Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This 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.

This 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 Bites

This 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.

This 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.

This 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.

This 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.

This week, in a special extra episode to coincide to the minute with a fascinating new way of publishing, I’m with content creation queen, Masterchef judge and co-presenter of The Food Programme, Leyla KazimLeyla’s debut Pathways is not one but two books about her massive life change to become a farmer in Portugal. It’s a memoir/manifesto/guide to living a purposeful life. Published by The Pound Project, it goes on sale for three weeks only, from 7pm on May 6th - 27th May. She’s in good company - Jess Phillips MP, Dolly Alderton, Pandora Sykes,  Emma Gannon, Sebastian Faulks, Charlie Mackesy, Rita Ora, Richard and Scarlett Curtis are just some of her fellow authors. She tells us about disruption in life, the food system and publishing!You can purchase the book from the following link, which goes live at 19:00 on May 6th: https://www.poundproject.co.uk/shop/pathways

This week, we’re talking about the dirty rotten scoundrels who run our global food industry with Dr Stuart GillespieStuart’s book Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet gives us the back story of a food system driven by greed and exploitation. But it suggests how to transform it into a food system fit for the future which prioritises global health and justice. And it starts with really understanding that the food system isn’t broken—it’s functioning exactly as designed.Pop over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites of Stuart, and for her recent posts on what Food Fight has inspired her to do with Cooking the Books. Click here for The Dark Side of the Plate, the report that Stuart mentions in the episode that he contributed to for The Food Foundation. And click here for the Food Foundation's Pod Bites.

This week, we’re digging deep – culturally and politically - into our connection with the land in Poppy Okotcha’s A Wilder Way, how gardens grow us.Poppy is this year’s winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Sous Chef Award for New Food Writers for her memoir – and very practical handbook – about putting down roots and growing a garden while reconnecting with Mother Earth’s infinite power to restore life.Her beautiful book is a wonderful wake up call to remind us of what’s under our feet, threaded through with fables and folklore from her Nigerian Igbo and British cultures. Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Poppy.