Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith Podcast By Gilly Smith cover art

Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

By: Gilly Smith
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About this listen

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.


It's about all of life from climate change to culture and politics to people through the prism of food. 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 - through books.


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
  • Tom Kerridge: The BBQ Book

    Tom Kerridge: The BBQ Book
    Jun 5 2025

    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


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    28 mins
  • Bee Wilson: The Heart-Shaped Tin

    Bee Wilson: The Heart-Shaped Tin
    May 29 2025

    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.

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    28 mins
  • Noor Murad At Cooking the Books Live: Lugma

    Noor Murad At Cooking the Books Live: Lugma
    May 22 2025

    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.

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    37 mins
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