Bookshelfie: Women’s Prize Podcast - S7 Ep6: Bookshelfie: Anna Jones

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Best-selling food writer, stylist, and author, Anna Jones explains how Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess gave her the confidence to just be herself in the kitchen.   Anna is the voice of modern vegetarian cooking and the author of the bestselling One: Pot, Pan, Planet, A Modern Way to Eat, A Modern Way to Cook and The Modern Cook’s Year. She’s a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner and nominee for multiple accolades for her work. A believer that vegetables should be put at the centre of every table along with the joy of food and its ability to affect change in our daily lives. Vick Hope, multi-award winning TV and BBC Radio 1 presenter, author and journalist, is the host of season seven of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast. Every week, Vick will be joined by another inspirational woman to discuss the work of incredible female authors. The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, and they continue to champion the very best books written by women. Don’t want to miss the rest of season seven? Listen and subscribe now! This podcast is sponsored by Baileys and produced by Bird Lime Media.

At Harrison Healthcare, we know that lasting health starts with personalized care. We're not just a clinic. We're your partner in prevention, helping you achieve your health and longevity goals. Our expert team combines evidence-based medicine with the compassionate, unhurried care you and your family deserve today and for many years to come. When it comes to your health, you shouldn't settle for anything less than exceptional. Visit harrisonhealthcare.ca.ca.com.com.com. and to me that's what a recipe is. It's a little piece of life. It's a little way of communicating. It's a little dance you do with the people you love and something that you make for the people that you care about. With thanks to Bailey's, this is the Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast. Celebrating women's writing, sharing our creativity, our voices and our perspectives, all while championing the very best fiction written by women around the world.

I'm Vic Hope and I am your host for Season 7 of Bookshelfy, the podcast that asks women with lives as inspiring as any fiction to share the five books by women that have shaped them. Join me and my incredible guests as we talk about the books you'll be adding to your 2024 reading this. Today I am joined by Anna Jones. Anna is a cook writer, the voice of modern vegetarian cooking and the author of the best-selling one potpan planet, a modern way to eat, a modern way to cook, and the modern cooks year. This is really bringing out my jolly accent, which doesn't come out much, apart from when I say cook and book. She is a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner and nominee of multiple accolades for her work.

A believer that vegetables should be put at the centre of every table, along with the joy of food and its ability to affect change in our daily lives. Welcome to the podcast, Anna. Well, it's a thrill to be here. I'm so, yeah, just. thrilled that you've you've invited me on. I'm so happy you're here. In the time before recording, we have managed to cover pretty much every subject from tattoos to being the youngest child to sloth.

Oh, to sloth energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm really behind some sloth energy. And for anyone listening who this might help today, because I never know what anyone's going through, it's just because I was thinking recently, having seen a sloth, that in spite of evolution, these animals are so goofy looking, they're so silly, they're so slow, they should. shouldn't have evolved and yet here they are. So if there's someone up there, they've decided that no matter how serious life is, sloths exist. Sloths exist, yeah. And I think we can all learn something from sloth, kind of how slowly they take life. I feel like my, you know, my nervous system, my adrenaline is going so quickly so often that maybe, you know, if we slow down to sloth pace,

I think, you know, that might be a good thing for all of us at some point. We could all learn something from them. Well, another thing that slows us down that helps us take stock that helps us have a bit of perspective on the world, of course, is reading. When do you do most of your reading? Do you find the time, does it sort of integrate nicely into your daily life? Over the years, definitely, I've got two quite young kids now. So I would say reading is a precious stolen moment rather than something, you know, that is sort of the regular heartbeat that I guess it has been for the rest of my life. But I think we all go through phases, don't we?

And having, I've got a one-year-old and an eight-year-old. So I kind of went through the baby years with my first son. And I've gone back into them again with my little boy, Eska. So I've realized that, you know, I will come back to it. It does all come back round. So I'm definitely enjoying books at the moment that I can kind of just dive into for, you know, or really, really short books. You know, some of the Claire Keegan books, which are very, very short,

have been real friends to me in moments like this, because I feel a real sense of accomplishment when I've got to the end. And where do cookery books fall into this? I always wonder with professional chefs whether they read a cookery book like I would read a piece of fiction. Well, I definitely do. And I have a ridiculously gigantic collection of cookery books. In fact, I had to put a sort of self-enforced ban on a couple of years ago. But that didn't last very long.

So, yeah, I don't tend to read them in bed because, you know, I know some people love to read a cookery book. in bed when I sort of settle down at night I want to escape from I guess the world that I inhabit the rest of the time but I do sit on my kitchen table and pour over them and yeah indulge in them and I guess I read you know I read recipes as if they were a different thing because I'm imagining the kind of choreography around the kitchen and sort of imagining that dance of cooking that happens so yeah I get a lot out of cookbooks and there's certain ones I you know that are friends that I go back to and moments when I'm sort of searching for inspiration, there's certain books I go back to and really, you know, and really get into, I love a bit of a read of Nigel Slater to kind

of, you know, to kind of encourage me to sort of feel the season. I think he's so good at evoking moments in time. But yeah, yeah, cookbooks. I could have given an entire list of cookbooks today. I mean, and we could have been here for several days talking about the cookbooks that influenced me. Or another podcast. Maybe we could do another. Oh my goodness. Yeah. The cookbooks, they are traditionally bigger, heavier, thicker than the other books on your shelves. So I imagine you have to have big shelves and you do have to be a little bit disciplined with how many you buy.

Yeah. Well, we just have a lot in the shed, a lot in our loft. Right. We have a lot in boxes around, because I just can't quite let go of them because I think I have quite a sort of sensory memory. And so for me, a lot of my life is kind of punctuated by dishes I've cooked and by a, flavors I've tasted. And so even though there might only be one recipe in that book that feels like it's a moment in time for me, it still feels like something I really need to hold on to.

I love the way that you describe reading recipes like prose. Nigel Slater, his recipe books, they are. They're written like stories. And you can argue that cookery is a form of storytelling, which I think is something we are going to discuss a little later on. I feel like it's going to come into some of your picks. But let's go on to your first bookshelfy book. Yes, let's do it.

Which is Forever by Judy Bloom. Oh, yeah. Catherine and Michael met at a party. The attraction was instant and pretty soon they were seeing each other. This is love and love is forever, right? Well, when Catherine's parents make them spend the summer apart, forever begins to feel like an awfully long time. Now, you've called this a seminal coming of age book.

What was it about this book that had such a profound impact on your younger self? Well, I think at the particular time when I read this, when I was growing up, I don't think there was much like young adult fiction in the way that there is now. I don't, this was the only book that me and my friends could kind of connect with or read that felt like it was talking about relationships. Like it was talking about sex. It was talking about boys and it was talking about the complication and constructs around that, that we were all feeling.

But it wasn't, it didn't seem to be written down anywhere. And I went to a kind of not a particular. strictly straight, but I went to an all-girls Catholic school and, you know, the idea of having a boyfriend. I mean, if people's boyfriends waited for them outside school, it sounds like I grew up in Victorian times, I really didn't. But this was in like, you know, the 80s, there was one particular teacher who used to wait outside the school gates and like shoo away people's boyfriends. So, you know, I felt like, you know, me and my friends were growing up in this very kind of girl-focused environment. but we all wanted to break out, we all wanted to learn,

we all wanted to know what it would be like to have a relationship. And I feel like this book kind of taught us that. And I remember that I think there are a few pages which had the kind of like the first kiss, the kind of sex scenes. And we sort of all sat, you know, on each other's beds, like pouring over them and really actually learning what, first of all, what sex was, but also what sex felt like, you know. And I think that felt really.

formative for me. I sort of grew up from nine years old thinking that I really wanted a boyfriend and I really wanted to like get married and my whole sort of that perspective has definitely shifted. I am married now and I do have a lovely husband but I think because boys

were sort of almost not forbidden but they weren't part of my life. I wasn't seeing you know boys every day at school. It felt kind of so separate and so kind of yeah something that I really wanted to learn and know about and this book kind of did that for me.

They were such a fantasy until they became a reality and things changed when they become a reality. They absolutely do. You said in the notes that you have this fond memory of fighting over the page. Yeah, The Page. With 10 of your school friends, tell us about The Page and why it was worth fighting over. Well, The Page was, you know, the first time that Catherine and Michael had sex. And I remember, I think, going on a school trip, like it was some outward bound situation

where, you know, you were sent up cargo nets and whatever else. And I think one evening after the teachers had kind of, you know, gone and we were all sitting on a top bunk bed. And, you know, we were just really kind of lamenting over the details. And we were giggling and, like, you know, a sort of childish, I guess, slightly embarrassed school-girly way. But it was what we were learning. It was the only way.

You know, our parents weren't describing. sex to us. We weren't learning it at school. No, and we weren't learning it at school and it was completely different. It felt completely different. There was sex but there was also feelings involved and

I do remember there are aspects of this book that, you know, I now look back on and think, wow, you know, there was the grandmother character in this book who was saying, you know, you can't have sex and was, you know, quite strict with Catherine and

that was definitely the sort of environment that I was growing up in, not necessarily from my parents, but the kind of feeling of school and that if you're a good girl, you kind of didn't have sex. And that feels luckily so different to the environment that, you know, today's teenagers are growing up in. But I think what this book gave kind of a generation of women and girls and I guess some boys who read it was the feeling that that was untrue. And I think that was a really powerful thing for us all to learn. Definitely. Because when we had sex education at school, sex was something to be feared because it was full of risk and danger, whether that was sexually

transmitted diseases, which is why we were being taught not to do it or pregnancy. And we only ever knew that there was a sort of an outcome, a good bit for the boys, because it was in physical form. Exactly. There was a product produced. Whereas with girls, we didn't know that we're allowed to enjoy it. We didn't know about female orgasm. We didn't know it's supposed to be good, which actually throws up a lot of complexities for understanding consent. It's good to know that it can be a good thing because then you can form your own boundaries and your own worth when it comes to understanding sex. So you went to an all-girls school. Paint a bit of a picture of what you were like as a young girl around the time that you were reading this book. Did you have an interest

in food at this point? I definitely did. I think, you know, my kind of like professional interest in food and the idea that food could be something that I did as my job definitely came later. But no, I've always been interested in food. Like I was a real sort of like not necessarily a geeky kid but I was a food geek I remember a moment where I was inside my mom and dad's kitchen and I'd some reason found a recipe for frosting grapes

I mean who would ever frost a grape the idea of it is revolting what is a frosted grape it's like frosting like a rose petal you get a grape you dip it in egg white raw and then dip it into like castor sugar and then it sort of is like sparkly and crystalline on the outside and it looks quite cool

but it's like deeply irrelevant. But anyway, I remember a moment where I was inside in the kitchen on my own frosting grapes. And my sister and all her mates and some of my other friends from like, you know, the local sort of, you know, streets were like playing outside. And I remember thinking, like, is this weird? And I was like, I don't care if it is weird. I'm leaning in. I'm enjoying frosting these grapes so much.

So it was definitely something that was always part of my makeup, you know, and part of something I did. And, you know, I used to love cooking from my family. my mom and dad and invite their friends around. I'd like beg them to let me cook dinner for like their dinner parties and stuff. I mean, a weird thing for a child to do. But I back my mom and dad for like saying, yeah, do it because it was quite a risk. You know, they didn't know what I was going to make and if it was going to be edible.

But no, yeah, always the food thing was kind of like the thread that, yeah, that I relied on and that was my kind of place of solace for sure. Well, that leads us nicely onto your second book, which is the cookbook in the list. Of course we could do a whole podcast that was just scoopbooks. But today you've been a bit disciplined and brought us How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. The classic baking Bible by Nigella. This is the book that helped the world rediscover the joys of baking and kickstarted the Cupcake Revolution from cake shops around the country to the Great British Bake Off. How to Be a Domestic Goddess is not about being a goddess but about feeling like one.

Here is the book that feeds our fantasy. understands our anxieties and puts cakes, pies, pastries, preserves, puddings and bread and biscuits back into our own kitchens. We have to have a cookbook in our list today. What makes this one better than the rest? Why is it pick of the bunch and you chose it today? Well, I feel like this is the cookbook that kind of shifted for me how I felt about people who have a voice in food and people who write cookbooks.

Because growing up, I had lots of cookbooks and I've already said my mom was amazing. it buying me ingredients and buying me cookbooks to cook from. But they were all written by, you know, Dealia, who I have a gigantic, enormous amount of love for it, I think is, you know, as we all know, an unbelievable legend of the food industry. People like Jane Asher, I remember had some of her cookbooks. She was like a, but she was kind of a model. She was always in a sort of buttoned up shirt and it always felt quite put together, quite reserved and in some sense is quite sort of like posh. Whereas Nigella sort of came along and she was this woman that I, kind of associated with.

She had a femininity. She had a kind of like looseness. She had a kind of turn of phrase. I mean, if we could all speak like Nigella. She speaks like she write. And I first of all find that unbelievable. That, you know, she manages to weave such beautiful sentences without writing them down.

But she was there and she was kind of in lovely clothes. She was, you know, had a cheekiness, had a sort of a fun looseness. to her cooking. It made me think that it was something that I could be part of. And I've loved all of her books, but this is the first one I bought. I think my mom bought me it. When I sort of saw the title, I thought, oh my goodness, is my mom trying to like make me into a housewife or something? And then when I actually read the introduction, I understood what she was getting at, how to be a domestic goddess. It was a feminist statement, you know, it was like you do you in the kitchen. You go into the kitchen, you make the things that light you up, you make the things that, you know,

set you on fire. No one is telling you to cook. No one is telling you to bake. No one is telling you to have cakes made or dinner ready. It was such an ownership of her kitchen and of her writing and of the things that she loved to do that it really felt, yeah, like it lit a fire for me, I guess. You mentioned Delia there and of course, Nigella. Aside from them, it is an industry that is so male dominator has been for a long time and especially these sort of men in whites and the men were always called the chefs and the women called the cooks which for me growing up was a bit confusing actually because I wondered what the options were for women in in the world of food and why it would even be gendered like why was that something that you noticed is that something that's

kind of affected your you're navigating the industry yeah it definitely was something I noticed and And, you know, sort of, you know, Nigella's contemporaries were kind of like Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White, these like really, really kind of like alpha male guys. Yeah, swearing in the kitchen. Yeah, exactly. And we're shouting and kind of like being a generally reasonably abrasive person was actually, was, was kind of celebrated. And to me, that just felt like the direct opposite to anything I desire in my life. Like, I don't respond to shouting. I don't respond to kind of like hierarchy.

You know, when I first started working in a restaurant kitchen and people asked me to call everyone else chef, I was like, but that's like, that's Derek, that's Steve. Like, have you lost your mind? I'm not calling anyone chef. And so I sort of said, no, I'm not going to call anyone chef. I'm going to call them by their names. And I didn't love the hierarchy of the kitchen either.

I felt like, you know, I was there. I was doing my thing. Everyone in the kitchen works so hard. You know, it's such a hard, long, physical job that it felt to me, like it should be a place where there is kindness, where there is compassion, where there is support and, you know, respect for each other. And I'm lucky that the kitchens I've worked in have been kitchens like that. But that representation of kind of like, you know, if you work in food, you have to be this kind of like hard core person just felt so wrong to me. And I, and I think

that is why I kind of tried to sort of carve a slightly different path for myself in cooking. And I was lucky to meet people who helped me do that and find people who have set an example of doing that, like Nigella for one, to know that I didn't, you know, because I knew a Michelin-starred kind of white chef, you know, yes-chef, no-chef kitchen wasn't for me. We-Chef. We-Chef. As I always say, see on Master Chef the Professional. What are the practical things that the industry needs to do to accommodate women trying to get into chefing

better? Are you passionate about being a role model for young women who want to get into cooking? I really am and I love to speak to people sort of starting out in the industry and I think in the last, you know, I've been cooking as my job for 20 years, which seems insane, but also I guess affords me a bit of an ability to sort of look at how things have changed over that time. But I think now the food industry is multifaceted, you know, there weren't many loads of women writing cookbooks and writing columns and obviously the, you know, social media and the sort of food and digital creators is a whole different arm. And so I think there are so many more opportunities in food now.

And I think that's an absolutely amazing thing. But I think in terms of restaurants, you know, I think there are some fantastic kitchens that are much more 50-50 now and there are some brilliant female-led kitchens. But I think if we look beyond sort of like the restaurants in the big cities, I think they are probably still quite male-dominated. And I think it's a very difficult industry for. women, especially for women if they are thinking about at some point in their lives having a family, because, you know, how do you navigate that around, you know, shift work? It's really, really hard.

It also is such a physical job. And so, you know, I remember, you know, days where I had crippling period pains, but you'd still have to stand up for 10 or 12 hours. And I think there are ways in which, you know, we can sort of change that and look at, you know, the shift work. And I think, think actually, like the pandemic, Brexit, you know, the sort of change in hospitality and the fact that there aren't as many people to choose from now have made restaurants sort of change their approach and treat their staff with the respect and reverence and money, actually, that they deserve. So I really hope things have changed.

I think female energy in the kitchen is such a wonderful thing to have. And I think, you know, it's important to make sure we're supporting those female cooks. Definitely. And like we said before, cooking is storytelling. The more stories, the more experiences, the more perspectives, surely the better. Absolutely. Bailey's is proudly supporting the women's prize for fiction by helping showcase incredible writing by remarkable women, celebrating their accomplishments and getting more of their books into the hands of more people. Bayleys is the perfect adult treat, whether shaken in a cocktail, over ice cream,

or paired with your favourite book. Check out baileys.com for our favourite Bailey's recipes. It's time to talk about your third book, Sheffey book now, which is one of my favourite books of all time. So thank you for picking this. It's half a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Our Women's Prize, winner of winners, celebrating the last 25 years of the Women's Prize in 2020, Chimamanda's half-fiello son tells the story of Ugu, a boy from a poor village who works as a houseboy for a university professor. Alana, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is enthralled to Alana's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran war engulfs them, they're thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.

Now, I understand this was your first Jim Amanda and Gossier Ditchie book. How did you come to it? I think it was given to me by my mom, actually, who is like, you know, she is a great passer on of books and she is a voracious reader and she's in about four different book clubs. And I think, you know, quite often I'll sort of like, you know, I think I was still living at home at this point and I, you know, quite often I'd go up and see the pile of books next to her bed and be like, have you finished with this one? Which one should I read?

So this one was definitely passed on to me by my mom, Geraldine. Shout to Geraldine. She would love to be here. She's the life and soul of the party. So that's how I came to it. And I just sort of thinking about this, you know, the list of books, I've sort of, you know, reflected on this book and on Chimamanda writing it. And I think that Chimamanda is nearly the same age as me.

So I think I'm nearly 45 and she's 46. And I remember the point in my life at which I read this. And I would have been about the same age as Chimamanda. And that thought blows my mind because I very much felt like I was still becoming the person that I was, that I was still learning about the world at this point. I was a young chef and I think I was, you know, reading it going in and out of my shifts on the bus. but her command of language and literature and her deep kind of empathy for these characters

and her incredible, you know, kind of knowledge of the suffering and the kind of complexity of this time. When I was reading it, I think I imagined someone, you know, 20 or 30 years older than me had written it. So to now look back and realise, that was written by one of my contemporaries just feels completely mind-blowing and to me is even more proof of her genius.

She is such an exquisite writer. It is a rare gift that does, like you say, blow your mind. I can't quite understand how she manages to evoke these characters so thoroughly, so perfectly, and this socioeconomic situation that is incredibly complex. She is writing history for us, but through stories, through experiences, and it really is something special. And it's since led you to read everything else by her.

But tell me why this book made the list. Well, I just think this book, as great books do, left me different. It left me feeling differently about the world. And I think I grew up with history, you know, all my history coming through such an Anglo-Saxon lens. You know, I learn about the World Wars. I learn about Russia. I learn about all of these, you know, the wigs and this sort of, you know, history from the 17 and 1800s that feels so irrelevant. And I knew nothing of this sort of conflict and of the deep, deep suffering that it created.

And so I was so grateful that she could tell that story to me in such a kind of. of nuanced and beautiful way. So that felt very important. It felt to me the first book that I sat down with and I remember being in floods of tears on the back of the 55, you know, and you know, there's deeply traumatic scenes that I was weeping about, but at the same time I was kind of, you know, I was laughing about it. I was, I wanted to sit at the table with Richard and Alana and their kind of learned friends and be part of those kind of grown-up conversations that kind of like I guess I sort of alluded to and there were just so many moments that sort of made me really, really feel I was there and I think that's why it was this book.

And I feel like it's such an important book at such an important time. My dad always says that he remembers seeing, he actually says it was the first properly televised war that the images of the Nigeria-Bia Afro Civil War on the telly. babies with their bloated bellies and you know further down line ended up marrying one of them that was my mum you know being fed by the British Red Cross and starving and housing soldiers but this book so perfectly fills the gaps that we have in our understanding and knowledge because he was like I was watching it but I didn't really know what was going on and it's not something we were ever taught as though it wasn't of interest to us and then you know my mum has gaps because she was

a child so she didn't necessarily know the context and I I thanked Amanda Gossi Dice for helping me understand my past in so many ways. Yeah, and what an incredible gift to have given, you know, you, but to have given all of us and to have given the world. It feels such an important book. Well, talking of the books that move you so profoundly, your fourth bookshelfy book is A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunn and Joan Didion

saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. This powerful book is Didion's attempt to make sense of those gut-wrenching weeks and then months. The results is an exploration of an intensely personal, yet universal experience, a portrait of a marriage and a life in good times and bad.

Now this book is a heavy read, but Anna, you like sad books, is that right? Oh my goodness, it does feel like that when I was sort of trying to find a theme. Obviously, you know, sort of how to be a domestic goddess is not a sad book, but all the other ones definitely had a sadness to them. But yes, this is a deeply, deeply sad book. and I think I wept and wept and wept whilst reading it. But there was something in this book that made me hold on to the people I loved so much more deeply. And I think there's a phrase in it that she uses saying, you know, I love you more than another day.

And I think that feels like such a beautiful, it's a tragic phrase. But it is, it describes to me how I feel about my husband and my children. And sometimes I feel tempted to sort of say it to them, but I know my children can't really understand the meaning and the nuance of that yet. That's how I feel about them. That's how I feel about my family. And I feel like this book, whilst so tragic in its subject matter, made me, it just hit me in how I love and how we love and how we are interconnected as a kind of constellation of people so hard and so beautifully. And yeah, I think it's a book that I can. carry with me and I think I had a really dear friend pass away, you know, in 2020 and I actually

hadn't seen him for six years. He was sort of a friend that had drifted apart, but we'd grown up with and I felt like we were sort of intertwined in that sort of way of tapestry that you are with people that you really, really love. And I really kind of connected with this sort of concept of magical thinking. I kept trying to think of ways that I could bring him back or I could go back and sort of changed. There was a moment just before he died where we passed each other on bikes and I saw him and he saw me but I think we must have both been in a rush but we hadn't seen

each other for six years and I wanted to go back to that moment. I went and stood by the tree where that happened and almost tried to conjure him back and so this concept that she lives with so viscerally for a year of trying to sort of like use his clothes and his smell and his

you know the memories of their life together to bring that back. I really felt like I absolutely knew what she was she was thinking. You said that this book made you feel alive in spite of death. Yeah. Within it. Is that a feeling that you consciously look for when you're selecting or you're reading a book to change you in some way or to alter something in your reality or to just make you appreciate what you have? I think that is what this book did. I think it made me appreciate what I have and I think there's there's passages in the book that are about how Joan and John never were apart and me and my husband sort of spend a gigantic amount of time together we

both work from home and we're sort of very close and in each other's pockets and we've known each other since we were 21 and and so we spend this a lot of life together but I think what this book made me you know made me feel was that you know I also want to to make sure that there's the kind of quality and aliveness of time and the quality and aliveness of our time together and our time as a family. So yeah, I think I do look for books that make me feel alive. And I think as we're sort of covering at the beginning, I don't have loads and loads of time for reading at the moment. So a lot of books get not half read. They don't even get a quarter read. I get through the first sort of 10 or 15 pages and then they get left for times when I have

more space. So I think I need a book. at the moment that makes me feel like it's doing something that makes me feel alive and like it's it's feeding me and my soul it's quality not quantity exactly which does actually feel quite summed up by that quote i love you more than another day it's not more time that i need it just needs to be yeah yeah exactly it's it's that it's those moments and it's it's holding on i think to those moments and those people and that that tapestry that essentially, you know, is us, isn't it? When we, you know, it's a big topic to think of, but when we do that time when we do leave this earth, we leave behind a tapestry. And I think the beauty of being woven into that

and being woven into other people and other relationships is, you know, that's life to me. It sounds like this is a book that in spite of being heavy, it brings you great comfort. And I do want to touch on something. It's a subject that me and my friends talk about quite a lot, and that is comfort eating. We all find solace in different things. I find it in books, in books when they speak to me, or they teach me something.

If a book is to give you a year of magical thinking, a new way of thinking, then great. Talk to me about comfort eating. Do you have a relationship with that? Because you're constantly surrounded by food. I am constantly, yeah, surrounded. by food and cooking and but I do still think there are things that I lean on I mean I'm cooking for a family every night so I'm not cooking like you know fancy stuff and I do think there are

things that we lean on for comfort and things that my son I know if he's had a hard day you know there are certain things that I might make him or also ways of punctuating the year like there are things we make like it was just it was yeah just since St. David's day and we will always make Welsh kicks because my husband's Welsh. And those, I think those things, as well as kind of comforting through sadness or exhaustion or those things that punch weight the year, those kind of become a comfort. They become a kind of, yeah, they become a kind of framework to live within. Their traditions. Their traditions.

Exactly. And I feel that, yeah, those things are sort of in a way my form of. comfort the sort of we make elder flower cordial which sounds all fancy and foragey but it's it's just a thing that we do together and it's a thing that we share and I hope that it's a comfort to my son in 10 years time or when he has a family that that will that memory of cooking will be a comfort yeah so I think comfort eating is like it's multifaceted and it comes in in lots and lots of different ways tied up in nostalgia memories rituals traditions which takes us to the next stop on our journey. This has been such a lovely set of segues. He's really made it seamless.

That's because you're a pro. Our fifth and final book, Shelby book today is Home Cooking by Laurie Colwyn, weaving together memories, recipes and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen. Home cooking is Laurie Colwyn's manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble, hot plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties. Colwyn regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Now, you've mentioned in the past that Laurie's writing makes it feel like you know her. Can you describe the way you feel you know her through this book? Well, I think to me, I have like a very sort of, I don't have a great memory for kind of words and

narrative, but I have a almost kind of photographic memory for food and I guess visual. things. So I feel like I, to really know people, I want to know what they're cooking. I want to know what they love to eat. I want to know. I might not remember someone's name, but I will remember the chocolate bar they love the most.

And so this book kind of did that for me. It sort of made me know the writer in such a kind of nuanced way. And also I feel like so many books about food or about the kind of perfection are about the kind of veneer and are about like getting it right.

And I think this book Home Cooking felt messy. I mean, there are recipes, but they're not really recipes. They're more kind of like pieces of life, I think. And to me, that's what a recipe is. It's a little piece of life. It's a little way of communicating. It's a little dance you do with the people you love and something that you make for the people that you care about the most.

And that's what Laurie's kind of writing does for me. I feel like she's a sort of like she's got a Nora Ephron kind of approachable warmth and feeling. And I think in the introduction she says something like, it's good to talk about food and it's good to talk about food whilst eating food. And then the best thing is talking about food whilst eating food with friends. You know, that feels like the Holy Grail. And that sort of describes what I like to do most in life. If friends come around and we get to really dissect, I don't know, this amazing chocolate bar that we found or this great place that sells, you know, Turkish Gosslemy for two pound or this amazing burgomot that someone gave you from a supplier in Italy or something. You know, I've got foody friends, but I've got very unfoody friends as well.

And so I feel like food is so universal and so democratic. and this book really gets that across to me in a way that I feel is rare. Yeah, you're right. There really is nothing better. What do you like as a host? Do you have a go-to meal that you like to prepare for friends, family that are coming around? What are your hosting tips? Well, I just think make something really easy.

I actually think people are thrilled and relieved to come around to your house and for you to make them a bowl of pasta. You know, I really, really do. and I think also shopping well. I think, you know, we are so lucky that there are so many amazing products now in the shops that you can buy and taste amazing. So I would say focus on making one thing. Don't do like a starter, a main dessert or homemade unless you're, you know, that's what you love. And you want to spend hours in the kitchen. I feel like you can buy gorgeous things for people to snack on when they arrive.

You make one nice thing and then, you know, give people some ice cream and, you know, mix some chocolate and peanut butter. To pour over the top, you know. It's just, I think it's really about like the enjoyment. And I think even as a chef, I can be guilty of kind of like wanting to impress. And people are impressed by your company, I think, more than they are by your food. And, you know, there is a cost of living crisis still affecting so many households, especially when it comes to food shopping. A lot of your writing focuses on vegetables, on vegetarianism, veganism.

What do you think about the conversations around being able to? able to eat healthly, being able to afford it, to be able to shop for these ingredients. How can we still have delicious food while keeping our bills down? I mean, that's one of the questions of our time, isn't it? I feel like we expect so much from our food these days, but at the same time is spending far less time in the kitchen and also wanting to spend less of our kind of weekly budget on food. So it's a uniquely tricky time, I think.

So I really think that changing how we eat is just about having like a collection of like, you know, five, six, seven recipes that you know by heart, that you know you can make, that, you know, you have the ingredients in for that then will stop you ordering a takeaway or eating a bowl of cereal on a Tuesday night, which by the way, I actually did two nights ago. So I'm not saying that I never do it. I mean, it's absolutely fine. But I do think that it's those sort of like easy, affordable recipes that if you can sort of almost commit to memory, then when you're in a fix on a Tuesday or Wednesday, you know that you're 10 or 15 minutes away from a really delicious meal. And there's a recipe I've been cooking, which is a one pot pasta and it's just literally spaghetti, a bit of lemon, a clove of garlic and small of oil. And you just boil it all up together. And in these days when, you know, I've got quite a little baby and time is short, it's just been. in, you know, we eat it then with some veg or whatever.

And it is lots of chefs make claims for recipes to be affordable. This recipe is really very affordable. And I think it's, you know, it's just really nice to have a few of those recipe friends that kind of, you know, you carry with you. Recipe friends. Imagine that in the voice of Simon from the in between. Recipe friends. And your new book, Easy Wins, is out now. What can you tell us about it?

Well, easy wins, I guess, has sort of come slightly out of that inspiration. You know, I am someone who doesn't spend loads of time in the kitchen every evening. I want to cook in sort of 20 or 30 minutes. And so this book is my sort of way of reverse engineering, you know, a short amount of time, but a ridiculous amount of flavor. I'm onto people's plates. And so I've focused on 12 ingredients in the book, which I've come to sort of think of as kind of a capsule pantry. the 12 ingredients that I couldn't cook without that I think make my food sort of unreasonably delicious for the amount of effort I put in and they range from lemons to tahini from tin tomatoes to vinegar. And there's a whole chapter on each so you won't buy a pot of something and have it languishing on the top of your fridge.

So yeah, I hope that they are a sort of delicious, easy, affordable way for people to make those Tuesday and Wednesday night dinners. Oh, it sounds like the sweet spot. I'm going to be perusing. There's too many languishing pots in our house of things I don't know what they are and they never get used again because we use them once when we made some particular recipe.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not about that. I feel like if you buy something, if you buy an ingredient, it's got to be a workhorse, it's got to earn its place in your kitchen just like, you know, if you buy a book, it's got to earn its place on your shell.

Yeah, as we said before, quality not gone to Z. My final question to you, Anna, is I'm going to ask you to choose one book from your list as a favourite. it has been a perfect journey and every book is so different so I think this is particularly hard today which would it be and more importantly why because they're all serving completely different purposes I mean I'm tempted to say the Laurie Colwyn because it just evokes such a sense of kind of

home in my heart but I just like no we can't she's Chimamanda she's the winner of winners for a reason but I mean I just think that it's a masterpiece. And whilst I love all of these other books, that stands head and shoulders above the rest for many reasons. She was our winner of winners. She is your winner of winners today, although it's not a competition. Can you imagine this podcast was actually a competition? Anna, it's been such an immense pleasure. I'm salivating at the end of this. Looking forward to getting stuck into easy wins and cooking up a storm. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute joy.

I'm Vic Hope and you've been listening to the Women's Prize for Thames for Thorn. fiction podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Bayleys and produced by Birdline Media. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.