Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, in the very first Cooking the Books LIVE at Rockwater in Hove, an audience with Guardian Feast columnist, Rachel Roddy.Rachel is the author of three books about her life in Italy including the multi award winning Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome which was first published in 2015 and now reissued in 2024.It’s the story of a 32 year old woman from Harpenden who turned up in Rome with little more than a travel toothbrush and a phone, planning to stay a month, maybe, before heading south and on in search of who knows what.  What she found in Testaccio, the tiny corner of Rome where she put her bag down, launched a career as a mutli award winning food writer.  In front of an audience of fans, food writers and foodies, Gilly finds out what that was.Click here for more from the Q&A on Gilly's Substack and here for the further reading Rachel mentions.

This week, as the schools get ready for the long summer holidays, Gilly is with the woman everyone needs to pop in their suitcase if they’re heading to France, Carolyn Boyd, author of Amuse Bouche, How to Eat Your Way around France. Carolyn has guided Gilly through the best food destinations – and therefore THE best destinations in France for the last couple of years though her articles in The Guardian, The Times, National Geographic Traveller Food and BBC Good Food. And that includes a recent trip to Hauts de France, a part of the country most of us scoot past en route to more exotic destinations. But Carolyn argues that food opens a door to some hidden gems - if you know where to find it. Click here to read Gilly's adventures, inspired by Carolyn's Amuse BoucheAnd stay on Substack for Extra Bites from Carolyn, including a mini guide for your summer drive through France.

This week, we’re off to Seoul with British-Korean writer, Su Scott.Su has lived in Britain longer than she lived in Korea where she grew up, and has raised her own daughter in London. But her latest book, Pocha tells the story of the country she left behind, her family and the food they shared, often in the pochas, the covered markets and food stalls which are about so much more than food. Click here for Extra Bites of Su on Gilly's Substack

This week, as the UK (and France) go to the polls, Gilly chats to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about the best way to support the NHS, his latest book How to Eat 30 Plants a Week.Last time we met to talk about the River Cottage’s Good Comfort, his message was to swap out the less healthy ingredients for more, eating healthily not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in. This time, he’s upped his game and using the best of the latest science, he’s showing us how to eat 30 different plants a week. Click here for Extra Bites of Hugh and here for the Food Foundation's Manifesto on how to put your own pressure on the next government to create a healthier nation.

This week in an extra episode in the run up to the UK General Election to remind everyone why we must get the next government to fix the food system, Gilly meets Chris Van Tulleken, TV, radio and infectious diseases doctor who catapulted the term ultra processed food into the public consciousness in 2023 with his book Ultra Processed People.Now out in paperback, Gilly asks him about power, politics and the ultra processing food industry.  Click here for Extra Bites of Chris on Gilly's Substack, and here for more information on the various parties' takes on food policy from the Food Foundation.

This week, we’re with Giulia Crouch to look at the diet of the Blue Zones that will make us not only live long and healthy lives, but is the Happiest Diet in the World.A little known fact: the very first book Gilly wrote back in 1993 on the back of a Channel 4 series called Food File was The Mediterranean Health Diet: the delicious way to lose weight and live longer. The TV show and the book was about a village in Southern Italy which scientists  had discovered best diet in the world – and the reflected the interest in what even the Government back then was telling us would save our NHS, already buckling under the weight of diet-related disease. 30 years later, many Western societies are obesogenic s with increasing numbers living in food insecurity, undernourished by an all powerful fast food industry. Gilly asks Giulia why she thinks we’re still trying to work out how to eat well.Head over to Gilly's Substack for more from Giulia's Happiest Diet in the World

This week, we’re with Irish chef, Anna Haugh to talk about her first cookbook, Cooking with Anna.Anna is a massive part of the story of British food culture, leaving Dublin as a young woman to cook in the steamiest kitchens in London – Shane Osborn’s Pied a Terre, Philip Howard’s The Square and Gordon Ramsay’s London House. But in 2019, she opened her own, Myrtle in Chelsea, more than a nod – a deep bow to Myrtle Allen, the doyenne of Irish cuisine and the inspiration behind Darina Allen's legendary Ballymaloe Cookery School  Click here for Extra Bites from Anna at Gilly's Substack

This week, we’re talking to friend of the show, Mark Diacono about his latest book, Vegetables.This is a book packed with ideas about how to get more from food from the land, a journey through the seasons which Ottolenghi calls 'simple, soulful, seasonal.' Bee Wilson calls it 'joyful', and Julius Roberts says it's 'an inspiring veg bible'. But for a gardener like Mark, it was Monty Don calling it 'a wonderful book, something truly inspiring and beautiful' that brought life to full circle.Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from Mark.

In this special extra episode on the morning after the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2024, we leaf through some of the best food writing of the year in four of the 16 categories to explore what judges Laura Nickoll, Lyndon Gee, Kalpna Woolf and Fliss Freeborn were looking for in their shortlists.Click here for the Awards brochure and the full set of categories and nominees.