Jeremy Lee: 30 Years in the Making

Chef Jeremy Lee has spent four decades in professional kitchens and almost as long writing his first cookbook. In this episode, recorded at Quo Vadis in the Soho institution's 100th year, he joins host Samuel Goldsmith to talk about Cooking, the book that lay fallow for 30 years, and Kitchening, the seasonal follow-up he wrote in a single January locked away in a Dorset farmhouse.

Jeremy takes us from a childhood in the northeast of Scotland (a mother who pored over Elizabeth David, a father who made the butcher push a whole sirloin through the mincer) to an apprenticeship in the barren British food landscape of the late '70s, when the aubergine was still exciting and a privately educated kid in a kitchen was an anathema. He explains why "kitchening" is a genuine Old English word, why seasonal cooking is not a trend, and why restaurant food got lighter, smaller and better. Along the way: medlars versus Pink Lady apples, the case for domesticating British rabbit, a beef à la mode so over-set you could have played football with it in front of Terence Conran, and receiving an MBE from Princess Anne on what turned out to be a final outing with his sister.

In this episode:

• Why Cooking took 30 years, and Kitchening took one month

• Good bread, good butter, good eggs: the only advice a new cook needs

• What Alastair Little, Rowley Leigh and Simon Hopkinson changed forever

• Quince gluts, mast years, and why the seasons teach you to expect nothing

• Quick-fire round: one cuisine forever, the worst waste of money, and the fictional character he'd have dinner with

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Cook-a-long with Samuel Goldsmith, in this bonus recipe episode

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Real Housewives of London series two is streaming now on Hayu.

Samuel Goldsmith sits down with Nessie Welschinger — cake designer, Real Housewives of London star and founder of Chelsea Cake Company — for a conversation that runs from royal commissions to kitchen catastrophes.

Nessie explains how she left a decade in banking to teach herself cake decorating from YouTube, coded her own website from a Coding for Dummies book, and ended up delivering Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday cake to the Tower of London just two weeks after giving birth. She talks about growing up between Singaporean and Egyptian kitchens — her grandmother chopping jute mallow for molokheya on her lap in front of the telly — and why the kitchen is her place of peace.

There's also Bake Off: The Professionals (and the carrot showpiece that went very wrong on camera), the reality of filming Real Housewives while raising three kids, a Christmas dinner featuring home-churned butter, a mandoline accident with a pot pie, and the durian story you won't forget.

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Cook-a-long with Samuel Goldsmith, in this bonus recipe episode

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Poppy O'Toole on batch cooking, secret MSG and putting caviar on chicken wings Poppy O'Toole is back for a rare second appearance and this time she's brought a new baby, a new book and a confession about the little pot of MSG living next to her salt and pepper. We get into her Absolutely Delicious Batch Cookbook and why most batch cooking books get it wrong (nobody wants to lose an entire Sunday), the goose fat roast potato trick that lets you freeze them par-boiled and cook straight from frozen, and why every recipe is tested to go in the oven without defrosting.

Then it gets less sensible. Poppy upgrades her all-time favourite dish from buffalo wings to buffalo wings with a bump of caviar, explains the free-caviar economics of the Fortnum's Awards, and admits her daughter has rejected mashed potato entirely, but will happily lick salt off a roast potato and demand her own cup of decaf tea. Neither of us is qualified to give parenting advice. We give some anyway. Plus: the mystery bags in her freezer, why she plays down her own expertise on camera and wants to stop, meeting Denise Welch as a life goal, and a quick-fire round she was convinced she'd fluffed.

In this episode:

• 00:00 — Welcome back (and how she compares to Rick Stein)

• 03:32 — The batch cookbook, and why most batch cooking is too much work

• 10:26 — The goose fat roast potato freezer trick

• 15:19 — The secret pot of MSG

• 16:48 — Baby hates mash: feeding a baby tea, salt and dog hair

• 20:20 — Favourite dish: chicken wings with a bump of caviar

• 26:08 — Confessions: bubblegum ice cream and a very bad undercut

• 28:27 — The Grumble, her imaginary all-potato pub

• 32:17 — The misconception she wants to fix

• 35:11 — Guilty pleasure: tinned fish

• 37:29 — Quick fire

• 41:15 — What good food means

Poppy's Absolutely Delicious Batch Cookbook is out now.

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Cook-a-long with Samuel Goldsmith, in this bonus recipe episode.

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Samuel Goldsmith sits down with Yotam Ottolenghi at his London HQ to talk about Simple 2, the follow-up to his 2018 bestseller, and why the kitchen has become a refuge from a noisy, screen-filled world.

Yotam explains how his idea of "simple" has evolved: under 10 ingredients, one pan or pot, less peeling and chopping, and unashamed use of good-quality jars and tins. Along the way he shares the confit chickpeas with olives and orange that epitomise the book, oven-baked meatballs glazed with pomegranate molasses, a rustic "one sauce" roasted tomato base, three dairy-rich rice recipes, and a study in brown sugar for dessert. He also talks about co-writing with Verena, the new Fundamentals chapter of fridge-ready flavour builders, feeding his kids, and the Ottolenghi condiment range born during lockdown.

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Cook-a-long with Samuel Goldsmith, in this bonus recipe episode.

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Angellica Bell joins Samuel Goldsmith live at the Good Food Show in Birmingham for an episode about the food that made her. She takes us back to her grandmother's tiny London kitchen - a St Lucian chef who cooked entirely by instinct, never opened a cookbook, and had Angellica gutting fish and frying chicken by the age of six. There was a blackberry bush in the garden, a pot always on the stove, and an open door for anyone who knocked. From there: student survival food (pasta, baked beans and cheese), the Dairy Book of Home Cookery that three generations of her family have cooked from, and the Celebrity MasterChef run she almost turned down, including the vanilla cupcake baked Alaska she gambled the competition on. Angellica also talks CBBC and the bag of fan mail she's never thrown away, what food is really like inside the Celebrity Big Brother house, why the dinner ladies who fed her at the start of her career still mean so much, and the death row meal that unapologetically combines a roast with a Christmas dinner. Plus she sets a new record in our quickfire round.

In this episode:

Learning to cook Caribbean food with her grandmother

Why she never listed food as an "interest" before MasterChef

Winning Celebrity MasterChef and cooking in professional kitchens

Food, shopping lists and strategy in the Big Brother house

School dinners, canteen food and why they matter Her ultimate three-course meal

Good Food is hosted by Samuel Goldsmith. Recorded live at the Good Food Show, Birmingham. Follow, rate and review wherever you get your podcasts.

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Cook-a-long with Samuel Goldsmith, in this bonus recipe episode.

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