foodgillysmith (2025)

14/02/2025

Brighton and Hove food fans, have you discovered Amari yet?

Tucked away in Baker St, it’s the kind of delightful Spanish find you might chance across off the tourist track in Barcelona or Madrid. Great food with fab music and vibe, but without the fuss or price tag you usually get with a menu like this.

I had the oysters baked in squid ink hollandaise with pickled gherkin, followed by the prettiest rare breed pork loin with truffled celeriac puree and Amontillado sherry sauce, and tocino de cielo (flan) to finish, with rhubarb sorbet and fresh raspberries.

Jed had the cep croquetas followed by torched mackerel with smoked cod roe mousse with olive and sorrel dressing. Oh, and the treacle and stout bread… Heaven.

Ian Swainson (Murmur, The Pass at South Lodge, Halisco)is in charge, with the Halisco boys, Mo and Ali his partners who, hot news.. have also just taken over Gungho in Preston St to turn into Halisco’s new bar in just 24 hours!

13/02/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, we’re celebrating CTB’s fifth birthday with another in our series of Live events at Rockwater in Hove, this time with Claire Thomson.

The Five o clock Apron, as she’s more commonly known, was with us to talk about her latest book, One Pan Beans, the 10th in her series of how to cook books.

In front of an audience of super-fans, she told us how to elevate the simplest of ingredients - beans, chickpeas and lentils - into fabulous weekday meals and weekend feasts.

Listen on Spotify or Apple pods, or wherever you get your podcasts, and then pop over to my Substack for the Q&A which has masses of tips from the book.

If you’re anywhere near Brighton or Hove, and love to hang out with people who talk about life through the prism of food, click on the link to CTB Live in my bio to book tickets for .lucy in March and in May.

11/02/2025

Instagramming instagram of Lee Millers kitchen table adorned with some of Lees recipes that we made together with in the one day workshop ‘Lee Millers American Kitchen’ - Joy of joys I got to do it all again with another group today and at the end of the month we will be deep diving into the recipes that focus on her pre war time in Egypt.

It is remarkable that we are able, through the generosity of Ami Bouhassane & , granddaughter and son of Lee Miller & Roland Penrose respectively, to actually cook in Lees actual kitchen, after having a proper nosey rummage around her kitchen cupboards and drawers. A very special experience.
There are a last few places available on the Monday 24th February workshop - Tuesday 25th is all sold out - do come, it’s a proper treat.

11/02/2025

I’ve had a bit of a crush on Lee Miller for a while now. First of all, I swooned, as so many others did, over her extraordinary beauty, and then I read her back story to find a woman who changed our ways of seeing.

When I found that Farley Farmhouse where she lived and died is just round the corner from The House of Dreams, and that an archive of her war photography was on show in the gallery, I was there.

The tour of the house is so much more than a peek into another world; it’s a dive into a very troubled mind. But as with the gang just up the road, I was inspired by the idea of filling the house with brilliant thinkers, artists, writers. I’ve been doing my best ever since.

So when invited me to cook with her in Lee’s kitchen yesterday, I had my pinny on before you could say Hitler’s bath. How fascinating to rummage through her actual cupboards, use her actual bowls and measuring cups and realise that however remarkable she was as a photographer, a muse, a disrupter, she too had a Useful Things Drawer packed with things she never used.

It was all part of Lee Miller’s American Kitchen, a cookery workshop with Chloe Edwards A history lesson in the best sense, it was an extraordinary way to get a glimpse into her everyday life. Look at that fitted kitchen - possibly the first in the UK and clearly inspired by her inner American housewife. And that dishwasher - she was way ahead of her time.

But what a treat to cook her recipes from the book by her granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane, to use that very table to make her Tomato Soup Cake (Campbells, of course) where she’d fed her Surrealist pals - Picasso, Man Ray and Miro were regulars. And to cook in her very own oven. I’m still pinching myself.

Lee Miller’s American Kitchen coming soon to Cooking the Books.

08/02/2025

Prepping for Tuesday night’s CtB Live with and …WOW, every single recipe in her new One Pan Beans is jumping off the page. Pot roast chicken with cinnamon, cardamom and chickpeas; creamy mascarpone butter beans with sausage and gremolata; whipped butter beans with peppers, smoked almonds and hot honey.. I’ll do the fried sprouts with lentils and walnuts for our vegan pals coming for lunch tomorrow. I mean….

I’ll put butter beans in just about anything I cook, so this marriage of olives and fennel is a glorious thing. No green ones (well, only ones with anchovies, and I’m saving them) and no parsley, so dill will do, but what a lovely winter soup on a drear old day.

If you’re in reasonable distance of Brighton/Hove on Tuesday, there are a few tickets left. Click on the link to CTB live, and I’ll see you there.

06/02/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books , and this week, we find out what it feels like when life falls apart… and grows again, with Kathy Slack’s Rough Patch.

Kathy aka was a high flying executive living the dream in Adland... until it became a nightmare. Burn out gave way to clinical depression and a very dark place indeed.

Ultimately, hers is a story about nature, dogs and how growing veg saved her, but she doesn’t pull any punches, and, trigger warning, we do talk about how depression can lead to suicidal thoughts, although thankfully not in her case.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or click on the link to CTB in my bio. And then pop over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Kathy, including the recipe from that Pitstop Tart.

Go to the show notes for useful links if you or someone you know needs a conversation that could save a life. is a good first step.

03/02/2025

It’s a week tomorrow until I’ll be chatting to Claire Thomson about her latest book, One Pot Beans, at Cooking the Books LIVE with on book signing.

We’ll be talking about her massive story in food publishing, on and offline. But it’s also CTB’s 5th birthday on Feb 13 so we shall be talking about the role of podcasting in food - she’s got one too.

If you love all things foodie and podcasty, come along to Rockwater in Hove. We’ll be snuggling up in its sheepskin throws in The Lodge downstairs from 6.30-8.30

Tickets are £8. Click on the link to book.

30/01/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, I’m with Niloufer Mavalvala to discover the food of the Zorastrians in the fourth of her compendium, The Route to Parsi Cooking.

This is about food without borders, a cuisine which is under threat as so many are when their people are displaced. But as we hear so often on this show, they can also become the roots to a culture. With only about 200,000 Zoroastrians living around the world, Niloufer explains why she has taken it upon herself to revive this ancient cuisine.

Listen on Spotify etc, and then head to my Substack (link in bio) for the recipe for the dhansak in one of her food moments.

23/01/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, I’m talking vegan baking with

His book, A New Way to Bake reimagined recipes for plant based cakes, bakes and desserts won the debut cookbook award last year at the Fortnum and Masons. But his day job as head pastry chef at Harrods has given him an opportunity to turn up the dial on veganism at the top end of London’s food scene.

Listen on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and then click on the link to my Substack for Extra Bites of Philip’s vegan creme brûlée recipe.

Image by Matt Russell.

16/01/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and this week, CTB Live is back at Rockwater, Hove in the first of a series of second Tuesdays … and a rather fabulous food book club.

And who better to start with but Brighton’s favourite novelist, - and the inspiration for her latest murder mystery, Mrs Isabella Beeton.

Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency is a classic whodunnit, but it’s the protagonist, Alice Beeton’s distant ancestor who haunts the story with recipes from her 1861 masterpiece Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management peppering the plot.

Josie explains why her legacy simmers on, how her recipes put meat on the bones of her characters and how food stirs her plots.

Listen on Spotify etc and then head to my Substack for Extra Bites of Josie, including the Q&A from the evening. Link in bio.

And come and join us next time when we’ll be celebrating Cooking the Books 5th birthday at Rockwater with

Tickets in bio.

13/01/2025

We’ve spent the last 10 years or so feeling our way in the rewilding of our land. Neither of us are born to it, but a lot of my food chats are rooted in conservation, and we’ve learnt that apart from a little occasional helping hand, messy Mother Nature usually knows best what to do with our ponds, meadows and woodland.

So although we invited the conservation students at Plumpton College over today to give us their thoughts on why the bull rushes might have stopped growing on the little pond, leaving no shelter for the geese family who’ve been coming here for years to build their nest, it turned out to be a much more extraordinary visit.

They quickly found water hog lice and diving beetles, water boatmen and even shrimps in the little pond. Nothing wrong there that a quick trim of the trees and a rake across the bottom won’t solve. Zero dredge to avoid disturbing life means Jed’s going to have to do it from a little boat. Who’s got one we can borrow?

They then headed down to the big pond, a vision of what the little pond was five years ago. One eagle-eyed student spotted a little bank vole poking his head out of his home to see what was going on.

The teacher explained how the wild flower meadow with its long grass providing the perfect habitat for butterflies and crickets, would also be a haven for many of the amphibians that live in the big pond. And therefore the bats and owls and all kinds of creatures who feast on such delicacies...

Our Heath Robinson style coppicing got full marks, and we learnt that our creature habitats are actually called hibernacula. Big brownie points there from the students. It seems that the abandoned woods we rescued 10 years ago are now an important part of the wetland eco system here. Who knew?

We’ve never had any experts here before, and while the most excellently named Will Mound gave his students an afternoon of their dreams, we feel rather validated in our city folk efforts to do something important with this lovely place.

Thanks to for the intro.

09/01/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books and this week, as the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference open their doors to discuss the role of farming in modern British life, I’m talking meat with Pipers Farm’s

The Pipers Farm Sustainable Meat Cookbook came out in 2022 but is one of my favourite reads and recipe resources. It’s a manifesto and a reminder of all the principles that guide my world, with some of the most delicious ways to enjoy the food that comes from them.

Listen on Spotify, Apple etc and then head over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Pipers farm with recipes of Abby’s food moments.

02/01/2025

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books in a brand new year of food chat. And as we head towards CTB’s 5th birthday in February, we’re kicking the year off with a thoughtful look at How The World Eats with philosopher,

He’s the author of over 20 books about philosophy for a general audience, but it’s what he says about food that had .saladino of BBC’s The Food Programme voting this global food philosophy his best book of 2024.

As we’re busy making plans to do better this year, I find out what a philosopher can do to help us out of the mess of our global food system.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts -where you might even give it a little review - and then head over to my Substack for Extra Bites of Julian.

Happy New Year!

27/12/2024

So it seemed that yesterday was not our day. If two broken chargers en route from Paris to Calais, a six hour drive and race against time to get the dogs wormed and the car fully charged to get home wasn’t enough, Le Shuttle’s Pet Reception’s ‘non’ most certainly was. It’s not like we didn’t know that we’d have to wait 24 hours after the worming to get back into the uk. It’s not like we’d not been there before. Doh.

So what would turn this one around? For Loulou it would be a hotel breakfast; for Jed Novick, a charger in the hotel garage; for me, a fabulous dinner. The dogs suggested a vast sandy beach walk in the morning.

Ta daaaa! Look what we found just off the Rue Royale! The Hotel Meurice is straight out of the Belle Epoque (although it first opened in 1771) with quirk and style a go-go. And a charger in the garage.

After dinner at Au Vieux Fourneau, proper job trad French, a late night whisky at the hotel bar and Loulou Novick’s dream breakfast, we’re ready for the beach.

As she heads off on her travels next week, I think we’ve reminded her that we’re not the kind of folk to make a drama out of a crisis.

26/12/2024

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, but I’ve got my eye on something else over the holidays.

Instead, can I suggest you scroll through the archives and listen to something from way back? I love , Henrietta Lovell from March 2020, Claudia Roden from December 2022, possibly the last ever interview with the lovely Russell Norman from Nov 2023 for starters.

As CTB heads into its FIFTH year in 2025, there’s a smorgasbord of gorgeous food chat to elevate your eating and change the way you buy coming your way.

Thanks for listening for however long you’ve been on this fabulous journey into food writing. Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and I’ll be back next week with the philosopher to discuss How The World Eats.

20/12/2024

Cooking the Books Live is back on second Tuesdays of the month from January, and should be an excellent Christmas present for your foodie chums if you’re in the area.

is first up on Jan 14 to tell us how the spirit of the late great Isabella Beeton stirs the plot in her latest must-read Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency.

will be in the house on Feb 11th to talk One Pan Beans, followed by River Cottage’s .lucy on March 11th. She’ll be sharing her Honesty Box, a memoir about love, divorce, neurodiversity and a giant marrow.

I’m away in April but back on May 13th for ‘s first solo title, Lugma. Form an orderly queue.

Get your tickets by clicking on the link in my bio to Cooking the Books Live. Your £15 includes £5 off a signed copy from the stall by the bar. Seaside, sheepskins and excellent food chat… What a great way to get through to spring.

19/12/2024

It’s Podcast Day on Cooking the Books, and I’m with Kate Hall, the author of The Full Freezer Method: Five Steps to Transform How You Shop, Cook and Live.

She’s all over morning telly and the nationals as the Freezer Queen giving tips from her fantastically useful book which really could help us save waste; as she points out, 70% of global food waste comes from the home.

But this isn’t just about batch cooking and having an endless supply of ready meals; this is a whole new way of thinking about how to use your freezer.

Listen on Spotify or Apple pods etc and get involved with the freezer revolution! And Kate shows us around her awesome freezer organisation skills over on my Substack, as well as sharing a lovely brownies recipe.

14/12/2024

Well hello It’s so nice to see you getting us back where we belong.

If you’re in Lewes/Brighton area, pop in for some brilliant sustainable Christmas presents.

foodgillysmith

14/02/2025

13/02/2025

11/02/2025

11/02/2025

08/02/2025

06/02/2025

03/02/2025

30/01/2025

23/01/2025

16/01/2025

13/01/2025

09/01/2025

02/01/2025

27/12/2024

26/12/2024

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14/12/2024

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