Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, we’re with historian and food writer, Priya Mani and her latest encyclopaedia of flavours, Spiced.

After her success with The Visual Encyclopaedia of Indian Food, an A–Z, this is a ground breaking deep dive into a whole world of spices from Norway to the Greek Islands, Yunnan to the Gulf of Guinea, with recipes gathered from people on buses to long table dinners along the way, essays from friends and esteemed colleagues and a foreword from Harold McGee, it’s a modern classic.

Pop over to Substack for extra bites and a recipe from Spiced.

If you'd like to support CTB which is advertising and sponsorship free, contribute whatever you like via this link, or become a paid subscriber on Substack which gives you access to Second Helpings, monthly Zooms with a CTB guest, and a massive archive of Gilly's articles.

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This week, we’re with Alissa Timoshkina and her third cookbook about Eastern Europe, Lozhka.

Loshka, meaning spoon, is about the symbolism of connection through nourishment. It is, she says, 'the simple kitchen object which time and again has the power to soothe and lift'. After her first book, Salt and Time in 2019 and Kapusta in 2025, Lozhka feels like she’s found a new confidence not just in telling stories about her homeland, but with an urgency in sharing its recipes and histories before they fade.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe from Lozhka.

If you'd like to support CTB which is advertising and sponsorship free, contribute whatever you like via this link, or become a paid subscriber on Substack which gives you access to Second Helpings, monthly Zooms with a CTB guest, and a massive archive of Gilly's articles.

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This week, we're with the award-winning Australian novelist, Charlotte Wood and her ode to cooking and food, Love and Hunger.

To Charlotte, cooking is 'creativity in its purest form', but it’s taken nearly 15 years to capture the attention of British readers with this book. Thanks to Nigella Lawson writing the foreword for this UK edition, and raving about it on her socials, comparing its flavour to Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking, she’s big in Britain.

We chatted about the sensibility an award-winning novelist can bring to observations, confessions and memories through food, but she began by telling me how she was sprinkled by Nigella’s fairy dust.

Pop over to my Substack for extra bites and a recipe from Love and Hunger. And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to the Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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In the last of our mini series of speakers from BrightonFoodStory, the food festival Gilly produced this year in her home town which is aimed at changing the conversation about the way we eat, we’re with Vicky Bennison, the James Beard award-winning author of Pasta Grannies: Eat Everything.

Vicky was at BrightonFoodStory last weekend to talk about nonnamaxxing, the Instagram trend of yearning for the slower, simpler, more resilient way of the grandmother. You can find out more @BrightonFoodStory on Instagram and Substack.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe from Eat Everything.

And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to the Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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Ahead of BrightonFoodStory, the food festival on October 3rd that Gilly is producing in her home town aimed at changing the conversation about the way we eat, we’re meeting some of the speakers on the various panel discussions.

This week, we’re with Karen Newby, author of the Natural Menopause Method and its cookbook partner, and now The Post Menopause Method.

Karen will be on the Nonnamaxxing panel to talk about how to age healthily. The Instagram trend has highlighted the global yearning for a slower more wholesome approach to life, and Gilly asks her why we need a method to get through what she says could be the happiest and healthiest time of our lives.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe from The Post Menopause Method. And do come along to BrightonFoodStory on Saturday October 3. It's all free.

And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to the Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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This week, we meet Nick Saltmarsh and Josiah Meldrum of Hodmedods to talk about the magic of beans in their debut cookbook Whole Food.

Now, Hodmedods has long since become the byword for beans in Britain, and can claim a major role in elevating the plucky pulse to enjoy its moment in the sun. Gilly's just finished another series of Bang in Some Beans for The Food Foundation Podcast – watch out for that coming in mid October presented again by Melissa Hemsley - and it seems that beans really are having their moment.

Whole Food tells the whole story, joining the dots between farming and fibre, global and local, history and the power of storytelling to change the conversation about fibre and keep it there.

With recipes from King Richard II’s master chefs to ancient Arabic feasts, Southern Indian temple offerings to Hampshire blue poppies, this glorious read weaves legumes, seeds and pulses easily and affordably into delicious dishes that anyone can make. It’s a must read and it’s why Nick will be on the Magic Beans panel at BrightonFoodStory on Saturday Oct 3.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe from Whole Food. And do come along to BrightonFoodStory on Saturday October 3. All the details are on the BrightonFoodStory Substack and Instagram, and it’s all free.

And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to Gilly's Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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This week we’re with former editor of the Good Food Guide, Andrew Turvil and his book,  Blood, Sweat & Asparagus Spears: The Story of the 1990s Restaurant Revolution.

Like Andrew, Gilly was right in the centre of the birth of what another editor of the Good Food Guide, Drew Smith called Modern British Cooking, and has written her take on this story in a biography of Jamie Oliver, and Taste and the TV Chef. As Andrew curated the story in the Good Food Guide from a consumer guide’s point of view, they discuss where the narratives coincide.

 Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Andrew, and if you'd like to support CTB which is advertising and sponsorship free, contribute whatever you like via this link, or become a paid subscriber on Substack which gives you access to Second Helpings, monthly Zooms with a CTB guest, and a massive archive of Gilly's articles.

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This week, in an extended episode, we’re with one of the most important voices in British food writing, Jeremy Lee with Kitchening, his follow up cookbook to the 2022 multi award winning Cooking.

Jeremy has taken his time to become one of the central storytellers of modern British cuisine – with his cookbooks at least, despite being right there at the birth of modern British cooking. Do listen to Sheila Dillon’s brilliant interview with Jeremy for The Food Programme, but also to the CTB episode with Food Foundation ambassador and campaigner against food poverty, Dev Sharma.  For a 17 year old Indian lad from Leicester, Cooking was more about a lesson in food manners ahead of going up to Cambridge.  Click here if you’re interested in the story of British food through that lens.

Meanwhile, join Gilly and Jeremy in the library at Quo Vadis to talk about his second dive into British food from his childhood garden outside Dundee through the kitchens of the nascent London food scene.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe from Kitchening.

And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to Gilly's Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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This week, we’re celebrating Back To School and Uni season with Claire Thompson and her latest book, Dear Grace.

This is a book unlike any Claire has written before. She wrote it while her heart was breaking as her eldest daughter, Grace, set off for university, and the letters from mother to daughter – and daughter to mother - about how to survive  are a universal weep as fledglings all over the world spread their wings and head off into the big wide world.   

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites and a recipe  from Dear Grace.

And if you like what you hear on this ad free podcast, you can contribute to the Economy of Kindness by clicking here to contribute a little something, or here to become a paid subscriber on Substack.

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This week, we're with an absolute legend in food writing, Anissa Helou and her culinary celebration of Lebanon.

Listed by Arabian Business magazine as one of the "500 Most Influential Arabs" and "100 Most Powerful Arab Women, she’s among the greats of modern food writing with the likes of Claudia Roden and Elisabeth Luard. Now, after 32 years of writing about the everyday food of the Middle East and beyond, Lebanon, A Culinary Celebration takes her back to where she began.  

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Lebanon. If you'd like to support CTB which is advertising and sponsorship free, contribute whatever you like via this link, or become a paid subscriber on Substack which gives you access to Second Helpings, monthly Zooms with a CTB guest, and a massive archive of Gilly's articles. 

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