foodgillysmith (2025)

07/08/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, we’re celebrating the food culture of Palestine with one of its most vocal champions,

Sami’s first solo cookbook, Boustany, meaning ‘my garden’, is about the abundance of vegetarian recipes that make up the heart of Palestinian cooking. He and Yotam Ottolenghi, largely through their first book, Jerusalem have done more to bring the food of the Middle East to the world than anyone, and most of us will know our way around a labneh or a pomegranate molasses by now.

Falastin, his cookbook co-written with Tara Wigley took him back to his homeland to begin to tell the story of Palestinian food culture, and in Boustany, he continues that mission.

01/08/2025

I am extraordinarily proud to have captured just a tiny bit of the passion, commitment and sheer bloody mindedness of so many campaigners at The Food Foundation and their colleagues on the weekly Food Foundation Podcast over the last five years.

But recording this 10th anniversary episode was a real career highlight; you can FEEL the drive and determination in 20 year old Dev Sharma’s voice but also the utter joy at being part of this brilliant band of game-changers. Imagine what it must be like to share this table and this story with people like Laura Sandys, Henry Dimbleby, Rosie Boycott and of course the inimitable Anna Taylor.

If you have anything to do with food, have a listen to this episode. The link is in my bio, but it’s on Spotify. Apple pods etc. It’s a punch-the-sky reminder of what is possible in transforming the food system, how far we’ve come and why we need to keep on keeping on.

Happy anniversary Food Foundation! You rock!

31/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books and this week, we’re off to Bordeaux with chef, author and friend of the podcast, to talk about fish in her latest book, Home Shores.

After the kids have left home and in her big birthday month, Emily’s tells us how she’s changing up her life. She may have left Cornwall where she was the first woman commissioned by the UK Cabinet Office to cook for royalty and world leaders at the G7 summit dinner at the Eden Project in 2021, but she’s on a mission to make the most of life.

She’s the Executive Consultant Chef and Creative Director at the Calypso Grill in the Cayman Islands, all while setting up a whole new home in France. In short, she’s living the dream.

Listen to Cooking the Books on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and then head over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Emily.

24/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, we’re back at my How to Cook Book food writing retreat at my house just outside Lewes in East Sussex with muse-in-residence, the grande dame of British food writing, .luard

After bringing the flavours of Spain to a British readership from the 1980s, her Classic Spanish Recipes: 75 signature dishes is part of the Hamlyn Classic Recipes series celebrating 75 years of publishing some the most admired chefs and writers in the world for their pioneering approach to food culture - Anna del Conte on Italian food, Ken Hom on Chinese, Chetna Makan on Indian.

Elisabeth explains why she is still THE WORD on Spanish peasant cooking, and how much we can learn from the simpler life.

Listen to Cooking the Books on Spotify/Apple or the link in my bio, and then pop over to my Substack from Extra Bites of Elisabeth’s Spain.

21/07/2025

Another lunch in an occasional series of wonderful lunches with Claudia Roden. But what to give the woman whose books are the ultimate in the gift that keeps giving?

I’ve made her ‘s orange scented rice cake, inspired by Claudia’s famous orange and almond cake, transporting it on train and tube from deepest East Sussex to North London. Both were delighted by my slightly soggy creation.

I’ve spotted a cake in Gails that was clearly a Roden-inspired recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi’s early baker days with OG Gail. Claudia opened the box and instantly saw her legacy right there. She was thrilled.

So this time I took .snewens utterly brilliant Moveable Feasts, his award winning gastronomic tour of Paris through its 20 arrondissements. Claudia, who spoke French at home as a child and has had a flat in Paris for decades, leafed straight through to the chapter on her beloved ‘septieme’. ‘This, for me,’ she says, ‘is a real gem’.

17/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, we’re with British-Caribbean writer, Keshia Sakarah whose debut cookbook, Caribe was shortlisted with and for the Jane Grigson Trust Award in 2023.

It’s a history of Caribbean cooking with 125 recipes from 23 nations - from Montserrat to Haiti, Antigua to Guadaloupe, capturing the cultures through food in what this Leicester born young writer calls ‘resistance through retention’.

Pop over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Keshia.

10/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, I’m with the British Iranian/Pakistani human rights activist and food and travel writer, to talk about her latest book, Sabzi.

Sabzi, meaning greens and herbs in Persian, the language of her mother, and vegetables in Urdu, the language of her Pakistani father, is about how to reduce the amount of meat in our diet with delicious vegetarian recipes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and South Asia.

It’s as political and environmental as we’d expect from Yasmin, but it’s also a book about her ancestors and the food from their land – as well as a hard-won journey to motherhood. I find out why she chose vegetables to convey such a big story.

Click on the link in my bio to listen, or head to Spotify, Apple pods etc and then pop over to my Substack for Extra Bites from Yasmin including a recipe from the book, and a delightful couple of poems by the Sufi mystic, Rumi.

07/07/2025

Cooking the Books Live is coming to Paris on September 4th!
snewens , whose Jane Grigson Trust Award winning debut, Moveable Feasts, a gastronomic guide to Paris through its multi-cultural arrondissements was just a stunning proposal then, will be following up on our initial post-win chat on CTB at the restaurant where it all began.

Le Mistral, 401 Rue des Pyrénées, 75020 Paris is where we’ll be from 6pm for CTB Live, and we’ll be staying on afterwards for a bite of aligot, the dish that inspired Chris’ search for the heart of Parisian cuisine.

Do come and join us. Tickets are FREE (because I only know 3 people in Paris!) but you’ll need to reserve your place. Link to CTB live in my bio.

05/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day AGAIN this week with a very special Cooking the Books Live from .

Groundswell is the regenerative agriculture festival that Sheila Dillon calls ‘the Glastonbury of Food and Farming’, and this week, I’ve been sharing its hay bales with 10,000 pioneers, innovators and all those lovely revolutionaries on the path to changing the food system.

Many of them are food businesses or farmers who have no idea of the influence of cook books and books about food in changing the way we eat and buy our food. What I try to do in CTB is join the dots and tell the WHOLE story of food, so I asked a panel of writers with influence, , of , .v.robinson of British Pasture Leather and David Finlay of what a book can do to change the story of food.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods.

03/07/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books with not only my LIVE show this morning on the influence of cookbooks and books about food in changing consumer behaviour, but also a trip back to last week’s CTB Live with and

More on Groundswell later, but regular listeners will know that Gurd is probably the writer who I think 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 W***y Wonka wizard of flavour, I ask him in front of a live audience, how he felt about the notoriously difficult second album.

Listen on Spotify etc and then head over to my Substack for Extra Bites of CTB Live with the Q&A.

29/06/2025

I’ve been thinking for ages about doing one of those intro posts that I see so many people do, but I get stuck on why, let alone what to say.

So I asked Perplexity.AI and, well I’m not sure anyone else would do it quite so well. It didn’t add the 2022 award for Cooking the Books, and missed my food writing retreats, but otherwise not bad. It might catch on, this AI stuff…

Gilly Smith is an award-winning food journalist, author, and podcaster based in the UK, known for her deep exploration of food culture, identity, and sustainability. She has been active in radio, television, and podcasting since the early 1990s and has written over 16 books—some sources mention 17—including the award-winning Taste and the TV Chef and biographies of Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver.

Smith is recognized as an early adopter in British food podcasting. Notably, she produced the delicious. podcast, which was the first podcast to accompany a major food magazine in the UK and was nominated for a Fortnum and Mason award in 2017.

She also produces and presents Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith, a weekly show featuring top food writers, which has also received award nominations.

Her work extends to producing and presenting podcasts for organizations like the Food Foundation and Compassion in World Farming, focusing on ethical eating and food system reform.

In addition to her media work, Smith coaches podcasting and offers online courses on podcast production. She is passionate about connecting people through food and using media to educate and inspire ethical, sustainable living.

26/06/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books and this week, I’m with Guardian columnist and author, 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 to 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.

Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your pods, and then head over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Felicity’s epic adventure. Link in bio.

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