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Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

By: Gilly Smith
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Cooking the Books is about all of life through the prism of food, from climate change to culture and politics to people. It's for foodie book lovers who want to hear something more profound about the way we live, making the link between delicious food and the impact of food production on the land, all through four food moments from the books of our favourite food writers.


Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith is the winner of The Guild of Food Writers' Best Broadcast or Podcast Award 2022, and was shortlisted for Fortnum and Mason Best Podcast 2022 and 2024.


Hear how A-lister food writers have changed the conversation about food as Gilly talks through their four chosen food moments from their latest books. As she joins the dots between stories from the old country and food identity, plant-based recipes and climate change, she shows how a deeper connection with food really could save the planet.


Listen to all your favourite food writers from Claudia Roden to Yotam Ottolenghi, Sheila Dillon to Anna Jones, Prue Leith to Elisabeth Luard, Gill Meller to Ravinder Bhogal, Dan Barber to Raymond Blanc as Gilly finds what's cooking in the minds of our food writing stars.


Do support the podcast by subscribing, and PLEASE leave a review. You can do this by clicking HERE for the link to Apple Podcasts, click on Listen on Apple Podcasts under the show title and then click on Rating and Reviews! Thank you so much.


For more information and to join the mailing list, visit Gilly Smith


Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith is rated in the top 2.5% of global podcasts by ListenNotes and in the top 40 of food podcasts globally by FeedSpot


Theme music by Willy Zygier



Gilly Smith is also the presenter of the delicious. podcast and Leon's How to Eat to Save the Planet which was highly commended in the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2021. She won the Investigative Food Work Award for Right2Food (now known as the Food Foundation Podcast) in the same awards.


She also produced The Big Table for Philip Lymbery, CEO of Compassion in World Farming, and is the multi-award winning author of Taste and the TV Chef: how storytelling can save the planet (Intellect Books 2020)

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Episodes
  • Skye McAlpine: The Christmas Companion

    Skye McAlpine: The Christmas Companion
    Dec 18 2025

    This week, we’re with the Spirit of Christmas herself, Skye McAlpine and The Christmas Companion


    Among all the talk of the pressures, the aspirational values and the industry of Christmas, Gilly finds herself feeling like the Grinch in the presence of the Christmas Fairy as she asks Skye about about the nostalgia, the beauty and the magic of giving.


    Click here for Extra Bites of Skye on Gilly's Substack and here to buy The Christmas Companion on the CTB shop at Bookshop.org

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    28 mins
  • Cherie Denham: The Irish Kitchen

    Cherie Denham: The Irish Kitchen
    Dec 11 2025

    This week, we’re with Northern Irish food writer Cherie Denham and photographer Andrew Montgomery in The Irish Kitchen


    If you’ve listened to Gilly's chat with Andrew on her Substack a couple of weeks ago, you’ll know that this is no ordinary book. It follows their first book, The Irish Bakery, published by Montgomery Press, Andrew’s own company designed to do exactly what he wants.


    The 90 recipes by Cherie are framed within stories about memory of home and rural life while Andrew’s extraordinary atmospheric photography captures the people, landscapes and food traditions still alive and well in contemporary Ireland. It’s part-cookbook, part cultural document of Irish home cooking and small producers, and a work of art. I


    You can only buy The Irish Kitchen from Montgomery Press, and Andrew has even given CTB fans a discount. Click here and use COOKING10 as the promo code.


    And do pop over to Gilly's Substack to see some of the wonderful photography, as well as a recipe from the book in Extra Bites.

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    29 mins
  • Nat Thaipun: Thai: Anywhere and Everywhere

    Nat Thaipun: Thai: Anywhere and Everywhere
    Dec 4 2025

    This week, we're with Masterchef winner and the hottest name in Thai food, Nat Thaipun.


    Her book THAI: Anywhere and Everywhere is packed with glorious flavours of Thailand via Melbourne where she grew up. But it was when Jamie Oliver as one of the judges on Masterchef spotted her talent that she really saw what a book could look like. We find out about the role of MasterChef as the global phenomenon in nurturing chefs, and the might of the Jamie Oliver mentorship.


    Pop over to Gilly's Substack for a recipe from Nat, and to see the original photos David Loftus took of her when Jamie first brought her to London.


    And if you’re looking for a way to suppport this ad free pod, do consider becoming a paid subscriber on Substack and buying all your food books from the Cooking the Books shop at Bookshop.org by clicking on this link.






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    32 mins
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