Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

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 changing 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.

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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 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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