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Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith
Christine Smallwood: The World Vegetarian - Italy
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This week, Italian food expert, Christine Smallwood takes Gilly Smith through the markets and osterias of Puglia to the cool new restaurants of Milan and childhood memories of Ischia as she discusses the place of the vegetable in Italian cuisine.
This season is sponsored by Odysea whose range of Mediterranean foods are just what we need to get through a COVID winter. This week, home mixologist and Bake Off star, Tom Gilliford talks us through why molasses are a delicious alternative to refined sugar in your cocktails this Christmas.
Music by Willy Zygier
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39. Gurd Loyal: Flavour Heroes
40:46||Season 24, Ep. 39This 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&A38. Felicity Cloake: Peach Street to Lobster Lane
35:21||Season 24, Ep. 38This 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.37. Olia Hercules: Strong Roots
37:28||Season 24, Ep. 37This week, we’re exploring the story of Ukraine with its most famous defender and cultural protector, Olia Hercules in her first memoir, Strong Roots.It’s the story of Ukraine that history can never tell, through the stories of its people - and in particular, Olia’s people, through four generations of her family. Nigella calls it 'breathtaking', Caroline Eden calls it cinematic, Elisabeth Luard says: ‘Here, in all its beauty and sorrow, is the story of Ukraine as it is, and was and surely will be again.’Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Olia and her photos from the family album.36. Andrea Oskis: The Kitchen Shrink
26:39||Season 24, Ep. 36This week, we're with award-winning psychologist, and graduate of Gilly's How to Cook a Book food writing retreat, Andrea Oskis.Her first book is a series of tales from her clinic exploring how the food we eat reveals who we are – and how we love. Its title? The Kitchen Shrink. Genius.Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Andrea.35. Tom Kerridge: The BBQ Book
27:49||Season 24, Ep. 35This week, Gilly is confronting her biggest summertime phobia with Tom Kerridge and his latest book, The Barbecue Book.He’s the man with the Midas touch – he turned the Hand and Flowers from a rundown pub in Buckinghamshire into the first and only 2 star Michelin pub in the world. He’s the chef who lost a stack of weight and turned his diet story into books and telly which helped millions of others do the same. He’s the boy who grew up on free school meals who launched Full Time Meals with Marcus Rashford in 2021 and campaigns for free school meals for all children in the UK. He’s the Michelin star chef whose books elevate the simplest of dishes. But is he the man who can teach Gilly how to love a barbie?Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites34. Bee Wilson: The Heart-Shaped Tin
27:50||Season 29, Ep. 34This week, we’re back with one of Gilly's favourite guests on Cooking the Books, Bee Wilson and her latest book, The Heart Shaped Tin.It’s a book about love and loss, and the magical thinking that so many of us transpose onto everyday objects, often found in the kitchen. As she navigates her way from the despair of a broken marriage to a gloriously happy present via the death of her mother and the inevitable life changes that happen as children grow up, she gathers stories and explores the psychology about our relationship with things – the junk and the treasure – in her most moving book so far. Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Bee.33. Noor Murad At Cooking the Books Live: Lugma
37:02||Season 34, Ep. 33This week, we’re basking in the evening sunshine at Cooking the Books Live at Rockwater, Hove with Noor Murad.Her debut cookbook, Lugma is her twist on the familiar, to use an Ottolenghi term, of the food from her homeland, Bahrain.It’s the very first international cookbook of Bahraini recipes, but reflects her own experiences of growing up there, the mix of Persian and Indian flavours infused with her own half Britishness and a brash of new York where she worked before landing in the bosom of the Ottolenghi family.Click here for tickets to the next Cooking the Books Live with Gurd Loyal, and then pop over to Gilly's Substack for the fascinating Q&A with the audience.32. Julie Lin: Sama Sama
32:39||Season 29, Ep. 32This week, we're with Malaysian Scottish chef, restaurateur and now food writer, Julie Lin and her debut cookbook, Sama SamaSama Sama meaning Same Same is all about food and identity. It’s a book that has been simmering for years as Julie explores her same-same notions of home and all the ingredients of belonging that have come together in the hashtag third culture food. Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Julie.31. Rosie Kellett: In For Dinner
32:30||Season 24, Ep. 31This week, Gilly is with the queen of communal living an icon of bohemian anti-capitalism, Rosie Kellett.An actress, a baker with Meringue Girls and Claire Ptak’s assistant at Violet Cakes – which included working on Harry and Meghan’s wedding cake, it was moving into a Carpet Warehouse in London that shot her to fame on Instagram. The idea of sharing the cost of living with her ware-housemates, cooking and eating communally – as well as the supper clubs with Italian housemate, Virginia - hit home to so many that publishers were queuing up to sign her. Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Rosie and a recipe from the book.