Gilly is with Pam Brunton, chef/owner at Inver restaurant on Argyll and Bute, author, philosopher and star of Rick Stein’s Food Stories on BBC1.

Her book, Between Two Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook is a deep dive into everything that we need to know about food - the philosophy, the politics and the provenance of what we eat. It’s part memoir, part manifesto on the future of feeding the world, as well as a sharp, feminist critique of the power of the global food economy, and has been heralded as a fiercely original work of narrative non-fiction, from one of the world’s most exciting thinkers about food, sustainability and landscape.  

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

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This week, Gilly is with Saturday Kitchen regular and author of nine cook books, Claire Thomson, aka Five o Clock apron. Her latest book, Veggie Family Cook Book is, like Claire, what it says on the cover – genuine, real, easy-going, with 120 recipes to make life more interesting. Gilly finds what makes her so appealing - and enduring - in the plentiful world of cookbooks.

Pop over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites of Claire and a recipe for Spanakopita.

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This week, we’re off to Seoul with British-Korean writer, Su Scott.

Su has lived in Britain longer than she lived in Korea where she grew up, and has raised her own daughter in London. But her latest book, Pocha tells the story of the country she left behind, her family and the food they shared, often in the pochas, the covered markets and food stalls which are about so much more than food. 

Click here for Extra Bites of Su on Gilly's Substack

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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, as the UK (and France) go to the polls, Gilly chats to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about the best way to support the NHS, his latest book How to Eat 30 Plants a Week.

Last time we met to talk about the River Cottage’s Good Comfort, his message was to swap out the less healthy ingredients for more, eating healthily not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in. This time, he’s upped his game and using the best of the latest science, he’s showing us how to eat 30 different plants a week.

Click here for Extra Bites of Hugh and here for the Food Foundation's Manifesto on how to put your own pressure on the next government to create a healthier nation.

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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 in an extra episode in the run up to the UK General Election to remind everyone why we must get the next government to fix the food system, Gilly meets Chris Van Tulleken, TV, radio and infectious diseases doctor who catapulted the term ultra processed food into the public consciousness in 2023 with his book Ultra Processed People.

Now out in paperback, Gilly asks him about power, politics and the ultra processing food industry.  

Click here for Extra Bites of Chris on Gilly's Substack, and here for more information on the various parties' takes on food policy from the Food Foundation.

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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, we’re with Giulia Crouch to look at the diet of the Blue Zones that will make us not only live long and healthy lives, but is the Happiest Diet in the World.

A little known fact: the very first book Gilly wrote back in 1993 on the back of a Channel 4 series called Food File was The Mediterranean Health Diet: the delicious way to lose weight and live longer. The TV show and the book was about a village in Southern Italy which scientists  had discovered best diet in the world – and the reflected the interest in what even the Government back then was telling us would save our NHS, already buckling under the weight of diet-related disease. 30 years later, many Western societies are obesogenic s with increasing numbers living in food insecurity, undernourished by an all powerful fast food industry. Gilly asks Giulia why she thinks we’re still trying to work out how to eat well.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for more from Giulia's Happiest Diet in the World

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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, we’re with Irish chef, Anna Haugh to talk about her first cookbook, Cooking with Anna.

Anna is a massive part of the story of British food culture, leaving Dublin as a young woman to cook in the steamiest kitchens in London – Shane Osborn’s Pied a Terre, Philip Howard’s The Square and Gordon Ramsay’s London House.

But in 2019, she opened her own, Myrtle in Chelsea, more than a nod – a deep bow to Myrtle Allen, the doyenne of Irish cuisine and the inspiration behind Darina Allen's legendary Ballymaloe Cookery School  

Click here for Extra Bites from Anna at Gilly's Substack

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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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