Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, we're with Masterchef winner and the hottest name in Thai food, Nat Thaipun.

Her book THAI: Anywhere and Everywhere is packed with glorious flavours of Thailand via Melbourne where she grew up. But it was when Jamie Oliver as one of the judges on Masterchef spotted her talent that she really saw what a book could look like. We find out about the role of MasterChef as the global phenomenon in nurturing chefs, and the might of the Jamie Oliver mentorship.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for a recipe from Nat, and to see the original photos David Loftus took of her when Jamie first brought her to London.

And if you’re looking for a way to suppport this ad free pod, do consider becoming a paid subscriber on Substack and buying all your food books from the Cooking the Books shop at Bookshop.org by clicking on this link.

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This week, we’re off to the Bohemian Kitchen of Brit-Czech writer, Evie Harbury

My Bohemian Kitchen is a nostalgic trip through the memories of a place Evie only knows through summers with her Czech granny and her dad’s childhood memories as she investigates the traditional cooking techniques of this largely untapped culinary region. The result is an adventure in refusing to follow the rules and finding a kindred spirit among the Bohemians of her bloodline.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for a recipe from My Bohemian Kitchen which you can buy from the Cooking the Books shop at Bookshop.org to support this advertising free  podcast.  

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This week, we’re with one of our favourite CTB pals, Mark Diacono in front of a live audience at Patio, the buzziest yet somehow most intimate bar in Brighton to talk about his latest book, Abundance.

Abundance is Mark's pioneering way of writing a food book, a Substack post every week over a whole year, supported by a global readership of paying subscribers. Of course the publishers piled in to scoop up the ready-made market, and Quadrille have produced a thing of real beauty which you can buy here.  It’s a masterclass in writing, observing, reminding yourself of the most important things in life and disrupting the traditional publishing model. 

Click here for Extra Bites on Substack where you can also show your appreciation for this ad-free podcast by becoming a paid subscriber.

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This week, we're with Amber Guinness whose latest book, Winter in Tuscany takes us into her own home to rifle through her pantry and cook what she cooks. But, as Gilly finds out, it’s also a stroll through a time and place still rooted in tradition, where cooking with the seasons and the frugal legacy of cucina povera is a reminder of the simple, good things in life.  

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for a recipe and Amber’s playlist made especially for Cooking the Books. And if you’re looking for a way to support this ad-free pod, do consider becoming a paid subscriber to Substack with access to the entire archive forever.

And you can buy the book from the Cooking the Books shop at Bookshop.org by clicking here.

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This week, we’re celebrating 25 years of great British cooking with chef patron of The Sportsman and former punk, Stephen Harris.

 He’s the chef who put “cuisine de terroir” on the map, hyperlocally sourcing the foods from the land that have been the inspiration behind his award winning cooking. The Sportsman has held a Michelin star since 2008, but in The Sportsman at Home, he takes us into his own kitchen, to create the kind of book that taught him to cook back in the day when he was a university student trying out his ideas on his mates.

And you can listen to Stephen’s playlist specially curated for Cooking the Books, as well as try out one of the recipes, on Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack, and you can buy The Sportsman at Home at the CTB shop on bookshop.org by clicking here.

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This week, we’re with Anna Ansari, the American-Iranian author of Silk Roads: A Flavor Odyssey with Recipes from Baku to Beijing.

We meet at Helm Gallery in Brighton’s North Laine, in front of a live audience which includes members of the Network of international Women whose debate about the culinary variations of Kuku from Iran and Iraq to Syria, Jordan and Yemen becomes particularly heated in the Q&A. Food, travel and geopolitics, food memory and food identity - it's all here among many of the people who understand these issues most.

You can buy Silk Roads from the Cooking the Books shop at Bookshop.org by clicking on the link, which supports this advertising free podcast.

And do pop over to Gilly's Substack for the recipe for kuku and pictures of the live podcast event.

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This week, we’re with Sarah Bentley, the brains behind Made in Hackney, and its brand new cookbook We Cook Plants.

Made in Hackney is a charity founded 13 years ago by Sarah which teaches thousands the skills to cook with plants for survival, joy, and empowerment. It’s a glorious invitation to put more plants on your plate and be part of real food system change.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack to see some of the wonderful work they get up to at Made in Hackney, as well as one of the recipes from the book.

And you can buy the book at the CTB shop on bookshop.org by clicking here.

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This week, we’re revisiting The Natural Menopause Method with nutritionist, Karen Newby

We first met Karen last year when she explained how to arm women with the information we need to dodge the drug industry, understand how food heals and to live in harmony with one of the natural events in our lives.  Have a listen to that episode of CTB here.

This time, it's all about the cookbook as the companion book. Gilly finds out why it's so important to learn to cook up the method ourselves.

You can buy Karen’s The Natural Menopause Method Cookbook at the Cooking the Books shop on bookshop.org.

And head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from Karen including a recipe from the book.

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This week, we are all about the bean - again. It’s Publication Day for Full of Beans, the second cookbook from Amelia Christie-Miller, founder of Bold Bean co., and lead singer in the campaign to bring beans back onto the British plate. 

We first met Amelia at Cooking the Books Live at Groundswell this summer to talk about her first book, Bold Beans: recipes to get your pulse racing Now, with her own little bean growing happily inside her, we caught up to celebrate the birth of Full of Beans and began by discussing the power of storytelling to change the way we eat.

Click here to buy Full of Beans from CTB's own page on bookshop.org, and here for Extra Bites of Amelia on Gilly's Substack, including a recipe from the book, and a glimpse behind the scenes at its photoshoot.

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This week, we’re off to a farm just outside London but which feels like it’s on a different planet, with Tamara Schiopu in My Vegan Farm Food.  

Tolhurst Organic, a 20-acre farm on the Hardwick Estate, is a dream of how farming could be – and is about so much more than growing. This is about community, where the growers work the land and live on the river under the famous willows of Kenneth Grahame’s children’s books. Hardwick Hall, the original inspiration for Toad Hall, overlooks the Victorian greenhouses and the 500-year-old walled kitchen garden where the produce is only half the story. Gilly, who has written the foreword to My Vegan Farm Food, finds out why Tamara, who co-wrote it with Samantha Kroes, chose to tell the story of Tolhurst in a cookbook. 

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for a glimpse of that extraordinary community life Tamara describes on Extra Bites

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