Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, we’re on The Isle of Skye with the author of Café Cuil , Clare Coghill. This is so much more than a recipe book celebrating the best of Highland produce, and the CUIL, the Gaelic for cosy nook - is much more than a play on words. This is a story of brilliant enterprise in the face of adversity drawn from a sense of identity and belonging – Gilly's favourite ingredients in any cuisine.&n...

This week,  we’re diving into Nigerian food culture with culinary anthropologist, food historian and now author of Chop Chop,   Cooking the Food of Nigeria , Ozoz Sokoh. Her Kitchen Butterfly blog has been documenting the back story to this West African cuisine since 2009, but Chop Chop, her debut cookbook, has been a long time coming. It’s already been nominated for an Andre S...

To kick off a brand new year, we’re diving straight into the power of protein with Jeffrey Boadi, author of  Plant Fuel.   As a former semi-professional footballer and tennis player, Jeffrey has been a top level athlete for most of his adult life. But it was his decision to go vegan overnight that has given him a place on the podium in the plant protein world. Gilly finds out how it...

This week, we’re creating Something from Nothing with Alison Roman. The former chef, food columnist for the New York Times, senior food editor at Bon Appetit, author of Dining In, Nothing Fancy and Sweet Enough, and now owner of her own store in upstate NY is all about about doing the bare minimum beautifully. But as one of the early queens of social media, she’s been through the highs and the low...

On Christmas Day, we’re combining all the things that Cooking the Books is about – identity, belonging, food cultures and vicarious travel thorugh food with Emiko Davies in one of Gilly's favourite books of 2025, The Japanese Pantry. As Emiko puts the pieces of her Italian living Australian-Japanese ancestry and influence together through all her books, The Japanese Pantry reads like she’s landing...

This week, we’re with the Spirit of Christmas herself, Skye McAlpine and The Christmas Companion Among all the talk of the pressures, the aspirational values and the industry of Christmas, Gilly finds herself feeling like the Grinch in the presence of the Christmas Fairy as she asks Skye about about the nostalgia, the beauty and the magic of giving. Click here for Extra Bites of Skye on Gilly's Su...

This week, we’re with Northern Irish food writer Cherie Denham and photographer Andrew Montgomery in The Irish Kitchen  If you’ve listened to Gilly's chat with Andrew on her Substack  a couple of weeks ago, you’ll know that this is no ordinary book. It follows their first book, The Irish Bakery , published by Montgomery Press, Andrew’s own company designed to do exactly what he...

This week, we're with Masterchef winner and the hottest name in Thai food, Nat Thaipun. Her book  THAI: Anywhere and Everywhere is packed with glorious flavours of Thailand via Melbourne where she grew up. But it was when Jamie Oliver as one of the judges on Masterchef spotted her talent that she really saw what a book could look like. We find out about the role of MasterChef as the global ph...

This week, we’re off to the Bohemian Kitchen of Brit-Czech writer, Evie Harbury My Bohemian Kitchen is a nostalgic trip through the memories of a place Evie only knows through summers with her Czech granny and her dad’s childhood memories as she investigates the traditional cooking techniques of this largely untapped culinary region. The result is an adventure in refusing to follow the rules...

This week, we’re with one of our favourite CTB pals, Mark Diacono in front of a live audience at Patio, the buzziest yet somehow most intimate bar in Brighton to talk about his latest book, Abundance. Abundance is Mark's pioneering way of writing a food book, a Substack post every week over a whole year, supported by a global readership of paying subscribers. Of course the publishers piled in to s...

This week, we're with Amber Guinness whose latest book, Winter in Tuscany takes us into her own home to rifle through her pantry and cook what she cooks. But, as Gilly finds out, it’s also a stroll through a time and place still rooted in tradition, where cooking with the seasons and the frugal legacy of cucina povera is a reminder of the simple, good things in life.   Pop over to Gilly'...

This week, we’re celebrating 25 years of great British cooking with chef patron of The Sportsman and former punk, Stephen Harris.    He’s the chef who put “cuisine de terroir” on the map, hyperlocally sourcing the foods from the land that have been the inspiration behind his award winning cooking. The Sportsman has held a Michelin star since 2008, but in The Sportsman at Home, he takes u...

This week, we’re with Anna Ansari, the American-Iranian author of Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing. We meet at Helm Gallery in Brighton’s North Laine, in front of a live audience which includes members of the Network of international Women whose debate about the culinary variations of Kuku from Iran and Iraq to Syria, Jordan and Yemen becomes particularly heated...

This week, we’re with Sarah Bentley, the brains behind Made in Hackney, and its brand new cookbook We Cook Plants. Made in Hackney is a charity founded 13 years ago by Sarah which teaches thousands the skills to cook with plants for survival, joy, and empowerment. It’s a glorious invitation to put more plants on your plate and be part of real food system change. Pop over to Gilly's Substack to see...

This week, we’re revisiting The Natural Menopause Method with nutritionist, Karen Newby We first met Karen last year when she explained how to arm women with the information we need to dodge the drug industry, understand how food heals and to live in harmony with one of the natural events in our lives.  Have a listen to that episode of CTB here. This time, it's all about the cookbook as...

This week, we are all about the bean - again. It’s Publication Day for Full of Beans , the second cookbook from Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Bean co., and lead singer in the campaign to bring beans back onto the British plate.  We first met Amelia at Cooking the Books Live at Groundswell this summer to talk about her first book, Bold Beans: recipes to get your pulse racing Now, wit...

This week, we’re off to a farm just outside London but which feels like it’s on a different planet, with Tamara Schiopu in My Vegan Farm Food.    Tolhurst Organic, a 20-acre farm on the Hardwick Estate, is a dream of how farming could be – and is about so much more than growing. This is about community, where the growers work the land and live on the river under the famous willows o...

This week, we’re off to Brazil with food writer and former Ottolenghi chef, Ixta Belfrage Her latest book, Fusao meaning fusion, is about more than the melting pot of Brazil’s huge diasporic food cultures; it’s about who she is after a deep dive into her own ancestry, the histories of Brazil and her own connection with food as medicine. Gilly finds out if this weighty book, packed with stories and...

This week, we’re with Tim Siadatan, the man behind one of the most iconic restaurants in London, Padella to chat about his eponymous debut cookbook. Tim started his journey in food on an apprentice scheme at Fifteen, with the most iconic of chefs, Jamie Oliver. From there, he rocketed through the food firmament from St John with Fergus Henderson to Moro with Sam and Sam Clarke, before setting up h...

This week, we’re back with Cooking the Books favourite, Tara Wigley and the second in her brilliant series of culinary confusions,  How the Cookie Crumbles. After co-writing the Ottolenghi big hitters with Yotam and other members of the Test Kitchen, she’s found her own niche in rhyme.  After How to Butter Toast charmed a whole new readership, she’s back with all we  ...

This week in a special extra episode, we’re live in Paris at the legendary Belleville bistrot Le Mistral with Chris Newens, the winner of the 2024 Jane Grigson Trust Award for best debut food writer for his gastronomic journey through the arrondissements of Paris, Moveable Feasts. The name of the book is a nod to Chris’ idol, Ernest Hemingway and his memoir of a struggling expat writer making...

This week, we’re with yet another lawyer turned chef, Malaysian restaurateur and award-winning author of Sambal Shiok and now Simply Malaysian, Mandy Yin. She’s the super-driven restaurateur who started selling satay burgers at a street stall after getting burnt out in corporate law, and who went on to be lauded by all the food critics for her London laksa bar, Sambal Shiok. As a mum of a three ye...

This week, we’re off to the Cairngorms of Scotland with anthropologist, food journalist and woman of the wilds, Ghillie Basan . After bringing the food of Turkey, Morocco, Lebanon, The Middle East, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Kenya to an international readership hungry for different flavours and food cultures, Ghillie's latest book, Food Whisky Life focuses more on her own life. It’...

This week, we're with Channel 4 news writer, social media food influencer and nominee for the Jane Grigson Trust Sous Chef Award for debut food writing, Felicty Spector. Bread and War: A Ukrainian Story of Food, Bravery and Hope   is an exploration of the profound role of food in wartime Ukraine.  Felicity’s trips through devastated villages, bombed cities, family kitchens, and...

This week, we’re off to the Greek Islands with chef and food historian, Carolina Doriti for a deeper dive into the stories of Greece through its food. Taking the tourist to see the traditions, the artisans and the produce of our favourite holiday islands, says Carolina, helps to connect them more with the food and the people, an essential element of sustainable travel. As she takes us th...