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 precarious bakeries meeting everyday extraordinary people showed her how food, particularly bread, has become a powerful symbol of Ukrainian identity, resistance, and hope.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Felicity.

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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 through four food moments from four of her favourite islands, we learn about how to slow-cook chicken in a tserepa, why to pair Samos wine with poached peaches and how to transform rusks with lemon leaves.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for a recipe from the book and for Extra Bites of Carolina.

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This week, we’re celebrating the food culture of Palestine with one of its most vocal champions, Sami Tamimi

Sami’s first solo cookbook, Boustany, meaning 'my garden', is about the abundance of vegetarian recipes that make up the heart of Palestinian cooking. He and Yotam Ottolenghi, largely through their first book, Jerusalem have done more to bring the food of the Middle East to the world than anyone, and most of us will know our way around a labneh or a pomegranate molasses by now.

Falastin, his cookbook co-written with Tara Wigley took him back to his homeland to begin to tell the story of Palestinian food culture, and in Boustany, he continues that mission. Gilly asks him how he feels about chatting about Sumac roasted plums with cardamom cream and pistachio when food is being weaponised in his own backyard.

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This week, we’re off to Bordeaux with chef, author and friend of the podcast, Emily Scott to talk about fish in her latest book, Home Shores.

After the kids have left home and as she faces a big birthday, Emily’s tells us how she's changing up her life. She may have left Cornwall where she was the first woman commissioned by the UK Cabinet Office to cook for royalty and world leaders at the G7 summit dinner at the Eden Project in 2021, but she’s on a mission to make the most of life. She’s the Executive Consultant Chef and Creative Director at the Calypso Grill in the Cayman Islands, all while setting up a whole new home in France. In short, she’s living the dream.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Emily.

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This week, we’re back at Gilly's How to Cook Book food writing retreat at her house just outside Lewes in East Sussex with muse-in-residence, the grande dame of British food writing, Elisabeth Luard.

After bringing the flavours of Spain to a British readership from the 1980s on, her Classic Spanish Recipes: 75 signature dishes is part of the Hamlyn Classic Recipes series celebrating 75 years of publishing some the most admired chefs and writers in the world for their pioneering approach to food culture - Anna del Conte on Italian food, Ken Hom on Chinese, Chetna Makan on Indian.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack from Extra Bites of Elisabeth's Spain.

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This week, we’re with British-Caribbean writer, Keshia Sakarah whose debut cookbook, Caribe was shortlisted with Irina 

Janakievska and Dina for the Jane Grigson Trust Award in 2023. It's a history of Caribbean cooking with 125 recipes from 23 nations - from Montserrat to Haiti, Antigua to Guadaloupe, capturing the cultures through food in what this Leicester born young writer calls 'resistance through retention'.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Keshia.

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This week, Gilly is with the British Iranian/Pakistani human rights activist and food and travel writer, Yasmin Khan to talk about her latest book, Sabzi.

Sabzi, meaning greens and herbs in Persian, the language of her mother, and vegetables in Urdu, the language of her Pakistani father, is about how to reduce the amount of meat in our diet with delicious recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia. It’s as political and environmental as we’d expect from Yasmin, but it’s also a book about her ancestors and the food from their land – as well as a hard-won journey to motherhood. Gilly finds out why she chose vegetables to convey such a big story.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Yasmin

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In extra episode from Groundswell, the Regenerative Agriculture Festival that Sheila Dillon calls 'the Glastonbury of Food and Farming', Cooking the Books Live discusses the influence of cook books and books about food on changing the way we eat and buy our food

In front of an audience of farmers and food businesses, pioneers and innovators who are changing the way we eat, Gilly asks a panel of writers with influence, Thomasina Miers of Wahaca, Amelia Christie-Miller of Bold Bean company, Alice Robinson of British Pasture Leather and David Finlay of The Ethical Dairy what a book can do to change the story of food. 

Check out Gilly's Substack here and get in touch on Instagram here

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This week, we’re back at Rockwater in Hove for Cooking the Books Live with Gurd Loyal.

Regular listeners will know that Gurd is probably the writer who Gilly think's best uses the lens of food to examine life. His first book, Mother Tongue won the Jane Grigson Trust award for Best Debut, and he has become the word on Third Culture food, prising open the liminal spaces between where we come from and who we can be.

His second book, Flavour Heroes is a lighter read, a pantry book giving us technicolour ways to elevate the simplest dishes with 15 superstar ingredients. After the food world clucked around him over Mother Tongue, Diana Henry calling him boundary breaking, Felicity Cloake dubbing him the Willy Wonka wizard of flavour, Gilly asks him in front of a live audience, how he felt about the notoriously difficult second album. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of CTB Live with the Q&A

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This week, we’re with Guardian columnist and author Felicity Cloake as she cycles through America in search of its food culture.

Peach Street to Lobster Lane is her great American road trip – on a bike. It’s the off-road trip that’s about getting to the heart of American cuisine via a glimpse into everyday life that you just can’t get by car.

The story she finds is about immigration, colonisation and enterprise, from tex mex to creole, fried chicken and real bbq, Chicago deep pan pizza, lobster rolls, clam chowder, Boston baked beans New York bagels and Coney Island hot dogs.  

Click here for Extra Bites of Felicity's epic adventure on Gilly's Substack.

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