Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week we’re off to North Macedonia via Crawley with Spasia Dinkovski   Spasia’s book, Doma, meaning home, is one of Gilly's favourite journeys, back to where it all started. She may have been born in Crawley, but her heart, she finds out through her cooking and her writing, is with the women who fed her soul in Macedonian summers.   Already spotted as an Observer Food Monthly Ri...

This week, Gilly takes us back to last week's Jane Grigson Trust Awards for debut food book writers to meet the winner, Chris Newens . He may still be writing his book, Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals , but Gilly helps him unpack four food moments which open a door on Parisian food through its 20 arrondissements. Check into Gilly's Substack to listen to chair of The Jane Grigson Trust, Don...

This week, Gilly Zooms over to the Clare Valley just outside Adelaide in South Australia to catch up with food writer, TV presenter, sustainable living advocate, urban farmer, entrepreneur and the queen of Granny Skills, Rebecca Sullivan to talk about her book, with partner Damian Coulthard , First Nations Food Companion. Gilly first met Rebecca in 2016 at a conference at the University...

This week, Gilly is discussing Easy Wins with the award-winning and best-selling queen of vegetarian food, Anna Jones. Her latest book is packed with stunning recipes and ideas for getting so much more taste and less waste on our plates. Easy Wins has 125 brand new recipes around 12 hero ingredients, all designed to make our lives easier. But with two small kids, that can’t be an easy win for her....

This week, Gilly is with Angela Clutton to talk about her latest book, Seasoning. This is so much more than a bit of salt and pepper. It's about how climate is changing our seasons with its earlier springs, longer summers, warmer, wetter winters and the role we play.  It has all the hallmarks of a modern classic, a book packed with the rigour we associate with Angela’s award-winning writing b...

This week, Gilly is with Charles Clover, author of Rewilding the Sea to dive deep into the world behind our fish. Charles is a seasoned environmental journalist, super campaigner, co-author of K ing Charles’ Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate .  And as co-founder of Blue Marine Foundation , he’s bringing life back to our oceans. Margaret Atwood calls his book a 'game changer,' Isabella Tre...

This week, Gilly is with nutritionist, Karen Newby hot on the heels of an Instagram live with the Queen of the Menopause, Davina Mcall, on her new book The Natural Menopause Method. It’s a book for our times. Since Davina’s documentary about HRT , everyone’s talking about menopause. Karen's book is all about food, but it’s not a recipe book. This is about arming women with the information we need...

This week, Gilly is with one of the main players in the story of modern British food, Michel Roux Junior His Mayfair restaurant, le Gavroche is a London legend, and its closure last month  57 years after his father and uncle, the Roux Brothers changed the game in British food, is a milestone in the way we eat.  At 63, he’s ready for the next chapter, and he’s marking it with hi...

This week, Gilly is with Ashia Ismail- Singer to talk food identity and how food culture travels across borders.  Her books Ashia’s Table and Saffron Swirls and Cardamon Dust , and her 3rd, The Laden Table which comes out in April, are about her Indian food culture, born in India, brought up in Malawi and the UK and fused with the best of New Zealand. Check for the recipes from Ashia's food m...

This week, Gilly is with the word on Omani food, Dina Macki. Her first book, Bahari: Recipes from an Omani Kitchen and Beyond is out today, but it’s been a long time coming; the Jane Grigson Trust Award which she won in 2023 is the annual pointer to the best of the brand new food writers before their books are even finished, and the world has been longing to see what the fuss is all about.&nb...

This week, as part of a new season for the New Year on how to live, be and do better, Gilly is with plant-based chef and author, Gemma Ogston to talk about how to get well enough to be your best self. Gemma's journey through dis -ease led to a career in addiction counselling and nourishing DJs and 24 hour party people back to health in her temporary home in Barcelona. Her simple guide to wellness...

This week, Gilly is with Lynn Cassells who with her partner Sandra Baer are two of the most inspiring women you’re likely to hear on Cooking the Books this year.  Our Wild Farming Life is their story of following a dream, moving from South East England to the Scottish Highlands to regenerate an 150 acre farm. It was more than a dream – it was a calling to reconnect with the land, to find out...

This week, Gilly is with food writer and photographer, molecular biologist, multiple James Beard award-winner, Nik Sharma . His latest book Veg-Table is all over the Best of the Year lists for his original scientific take on vegetables which has opened up a whole new way of eating. Check out Gilly's Substack for Nik's Extra Bites Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To kick off a brand new year of life through the prism of food, Gilly is with the Head of Communications and Marketing at Veganuary , Toni Vernelli to talk about the 2024 edition of the Official Veganuary Cookbook. It's 10 years since Veganuary first made January its own, encouraging people all over the world to try out a meat free month for the sake of our own health and that of the planet.&...

This week, Gilly is with Alex Jackson, Noble Rot chef, former restaurateur at Sardine and author of Frontieres. He talks about his long love affair with France, and particularly with its food, but it’s the edges that we’re after here, The Italianness of the French Riveiera , the spices of  Provence, melting pot of Marseille. It’s about an adventure in French cooking through the prism of...

This week, Gilly's with a man after her own heart. There are very few people who write about TV chefs and their place in British food culture, but Kevin Geddes , author of Keep Calm and Fanny On and Gilly, who wrote Taste and the TV Chef (2020) are two of them. Channel 5 is showing an hour long documentary on December 28th called the 70s Dinner Party in which Gilly joins Dr Annie Gray to talk abou...

This week, Gilly is with private chef, Jane Hodson , food writer, Lucas Hollweg and probably the most influential of social media food influencers, photographer Clerkenwell Boy to discuss These Delicious Things , a charity cookbook featuring recipes and childhood food memories from the likes of Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Stanley Tucci.  The idea began when Jane and Lucas, hunk...

This week, Gilly is with Dina Begum , whose book, Made in Bangladesh celebrates the food and folklore and of the old country which she left when she was four years old. It was first book, Brick Lane which first opened the door on what was happening in the kitchen of our East End curry houses, and propelled her into pole position as authority on British Bangladeshi culture. Gilly explores with...

This week, Gilly is on Hove seafront with an old friend of the podcast, Joe Woodhouse to talk about More Daily Veg. A lot has happened since they first met on Zoom to talk about his first book, Your Daily Veg . While the Ukraine war has rocked his family life – his wife is the Ukrainian food writer and Cook for Ukraine champion, Olia Hercules , their three year old son, Wilf was diagnosed wit...

This week, Gilly is talking to Alexina Anatole  about the least pleasant of our five tastes: bitter. Or is it? Alexina's series of cookbooks on the five tastes: Bitter, Sweet, Salty, Sour and Umamia is a step-by-step exploration of flavour, and an impressive start to a what looks like a masisve career for this bright young spark who swapped the trading floor for Masterchef in 2020. &nbsp...

This week, Gilly is with Russell Norman , the award-winning restaurateur, writer and broadcaster who brought Italy to the British high street, first through Polpo , the book and chain of Venetian style restaurants which gave us small plate food culture, and now Brutto , the Florentine trattoria next to London’s Smithfield market. Brutto, the book , is about much more than the recipe...

This week, Gilly is talking about what home means to Irish TV chef, Donal Skehan . Donal has moved a lot in his massive career on TV, from Eurovision to Saturday Kitchen and on to Food Network in LA. Now, with wife Sofie and their two young boys, he’s come home to Ireland. His 11th cook book, Home Kitchen, is a meditation on home, nostalgia and who he is now as a food writer. Check Gilly's Su...

This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, the author of First Bite and T he Way We Eat Now , Bee Wilson. After years of writing about the psychology and history of food, this is Bee’s very first cook book. It’s packed with recipes for an easier life in the kitchen, as the sub title suggests, but the Secret of Cooking is not just a treasure trove of simple dishes, but how fo...

This week, Gilly is digging deeply into the construction of identtiy through the food with multi award - winning Russian writer Anya von Bremzen. National Dish i s a fascinating book which explores how certain foods become the cultural signifiers of France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey. Mixing academic rigour with chats at bars and cook ups in local kitchens, she stirs up a load of our...

This week, while Gilly is talking about the roots of Italian cuisine, Cucina Povera Giulia Scarpaleggia began her food writing career as a blogger and photographer before becoming one of the most respected writers on Italian food. Her book Cucina Povera is all about her respect for the inguity of peasant cooking which reveals the soul of Italian food at its best. Head to Gilly's Substack to h...