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 food can heal, as Bee learnt from her own experience after her husband left her in the summer of 2020....
Nov 09, 2023•34 min•Season 23Ep. 10
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 assumptions, but does she find the answer? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...
Nov 02, 2023•35 min•Season 23Ep. 9
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 hear why Giulia loves British food writers so much. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inform...
Oct 26, 2023•31 min•Season 23Ep. 8
This week, Gilly's with the king of Tik Tok, the idol of Insta and star of channel 5’s A Taste of the Country , Julius Robert s. His debut cook book The Farm Table is a beautifully written story of a young man following his dream from cheffing to farming, with goats who think they’re dogs, pigs begging for a tummy tickle and an idyllic walk through the seasons. An audience of 500k on both Instagram and Tik Tok has followed his insipring journey to find himself, while he’s become one of the most ...
Oct 19, 2023•33 min•Season 23Ep. 7
This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, Diana Henry . The new edition of her 2005 book Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is a lyrical walk through the autumn leaves and winter wonderlands of her favourite food places in the world as she shares the delicious finds that have made her one of Britain’s most well-respected and award-winning food writers. It’s a book that makes you feel warmed to your bones. But Diana has been dogged by depression for years, and has faced some major lif...
Oct 12, 2023•35 min•Season 23Ep. 6
This week, Gilly is at Knepp with the queen of wilding, Isabella Tree. The Knepp estate is an extraordinary pioneering wilding project to restore nature which Isabella captured so beautifully in her 2019 book Wilding . Chris Packham called it ‘A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land'. Now, The Book of Wilding breaks that story down into encyclopaedic form for everyone to refer to, however big or small their garden. And if you’d like more from Knepp, head over to Gill...
Oct 05, 2023•30 min•Season 23Ep. 5
This week on Cooking the Books, Italian-Kiwi gardener and cook, Bri DiMattina tells us how she’s grown a food forest using permaculture principles in her garden in New Zealand. Her book Nostrana , meaning ‘home grown’ is also an extraordinary story of Italian food heritage in New Zealand. It’s the legacy of her grandparents growing a new world for themselves and their fellow Italians during the economic migration in the early 1900s. But as Bri celebrates its publication in the UK - and Nigella's...
Sep 28, 2023•27 min•Season 23Ep. 4
This week, Gilly is with Conor Spacey , chef, culinary director of Food Space Ireland and one of the movers and shakers behind the Chefs' Manifesto , a community of over 1000 chefs in 110 countries making real change in the world of food His book Wasted is packed with recipes for the kitchen waste we all have in our homes, and it’s ingenius. Check Gilly's Substack for a chocolate cake recipe made from stale bread! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Sep 21, 2023•35 min•Season 23Ep. 3
This week, Gilly is with Adriana Cavita , the brilliant Mexican chef and, now author of Cocina Mexicana , whose journey from her grandmother’s street food stall to top international restaurants like Pujol and El Bulli has brought the real flavours of Mexico to London. Have a listen to the resilience of this woman – she’s like a hurdler, jumping the barriers of gender, language, money and envy to open her own restaurant in London. She says that this book is for all the women of her home country, ...
Sep 14, 2023•28 min•Season 23Ep. 2
This week, Gilly is with the Indonesian chef behind her last sell out supper club, Petty Elliott. Her book, The Indonesian Table is a seminal work on the food of this archipelagic state of 17000 islands. We might think we know the flavours of Bali, Java, maybe even Sumatra, but Minangkabau? Manado? Banda Island? Probably not. Petty brought Indonesian food to a hungry public for the first time 20 years ago as a food journalist and chef, and has been cooking for some of the most influential people...
Sep 07, 2023•29 min•Season 23Ep. 1
This week, in the last of this mini series on Matrescence , Gilly is with Helen Rebanks , farmer, businesswoman, teacher, conservationist and a working mother of four. She's also wife to Britain’s most famous farmer, James Rebanks whose phenomenal success with his books The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral (as featured on Cooking the Books), changed the way we look at farming. Now Helen tells the story of The Farmer’s Wife and looks at the values of an old fashioned way of life rooted in har...
Aug 31, 2023•31 min•Season 22Ep. 5
This week, Gilly is with Emiko Davies, the Australian born, half Japanese writer on Italian food who lives with her family in Florence to talk about Japan. Her book Gohan is the story of her childhood food, fed to her by her Japanese mother in Australia and by her grandparents in Japan. It's the Japanese word for rice, but it also means ‘family meal’ and for Emiko, the only word as the title for her latest book. As she explores who she is through her food, we learn how mothers can hold the key t...
Aug 24, 2023•33 min•Season 22Ep. 4
This week, in the third in a special series this summer on Matrescence, Gilly is with Tara Wigley, co-author of the award-winning Falastin , in-house writer of Team Ottolenghi, Yotam’s co-author on eight of the biggest food books, including the million-seller, Ottolenghi Simple .. and mother of teen twins and a tween. Her hilarious and often biting ditties on Instagram have won her a new audience which is interested more in her own voice; when she asked Gilly what she thought of an early idea of...
Aug 17, 2023•38 min•Season 22Ep. 3
This week, in the second in a special series on matrescence, Gilly is talking about morning telly, cook hacks and motherhood with TV chef, Shivi Ramoutar . Shivi is the Caribbean Queen of Morning TV. She’s the chef on Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show , she was the TV Chef on Garraway’s Good Stuff and cooked with the Kemps on Martin and Roman’s Weekend Best . She's a regular guest on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, and ITV’s This Morning and has even appeared on Celebrity Mastermind . Her latest book Cook Cle...
Aug 10, 2023•32 min•Season 22Ep. 2
This week, Gilly's at the home of award-winning recipe writer, author and YouTuber, one of Bake Off’s most celebrated winners and mother of 2, Chetna Makan to talk about her new book, Chetna’s Indian Feasts . But in this first episode of a special series this summer, we’re talking about food through the prism of matrescence , the raw ingredients which make up the heady mix of motherhood and provide the recipe for life. Like adolescence, matrescence shows us a picture of process, and with it an i...
Aug 03, 2023•30 min•Season 22Ep. 1
This week, Gilly is with Maria Bradford, author of Sweet Salone, the first book to tell the story of the food from her homeland of Sierra Leone. Maria came to the UK as a student and grew up with her guardian in a village in Kent, far from the colourful food culture spreading through London’s West African communities. But it was her sense of being different that has led to her becoming the word on Sierra Leonian food. Here she goes back to find the food that it took a lifetime to realise was suc...
Jul 27, 2023•35 min•Season 21Ep. 34
This week, Gilly is with Syrian chef, restaurateur and charity pop-up king, Imad Alarnab, whose story has become a symbol of hope for so many migrants fleeing their war-torn homelands. His book, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is so much more than a book of recipes from Syria. It’s the story of gritty determination to make a better life for his family, of meeting angels even when he was in the depth of despair, and the extraordinary healing that food from home can provide. Head over to Gilly's Substack to...
Jul 20, 2023•36 min•Season 21Ep. 33
This week, Gilly is with cook, gardener and beekeeper, Amy Newsome . Her book, Honey: Recipes From a Beekeeper's Kitchen takes us through the beekeeper’s year, arguing the case for less but better honey from inside the bee hive. Her holistic approach takes us from terroir to table via a garden designed for bees, while her four food moments capture the alchemy a pot of honey can achieve. Check in to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Amy and her honeybees. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy ...
Jul 13, 2023•35 min•Season 21Ep. 32
This week, Gilly is with the woman who cooked for Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, the late Queen and the leaders of the Western world at the G7 conference in 2020. But as she opens up about what drives her, she reveals that she didn't always feel such a superwoman. Her restaurant Emily Scott Food, perched on the beach at Newquay, has settled into the excellence of the Cornish food landscape now and as she finds more time to write, she reveals in her second book,Time and Tide, much more of her inner a...
Jul 06, 2023•26 min•Season 21Ep. 31
This week Gilly is with journalist and author, Clare Finney whose new book, Hungry Heart is a memoir which unravels a tricky relationship with food. As she explores her own story with food, she unravels the complexities of British food culture in conversation with famous friends, Diana Henry , Bee Wilson and Gurd Loyal , academics and school friends. Head over to Gilly's Substack for Clare's Extra Bites. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 29, 2023•31 min•Season 21Ep. 30
This week, Gilly is with chef, restaurateur, journalist and award winning writer, Ravinder Bhogal. Her latest book, Comfort and Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen celebrates the legacy of her grandfather and the life he built, ground up, for her family in Kenya Her writing is surely some of the best in Britain today, and her poetic meditations on where we are with an increasingly plant focussed food culture combined with the stunning photography by Kristen Perers , are deeply ...
Jun 22, 2023•37 min•Season 21Ep. 29
This week Gilly is going fishing with Jenny Jefferies , author of For the Love of the Sea, who has made it her mission to give a voice to the hidden fisherfolk of Britain, capturing the detail of their daily work, their passion and their massively important contribution to our economy. Gilly and Jenny discuss sustainability, politics and why an island nation has such a problem with seafood. Head over to Gilly's Substack to find Jenny's suggestion of how to write to your MP to fight for the futur...
Jun 15, 2023•25 min•Season 21Ep. 28
This week Gilly is with Jenny Chandler whose book A Good Appetite is all about eating for planet, body and soul. It's a subject particularly close to Gilly's heart; her award-winning book Taste and the TV Chef looked at the influence TV chefs have had and could have in changing the way we eat. Her podcast for Leon H ow to Eat to Save the Planet and her work for Compassion in World Farming , the Food Foundation and Cooking the Books itself itself are all rooted in the interdependence between wher...
Jun 08, 2023•32 min•Season 21Ep. 27
This week, Gilly is with James Whetlor, former chef at River Cottage and The Eagle in Farringdon with a whole new take on the barbecue. For festival goers, upcycling hobbyists and outdoor cooking fanatics, James has come up with genius ways to easily build your own. Before she traces the fascinating dark history of the barbecue with James, Gilly asks why a man who admits he can’t even put up a shelf decided to write The DIY BBQ CookBook. Check out Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites every episode. ...
Jun 01, 2023•35 min•Season 21Ep. 26
This week, Gilly is with Niki Segnit , the award-winning author of The Flavour Thesauru s, 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. Hosted on Acast. See...
May 25, 2023•35 min•Season 21Ep. 25
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 ...
May 18, 2023•30 min•Season 21Ep. 24
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 fatig...
May 11, 2023•33 min•Season 21Ep. 23
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 Prescript...
May 04, 2023•39 min•Season 21Ep. 21
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...
Apr 27, 2023•31 min•Season 21Ep. 20
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 a...
Apr 20, 2023•36 min•Season 21Ep. 19
