, Gilly Smith is, virtually, in Crete with MasterChef 2019 winner, Irini Tzortzoglou whose four food moments take us through her debut cook book Under the Olive Tree. Packed with stories of family and feasting, this is her extraordinary journey from rural Crete to the City of London and back to the food of her home, but this time as a champion. 

This month Cooking the Books is sponsored by Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods retailer. With 7 stores across London, they offer a huge range of products that lead the way in quality, specialty and vegan diets. Head over to @wholefoodsuk or check out @alexandradudley for more information on the Mindful Moments campaign. 

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This week we’re off to Venice with food writer and columnist and Venetian local, Skye McAlpine to hear her four food moments from her latest book A Table for Friends.

This month Cooking the Books is sponsored by Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods retailer. With 7 stores across London, they offer a huge range of products that lead the way in quality, specialty and vegan diets. Head over to @wholefoodsuk or check out @alexandradudley for more information on the Mindful Moments campaign. 

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This week, Gilly runs away with the circus as Ols Halas, chef at Gifford's Circus restaurant Sauce and co-author with Nell Gifford of its official cookbook walks her through the glittering capes and pointy-toed ponies to peak behind life in the big tent.

This episode is sponsored by Whole Foods Market, the world’s leading natural and organic foods retailer. With 7 stores across London, they offer a huge range of products that lead the way in quality, specialty and vegan diets. Head over to @wholefoodsuk or check out @alexandradudley for more information on the Mindful Moments campaign. 

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This week William Sitwell, restaurant critic at the Telegraph, host of the podcast Biting Talk and author of The Restaurant takes us through the history not just of eating out but the story of human life through the prism of how we’ve learned to eat.

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Guest presenter, Elizabeth Perry, aka E.C Reads on Instagram talks to Sara Paretsky about the food moments in Dead Land, the latest in the series to feature her private detective V.I. Warshawski. When Indemnity Only, the first, was published in 1982, Paretsky revolutionised the genre with this tough-talking female private eye, and in 2002 won the Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. Elizabeth has been reading her since she was 14 and admits that she is massive nerd-level fan.  

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