Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

 This week, Gilly is with one of the old skool TV chefs who taught Britain how to eat, Rick Stein

They last met over lunch when she was chatting to him about his book Secret France for the delicious. podcast. This time, it’s about secret Britain, or at least the communities of Britain bursting with flavour and influencing our national diet. Rick Stein’s Food Stories, the book and the BBC show, is about all that we are in Britain and is a subject very close to Gilly's heart. She asks him, after travelling the world – Mexico, Thailand, The Mediterranean, Istanbul to name a few, to find their stories through food, what this book says about our changing nation.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from the book.

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This week, Gilly is with food royalty, the restaurant critic, writer, and son of Queen Camilla, Tom Parker Bowles. 

Royal Food has always been about impressing the most powerful people in the world, and in his book Cooking and the Crown, he tells how it has set trends for centuries, from Victoria to his stepfather, King Charles 3rd. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Tom Parker Bowles

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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, Gilly has her hands on on the brand new, much awaited book from Ottolenghi, Comfort.

Written by the 'four hungries', Yotam, his original co-writer Tara Wigley, Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller, these are the foods that provide a comfort blanket for them, and mark a departure from the big Ottolenghi books of the past.

In a deliciously raw, often indiscreet chat with three of the 'hungries' while Yotam is out of the Zoom room, we learn what makes Ottolenghi Ottolenghi, the connected nostalgia of their favourite comfort foods and Yotam's guilty pleasure when no-one else is looking.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of the Ottolenghi crew, and a recipe from the book.

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This week, in the last of our summer holiday specials, we head to the Good Kitchen in Sicily with community chef and adventurer in all things good, Danny McCubbin.

His story is one of a leap of faith, driven by a sense of purpose coursing through his veins and cultivated by his 17 years working with Jamie Oliver, including mentoring chefs at Fifteen who had come from challenging backgrounds.

Gilly first met Danny at San Patrignano, an extraordinary rehabilitation community committed to building a better society on a beautiful farm in Northern Italy. He spoke very little Italian then, but Gilly watched in awe how he communicated through something much more primal, a massive heart, and of course, food. You can listen to that interview for the delicious podcast here.

He’s done the same, against all odds, in Mussomeli, Sicily, and his book, The Good Kitchen, Love and connection Through Food, tells that story. 

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This week’s we’re off to the Med – yup, all of it - with chef, Ben Tish.

Ben’s latest book Mediterra follows his deep dive into bits of the Mediterranean; Moorish looked at the influence of the moors over hundreds of years on food of the Med, while his book Sicilia was a visceral guide to the street and home food of Sicily. This time, he covers the whole Mediterranean – north, south, east, west to bring us the flavours that Greece has in common with France, Lebanon with Spain, Turkey with Egypt.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for more of Ben, including a recipe from the book.

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This week, Gilly is with Meera Sodha, author of Made In India The Times’ book of the year in 2014, Fresh India, which won the 2017 Observer Food Monthly's Best New Cookbook Award, East which drew from her Guardian’s New Vegan column, and now Dinner, with a rather different story.

This is about the food that helped her recovery from burn out, scribbled in her orange notebooks which, after three years of not being able to cook at all, she would cook only for pleasure. She talked to her just after a piece she wrote about her breakdown for the Guardian prompted an outpouring of love, support and sharing and asked if she felt that she had inadvertently touched a nerve.

Head over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites from Meera including original recipes from her orange notebooks side by side with the finished product in a rather beautiful meditation on process.  

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This week, we’re back at Rockwater, Hove talking LIVE with Melissa Hemsley, food writer of six best-selling cook books, including her latest, the Sunday Times bestseller, Real Healthy.

A delicious reminder of how to unprocess our diet with easy, everyday recipes, the book is an antidote to ultra processed foods. Gilly chats to Melissa about everyday activism, elevating the simplest of flavours and the recipe for joy.

Click here for Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack including a recipe from the book as well as the Q&A from the evening.

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This week, we’re going back to London, 2002, a time before pomegranate molasses, when Nigella and Jamie were first on the telly and Ottolenghi had yet to chuck his flavour bombs into the salad bowl of British cuisine, to the publication of the very first Diana Henry book, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons.

Click here for Gilly's previous chats with Diana  about How to Eat a Peach and Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, but this time, we’re going back to a time when they were both TV producers, intoxicated by the smells and eating habits of an increasingly diverse and exotic capital.

Click here for Gilly's Substack and Extra BItes of Diana.

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