Right then, it’s finally time…

Over the past year, Cook the Books has become one of my favourite things I’ve ever done. What started as me trying to actually use the cookbooks I owned rather than just look at them, has become one of the things I enjoy most. Heck, I’ve focused my Substack around it!

I’ve discovered some fantastic books, learned more than I ever could from a Tiktok video, spoken to some wonderful people and somehow pushed myself way outside my comfort zone.

Which, if you know how bloody shy I am, is no small thing.

And now I’m even hosting a LIVE podcast.

I know. Who am I?!

I love talking to you guys about cookbooks, connecting over them, sharing recipe recommendations, discovering new authors… And the more I thought about it, the more the idea of turning that into a proper community felt like such a bloody good idea.

And I hope you agree!

From the start, I knew I wanted to create the kind of club I’d actually want to be part of. Something fun, friendly and most importantly - easy to dip in and out of. Something you can join in with as much or as little as you fancy. The last thing I want is for this to become yet another obligation or something else you feel like you have to keep up with.

Now, there’s plenty of time for me to explain how all this works. But first things first… we need a cookbook!

And our first book is…

I’ve been wondering for weeks what the right first book should be…

And in the end, it just had to be Abundance by .

Abundance follows a year of eating and living with the seasons in Devon, with more than 80 recipes shaped by what’s growing, what’s around and what Mark happens to be noticing at the time.

There’s early summer shakshuka, salsify and radicchio gratin, onion seed and oregano flower focaccia... basically, plenty of delicious recipes for us to get stuck into!

But what I personally love most about the book is that it isn’t just about recipes. It’s about paying attention - and about cooking with what’s around you and what’s in season. It’s also very much about finding a bit more joy in your everyday.

And, if you’ve been here for a while, you’ll probably know that Mark is pretty special to me too.

I’ve featured his book Sour for Cook the Books, and I’m incredibly lucky to now call him both a friend and mentor. He’s had a huge impact on the way I think about food and writing (you’ve him to thank for me starting this little Substack of mine!), so there’s something that feels very right about beginning this new adventure with one of his books.

Abundance itself grew from Mark sharing his writing with his community of readers. So, a pretty apt choice all round, I’m sure you’ll agree.

You can grab a copy of Abundance using the button below1

> Get your copy of Abundance here <

Author Pick

Each month, I’ll be asking the author to choose one recipe from their book that they’d especially love us all to cook. And for our first Author Pick, Mark has chosen...

Late Summer Fruit Panzanella!

Panzanella is an Italian joy based around stale bread, onions and tomatoes, usually in combination with basil, olive oil and vinegar. This sweet variation takes the spirit of that classic and turns it to the best of late summer’s fruit

Whizz yourself to page 175 to find this recipe.

So, how does it work?

The main Cook the Book Club is open to all subscribers and joining in is very simple.

At the beginning of the month:

• I’ll announce the cookbook we’re cooking from

• I’ll share the Author Pick, one recipe chosen by the author for us all to cook together (although you absolutely don’t have to make it)

• I’ll start a dedicated Chat here on Substack for the chosen cookbook, so all conversations for that particular month stays together and is easy to find

• Paid subscribers will also get their monthly Challenge Card. More on this soon!

Throughout the month:

• Get hold of the book however works for you - whether you buy it, borrow it from a friend or request it from your library

• Cook as much or as little as you fancy

• Pop into Chat for a natter: share photos, videos (if you’re feeling brave), ask questions, offer tips and substitutions, share triumphs (and disasters)

At the end of the month:

• Paid subscribers will be invited to a monthly meetup on Zoom, where we’ll have a chat about the book, share what we’ve cooked or baked, what we loved and what perhaps didn’t quite go to plan. More on this soon!

• And, where possible, I’ll invite the author along too so we can have a Q&A and you can ask any burning questions you’ve had while reading/making your way through their book

And nothing will disappear or be closed once the month is over either!

If you miss a month, join halfway through or discover six months down the line that we cooked a book you’ve been meaning to try, you can always go back and join the conversation. I’d love for this to eventually become a little library of cookbook discussions that we can all dip back into whenever we fancy.

And as the community grows, I’d love to take some of this offline too. Potlucks, supper clubs, book swaps, kitchen days and evenings where we eat well, talk about food and spend time with people who just get it.

Because how bloody hard is it to make new friends as an adult?

Shall we get cooking?

And that’s it folks - Cook the Book Club is officially open!

We’re starting with Abundance, we’ve got our first Author Pick and now all that’s left to do is get into the kitchen.

Grab yourself a copy, have a good flick through and come and join us in Chat. Tell us what you’re thinking of making first, or just come and have a nosey at what everyone else is planning.

Remember, there’s no right way to do this - cook just one thing or the whole bloody book! It really doesn’t matter.

Just come and be part of it.

> Get your copy of Abundance here <

And as always, thank you for being here ❤️
-Mark

Not a scary one, obviously. The one I imagine they’d create involves tahini and shakshuka, freshly baked breads, excellent sweet treats and, of course, very generous dinners that stretch well into the night. (Preferably with copious amounts of wine!)

To me, the Honeys (as I’ve affectionately started calling them) are joy incarnate.

They are completely and hopelessly in love with food. You can feel it in the way they talk and write about it. And that ridiculously infectious enthusiasm… it makes you fall in love with food over and over again too!

When food is also something you photograph, write about and share - it’s surprisingly easy to get lost in the sauce. Making the thing, shooting the thing, writing the post about the thing…

Maybe that’s why I find them so bloody inspiring! It’s good to be reminded that for all the beautiful cookbooks, carefully styled photographs and recipes we obsess over, food is still fundamentally about eating. Preferably with people you like. And preferably with something on the table you can mop up with bread!

And this, all of this, was how I felt about the Honeys before I’d even cooked a single recipe from one of their books. Since then, I’ve made a handful of recipes from The Baking Book, so I already knew that their particular brand of joy translated so well onto the page. But Daily is something different - it’s the food they want us to make, well… daily!

About the Book

Authors: Itamar Srulovich & Sarit Packer
Publisher: Quadrille Publishing
Published: 14 May 2026
Photographer: Patricia Niven

Cookbook number 5 in their collection - Daily is filled with recipes for the everyday. Sarit and Itamar have taken the food they serve at their Honey & Co. Daily cafe and bundled it all into a cookbook so you can make those exact recipes you find on the menu at home.

The book follows much the same spirit, flowing almost like a day spent at the café itself - eggs to start things off, soups, things to pile in or on bread, big colourful salads, then the wonderfully named Daily Nightly for dinner. And because this is Sarit and Itamar we’re talking about, there are of course cookies and cakes galore, followed by desserts and cocktails for those occasions when pudding is better served in a glass.

A couple of months ago, I got to experience the book in a rather fantastic way, as I went to see Sarit and Itamar in conversation at the Café Murano Book Club! They talked about Daily, the story of Honey & Co. and the slightly winding road that brought them to where they are today. We were fed a menu taken from the book as they talked which, I’ll be completely honest with you, is exactly how I think all cookbook events should work.

And because apparently one night of Honey & Co. wasn’t enough for me, the following day I made my way to Honey & Co. Daily itself for breakfast. (It would have been rude not to, right!) I ordered the spiced peas with ricotta and fried egg on sourdough toast, which just so happens to be the cover photo of the book, and it was sublime. Not something I would usually pick for breakfast - but I’m so glad I did.

The photography is, well… it’s Patricia Niven, so it’s bloody outstanding. Each and every image has that depth, warmth and clarity I’ve come to love in her work. I’ve written before about how I look at images in cookbooks as something to study as much as admire. Looking at composition, light, texture, the way a plate is framed… and her work in Daily is another masterclass in all of it.

Meet the Authors

If you’ve not come across them before, Sarit and Itamar are the husband-and-wife power couple behind Honey & Co. - and at this point, they’ve created quite the little empire! Besides being extremely talented chefs, they’ve opened restaurants, cafés and a deli, written a stack of cookbooks and even built themselves a studio space!

And yet for all that, there’s nothing remotely intimidating about them. Listening to them at Café Murano, the passion and the way they talked about their food was exactly how you’d talk with friends at dinner.

Find the book

Daily is very much a cookbook you cook from. It’s not one of those cookbooks you read cover to cover like a novel (and you know how much I love those) - but it is one you’ll find yourself reaching for most days. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, pudding… It’s all in there.

The only problem was deciding which three to start with…

What I cooked

Orange Cake with Chocolate Flecks

We’re currently in the middle of a heatwave here in the UK - which has gone on so long it feels like it’s been 84 years at this point (gold star to you if you get that reference!) So I’m not entirely sure what delusion convinced me that turning the oven on to bake a cake would be a fun idea… but here we are.

I had a blush orange that needed using and this orange cake with chocolate flecks was practically calling my name.

And I’m very glad I listened!

It’s a ridiculously tender cake, which I suspect has a lot to do with the fact that it uses both butter and oil *and* the juice of a whole orange! Add the orange zest and little flecks of chocolate and it’s giving serious chocolate-orange vibes.

At this point, I do have a confession to make (which might help you out too if you want to make this cake)… There’s a baharat sweet spice mix in this recipe. The book gives you everything you need to make it yourself. Did I? Absolutely bloody not. I bought mine and feel no shame whatsoever.

Slices were quickly delivered to neighbours, who were all very happy to help with the important business of quality control. (And to save me from devouring it all myself).

And so my love affair with Daily (and the Honeys) continues…

If you own the book, you’ll find this one on page 178. If you don’t… well, keep reading. I might be able to help with that!

One-Pan Lamb & Pappardelle

We had some lamb mince that needed using and the obvious answer was shepherd’s pie. It’s our usual and dependable go-to.

But you know when you fancy something a bit more, well… fancy?

Then I remembered seeing the one-pan lamb and pappardelle and thought yes! This is the one.

And let me tell you… it’s pappardelle-icious. (Sorry. I couldn’t help myself!)

I genuinely think this might be one of my favourite dinners I’ve made this year - and I’ve made a lot so far.

It’s rich, comforting and so so satisfying. Definitely the sort of dinner that after you’ve tried it for the first time, you’ll be craving all the time. Yet another simple dish that is totally delicious. And the fact that it all comes together in one pan makes it even better. (Less washing up = winning!)

The recipe serves four, but we halved it and it was more than enough for a hearty dinner for two.

If you own the book, you’ll find this one on page 128.

Elderflower Cream & Macerated Strawberries

There was one thing from that Café Murano evening I just could not stop thinking about (besides coming away thinking about how I just want to be best friends with them both)… that bloody dessert.

The elderflower cream with macerated strawberries might seem simple (I mean, it is) but it tastes like it shouldn’t be with how ridiculously good it is! I knew almost immediately I was going to have to make it at home so Ben could try.

So I did!

Mine definitely wasn’t as fancy looking as the one we were served that night - but believe me when I tell you, it was every bit as delicious!

The elderflower cream is rich and floral without being too much (I’m actually not a massive fan of elderflower - but this is converting me to a believer!). And the strawberries - sharp, sweet and juicy as they are, go perfectly on top.

It’s for sure one of those desserts where you look at the ingredient list and think, is that it? And then you eat it and realise that yes, that really is it!

This to me pretty much sums up my whole experience with Daily - simple recipes that take no time at all and still taste utterly delicious.

If you own the book, you’ll find this on page 198. If you don’t… keep scrolling!

A few more I’ve got my eye on…

• Tunisian tuna sandwiches, page 73

• Crispy potato and marinated tomato salad, page 106

• Green fish balls in lemon-saffron sauce, page 141

• Date and cardamom scones, page 181

Recipes

Consider this your little taste of Daily. An amuse-bouche, if you will…

The lovely people at Quadrille have given me permission to share three recipes from the book with you. Two are dishes I’ve cooked for this edition and one is something I thought you’ve just got to try… that spiced peas on toast I loved so much at Honey & Co. Daily!

So, if Daily has been tempting you so far, here’s your chance to try a little piece of it at home:

Daily - Orange Cake With Chocolate Flecks

1.05MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Daily - Elderflower Cream With Macerated Strawberries

611KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Daily - Chilli Peas And Goat’s Cheese With Fried Egg On Toast

1.14MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

You’ll Love This If…

…you like quick and easy recipes that still feel a little bit special. This is food for the everyday, but plenty of it could just as easily be served at a dinner party. Easy enough for a Tuesday, a crowd pleaser on Saturday night.

If this sounds like a book that belongs on your shelf, you can find a copy here1

Find Daily here

Final Thoughts

And just like that, my little tour of Daily is over!

From the books they’ve written to the places they’ve opened, Sarit and Itamar have poured passion and excitement into everything they do.

To me it feels less about the business they’ve built (although a very bloody successful one!), and more about how they’ve created a whole philosophy around the joy of food, hospitality and bringing people together.

Win a copy

I happen to have an extra copy of Daily sitting on my cookbook shelf, and rather than keep it all to myself, I thought it would be much nicer to send it off to one of you!

• The prize: A copy of Daily by Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich

• To enter: Entry is free! All you need to do is subscribe to this Substack. That’s it!

• Open to: Subscribers internationally, wherever shipping is reasonably possible.

• Closes: Friday 28th August 2026

After the giveaway closes, I’ll choose one winner at random from my subscriber list and get in touch directly.

If you’re outside the UK, I may arrange for your copy to come from a bookseller closer to home where that makes more sense. But I’ll do my best to make sure it reaches your kitchen safely.

Good luck! And as always, thank you for being here ❤️

Last time on Cook the Books…

Hello friends and welcome back to The Kitchen Table.

Before anything else, thank you.

The response to the new name has been genuinely overwhelming in the very best way. At the end of June I shared the full story behind saying goodbye to Taisty Bytes and hello to The Cookbook Kitchen, so I won’t repeat myself here. But if you happened to miss it, you can catch up here:

And if you’re new here, welcome to The Kitchen Table! This is my monthly, more chattier feature where I share what’s happening in my world. Expect personal updates, recipes I’ve been cooking (and occasionally tinkering with), books I’ve read or want to read, conversations I’ve had and the brilliant people that have inspired me lately.

It’s also home to Kitchen Table Talk, my podcast series (yes, we’re officially calling it a podcast now!) where I sit down with fellow food folks for a chat about cooking, creativity, community and building a life around food.

So far, I’ve been incredibly lucky to sit down with some wonderful people:

joined me to talk about the food memories that shaped her, discovering that cooking could become more than a passion, life after MasterChef and what it’s really like to build a career in food from the ground up

joined me for a brilliant Q&A full of practical cooking tips, thoughtful career advice and a sort of behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life that was very interesting

Most recently, and I had one of those conversations that could easily have gone on for another hour, chatting about food writing, slow living and carving out a creative life on your own terms

Right then, are we all caught up? Good… as we’ve got a lot to get through today! Shall we pull up a chair and get started?

What’s on the Table…

We’ve got a hell of a month coming up! Here’s what you can enjoy over the next couple of months:

August

• Cook The Books: A few of you have asked whether Cook the Books is sticking around…
  The answer is a very enthusiastic yes!
  Guys, this is my bread and butter! The only thing that is changing is that it will no longer be on a fixed monthly schedule. Some months we might spend time with one book and others we might explore a few.
  The next books heading to the kitchen for review are:

  • Silk Roads by

  • Daily by Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich from

  • The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook by Sarah Mayor

• Kitchen Table Talk: TBC

—

September

• Cook the Book Club launches: For the first time, we’ll spend an entire month cooking our way through the same cookbook together! We’ll be trying recipes, sharing how we’re getting on, swapping tips, posting photos and videos - and generally connecting over a shared love of food and cookbooks.

  At the end of August, I’ll reveal our very first cookbook, along with your first set of challenges and an invitation to our monthly gathering.

• Cook the Books: Paid subscribers will also be able to nominate a cookbook for a future review - which I’m ridiculously excited about!
  At the top of my pile are:

  • Cucina dell’Emilia-Romagna by Ursula Ferrigno

  • Lebnani by Jad Youssef

  • Subscriber choice

• Cook the World returns: Our culinary adventure continues… in JAPAN! We’ll be exploring this incredible country through the pages of four beautiful cookbooks:

  • Gohan and The Japanese Pantry by

  • Wafu Cooking by Sonoka Sakai

  • JapanEasy Kitchen by

  • Japan, The Cookbook by Nancy Singleton Hachisu

And to round things off, we’ll be welcoming another very special guest to Kitchen Table Talk.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a rather delicious couple of months!

There are so many brilliant cookbooks worth talking about, whether they’re brand new, coming soon, already on the shelves or recommended by one of you lovely lot. So, this is Cookbook Corner - a space where I can share the books that are on my radar that I thought you might enjoy too.

And if you’ve read any of these or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

• Come Here and Cook by Jordan Howlett - coming 10 November 2026.
  Ok so I’m a bit of a fan of Jordan’s, so I am thoroughly excited for his new book coming out later this year. A sort of cookbook-memoir, with 40 stories and 40 recipes covering everything from cooking with his grandmother and trying to nail her pineapple upside-down cake, to restaurant jobs, fast-food recreations and the slightly wild world of building a career online.

• Of Cabbages & Kimchi by James Read
  I picked this up on a wander round Hatchards, mainly because the cover illustration made me smile instantly and partly because fermentation is one of those kitchen rabbit holes I’m always tempted to fall down. James takes you through ten living ferments, from the fiery funkiness of kimchi to the tang of kefir, then shows you how to make and cook with them at home.

• Polpo by Russell Norman
  This is another book that I picked up on my recent trip to London after a good dozen or so of you recommended that I MUST get it. Written by the late Russell Norman, it’s inspired by the bàcari of Venice - the small wine bars where good food and good company seem to go hand in hand. It’s filled with spritzes, small plates, recipes made for sharing and photography that makes you immediately hungry. Arancini. Warm octopus salad. Bellinis. Crispy little pizzas topped with prosciutto and rocket. Tiramisù.
  I’ve barely begun reading it, but already I understand why it has such a devoted following. Now I’d love your help. If Polpo is already sitting on your bookshelf, which recipe should I cook first?

Leave a comment

If you’re anything like me, your ‘I’ll make that one day’ list is growing far faster than you could ever hope to cook your way through it. Mine is an ever expanding collection of screenshots, bookmarked recipes and tabs I absolutely refuse to close because this might be the week I finally make them. No?

So, in the spirit of adding a few more to the pile, here are the recipes that have recently caught my eye. And perhaps one or two will find their way onto your list as well…

—

Salt bread seems to be taking the world by storm at the moment and I’m still yet to try it. This recipe by the lovely Joanne Lee Morinaro (The Korean Vegan) looks incredible.

Now, I am a complete sucker for anything involving peaches. So, when I spotted this recipe for Peach Tea Galette in a recent post by - it went straight on the list. I mean, just look at it.

I’ve wanted to try making mochi for years, but it's always been one of those recipes I admire from a safe distance. I think this butter mochi might finally be the one that persuades me to have a go.

Nectarine & thyme brioche toasties. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Nectarine & thyme brioche toasties… My belly grumbled and my mouth watered throughout the entirety of reading this recipe (and again putting this section together!) by - which can only really be described as summer on a plate. Quick note: this is a paid recipe and is worth every penny

And finally, it’s cherry season. So it would be criminal of me not to include a cherry recipe now, woudlnt it. I picked up this recipe card from Waitrose because it combines three flavours I absolutely adore… these tahini, cherry & cardamom meringues are going to be delicious.

One of the best things about being part of this community is discovering and sharing people who are doing brilliant, inspiring things. They say you should surround yourself with people who inspire and motivate you, don’t they? Here’s a few who’ve done just that this month:

Rubes is a phenomenal baker and an even lovelier human. She has recently embarked on the adventure of running an at-home bakery and it’s been an absolute joy to watch. I honestly dont know where she gets the energy - she’s absolutely killing it! Rubes is refreshingly honest about the realities of building a business, sharing the good bits and the nitty-gritty-shitty bits too. If you’ve ever dreamt of turning a love of baking into something bigger, she’s an absolute must follow.

, The Cinnaman
I’m so pleased I stumbled across Majed’s writing (and his beautiful photography) here on Substack. His writing on ‘The Cinnaman’ is part food diary, part love letter to the UAE and part excuse to keep eating and writing about it! Which is a mission I can very much get behind!

, Bite of Delight
Leslie is one of those people I feel very lucky to have crossed paths with. We’re quickly becoming good friends and I find her approach to food genuinely inspiring. Bite of Delight is all about adventurous but approachable recipes - and is the kind of food that brings a bit of travel, colour and joy into real home kitchens. She writes beautifully about Turkish food, cooking for the people you love and making meals feel special without making them impossible. I have a feeling you’ll enjoy her writing just as much as I do.

And that’s it for this month’s Kitchen Table!

Thank you, as always, for hanging out with me for a while. And for being so bloody lovely about all the recent changes. It means far more than you probably realise.

Before I disappear in search of something sweet, I thought it might be helpful to share a quick overview of what you can expect from The Cookbook Kitchen going forward.

If you’ve been here for a while, you’ll know by now that I’m forever getting excited about new ideas, so hopefully this makes everything a little easier to follow:

Free subscribers get:

• Regular posts from The Cookbook Kitchen

• Cook the Books cookbook deep-dives: reviews, recipe testing, photos and reflections from the books I’m spending time with

• Cook the Books LIVE chatting with cookbook authors

• Full access to Cook the Book Club posts, challenges and chats

• Cook the World stories exploring food cultures through recipes, ingredients and cookbooks

• The Kitchen Table round-ups with cookbook recommendations, recipe finds, creator spotlights and what’s coming up

• Most importantly, being part of a warm, welcoming community of people who love cookbooks, food and talking about both far more than is probably reasonable

Paid subscribers get:

• Cookbook requests: submit a book you’d like me to consider for Cook the Books

• Extra Cook the Book Club perks: including giveaways, extra challenges and bonus notes

• More detailed recipe reflections, photography notes and behind-the-scenes thoughts from my kitchen

• Bonus posts, extra recommendations, extended conversations and first looks at what I’m working on

• Subscriber-only gatherings, chats and events

• Voting on future cookbooks for Cook the Books and Cook the Book Club, plus future countries for Cook the World

• And, perhaps most importantly, the warm fuzzy feeling of helping this little corner of the internet continue to grow into something really rather special

I’m sure things will keep evolving as we grow, because they always do! Some months there’ll be plenty of things bubbling away and others will be shaped around a bigger feature, conversation, gathering or event.

Subscribe now

Whether you’re here for the recipes, the stories, the cookbooks or simply because you enjoy spending time around this table - thank you!

At the heart of what I’m doing here is fostering an amazing community of food lovers. I love hearing from you and your input shapes so much of what I do. Always feel free to jump into the comments and get involved!

You’re always welcome at The Kitchen Table.

Now then… I think it’s time for some cake.

Taisty Bytes is now The Cookbook Kitchen.

After just over two years, I’m saying goodbye to Taisty Bytes and hello to The Cookbook Kitchen. This is a change I’ve been mulling over for the better part of 18 months now. Which is a bloody long time to sit on something that, in hindsight, feels very obvious!

Before I get into it, I hope you’re doing really well! I took June off for my birthday and, if I’m truly honest, because I really needed rest. I’ve been feeling pretty damn poorly for going on 3 months now - and after multiple tests coming back saying that everything was clear, I decided to listen to my body and take the month out. I’m very glad to report I’m starting to feel much better!

I’m writing to you on the train home from a glorious solo trip to London, where I’ve spent the last 3 days getting lost in cookbook shops, visiting bakeries and watching the Devil Wear Prada in theatre.

Last night I enjoyed an unforgettable evening with the utterly joyful Sarit and Itamar from Honey & Co, at the Cafe Murano Book Club hosted by .

What’s in a name?

When I first came up with Taisty Bytes, the idea was that I was going to use AI to teach me how to cook.

I know. I know. I even roll my eyes at myself thinking back on what the hell was I thinking.

I very quickly realised that I’d taken a wrong turn in that decision. In equal part thanks to Mark and . Debora’s book Notes from Small Kitchen Island was the first ever cookbook I added to my shelves - and after a few pages in it was like a lightbulb moment *ding*. It may sound very naive of me but I truly didn’t realise that cookbooks weren’t just a collection of recipes. They’re stories, they’re memories… they’re adventure! I got lost in Debora’s notes and have gladly never looked back.

As much as I loved how snappy Taisty Bytes sounded, I fell out of love with what it represented.

If you’ve caught any of my Kitchen Table Talk chats so far, you’ll know I often talk about where people ‘fit’ in the food world. I say ‘fit’ in the loosest terms because you’ll never just be doing one thing, will you. For me, I’ve realised that thing is cookbooks. In the big, all-encompassing sense. The recipes, the design, the stories and of course the authors themselves.

Cookbooks, food and community.

That’s the heart of it, isn’t it. And I think The Cookbook Kitchen just says that so much better.

It gives me a clearer focus too. A wide enough scope to explore all the areas of food I love, but with enough structure to stop me running off in seventeen directions at once. Which, let’s be honest, is something I’m prone to quite often!

So, what’s changing?

Right, let’s get stuck into it because there are a few things I’m really excited about!

Some things are changing, some things are staying the same and there are a few bigger ideas bubbling away that I’m going to keep under wraps for now.

Gosh… Don’t you just hate it when people do that? 😉

Launching: Cook the Book Club

Over the past year, Cook the Books has become one of my favourite things I’ve ever done. What started as a way to actually use my cookbooks has turned into something I could never have imagined. I’m so bloody shy it’s untrue, honestly. But here I am, now a year in, having spoken to so many wonderful people. Not just in general day to day conversations, but even hosting a LIVE podcast. Who’d of thunk?!

I love talking to you guys about cookbooks, connecting over them, getting recommendations, discovering new authors… The more I’ve thought about it, the more the idea of turning that into more of a book club feels like such a bloody good idea.

And I hope you agree!

Here’s the foundation of the idea:

Each month, I’ll choose a cookbook and suggest a handful of recipes in different categories. We’ll all enjoy a month of cooking the recipes, discussing how we’re getting on along with any tips or advice, sharing images/videos and generally just connecting over a shared love of food and cookbooks.

At the end of the month, I’d love for us to get together on Zoom to talk about the book. And much like Cook the Books, I’ll also be inviting the authors along too!

And then, dreaming out loud a little here, I’d love this to grow into in person meetups! I’m thinking pot lucks (we all make and bring a dish), author Q&As, supper clubs, book swaps… safe spaces where we can talk about food and make new friends. Because how bloody hard is that as an adult??

Dreaming even bigger… Maybe even Cook the Book Club retreats. A few days away talking about cookbooks, cooking together or having a personal chef to make food from the book, eating well and spending time with lovely people..?

The core book club will be available to ALL subscribers - with specific perks available for paid subscribers.

I’ll be explaining all about how it’s going to work in the coming weeks. I’m pretty much there with everything - I just want to noodle on a few things before I roll it out properly!

I’d really love to know your thoughts on this.

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Cook the World

Cook the World is staying, but it will be more clearly focused around cookbooks too.

This will still be about exploring countries, cultures and food through recipes, ingredients and stories. Sometimes it’ll tie into the monthly book, but mainly I’ll be choosing a variety of cookbooks that share recipes from the chosen country.

Much like I did with Bread & War by and Cuisines from Odessa by Maria Kalenska for our first edition, visiting Ukraine.

The Kitchen Table

The Kitchen Table will continue as my monthly round up and community space.

This is where I share what’s happening, what’s coming up, cookbook recommendations, recipe finds, creator spotlights, events, podcast chats with other food folk and anything else I think deserves a place at the table.

Mentorship

I also want to take some time here to mention something that has been a huge part of all this evolution - mentorship.

Since January, I’ve been having regular sessions with , who has taken me under his wing - and I honestly can’t stress how valuable they’ve been.

Not because I sit there while Mark hands me a list of brilliant ideas and tells me exactly what to do, what to write and everything just happens. Actually, it’s quite the opposite…

Oftentimes (every time!) we meet, I go in bouncing with a million and one ideas and thoughts and plans. Mark listens, digests, asks the right questions, challenges me where I need it and then helps me tune and tweak the direction I’m already moving in.

A huge part of that has been confidence too. Not that you should need someone to tell you, ‘Oh Mark, that’s a great idea or that’s a great piece of writing’. I mean I won’t lie, it definitely does help! But, I mean more so in the sense that with a bit of outside help, you start trusting your own instincts.

I had a conversation with someone the other day who was saying how much they loved my last Cook the Books post and for the first time, the first time, I actually said ‘Thank you - I know, I’m really proud of that’.

I didn’t mean it in a big-headed way at all. Gosh I cringe at the thought. It was from a place of finally starting to feel comfortable and confident in what I’m doing.

Anyway, clearly in my next session I need some advice on how to waffle on so much! (Mark, make a note!)

Nevertheless, this change to The Cookbook Kitchen has come out of that process.

It feels really great to say this is what I care about, this is what I’m good at and this is where I’m going.

What happens next?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll start moving everything properly under The Cookbook Kitchen and I want to work out a rhythm that feels good for us all, without boxing everything into something too… rigid?

Having monthly features has worked up to now, but I definitely want to be looking at a different cadence to these posts. Some months there may be more I want to share. Others, perhaps one big thing might need the whole series of posts over the month to itself.

For now though, thank you. Whether you’ve been here since the early Taisty Bytes days or you’re brand new to my little slice of the internet. Thank you.

I’d genuinely love to know what you think.

Welcome to The Cookbook Kitchen.

Because that’s exactly how I’ve felt during my time spent with The Irish Bakery and The Irish Kitchen for this month’s edition of Cook the Books.

Both books have that rare thing a handful of cookbooks manage… they make you feel nostalgic for a home or place you’ve never lived in. For me, a lot of that nostalgia goes right back to growing up on a farm in rural Lancashire. The recipes and the images in these books… it was like looking through an old family album. It all felt very familiar.

Today we’re covering two gorgeous books from Cherie Denham, with photography by Andrew Montgomery: The Irish Bakery and The Irish Kitchen.

It’s a long one, so if you’re reading this via email - you may need to click ‘view entire message’.

I couldn’t help but smile seeing photos of the exact same china my grandma had in her crockery cabinet. Of old tea tins, now used to store sugar. And of course those doily-like net curtains… you know the ones!

The recipes themselves are practical and ones you’ll easily find yourself making in your day to day. I spoke to Cherie, who said that ‘recipes have got to work for you’, and I couldn’t agree more.

And that’s really the main way I approach planning for Cook the Books, too. When I’m prepping what I’m going to make, I’ll usually work my way through the whole book and pull out recipes that are going to form part of our meal plans. When I first sat down to do this with The Irish Bakery, I’d made it about halfway through before realising I’d written down every recipe so far! So, hopefully that gives you a good idea of what I mean by practical.

But, these aren’t just books filled with deliciously practical recipes. They are! But they’re also an invitation into the very soul of Ireland itself. Into the kitchens, the stories, the people and the places that make Irish food what it is.

One of the things I especially loved about both books is how they spotlight some of the finest artisan producers working in Ireland and Northern Ireland today. These are the growers, farmers, makers and preservers who give Irish food its backbone. Such as:

• Martry Mill: Ireland’s oldest working watermill, first recorded in 1323. The Tallon family have been milling there since 1859 and today it’s run by James Tallon Jnr (5th generation), who took over in 2020. The waterwheel was restored in 2012, and it’s still turning over 700 years later!

• Portnoo Market Garden: a small scale, chemical-free market garden in rural Donegal, built around working with nature, not against it. It sounds like the sort of place that’ll make you see what ‘in season’ is really supposed to mean.

• The Curly Pigs: free-range Mangalitsa pigs raised in Fermanagh, with that woolly coat and beautifully marbled meat. Huge advocates of a ‘slow-grown’ approach and proving why animal welfare and flavour are usually the same conversation.

• Wild Irish Seaweeds: a fourth-generation seaweed business on the west coast, harvesting and drying wild organic seaweed where they’ve been at it for over a century! It’s brilliant to see seaweed treated as a proper pantry ingredient rather than a novelty.

• Ryan’s Rhubarb: Derek Ryan, a fourth-generation grower in Oldtown, Co. Dublin, who’s been growing rhubarb for over two decades. They’re known for early-season forced rhubarb, the sort that’s almost luminous in colour.

• Long Meadow Farm: the McKeever family’s three-generation orchard in Armagh, where Peter McKeever senior planted the first Bramley apple tree on the home farm back in 1968. They now turn those apples into craft cider, juice and cider vinegar.

Meet the Authors

Cherie Denham is the cook, baker and writer at the heart of these books - and her recipes are genuinely phenomenal. She grew up on a farm in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, where seasonal eating was not a trend, it was simply how life worked. Cherie writes about being connected to the landscape as a way of life, about finding joy in simple pleasures and how she makes food that is cooked, shared and returned to.

Photography is done by the hugely talented Andrew Montgomery - and these books are very much a partnership. What I love about Andrew’s work is how he’s able to capture the soul of a place, not just the shot. He’s spoken about chasing mood through light, of late winter in particular and those misty mornings and the soft glow through a cracked kitchen window.

The books are also threaded through with essays by Kitty Corrigan, from Northern Ireland. Kitty has a real gift for pulling you out beyond the kitchen and towards the people who keep these traditions alive. She writes about the cooks, farmers, millers and wild harvesters who are each an integral part of this story.

The scale of the work that went into The Irish Bakery and The Irish Kitchen is honestly mind blowing. They talk about photographing pub recipes in actual Irish pubs, chasing the Christmas chapter through an old country house and clocking up thousands of miles to get it right.

You can feel that love and commitment in every page.

Cook the Books is my personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf. In each edition, I cook and bake a selection of recipes, photograph the process, and share what I’ve made and learned along the way.

Right then, let’s get into it, shall we!

Shah Biscuits with Crystallised Ginger

The Irish Bakery, p.138

My first bake had to be these Shah biscuits. The recipe makes a few dozen, which sounds generous until you realise they’re dangerously moreish.

Made with ground ginger, mixed spice and little nuggets of chopped crystallised ginger that you mix through the dough. Rolled into balls, you then flatten them with the base of a glass, which creates this almost flower like shape.

I dropped a batch off to my friends who own the local coffee shop and then did a neighbour round later on. Not just because I’m generous, mind you, but because left alone with the tin, I’d have polished the lot.

Soft White Loaf

The Irish Kitchen, p.46

No kitchen is complete without a go-to soft white loaf and I’ve been on the hunt for mine for a while. Luckily (but unsurprisingly), I think I’ve just found it.

This is hands down, the simplest and tastiest white loaf I’ve ever made. It’s been perfect as toast with a thick swipe of salted butter and yes, it did get the ultimate test too… a bacon butty, purely for research purposes.

Sultana and Cranberry Rock Buns

The Irish Bakery, p.176

Three is the magic number, because this third bake well and truly transported me straight back to childhood. We calls these rock cakes where I’m from up north and if you were ten (or under), you probably just called them rockies.

Fun story - My aunty was the chef at our primary school and lived next door, which meant I had a very specific kind of luck. If there were any left over from lunch that day, she’d fold one into a napkin and pop it in my backpack for a surprise treat.

She’d also make a version we’d call volcanoes, which had a little pool of jam in the top of each one.

These ones are crusty on the outside, scone-like on the inside and loaded with sultanas, dried cranberries and candied peel. An elite brew companion and I’m fully grateful to Cherie for reminding me how much I love them. The only problem now is I know how to bake them… so how do I stop myself making copious amounts?

Potato Bread

The Irish Bakery, p.80

Potato bread is an Irish staple that I’ve somehow managed 36 trips around the sun without ever trying. I know... absolute blasphemy. Consider this my official correction of that error!

And they’re so simple to make - potatoes, butter, plain flour and seasoning - and then suddenly you’ve got something that is going to revolutionise breakfast!

Less like bread and more like a thick pancake, these were originally baked on a griddle pan hung over the fire.

And of course, once you start down this road, you end up curious about how it’s the linchpin of the full Ulster fry Cherie writes about. I’ve got a feeling there’s some very important research coming my way soon…

Date and Walnut Loaf

The Irish Bakery, p.100

Next up was this delicious date and walnut loaf. I love a bake where you can bang everything into one bowl and then be tucking into it an hour later.

This loaf is dark, sticky, sweet and nutty - and one that feels like it belongs in a tin on the counter. It’s brilliant sliced thick and eaten as is, but it’s even better toasted the next day, when the edges caramelise a little.

Normally I’ll have a few slices of whatever I’ve made, then drop the rest off to friends and neighbours. This one though, I’m keeping all to myself.

Ginger Cake with Lemon and Ginger Icing

The Irish Bakery, p.270

We’re off to visit Cherie’s Aunty Evelyn for our final bake from The Irish Bakery, before I move on to something a little more savoury from The Irish Kitchen.

Deliciously moist, sticky, and bejewelled with stem ginger… this is the sort of cake where one slice is rarely enough!

Much like Aunty Evelyn, my grandma always had a Jamaica ginger cake tucked away in the cupboard, so it has a special place in my heart. It’s firmly in my top three favourite cakes of all time. It reminds me of home. Not just the physical place, but that feeling inside that makes you feel safe.

(Fun fact, my grandma’s sister was called Evelyn!)

I actually wrote a piece last year that (hopefully) captures my love for this cake, which I’ll share it towards the end of this carousel. It was written for a timed prompt ‘Coming home in time for’ and it was one of those memories that just fell out of me in a scant hour.

Probably one of the most emotive things I’ve written - so I daren’t try and edit it.

You can read it here »

It actually ended up being my submission for the Guild of Food Writers Newcomer Award too.

Irish Stew

The Irish Kitchen, p.202

Well, friends, we’re coming towards the end of our time with these gorgeous books and I’ve saved the best till last.

I spent the day smiling my way through the final couple of recipes - and here we are with Irish stew. This is, without a doubt, my all-time favourite meal. Ever.

I couldn’t make it look quite as aesthetically pleasing as Cherie’s, but it tastes bloody good all the same. With onions, carrots, tender lamb chunks that melt apart, chunky potatoes and beads of pearl barley - this is one of the heartiest recipes you’ll ever try.

I grew up on a farm in rural Liverpool and this was the one meal I’d always ask my mum to make. I still do. But after today, I can make it for her.

To me, this dish is home.

Guinness Wheaten Bread

The Irish Kitchen, p.128

Okay then, just one more! Cherie suggested I try the Guinness wheaten loaf, the one her friend Jenny swears by, and I’m happy to report Jenny is absolutely right.

It’s made with buttermilk and Guinness and both hearty and ridiculously moreish. The crumb is soft, the crust has that proper wheaty chew and it tastes like it belongs on the table with a big pot of something warm.

I ate mine the only sensible way, thickly buttered, finished with a pinch of flaky sea salt, alongside a bowl of that Irish stew.

If there’s a better end-of-edition meal than that, I’ve yet to find it.

My heart, and my belly, is full.

And just like that, our time with The Irish Bakery and The Irish Kitchen is over. What an absolute joy it’s been cooking and baking from these gorgeous books over the past few weeks. I’ve loved every minute.

They’ve made me hungry, yes, but they’ve also made me nostalgic. For familiar kitchens I’ve never stood in. For places I’ve never been. For the kind of ‘home’ you can taste in perhaps a ginger loaf, a rock cake, or a stew that’s been left to do its thing.

And look, if I didn’t want to visit Ireland before (I did) then I definitely do now. What an adventure it would be to follow in Cherie and Andrew’s footsteps and explore these fantastic places and people.

Either way, these two books have well and truly earned a permanent place on my kitchen cookbook shelf.

If you would like to pick up a copy of The Irish Bakery or The Irish Kitchen, you can do so the Montgomery Press website via link below:

Montgomery Press

Or, you can enter this month’s giveaway! See below for details:

Before we get to this month’s giveaway, a huge congratulations to who has won last month’s giveaway - a copy of Bread & War by ! If you can pop me a DM with your address, I’ll arrange shipping shortly and get it on its way to you.

To celebrate this month’s edition of Cook the Books, I’m giving away a copy of The Irish Bakery OR The Irish Kitchen (your choice) by Cherie Denham.

How to enter: Entry is free! All you need to do is be a subscriber to this Substack. That’s it!

Open internationally: Each month, a winner will be drawn at random from my current subscriber list, no matter where you are in the world. In some cases, it might be easier to order the book from a local retailer or site in your country, but I’ll make sure it finds its way to your kitchen, one way or another.1

Entries close for this month’s giveaway on June 20th 2026 and I’ll be in touch with the winner directly shortly after.

Good luck! And thank you, as always, for being here.

This week on Kitchen Table Talk, I sat down with the brilliant for a good natter about food writing, slow living and what it really looks like to build a creative life on your own terms.

Claire is an award-winning food writer ( Newcomer Award Winner 2023), a long-time blogger turned Substacker and a freelance writer who also works writing for herself, for a plethora of publications and as a ghostwriter. She’s also involved with the Guild behind the scenes, including helping out on their Substack.

Auntie Bulgaria's Kitchen

Two packets of Bourbons and a packet of Hobnobs

Greetings from the UK, where I’ve spent the last two weeks flinching at the price of everything, and catching up with friends and family. But mostly flinching at the price of everything…

Read more

a year ago · 41 likes · 25 comments · Claire Ruston

What we chatted about

• Life in rural Bulgaria: where actually is Bulgaria?? Plus a bit of context on living and working rurally when the internet is… temperamental.

• Vegetables, growing, and seasonal living: how gardening and ingredients shape what Claire cooks and writes about, with a very honest take on why ‘Christmas recipes in August’ is not the dream.

• Winning the Newcomer Award: what it felt like finding out on the night, what actually changes afterwards, and how the mentorship helped her focus on the kind of work she wanted to do.

• Pitching to publications: her honest take on how often pitches turn into a yes, why relationships matter, and the one thing you should do before pitching any magazine. Spoiler: really, really know it.

• Substack vs magazines: the joy of being published, what each gives her and why Substack still feels like the most energising place to write and connect.

• Ghostwriting: what it involves, how you find someone’s voice and why the groundwork matters more than people realise.

Claire also shared some fantastic advice for anyone thinking about pitching, applying for awards, or simply putting themselves out there a bit more.

Thank you to everyone who joined us live and for the great questions in the chat.

If you’re watching on the replay and you’ve still got questions for Claire, pop them in the comments and I’ll pass them on.

And finally, a HUGE thank you to Claire for joining me at the table! I really appreciate the time, the honesty and for being great company.

Welcome to Cook the World!

Hello friends and welcome to the very first edition of Cook the World!

This is my new monthly series where we’ll set off on a culinary expedition across the globe - exploring a different country each month through its recipes, ingredients, history and the people who cook it best.

The Itinerary

Food is hands down one of the very best ways to explore a new place. When I’m travelling, most of my days are centered around what food we’re going to try - as well as where and when we’re going to eat next!

A single dish can tell you about a country’s history, its landscape, its weather and its people. About what grows where, what’s been traded across borders and what’s passed down through generations.

Each month we’ll touch down somewhere new and spend a few weeks getting to know the place through its food. Here is what I’m thinking:

• We will look at the country’s food culture, history and pantry staples

• Cook through a handful of recipes and explore the history and stories behind them

• Where possible, have conversations with people who know these flavours best

• And, of course, I’ll be taking plenty of photographs from the kitchen!

Passport to New Foods

Something I’ve always loved about travelling is getting your passport stamped at the airport. As a child growing up in the 90’s, I used to love collecting stickers and cards and whatnot - and this love stayed with me into adulthood. I think it’s hard wired into those of us of that era? There’s something so exciting about filling up a passport with memories of the places you’ve visited.

So, I wanted to try and recreate a little bit of that excitement here. I’ve sketched out our very own Cook the World passport - which will be ‘stamped’ after each destination we visit. I know, I know… a little cheesy, but I’m a big kid. So you’ll have to humour me with this one!

Launch Crossover

For our launch month I wanted to do something a bit special - so we’re kicking off Cook the World with a crossover edition with Cook the Books!

This month’s Cook the Books pick was ’s Bread & War, an extraordinary book from an extraordinary human - about the bakers, cooks and volunteers feeding Ukraine through the ongoing war. I was floored by the stories I read and it was then that I knew our first stop on Cook the World had to be Ukraine.

Start here » You’ll find the first 4 recipes of our journey through Ukraine I made in that post, which has all come from Felicity’s book:

• Palyanytsya, a centuries-old enriched sourdough loaf with a signature crescent smile. Vital to the work Bake for Ukraine are doing.

• Syrniki, delicious little curd cheese pancakes (Felicity’s favourite!)

• A plum and poppyseed cake that was almost too good to put into words, and

• Gombovtsi, moreish curd cheese dumplings stuffed with cherries

For this post, we’re heading deeper still. 4 more recipes from across the country, a full introduction to one of the most fascinating food cultures in Europe and a celebration of a country that deserves so much more recognition than in a headline about war.

Right then. Seatbelts on? Ready for takeoff! Ukraine… here we come!

Welcome to Ukraine

Ukraine is the largest country entirely within Europe and has long been known as the breadbasket of Europe. Its vast steppes of black earth soil, which is chernozem in Ukrainian, is some of the most fertile farmland on the planet!

The more I’ve dug into Ukrainian cooking this month, the more I’ve realised just how vast and varied it really is. Let’s take a little whistlestop tour around:

Let’s start in the west, up in to the Carpathians and you’ll find yourself in places such as Lviv and Zakarpattia - enjoying dishes such as varenyky (sweet or savoury dumplings), sheep’s cheese and stuffed cabbages. Roam into the central heartlands around Kyiv and Poltava and you’ll find the classics such as borsch (a savoury soup), and salo (salt cured pork).

Next we’ll head down south to the Black Sea coast and to the city of Odesa - where you’ll find some of the tastiest fish dishes. Being a seaport, the food is a glorious mashup of Ukrainian, Jewish, Greek and Bulgarian flavours, to name a few! The streets are lined with vibrant markets, an abundance of veggies and fresh-off-the-boat fish.

And finally, if you venture up to the lush forests in the north of the country, the menu turns to mushrooms, berries, rye and game!

This book by illustrates what a truly fascinating place Odesa is. Definitely one to add to your cookbook shelf!

The Pantry

A few real cornerstones kept cropping up as I cooked and read my way through Ukrainian recipes this month:

• Bread, which I’ve discovered is way more than just food. It’s hospitality, ceremony, identity and now in light of the war… Hope. Each region has its own loaves, its own techniques and its own stories.

• Curd cheese (tvorog or syr) seems to be an absolute staple in kitchens, that turns up in pancakes, cakes, dumplings, pastries and breakfasts. Pretty much anything and everything!

• Sunflower oil

• Dill - and lots and lots of it! I adore dill and was thrilled to see that a lot of dishes are accompanied with dollops of sour cream and handfuls of this sprinkled overtop.

• Pickles and preserves, jars and jars of them. Cucumbers, tomatoes, sauerkraut, plums, cherries... Ukrainians are a dab hand at building their pantry ready for the long winter!

• Beets are the unsung hero. Found famously in borsch of course, but also salads, relishes and even in desserts.

• Honey, used everywhere from cakes and glazes to home remedies.

• Buckwheat (hrechka), a daily staple grain that’s super rich in fibre, nutty in flavour and deeply nourishing.

Markets, kitchens and tables

Let’s start with the markets, because blimey, they sound like an absolute spectacle! When I spoke with in our Substack live, she described Ukrainian markets as next level. Long tables groaning under the weight of fresh produce. Buckets of curd cheese being scooped out by the spoonful - and side note, curd cheese seems to feature in a lot of Ukrainian recipes!

Pickles by the jar, more varieties of mushroom than I knew existed, sunflower oil pressed in front of you, honey straight from the comb… I think you get the picture. Honestly, what I’d give for a Saturday morning wandering round one. Perhaps one day!

Then it’s home and into the kitchen, where Ukrainian home cooking seems to be all about 3 things… what’s in the pantry, what came back from the market that morning and what’s in season.

On a regular weeknight, you could expect a steaming bowl of borsch with a generous swirl of sour cream, a hunk of bread to mop the bowl clean, boiled potatoes finished with butter and dill, a few pickles fished from the jar and maybe a slice of salo or some sausage on the side. Simple, hearty and frankly all bloody delicious!

Right, I think that’s enough scene setting for now. Let’s get into the kitchen…

Dish 1: Paska

Paska is the Ukrainian Easter bread - and given we rolled into Easter just as I started cooking for this post, I think I timed it pretty damn well! It’s an enriched, gently sweet bread with a beautifully golden, glossy crust and an open, fluffy crumb. A bit like a brioche and a panettone - it also reminds me of a giant hot cross bun. (And I mean that as the highest compliment!)

You’ll find Paska baked a few different ways depending on the family and the region. Some are tall and cylindrical, extravagantly decorated with icing and sprinkles. Some are kept nice and simple. Some lean more citrusy or spiced, others go heavy on the dried fruit.

For mine I took the more traditional, rustic route (I find if you describe something as rustic, then a lot is usually forgiven!). It’s a wide, round, domed loaf with two braids crossing over the top, an egg wash for that gorgeous golden crust and finished with a generous bounty of raisins running all the way through.

Paska is one of the most symbolic dishes in Ukrainian cooking. Its name comes from the Hebrew Pesach and it sits right at the centre of the Ukrainian Easter table. Typically, families bake several loaves in the days before Orthodox Easter Sunday, then carry them in beautifully decorated baskets, alongside coloured eggs (called pysanky), butter, cheese and sausages to be blessed by the priest at the Easter morning service.

This year, families will have been celebrating Easter in the midst of war for the fifth consecutive year. Since the war began, Bake for Ukraine have run a charity paska tradition. This year, alongside their incredible partner bakers at DOF Centre in Mykolaiv, they delivered 300 free paskas to villages near the frontline.

“Paska for Ukrainians is a symbol of goodness, care, love, and family warmth.”
Yuliya, WCK Ukraine Response Director

World Central Kitchen’s Chefs for Ukraine team have been doing the same for five Easters running too, baking paska themselves at community kitchens and delivering it to frontline communities alongside meal kits, fresh vegetables and pysanky-dyeing kits for the kids!

This is just a couple of charities, but there are countless others in communities right across Ukraine that are doing their bit to bring warmth, hope and a feeling of home where it’s needed most.

If you would like to have a go trying to make Paska yourself, WCK have kindly shared a recipe so that you can enjoy a taste of Ukraine at home

Recipe for Paska

Dish 2: Syrnyk

For dish number 2, we’re making Syrnyk (not to be confused with syrniki, the curd cheese pancakes we made from Bread & War!).

This is a traditional Ukrainian curd cake (basically, almost a cheesecake!) that is typically made with syr (curd cheese) or cottage cheese and a little semolina, then topped (or in this case, bottomed) with golden, caramelised apples.

The cottage cheese gives it those lovely, slightly textured pops of curd running through the middle. Bloody delicious!

Syrnyk’s roots go back centuries. Long before it became a structured dessert, the base ingredient syr was a staple of the ancient Slavic diet. interestingly, curd based dishes were once tied to pagan sun worshipping rituals! Round, golden fried or baked cheese foods were cooked in honour of Yarila, the Slavic god of the sun and fertility, to ensure a good harvest for the year to come. Over the centuries, this ritual food slowly evolved into the dish it is today.

The version most recognised today is the Lviv syrnyk - created in the cafés of Lviv with farmer’s cheese baked into a delicate crust and often studded with raisins or candied fruit. Not surprisingly, it quickly won over the hearts (and stomachs!) of the locals and quick became one of the city’s signature treats.

Thanks to travellers and tourists, it’s become somewhat of a rather delicious ambassador for the city’s food heritage well beyond Ukraine’s borders!

Dish 3: Bitochki

Right, I think it’s time for something savoury - and this has got to be one of the most deliciously simple dishes I’ve cooked in ages.

Bitochki are tender little Ukrainian cutlets, found on family tables right across Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Mine were chicken, though you’ll find them just as often with pork, beef or a mix of the two. For this recipe, you slice 2 chicken breast up into 8 pieces, batter them flat with a rolling pin so they’re the same thickness - then dredge in flour, dunk in egg and shallow fry until deeply golden.

I served them the traditional way, with a generous spoonful of sour cream and a good sprinkle of fresh dill.

Speaking of Odesa… fish bitochki are considered a signature traditional dish of this region, reflecting its Black Sea culinary roots. Recipes typically use tyulka (sprats) or bychky (gobies) - and are often served with garlic sauce or marinated in tomato sauce

Bitochki are about as close to a Ukrainian national dish as it gets. Every household has its own version - and every Ukrainian it seems will tell you that their grandmother’s was the best.

The word bitochki actually comes from the Slavic root biti, which means to beat, strike or smash. Originally, they were made from prized cuts of meat that were tenderised by hand, a slightly grand dish for those who could afford the cut. Over time, as households needed to stretch what they had a little further, the meat got chopped, mixed with bread and shaped into the soft little patties.

A dish that began life on the tables of the well-off, eventually found its true home in family kitchens, all across the region!

In a country whose kitchens and pantries have had to weather wars, occupations and revolutions, recipes like this one have endured for a reason.

Dish 4: Pampushky

Last but absolutely not least, I have made pampushky. This was the dish I was most excited for since the moment I started planning this post!

Pampushky are soft, pillowy little buns made using an enriched dough - then doused in delicious garlicky oil the moment they come out of the oven. They are undeniably Ukrainian (no other country lays claim to them!), and they smell PHENOMENAL.

You would usually enjoy them served alongside a steaming hot bowl of borshch and used to soak up the broth. But… I snuffled mine straight from the baking tin.

Fun fact: pampushka is also the Ukrainian word for a gorgeous, plump woman. What a bloody brilliant word!

The word itself has actually been on quite a journey itself… pampushka is a diminutive of the older pampukh, which traces back via Polish pampuch to the German Pfannkuchen. Which literally means ‘pancake’. And it’s not just the word that travelled! According to a prominent food historian called William Pokhlyobkin, the actual baking and frying techniques arrived in Ukraine with German colonists who settled near the Black Sea in the second half of the 19th century. Ukrainians took those techniques and ran with them, naturalising the dough into something so completely their own that pampushky now belong nowhere else.

There’s a fantastic Ukrainian saying about all this that I came across, that goes: ‘If a woman cooks borshch for a man, it means she likes him. If she serves the borshch with garlic pampushky, she is in love.’ Which is rather bloody lovely, isn’t it!

Interestingly, there’s also a whole sweet side to the pampushky family - and they have their own name… the pampuchy. They are bigger and rounder than the garlic buns, these are filled with fresh fruit, berries, povydlo (which is like a thick fruit jam) or varenye (fruit preserves), then finished with a dusting with icing sugar. Pampuchy are traditionally served at Christmas.

Speaking of which, the city of Lviv has hosted an annual Pampukh Festival during Orthodox Christmas since 2008. In 2012, festival-goers set a Guinness World Record by building the world’s largest mosaic made entirely of doughnuts. Honestly, what a sentence!

And just like that, our first Cook the World expedition draws to a close - and we can add the very first stamp to our passport!

Ukraine has been such a wonderful place to begin this series. A country that’s so much more than the headlines, with a food culture rooted in incredible produce, deep tradition and has absolutely blown me away with how delicious every dish is.

If you’ve cooked any of these recipes, or you’ve got Ukrainian dishes of your own that you love, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Next Stop: Korea 🇰🇷

In May we’ll be swapping sunflower oil for sesame oil and dill for gochujang, as we make our way to Korea. I adore Korean food and I’ve picked up some fantastic books ready for our next leg of the journey!

If you’ve got any Korean recipes or suggestions of things you think I should make, drop them in the comments!

Thanks for reading.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and would like to support my page, you can help me keep creating, you can do so via the button below

Tip me a bag of flour!

Though I suppose Bread & War isn’t technically a cookbook. Not in the usual sense anyway, and not like the books we’ve featured here on Cook the Books so far. But I digress…

Bread & War is the extraordinary book from that follows the bakers, the cooks and the volunteers feeding Ukraine through the ongoing war.

For the last few years, Felicity has been travelling across Ukraine - meeting with and connecting to people and communities across the country. She’s sat at kitchen tables and helped out in basement bakeries. She’s visited cafés that have somehow stayed open and also places where the doors are gone altogether.

This book gathers their stories, ordinary people doing something remarkable. The bakers turning out loaves through bombardment and the volunteers running mobile kitchens. Restaurants that have become community canteens and of home cooks, somehow keeping a starter alive through power cuts and air raids.

I’ll be totally honest - I thought I was pretty clued up on what the situation was over there. I had read articles and watched programs and… well, let’s just say I didn’t realise how naive I was.

It’s an unflinching book that doesn’t shy away from the horrors of what’s happening there, and yet - never a despairing one. As Felicity herself writes, “It is a story of unbearable loss, of courage, and a strong, proud Ukrainian heritage that refuses to die. And somehow, this story is always about bread.”

This month also marks the launch of my new monthly series, Cook the World, where we travel somewhere new and explore the country through its cooking and food history.

Our adventures start in Ukraine, and Bread & War is the reason we begin there. A huge part of Ukraine’s story right now is the war, but there’s so much more to the country than that.

Dishes like palyanytsya and syrniki have been a part of Ukrainian life for centuries and as we cook through them, I’ll share a little of what I’ve learned about each one. Next week, we’ll continue our expedition around Ukraine, learning and making more delicious recipes from this fascinating country - one that’s long known as the breadbasket of Europe.

Meet the Author

Felicity Spector is a London-based journalist with more than three decades in national and international news, alongside a parallel life as a respected food writer and creator.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Felicity has worked closely with Bake for Ukraine, helping document and support the effort to get fresh bread and essential food supplies to the people who need them most. Her connection to the country is a personal one too… her family roots are in Dnipro, the city her grandparents left for London in the early 1900s, like so many Jewish families of that era.

I had the absolute privilege of sitting down with Felicity for this month’s Cook the Books Live, and what a conversation it turned out to be. We talked about Ukraine’s food culture and how fertile and abundant the country is, from the wheat and sunflower oil to the buckwheat and rye. And the markets that Felicity described as genuinely next level.

We spoke about the jars of pickles and preserves that keep families going when the shops shut for weeks on end. About restaurants cooking whatever they’ve got on the shelves for the people defending their cities. About the iconic Bake for Ukraine mobile bakery - a wood fired, generator powered, water-tank-equipped workhorse that can turn out a couple of hundred loaves when and where they’re needed most.

More than anything though, it was a conversation about community. About what ordinary people are capable of when everything around them is anything but ordinary. And about how food, however simple, is the centre of all things.

Cook the Books is a personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf. In each edition I’ll cook and bake a selection of recipes, photograph the process and reflect on what I’ve made and learned.

This time, as we’re crossing over with Cook the World, we’ll also be taking a look at the history and traditions of the dishes too!

Right then, let’s get into it, shall we!

For my first bake from Bread & War, this felt like the perfect place to begin… bread.

Palyanytsya is a Ukrainian enriched sourdough with a deep, crackling crust and a dense but fluffy crumb. The taste reminds me of a cross between a sourdough and a brioche.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram you’ll have seen that I’ve just started getting into sourdough baking, and knowing when a loaf is under or overproofed is still very much a work in progress. That said, I think the crumb looks ok and it tasted absolutely delicious - so I’m pretty damn proud of how it turned out for a first attempt!

Palyanytsya is actually one of the oldest loaves in Ukrainian baking. A round, hearth-baked (that means not baked in a tin or Dutch oven!) wheat loaf with a signature crescent smile cut across the top, it’s been on Ukrainian tables for centuries, served at festivals, gatherings and family meals.

So traditionally it would have been baked in wood-fired masonry ovens out in the rural parts of the country. It was something of a treat - a step up from the everyday rye loaf, and considered quite the luxury.

As a symbol of hospitality, home and national identity - in 2013 it was even honoured with its own Ukrainian postage stamp!

The Shibboleth Test: I’ve discovered that since 2022, palyanytsya has been used as a sort of cultural password at Ukrainian checkpoints. The ts sound is famously difficult for Russian speakers to pronounce correctly (and me!) so being asked to say it out loud became a quick way of identifying Ukrainian natives from outsiders.

“This recipe for Ukrainian palyanytsya bread was created by Katrya Kalyuzhna and Mykola Nevrev for Bake for Ukraine. It’s been baked in their mobile bakery and by sourdough bakers all over the world.” - Felicity Spector

If you’d like to give it a go yourself, you can download the recipe as part of the Bakery Kit provided by Bake for Ukraine below. Along with the recipe for Palyanytsya, you will also find one for Darnitskiy too, as well as information on how to get involved with their #BakeForUkraine fundraising campaign:

Bake For Ukraine Bakery Kit

1.18MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

On to bake number two and to a dish that just so happens to be Felicity’s favourite food from Ukraine - syrniki! After devouring a whole plate in one sitting, I can absolutely see why.

The best way I can describe syrniki is that they’re like a pancake and cheesecake had a baby - small, dumpy pancakes that are slightly crispy on the outside and soft as anything in the middle. This recipe is made with a fresh curd cheese called tvorog1 (you can find this in most supermarkets or Eastern European / Polish food shops), eggs, flour and a little sugar - then fried in sunflower oil for about 3 minutes each side until golden.

Quick note: I found that my mix was a touch wet, so added 3 spoons of flour rather than the 2 suggested in the recipe and they turned out perfectly. Or at least they did to me!

This is a beloved dish across Ukraine and is a great example of turning the simplest pantry staples into something utterly delicious. I’ve noticed that curd cheese pops up quite a lot in Ukrainian cooking. Clearly a real cornerstone of home cooking!

I served mine with a big dollop of sour cream and made up a quick blueberry compote to drizzle over the top. Bloody good!

Syrniki are familiar across a lot of Eastern Europe - found on Belarusian, Polish, Lithuanian and Russian tables too. And historians can’t quite pin down where they officially originated from. Much like a lot of recipes I suppose!

The word syr comes from an old Slavic word meaning sour milk or fresh cheese, which is exactly what they’re made from! What we do know is, they’ve been enjoyed across the regions for centuries.

For a long time, syrniki were considered a Soviet comfort food. The kind of thing you grew up eating at your grandmother’s kitchen table. But since the war, there’s been a movement to reclaim dishes like this one for what they actually are… deeply and particularly Ukrainian.

I read a fantastic article about syrniki on Taste where Ukrainian chef Anna Voloshyna says: “Right now everything that is truly Ukrainian is a strong point of affection and protection. With the war, it’s time for us to dig deeper and figure out what’s ours and how we can build on that.”

If you come across syrniki on a menu, please - make sure you order them immediately!

Our next stop for bake number three is Lviv - to the largest city in Western Ukraine, to be precise! And to a recipe Felicity brought back from one of her visits there when visiting her friend Katrya, where apparently there’s always a slice of cake on offer. After a slice (and then another), I can wholeheartedly see why this one’s a firm favourite.

It’s a soft, subtly sweet cake with little pops of poppyseed running all the way through and a layer of sticky, caramelised plums on top that are moreishly tart against the sweetness. It’s such an easy cake to throw together too! I served mine with a big dollop of sour cream on the side, which felt very Ukrainian of me.

I shared a slab with my neighbour. Her verdict, and I quote, was: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

It’s one of those cakes where you wonder where it’s been all your life.

Walk through almost any Ukrainian village and you’ll find poppies growing near every home, both wild and cultivated - that bloom in bright red bursts through the summer. The seeds are harvested, dried and then stashed away to be used in cakes, breads and pastries throughout the year.

Poppyseeds are traditionally crushed by hand using a wooden pestle called a makohin and a ceramic bowl, called a makitra.

In Ukrainian folk culture, I’ve found that the poppy carries about a dozen or so meanings. A symbol of the sun, of abundance and prosperity, of beauty and pride, of good sleep and protection from evil. The seeds themselves are woven through some of the country’s most beloved bakes, from makivnyk (the Christmas poppyseed roll) to kutia (a wheat and poppyseed dish that traditionally opens the Christmas Eve table).

Plums also sit close to the heart of Ukrainian cooking, present in a wide variety of recipes - such as varenyky (which are like half moon shaped stuffed dumplings), in jams and povidla (a plum butter) and in plum cakes baked across the country.

Together with poppyseed, you’ve pretty much got two of the most distinctly Ukrainian flavours on a plate!

The final leg of our journey sees us to Zakarpattia - and to our final recipe, Gombovtsi.

This is a traditional Ukrainian dish that’s made with curd cheese dumplings, stuffed with cherries and rolled in buttery, crisp breadcrumbs. I served mine on a big dollop of sour cream, with a quick sweet cherry compote I’d made, spooned over the top. Utterly delicious.

I’m pretty damn chuffed with these ones, and not just because they were my first ever dumplings I’ve made... I also baked a sourdough loaf from scratch to make the breadcrumbs! Sure they’re a bit rustic looking, but I reckon that’s half the charm.

As I mentioned, Gombovtsi come from Zakarpattia - this is the southwestern corner of Ukraine that nestles up against Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Tucked away on the far slopes of the Carpathian mountains, it’s a region with gorgeous views and a food culture all of its own. One that has been shaped by centuries of bumping shoulders with its neighbours and a long stint inside the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Interestingly, Gombóc is the Hungarian word for dumpling! So it seems that gombovtsi clearly shares the same roots with the Hungarian szilvás gombóc, which are also fruit stuffed dumplings rolled in buttery breadcrumbs that you’ll find on tables right across the old empire.

What makes the Ukrainian version distinctly its own though, is the use of curd cheese in the dough. Where as the Hungarian gombóc are usually built around potato.

I told you at the top of this post that I’d finished Bread & War in tears. That’s true.

The weight of this book is real. Felicity has witnessed and written about not only the worst of humanity, but also some of the very best of it too. And the two live side by side on every page.

I’d been reading Felicity’s Substack for a couple of months before the book arrived, so had already begun to understand the heaviness. But it was while I was cooking these recipes that the stories really hit home - I was genuinely feeling a connection to the people of Ukraine through food.

And so, I’ve closed this book falling in love with Ukrainian food - and with a deep respect for its people, its culture and its continued story.

We so often talk about Ukraine as a country at war. Full stop. But it’s so much more than that. It’s also wheat fields and sunflower oil, bakeries and family kitchens. A beautiful, fertile landscape - and I’d love to hike along the Carpathian mountain range one day. It’s got truly inspiring people and a food culture that goes back centuries. It deserves to be told as more than just a headline.

Bread & War is less a recipe book and more a recipe for hope. Of hope.

If you would like to help support the work that Bake for Ukraine are doing, Felicity has set up a JustGiving page - all donations are gratefully received and every penny goes straight to those who need it.

Felicity's JustGiving Page

If you would like to pick up a copy of Bread & War, you can do so via my Bookshop.org link2 below:

Buy Bread & War

Or, you can enter this month’s giveaway! See below for details:

Before we get to this month’s giveaway, a huge congratulations to , who has won last month’s giveaway - a copy of Kitchen Table by ! If you can pop me a DM with your address, I’ll arrange shipping shortly and get it on its way to you.

To celebrate this month’s edition of Cook the Books, I’ll be giving away 2 copies of Bread & War by Felicity Spector.

How to enter: Entry is free! For your first chance at winning - all you need to do is be a subscriber to this Substack.

Subscribe now

For your second chance to win a copy, you will need to head to my latest post on Instagram linked below and follow the instructions.

Visit my Instagram

Open internationally: Each month, a winner will be drawn at random from my current subscriber list, no matter where you are in the world. In some cases, it might be easier to order the book from a local retailer or site in your country, but I’ll make sure it finds its way to your kitchen, one way or another3.

Entries close for this month’s giveaway on May 23rd 2026 and I’ll announce the winner in the next edition of Cook the Books on May 24th 2026.

Good luck! And thank you, as always, for being here.

A little butter goes a long way!
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Buy me some butter

In today’s Kitchen Table Talk, the brilliant Andrew Dargue (founder of ) joins me for a Q&A.

Over the past couple of weeks, I asked you for your questions for Andrew - and you sent in some excellent ones! Our chat ended up as a great mix of practical cooking tips, thoughtful career advice and a sort of behind-the-scenes look at restaurant life that was very interesting.

If you don’t know Andrew’s story, he and his partner Donna founded Vanilla Black back in 2004 - first in York, before moving to London. Their approach was a simple concept, really… that vegetarian cooking should be every bit as exciting, confident and considered as any other serious kitchen.

A few things we covered:

• ’s question about young people going into cheffing, and Andrew’s honest take on the realities of kitchen life, plus the importance of having a plan and learning somewhere you can really build skills.

• Heat control, and the small habits that make a big difference, including being more active with the pan and the heat rather than letting it run away from you.

• A really useful restaurant habit: par-cooking and why it helps, plus a surprisingly good tip on microwaving potatoes for mash.

• Andrew’s pick for an underused ingredient: soy sauce, used as seasoning to add depth, not just as a dip.

• ’ question about the unique challenges of vegetarian cooking, and Andrew’s take on why making veg feel truly exciting takes more thought, more technique and more imagination than people often realise.

We also touched on whether Vanilla Black might return in some form - and Andrew’s answer is refreshingly realistic about the current restaurant climate.

Thank you to everyone who joined us live and for your questions throughout the show.

If you’re watching on the replay or listening on the podcast and you’ve still got questions for Andrew, pop them in the comments! I’ll pass them on.

And finally, a HUGE thank you once again to Andrew for joining me at the table. I really appreciate the time, the honesty and for being brilliant company.

You might know Felicity as a journalist, a fantastic food writer, a Great Taste Awards judge, or from her extraordinary book Bread and War - which follows the people and places feeding Ukraine through the ongoing invasion.

One thing I loved hearing Felicity talk about was Ukraine’s food culture itself. It’s such a fertile country, with incredible wheat, sunflower oil, buckwheat and rye. She describes how the produce in the markets are genuinely next level - and how even the supermarkets, in places that are hit again and again, can still be astonishingly well stocked.

We talked about the things that don’t always make the headlines, but are everything when you’re living through it. We discuss the jars of pickles and preserves that keep people going when the shops shut for weeks, restaurants cooking whatever they’ve got for the people defending their cities and the sheer determination to keep traditions alive, even when life is anything but normal.

Felicity also shared more about Bake for Ukraine’s mobile bakery, an old but incredibly effective setup that’s built for tough conditions (wood-fired oven, generator, water tank), that can turn out a couple of hundred loaves when it’s needed most.

Thank you so much to everyone who joined us live, commented and asked such thoughtful questions. If you’re watching this back on replay, we hope you enjoy.

Links mentioned:

• Felicity’s JustGiving Page

• Bake for Ukraine (site + packs)

• Cuisines of Odessa, by Maria Kolenska

Hello friends and welcome back to The Kitchen Table!

It’s Easter weekend, so hopefully you’re reading this with a chocolate egg or two within arm’s reach. Or at least a bag of Mini Eggs…

First up, thank you for the brilliant reception to the first edition of The Kitchen Table. I’m genuinely chuffed you enjoyed it as much as I did putting it together.

March was pretty full-on! The March edition of Cook the Books featured Kitchen Table, with my first Cook the Books Live guest - who couldn’t have been a better first guest! We also launched the first Kitchen Table Talk with the hugely inspiring - someone I’ve been watching the past couple of years now and was also an integral part in me starting all of this.

A lot of ‘firsts’ this past month!

You can read or watch the posts mentioned above, here »

• Cook the Books / Live: Kitchen Table and Emily Cuddeford

• Kitchen Table Talk: Hope Batchelor

Now it’s April (already??) and it’s time for the first edition of Cook the World - with the first country we’re visiting being Ukraine. I hesitate to share what’s on my list to make, as I’m forever changing my mind… but here’s what I’m thinking of for the next couple of weeks:

• Paska - commonly known as Easter bread!

• Sochniki - a sweet cheese pastry

• Medovik - a honey cake

• Pampushky - garlic buns

• ’ Curd Cake with Caramelised Apples

I will also be baking from Felicity Spector’s book ‘Bread and War’ for this month’s Cook the Books. See below in the Coming Up section for more details.

If you’re Ukrainian and would like to suggest a recipe for me to try, I’d be thrilled! Pop me a comment with any suggestions:

Leave a comment

Also, I’ve finally started baking with Yeast Witherspoon, my sourdough starter. Yes, after nearly eight months of feeding the thing every day like she’s a small pet, I’m actually using it. On the plus side, she’s strong, stable and making some pretty decent loaves. I’ve been practicing being on the other side of the camera and sort of recording the progress. Here’s my latest one, which includes a little oven drama…

April

April marks the launch of Cook the World, and we’ll be starting our journey in Ukraine. Our Cook the Books pick for the month is Felicity Spector’s Bread and War - a powerful account of the war in Ukraine told through the lens of bread and baking.

• Cook the World: Ukraine

• Cook the Books: Bread and War

• Cook the Books LIVE: Felicity Spector

  • April 7th at 7pm - Click here to register

    Felicity has spent years travelling back and forth to Ukraine, helping set up a mobile bakery with Bake for Ukraine, bringing fresh bread to front line communities. It’s an extraordinary book about food, resilience and hope.

• Kitchen Table Talk: Andrew Dargue of Vanilla Black

  • April 14th at 9am - Click here to register

    Andrew, co-founded Vanilla Black, an award-winning Michelin-recommended vegetarian restaurant in London that was described as one of the most exciting meat-free venues in the world. We’ll be chatting about food and what it’s meant in his life - then we’ll be gleaning some of that invaluable knowledge as we chat all about food: Ideas, techniques, recipes, the lot! If you’ve got a question you’d like me to ask, pop it in the comments.

May

Our second destination for Cook the World will be talking us to Korea! Which means big flavours, lots of comfort food, lots of chilli and me having the excuse to put gochujang in absolutely everything.

We will also have a double whammy for Cook the Books, as I’ll be cooking and baking from both The Irish Bakery and The Irish Kitchen by Cherie Denham.

• Cook the World: Korea

• Cook the Books: The Irish Bakery & The Irish Kitchen

• Cook the Books LIVE: TBC

• Kitchen Table Talk: TBC

If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s a good time! There’s a lot coming and it’s all free. Hit that button and I’ll see you in your inbox.

Subscribe now

There’s only so many books that I can feature on Cook the Books - but there are also so many incredible books out there that deserve a moment in the spotlight too. So, this is Cookbook Corner - a space where I can share more books that are on my radar, whether they’re new releases, old favourites or ones I’ve just stumbled across that I thought you might enjoy.

And if you’ve read any of these or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

How I Cook by

This is one of those cookbooks you actually use, not one that just sits pretty on the shelf. Ben’s basically taken all the restaurant know-how and distilled it into something you can nick for your own cooking at home. It’s a practical cookbook and full of the sort of food that makes you think ‘yeah, I could smash that on a Tuesday’. No faff and just really solid cooking! With plenty of little tips that make everything taste better.

The Farm Kitchen by (Abby Allen)

I’m a farmer’s lad at heart, so anything with farm in the name has basically already got me! Abby’s book pulls inspiration from the field, farm, garden and the coast, with chapters organised by season. I also love that it isn’t just recipes, there are little essays in each section on food and farming in the UK right now, from regenerative farming to growing your own and food diversity.

Food You Want to Eat by Thomas Straker

This is a cookbook that does exactly what it says on the tin. Food you actually fancy. Big flavours, simple moves and recipes that make you put the book down and go straight to the kitchen. When reading through I often find myself going ‘ohhh, so that’s how you do it’. As Angela Hartnett put it: ‘I want to eat everything in this book’. So do I, Angela. So do I.

Leave a comment

Sure, my ‘saved for later’ recipe list is never ending (and I bet yours is, too!) but nevertheless - these are some recipes I’ve come across that deserve to be on it as well.

This recipe for Pad Kra Pao by looks and sounds insanely delicious. It’s quick to make, spicy, a bit addictive by the sound of it and I’m fully here for the crispy fried egg situation! Basically the makings of a perfect weeknight dinner.

Now, I’m still yet to enter my mushroom era - and I fully blame being forced to eat tinned button mushrooms as a kid. People have since tried to convince me it doesn’t have to be that way, but nothing has really drawn me back in. That was until I stumbled across this recipe for Blooming Enoki Mushrooms - and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since! So clearly I need to buy some and give it a go.

I love watching the Dish podcast on Youtube and this week they featured a Pomegranate Negroni by that looked like a must try. I’m a sucker for anything pomegranate, so this was going straight on the list.

Emily from The Copperspoon Inn & Tavern appeared on my feed with this recipe for Braised Pork Belly and Eggs, and I audibly went, ‘OH’. You’re welcome.

If you fancy an Easter bake that feels a bit special, then this recipe for Pastiera Napoletana by is just gorgeous. Ricotta, cooked wheat, loads of citrus and a really lovely story in the post too - about Apulian and Neapolitan food traditions colliding in the best way.

One of the best things about being part of this community is discovering and sharing people who are doing brilliant, inspiring things. They say you should surround yourself with people who inspire and motivate you, don’t they? Here’s a few who’ve done just that this month:

Lisa McLean, Culinary Repertoire

Every now and then, a person comes into your life who’s a phenomenal force for good, endlessly supportive and incredibly talented at what they do. Lisa is one of those people. Her Substack is a treasure trove of recipes, spice knowledge, techniques and I hope she won’t mind me saying… ‘nerdy-but-readable’ food science.

Kate Ryan,

Kate and I met on a food writing retreat last year and I’ve been a fan of her work ever since. She’s an award-winning food writer that’s championing Irish food and culture, from farm to fork and more. If you like great writing that’s funny, honest and super relatable - she’s one to follow.

Aki Moroto, Aki Moroto

Aki is a hugely talented chef who can seriously cook, but also seriously write. His Substack is packed full of delicious looking food, plus stories that pull you in before you even realise you’re reading a recipe. Definitely worth following - but just be warned, you’ll come away hungry!

And that’s this month’s Kitchen Table! Thanks for hanging out at The Kitchen Table again and for being so bloody lovely about the first edition.

If you’ve got any Ukraine recipe suggestions I should try, or you’ve got a strong opinion on sourdough (I’m all ears - Ha!), pop it in the comments.

Have a cracking Easter weekend and I’ll see you next week for Cook the Books LIVE with Felicity.

If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of it, hit subscribe - it’s free and means the world. And if you know someone who’d enjoy this, send it their way. The more the merrier at this table.

Subscribe now

You might know Hope from MasterChef UK (Series 20), from her gorgeous Substack Something Very Good, or from the brilliant community of nearly 250,000 she’s built across Youtube, TikTok and Instagram. Hope made the leap from a career in the corporate world to being a full time food, lifestyle and beauty content creator and she’s not looked back since.

We talked about everything from core food memories, the moment she realised food could be more than a passion, life after MasterChef and the reality of building a food career from scratch.

She shares honest advice for anyone dreaming of making the leap themselves, how she fits 48 hours into a 24 day, how she protects her love of baking and cooking now that it’s her job - and much, much more.

Hope is a baker, chef, recipe developer, leftover enthusiast (wait until you hear about the ‘use first’ container) and someone who genuinely believes food is about bringing people together. This conversation proves exactly that!

Once again, thank you so so much to Hope for joining me for our very first edition of Kitchen Table Talk. We hope you enjoy!

Yesterday was our monthly gathering of ’s writing group - and as always, I’ve come away inspired and with a head full of ideas. If you caught my last post from this gathering, you’ll know the prompt Food from another place took me to a curry house in Tokyo. If you didn’t, you can read it below »

With these sessions, Mark shares a prompt a week before we meet and you’re given 1 hour to write whatever comes to mind. Then, during the gathering we talk about what came up in the writing, how we approached it and, for those who feel comfortable, we read our words aloud.

I actually missed last month’s prompt entirely, as I couldn't find the time. Which is a lame excuse really, isn’t it - because who can’t find a spare 1 hour in the roughly 730 we have in a month!

This month’s prompt was: I didn’t, but I like it now

Unlike the others we’ve written from, this one didn’t spark anything at all. Not a jot. Maybe this was going to be the second month a row I flunked! Then, the day before our gathering, inspiration finally struck.

It’s not finished and there’s a few bits I’d change, take out or add in - but here’s what I wrote in the hour:

I didn’t, but I like it now.

The smell alone was enough. That bitter, burnt-earth fog that hung around certain family members like a second coat. I’d see them coming, arms wide for a hug, and brace myself. Not for the squeeze, no no - but for the wave of…

Coffee that hung heavy on the breath, coffee on the jumper, coffee in their hair, coffee orbiting them like some invisible force field of poo. I’d hold my breath and try to smile through it… all the while feeling that tug at the back of my throat.

Mornings on the farm were no different - each one the kitchen was filled with that grotesque fog before anyone had said a word. Kettle. Spoon. Mug. Silence. Before coffee, nothing existed. No plans, no conversation, no functioning adults. Just zombies in dressing gowns staring into their mugs like the meaning of life was floating around in there somewhere.

You’d barely get three words out before the finger went up. No eye contact was needed - just the finger. ‘Coffee first.’

Grandma, though… Grandma was a tea drinker. Hers was the only mug in that kitchen that didn’t smell like the devil. She’d sit at that big round mahogany table with her cup of tea (most probably her sixth of the day already) whilst the rest of them performed their rancid worship, and I’d think… at least someone in this house has sense.

I carried this well into adulthood and I proudly wore it like a badge. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’ I’d say, with a little smugness, almost as if it made me interesting. It didn’t.

I can’t tell you the exact moment it turned - this initiation into adulthood. Nobody can, can they? One day you’re that kid holding your breath through the hugs, and the next you’re standing in a kitchen at 6am, staring into a mug like the meaning of life is floating around in there somewhere. unable to form a sentence until you’ve had your first sip.

I jest, partly, because it’s actually become so much more than the drink itself. Most days, Ben and I head out on our morning walks with Hiro. I circle the park, whilst he makes a beeline for the coffee hut on the beach. Two coffees please. (and a bacon butty or croissant if we’re feeling fancy!). He meets me on the loop and we walk. We talk about the day, the week, whatever needs untangling. Sometimes we plan. Sometimes we just wander and let the conversation go wherever it wants.

It’s my favourite part of the day. Not the coffee itself, though that’s is absolutely an integral part. It’s the ritual. The walk. The sea air mixing with that smell, the one that used to make me recoil, now carried something different entirely.

Comfort. Routine. Us.

Funny, isn’t it? The thing I couldn’t stand has actually become the thing I’d miss the most.

I’ll leave you with Hiro on the beach

Even if you don’t share your own piece, simply listening to how others build a world, pace a paragraph, or find the emotional core of a story is wildly inspiring.

To join the writing group, along with an Abundance of other fantastic perks - visit Mark’s substack via the button below:

Visit Mark Diacono's Substack

A quick reminder that tomorrow I’ll be speaking to the lovely Hope Batchelor for our very first Kitchen Table Talk!

Hope and I will be chatting about her shift from full-time project management into food and content creation, what it really looks like to make that leap, how she manages the workload, and what’s next.

It’s tomorrow, March 26th at 6pm - Click here to register

Hope to see you there, but if you can’t make it live then don’t worry - the recording will be available for free to watch later that evening.

Subscribe now

When I first picked up Kitchen Table, I thought I knew what to expect. A nice bakery cookbook with tasty bread recipes, some pastries, delicious looking cakes… maybe a sourdough chapter. What I wasn’t expecting was to find myself captivated by how they obtain their olive oil from a single producer in Greece called Honest Toil - which is bought by the pallet load at the start of each harvest. Or how their flour producers Wildfarmed works with a network of farms promoting soil-focused regenerative farming.

Kitchen Table: Simple Things Made Well is the debut cookbook from and Rachel Morgan, the phenomenal pair behind Twelve Triangles, Edinburgh’s award winning and highly acclaimed bakery.

Each chapter in Kitchen Table is built around an ingredient and the person, or people, behind it. Emily and Rachel have spent over a decade building these relationships, some from the very earliest days of Twelve Triangles, and you can truly feel that on every page. The recipes aren’t just delicious (they are, but we’ll get to that!) - it’s their way of giving back to the community. Their community.

I think that if at the core of your book, your message is ‘this is who grew it, this is who made it and this is what we love to do with it…’ well, I can’t think of anything better than that!

I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Emily for our very first Cook the Books Live conversation, where we talked about how the book came together, the philosophy behind the recipes and what ‘simple things made well’ actually looks like in practice.

From the early days of Twelve Triangles, when Emily was baking four loaves a day that didn’t sell out, to how she trained over sixteen bakers to make the same recipe and why that process is exactly what makes these recipes so thorough. We talked about the producers, the photography and what ended up on the cutting room floor (an entire feasting chapter, no less!). You can watch the full conversation above.

As this was our very first Cook the Books Live, I'd love to know what you thought! Did you enjoy the format? Would you like to see more? Drop me a comment below and let me know!

Leave a comment

About the Authors

So, who is it that has invited us to their Kitchen Table? Although both had above for food from an early age, neither Emily nor Rachel actually came from traditional baking backgrounds. Rachel started out in costume design, working in theatre, before realising the cafe jobs and farmers’ market stalls she was doing on the side were actually what she loved. After retraining, she found her passion in baking and co-founded her first bakery Lovecrumbs in Edinburgh in 2011.

Emily grew up in the countryside where quality and provenance of ingredients were always central to family meals. She studied fine art in Brighton and began baking on the side to pay her way through university. When Lovecrumbs advertised for a baker’s position, Emily applied and then moved back to Edinburgh. And so the story began…

Together they founded Twelve Triangles, a bakery specialising in sourdough and slow-ferment pastries, with one simple goal: providing the best daily bread they could.

Cook the Books is a personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf. In each edition I’ll cook and bake a selection of recipes, photograph the process and reflect on what I’ve made and learned.

As always, I’ve got some of the full recipes from the book for you to download and save below.

Right then, let’s get into it, shall we!

House Loaf | p.30

It felt only right to start with the very first recipe in the book, the House Loaf. Because where else would you begin with a bakery cookbook? Bread!

This was quite a high hydration dough - and I won’t lie, I was pretty convinced this was going to be a dud bake. When it came to pre-shaping the loaf, it just… well, wouldn’t. The dough was still incredibly wet and refused to tighten up. So I did what I could, popped it in the tin and then left it overnight hoping for the best.

In hindsight, I think swapping linseeds for chia seeds probably didn’t help. Chia seeds form a gel when they absorb liquid, which seems to have interfered with the gluten development and made the dough much softer and harder to shape. Or so Google tells me! Lesson noted…

By morning the dough still felt quite dense, so I popped it in my top oven with just the light on for an hour or so until it felt softer to the touch. Then in to the oven it went, with some ice cubes thrown in to help with the rise.

And you know what? It didn’t turn out half bad at all! A little rustic, sure, but nicely baked with a soft crumb and great flavour. Even better slathered with butter and sprinkled with flaked sea salt. Because it would be rude not to.

I’ll definitely be making this one again, just perhaps with the right seeds next time.

Coffee & Cardamom Loaf Cake | p.158

For our second bake, I’m making what is arguably one of the most popular cakes here in the UK… coffee cake. This one however, takes it to another level entirely.

The intense coffee flavour in this recipe is added at every stage of the bake. It starts with infusing melted butter with smashed coffee beans and a few cardamom pods, which is pure genius and made the house smell phenomenal. I’d buy that scent as a candle any day.

Once baked, the cake is soaked in a sweetened latte mix and topped with an espresso icing glaze.

This could quite possibly be the moistest, most tastiest coffee cake you’ll ever try!(Also, add cardamom to any cake and I’m pretty sure I’m going to love it.)

A few slices were delivered to the neighbours - one of whom, a self-declared coffee cake connoisseur, enthusiastically trotted across the road to tell me that it the best one she’d ever tried!

Honey Tart with Apricot Jam | p.44

I’ve never browned butter before. I know, I know - two years of baking and I’d somehow never done it. For those of you that might be in the same boat, it’s simpler than it sounds… you melt the butter in a pan and keep it on the heat, swirling occasionally, until it turns a deep golden colour and starts to smell nutty and toasty. You’re essentially cooking the milk solids until they caramelise.

You will see the butter starts to turn almost translucent and flecks begin to appear - that’s a good sign, along with the smell and colour, that you’re pretty much there. It adds this incredible depth, almost… toffee-like!

Emily writes that ‘a reliable sweet pastry recipe is something every cook needs,’ and I couldn’t agree more. This one is exactly that. Very forgiving, easy to work with and bakes up a treat.

Luckily, Ben had just bought a fresh sourdough, so I was able to pinch a few slices to dry out in the oven before whizzing into crumbs - which is one of the main ingredients, along side the honey and the jam.

The tart itself is a thing of beauty. Rich, buttery, with the apricot jam cutting through the sweetness of the honey perfectly. One of those bakes that looks and tastes far more impressive than the effort involved - it was so easy to pull together!

Though, I did somehow manage to use nearly every bloody bowl in the kitchen?? Go figure.

Scrambled Eggs | p.76

I hadn’t planned on making scrambled eggs. But I landed on the page as I was planning out ingredients for the next few recipes and decided to give them a go.

You see to some, scrambled eggs are just scrambled eggs. I must confess, I fall under this camp too. I don’t make them that often, but when I do… let’s just say the microwave has been involved (I think I literally just heard you gasp)

To Emily, though, they’re so much more. Not to get too poetic about them, but they’re likened as little acts of service, or memories of people you love. And making them is a deeply personal ritual - one of patience, care… and lots and lots of butter!

I’ll admit I still had slight (and excuse the term) snotty egg anxiety, so I probably pushed them a bit too far. But even slightly overdone, they were bloody good. After making real scrambled eggs like this, there’s no going back for me.

Treacle Soda Bread | p.41

If there’s a soda bread recipe in a cookbook, you can pretty much count on me making it. It’s almost as much of a given as banana bread at this point!

Maybe it’s growing up on a farm, but bread like this just feels like home. You just can’t beat a sweet, malty, beautifully rustic loaf with a dense crumb. Sliced or torn, smothered in melting butter and topped with a generous dusting of sea salt flakes.

This recipe actually comes from chef Roberta Hall-McCarron, who owns the Little Chartroom in Edinburgh. Emily writes that before opening her first restaurant, Roberta came to work at Twelve Triangles because she wanted to learn how to make sourdough.

After working with them for a while, she quickly realised that was perhaps an ambitious hope, given the time and space it takes. But working together was a joy and Emily says Roberta described the bakery as being ‘like a spa break’ compared to the restaurant kitchens she was used to. This treacle soda bread is what Roberta now serves in-house at her restaurant.

I love that story, as it’s exactly what I was talking about when I said it’s what this book does so well - that every recipe comes with a person, a connection and a reason it’s there.

Olive Oil Chocolate Cookies | p.256

I fancied a quick and easy bake, so these olive oil chocolate cookies it was. Made with a generous glug of extra virgin olive oil rather than butter, three types of sugar and a whole lot of dark chocolate, you’ve got yourself a cookie that’s chewy and indulgent in the centre, with a snap and crunch around the edges.

Finished with a sprinkle of flaked sea salt and a lie about how you’ll only have ‘just the one.’ Yeah right.

The great thing about using olive oil rather than butter is that it keeps the cookie dense and moist - and even better… there’s no need to chill the dough before baking! 30 to 40 minutes from start to finish. That’s it.

Emily writes that the olive oil you use really does matter here (hello Honest Toil from seas yonder!), as that’s where the depth of flavour comes from.

Since making the original batch, I’ve made five more. I think that tells you everything you need to know!

Download the full recipe below:

Olive Oil Chocolate Cookies

847KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

So there we have it friends, that was Kitchen Table: Simple Things Made Well. A book that has made me question whether I’ve ever really paid attention to where my ingredients come from (the answer was no!) - and has totally made me rethink how I can become a part of the local community of producers and makers.

In this book, Emily and Rachel haven’t just shared their recipes - they’ve shared with us their people, their producers, their passion and their community. And through these pages, that table gets a little bigger.. because now you’re sat at it, too.

To give you a taste of what’s inside, here are three recipes from the book, yours to download and keep.

Middle Eastern Lamb Shanks With Almonds And Dates

1.55MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Wild Garlic Pesto

931KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Millionaires Shortbread

594KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

If you would like to pick up a copy of Kitchen Table, you can do so via my Bookshop.org link1 below:

Buy Kitchen Table

Or, you can enter this month’s giveaway! See below for details:

Before we get to this month’s giveaway, a huge congratulations to , who has won last month’s giveaway - a copy of Beyond Baking! I’ll be in touch this weekend to arrange shipping and get it on its way to you.

To celebrate this month’s edition of Cook the Books, I’m giving away a copy of Kitchen Table by Emily Cuddeford and Rachel Morgan.

How to enter: Entry is free! All you need to do is be a subscriber to this Substack. That’s it!

Subscribe now

Open internationally: Each month, a winner will be drawn at random from my current subscriber list, no matter where you are in the world. In some cases, it might be easier to order the book from a local retailer or site in your country, but I’ll make sure it finds its way to your kitchen, one way or another2.

Entries close for this month’s giveaway on April 22nd 2026 and I’ll announce the winner in the next edition of Cook the Books on April 24th 2026.

Good luck! And thank you, as always, for being here.

Mark + Hiro 🐾

Hello friends and welcome to The Kitchen Table!

This is my brand new series here on Substack - a place to share what’s happening in my world, what’s coming up, and what I’ve been enjoying lately.

If you’re new here, hello! I’m Mark - a baker, cook, food photographer and writer living in the beautiful rolling hills of the Devon countryside.

I’ve spent the past couple of years immersed in baking and documenting my progress here on Substack and Instagram - developing my skills from scratch, being part of the awesome community of foodies here and falling deeper in love with food along the way.

This year, we’re going bigger. We’ll be diving into more cookbooks, exploring food cultures that deserve our attention and having real conversations with the people behind the food.

So, pull up a chair and let me tell you what I’ve got planned.

I’ve been working on something big behind the scenes and I wanted this first edition of The Kitchen Table to be where I share it all with you. This year I’m building everything around three pillars:

Cook the Books

Each month we’ll get lost in a chosen cookbook. I’ll show you around what the book has to offer and get stuck in making several recipes. There might be some recipes from the book for you to save and try, too! Think of it as a personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf!

Cook the Books LIVE: I’ll also be hosting 20-minute Substack Live sessions with the authors themselves - which will be a fantastic opportunity to ask questions, hear their stories and connect with fellow foodies.

Cook the World

Food is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to explore places, cultures and even memories.

Each month, we’ll explore somewhere new through recipes, stories and conversations with the people who know these flavours and dishes best. Every destination gets its own stamp in our digital passport - collect them as we go! (Can you tell I’m an 80s kid!)

The Kitchen Table

This is our space to gather. I’ll be sharing updates on what’s happening in my world, news and recipes that have caught my eye, a look at what I’ve been enjoying lately and spotlighting people who have inspired me that month.

Kitchen Table Talk: A new interview series where I sit down and chat with fellow food folks. As I continue finding my feet in the food world, I’m increasingly curious about how people build creative careers around it. And what better way to explore that than by chatting to content creators, bakers, chefs and founders… the people who are doing exactly that!

I’ve got some fantastic posts and conversations lined up over the next couple of months. Here’s what’s coming:

March

March kicks things off with the very first Cook the Books LIVE and Kitchen Table Talk conversations - two brand new formats I’m really excited (and slightly terrified) about.

• Cook the Books: Kitchen Table

• Cook the Books LIVE:

  • March 18th at 1pm - Click here to register

    Emily and I will be chatting about the story behind the book, the recipes and what she hopes home bakers take from it.

• Kitchen Table Talk:

  • March 26th at 6pm - Click here to register

    Hope and I will be chatting about her shift from full-time project management into food and content creation, what it really looks like to make that leap, how she manages the workload, and what’s next.

April

April marks the launch of Cook the World, and we’ll be starting our journey in Ukraine. Our Cook the Books pick for the month is Felicity Spector’s Bread and War - a powerful account of the war in Ukraine told through the lens of bread and baking. Felicity has spent years travelling back and forth to Ukraine, helping set up a mobile bakery with Bake for Ukraine, bringing fresh bread to front line communities. It’s an extraordinary book about food, resilience and hope. I’ll be sitting down with Felicity herself for Cook the Books LIVE (date TBC).

• Cook the World: Ukraine

• Cook the Books: Bread and War

• Cook the Books LIVE: (Date TBC)

• Kitchen Table Talk: Andrew Dargue & Donna Conroy of

  • April 14th at 9am - Click here to register

    Andrew and Donna founded Vanilla Black, an award-winning Michelin-recommended vegetarian restaurant in London that was described as one of the most exciting meat-free venues in the world. We’ll be chatting about food and what it’s meant in their lives - exploring the journey that led up to Vanilla Black, the years it ran, what came after closing its doors and what is still to come…

If you’re not subscribed yet, now’s a good time! There’s a lot coming and it’s all free. Hit that button and I’ll see you in your inbox.

Subscribe now

There’s only so many books that I can feature on Cook the Books - but there are also so many incredible books out there that deserve a moment in the spotlight too. So, this is Cookbook Corner - a space where I can share more books that are on my radar, whether they’re new releases, old favourites or ones I’ve just stumbled across that I thought you might enjoy.

If you’ve read any of these or have recommendations of your own, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

A Meal for Two by Emily Ezekiel

I picked this up as a gift for Ben for Valentine’s Day. 95 recipes all scaled for two people. From quick 15-minute weekday meals to proper date night dishes. I suppose the book was for me really, but the gift was that Ben gets to pick meals for date nights and I’ll make them for us. Win-Win!

The Farm Table by

I’m a huge fan of Julius and what he’s doing. A professional chef who left London’s restaurant world to live and farm sustainably in the Dorset countryside. And this book is the result. 100 seasonal recipes that capture the true essence of British rural life, written from a place of genuine love for the land and the food it produces. As Nigel Slater put it: “A heartwarming and uplifting book. The recipes are utterly gorgeous.”

A Love for Food by

As you know I love going to visit Ben’s brother in the Cotswolds, if not anything but for the chance to spend time at Daylesford, and I picked this book up last time I was there. It’s over 150 seasonal recipes straight from Daylesford’s kitchens, using produce grown sustainably on the farm. It’s a beautiful book - part cookbook, part celebration of caring about where your food comes from.

What else would you add? Would you like to see any of these featured in Cook the Books? Let me know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Sure, my ‘saved for later’ recipe list is never ending (and I bet yours is) but nevertheless - these are the recipes that deserve to be on it. Ones I want to make, and ones I think you should too.

Mango Sticky Rice Tart, : Hope has been travelling round Southeast Asia for the past six weeks (and what an amazing trip) and developed this recipe as soon as she got home - inspired by just how much mango sticky rice she ate out there.

I’ve bought a big bag of Thai glutinous rice to give it a go because... I must. That mango top looks too tongue-smackingly good not to! Side note: couldn’t find any of that rice in Waitrose and they told me they’ve never stocked it? Very odd…

This recipe from Sam Nixon popped up on Instagram and looked so delicious - we’ve already gone out and bought the ingredients! And it's a one pan wonder - which is always very welcome, especially so on a Sunday. Four chicken thighs browned off in olive oil, pancetta, leeks, garlic, butter beans, chicken stock, crème fraîche and tarragon. Twenty minutes in the oven and done. Me and Ben will be tucking into this later today.

I’ve been sat flicking through the latest Waitrose magazine and this recipe for Speck & Truffle Pizzette practically said ‘make me’, so I will. I’m going to make my own dough for it and I’m thinking of pairing it with the homemade pesto recipe from Kitchen Table (page 16) too.

shared this recipe for Devon Spiced Beans in his latest post - and they sound every bit as delicious as the photo looks. I’m always a fan of ‘something on toast’, so I look forward to trying this. I’ve also never heard of a ‘lantern of mace’ before - love it!

It would be criminal not to share a rhubarb recipe, ‘tis the season after all! ’s latest post is a love letter to Yorkshire forced rhubarb - she tells how she ordered a whole 7kg box direct from one of the last remaining growers in the Rhubarb Triangle, Rhubarb Robert. (What a great name!)

There’s a rhubarb and roasted vanilla jam recipe that apparently tastes like the perfect distillation of rhubarb and custard - and a Grasmere gingerbread-style rhubarb and ginger crumble bar inspired by a bakery visit during her trip to Oxford recently.

I’ll be giving this a go later this week!

One of the best things about being part of this community is discovering and sharing people doing who are doing brilliant, inspiring things. They say you should surround yourself with people who inspire and motivate you, don’t they? Here’s a few who’ve done just that this month:

(Barrie and JoJo),

If you’re not already reading their weekly Encourage Meant posts, you need to fix that! Every week Barrie and JoJo drop Field Notes for Curious Minds - a beautifully (and carefully) curated collection of photography, art, travel, reading and people that have inspired, motivated or encouraged them. They champion other creators in a way that feels genuinely heartfelt and generous. They’re exactly the kind of people you want in your life. Writing from their basecamp in rural France, they’re proof that the best content comes from curiosity and kindness. Go follow them!

,

I’ve been baking for two years and I still haven’t made brown butter. I know, I know - it’s almost sacrilegious. Kerry’s latest post has made that impossible to ignore any longer. It’s a brilliant, thorough guide to perfecting beurre noisette (brown butter to you and I!) - providing foolproof tips, sensory cues to watch for and a gorgeous collection of recipes to put it to use.

,

Hazel is a phenomenal recipe developer, food photographer and stylist whose work I find genuinely inspiring. Her images are moody, textured and absolutely stunning. In a recent post she explores how to find inspiration in unexpected places. From the textures of a cheese board at a vineyard, to ‘Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro’ and the way afternoon light hits a cup of tea. As someone who’s constantly working on my own food photography, her writing on light, composition and the discipline of chasing the ‘second shot’ has made me think differently about how I approach my own work. One to follow.

And there we have it, friends - the very first edition of The Kitchen Table! I really hope you’ve enjoyed it. This is a brand new format so I’d love to know what you think, what you liked, what you’d like to see more of and anything you’d change.

As you can see, the next couple of months are shaping up to be really exciting! With our first ever Cook the Books LIVE sessions, the launch of Kitchen Table Talk, Cook the World kicking off in April - and some brilliant conversations with some brilliant people along the way.

If you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of it, hit subscribe - it’s free and means the world. And if you know someone who’d enjoy this, send it their way. The more the merrier at this table.

Subscribe now

You’d probably look at me sideways. And I’d have done the same!

Philip Khoury has spent the last decade reshaping the rules of modern baking. In Beyond Baking, he doesn’t simply offer alternatives… he questions the foundations we know of baking altogether. Proving that structure, richness and indulgence don’t belong exclusively to eggs and dairy.

Now don’t get me wrong, Philip isn’t asking you to give them up anytime soon - and I certainly won’t be! But instead, he asks us to open our minds to the idea that there is more than one way to bake. This way also happens to be kinder to the planet, to people and to animals. And that’s no bad thing.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of baking from Philip’s first book, A New Way to Bake, but I’d heard more than enough to know this wasn’t going to be a standard plant-based cookbook.

And sure enough, as you work through the early chapters, you realise this isn’t about absence at all. Eggs and dairy aren’t hand-on-forehead dramatically removed and missed. They’re… just not needed.

What Philip gives you instead is knowledge. Why fats tenderise. How starches thicken. What proteins are actually doing to create structure. Beyond Baking is set out almost like a manual, or dare I say science textbook - as it leans into the technical side of things.

And after two years into teaching myself to bake, and becoming slightly obsessed with the science behind it all… I’m a little bit in love with it!

Speaking of things I love, a good set of rules ranks surprisingly high! And Beyond Baking opens with three very clear ones: read the recipe first, use scales, don’t substitute. My digital scales, permanently set to two decimal places, have never felt more seen!

About the Author

So who is the guy behind all this wizardry? Philip Khoury is a globally recognised pastry chef, whose work has helped redefine modern plant-based baking. Born in Australia to Lebanese parents, he trained in some of Australia’s most celebrated kitchens before moving to London to become Head Pastry Chef at Harrods. His debut cookbook, A New Way to Bake, won the Fortnum & Mason Award for Best Debut Cookery Book and established him as a leading voice in sustainable patisserie.

In Beyond Baking, he continues that exploration, pushing further into ingredient-led innovation while keeping his work accessible to home bakers. In 2025, he said his goodbyes to Harrods to focus on launching his exciting confectionery brand, Khourys.

His recent bar ‘Hong Kong’ celebrates the Lunar New Year, with flavours of candied tangerine marmalade, black sesame and roasted brown rice crunch captures exactly what defines his work… technical precision, cultural memory and a willingness to reimagine tradition.

I treated myself to a boxful. For research purposes, of course - and can confirm they taste bloody delicious!

Cook the Books is a personal tour through the cookbooks that deserve a place on your shelf. In each edition I’ll cook and bake a selection of recipes, photograph the process and reflect on what I’ve made and learned.

I’m beyond excited to be sharing 3 recipes from the book below - a little gift to you and taste of what makes Beyond Baking so great.

Right then, let’s get into it, shall we?

Light Fruit Cake | p.102

Now, I know fruit cake isn’t everyone’s favourite. It’s one of those bakes that people love to announce they ‘don’t do’, like it’s a personality trait. But I’m firmly in the fruit cake camp.

And this one is bloody good!

It’s packed with rum-soaked raisins, candied citrus peel and dried cranberries. It somehow manages to be tender and light, while still being sturdy enough to slice properly. No eggs, no butter - and you genuinely wouldn’t know.

The flavour is rum and citrus warmth, and is the kind of fruit cake that might just convert the sceptics…

Peach & Hazelnut Crumble Cake | p.112

Did you know Philip comes from a long line of peach farmers? He does! Which makes this bake all the more special.

I’m happy to report that it’s quite possibly the most delicious crumble cake I’ve ever made. Or eaten, for that matter! With the peaches all jammy and sweet contrasting with the crunchy warmth of the hazelnuts. Makes you want to go back in for ‘just one more sliver’ about six more times!

It’s hard to believe there are two whole tins of peaches hiding in there. Two! Because the crumb stays beautifully cakey and moist, not heavy or claggy in the slightest. You get the juiciness and the structure. Witchcraft.

And can I remind everyone that this is completely plant-based?! Incredible.
(I promise I won’t keep reminding you of this. Maybe...)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies | p.86

The cookie curse has been broken!

Picture me happy dancing around the kitchen, because for the longest time, cookies have been my Achilles heel. I don’t know why, but every batch I tried either spread into one giant cookie puddle, or stayed stubbornly unmoved like little baked hockey pucks.

But not this time. This time, we have success!

These are chunky, indulgent, Levain-style little beasts, studded with molten chunks of dark chocolate and crunchy peanut shards. Dangerously moreish. The sort of cookie you accidentally eat standing at the counter, and then accidentally eat another one straight after. Being plant-based, they’re practically one of your five-a-day, no?

I dropped a batch round to my friends who run a coffee house and, after immediately devouring the lot, asked: ‘How many can I order from you in one go?!?!’

I think I’ll take that one as a win.

Macadamia Shortbread | p.91

Is there any better partner for a cup of tea than a good bit of shortbread? This macadamia version is rich, buttery and properly melt-in-your-mouth… which is funny, because there’s not a swipe of butter in sight!

The magic is in the macadamias themselves. It’s the oils from the nuts that bind the dough together - and a generous helping of cinnamon adds just the right amount of warmth. The result is the perfect little treat for an afternoon brew.

(And let’s all agree to ignore the fact I can’t seem to score a straight line to save my bloody life!)

Download the full recipe below:

Macadamia Shortbread

1.09MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Extracted from Beyond Baking by Philip Khoury (Quadrille, £30) Photography by Matt Russell.

Download

Corn-ish Pasty | p. 199

I have a newfound respect for anyone who can crimp a Cornish pasty neatly! Mine looked less Cornwall bakery window and more I wrestled it into submission and hoped for the best.

But did you know that iconic thick edge was originally there for purely practical reasons? It was designed as a handle for miners with mucky hands. Which means that hefty rim of pastry was never really meant to be eaten at all! I’ve never been a huge fan of it and usually slice it straight off - and now it doesn’t feel quite so sacrilegious.

I was genuinely shocked at how great the pastry was. In a good way, of course. It’s just flour, salt, olive oil and water - and it was by far the easiest pastry dough I think I’ve worked with up to now.

This Corn-ish version leans into the warmth of earthy mushrooms, sweetcorn, and tender root veg instead. Still hearty, still deeply satisfying, and every bit as delicious as its meaty counterpart.

Download the full recipe below:

Corn-ish Pasty

5.22MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Extracted from Beyond Baking by Philip Khoury (Quadrille, £30) Photography by Matt Russell.

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Pure Pistachio Tart | p.155

I saved the best till last with this decadent tart, celebrating a flavour that’s firmly in my top three of all time… pistachio.

This is one of those bakes where you look at the ingredient list and think, right then, Phil… we’re doing this, are we? There are quite a few elements at play here, but honestly that just made it more fun.

From scratch, you make and layer up a sweet matcha-infused pastry, a luxurious pistachio frangipane, a silky pistachio praline, a smooth pistachio crème, and then finish it all off with an airy pistachio crème diplomat. It’s quite literally layer upon layer of delicious green gold.

Now, I’d love to say that the process went smoothly - but in the middle of blitzing up the pistachio praline, my Nutribullet only went and bloody died, didn’t it! One minute it’s whirring away like a champ, the next it’s wheezing and smoking and giving up on life entirely. Thankfully, I managed to finish off the praline with my hand blender. Crisis averted!

Slight drama aside - I couldn’t be more proud of myself with this bake. Look at those layers!!

A perfect end to an utterly brilliant book.

Download the full recipe below:

Pure Pistachio Tart

6.85MB ∙ PDF file

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Extracted from Beyond Baking by Philip Khoury (Quadrille, £30) Photography by Matt Russell.

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So there we have it friends - Beyond Baking. A book that proves baking isn’t fixed or finite, but ever evolving.

We started with a slice of cake without eggs or butter, and ended up reshaping the way we think about both - all while producing bakes that are, quite frankly, bloody delicious.

If you would like to pick up a copy of Beyond Baking, you can do so via my Bookshop.org link below:1

Buy 'Beyond Baking'

Or, you can enter this month’s giveaway! See below for details:

Before we get to this month’s giveaway, a huge congratulations to , who has won last month’s giveaway - a copy of Winter in the Highlands! I’ll be in touch shortly to arrange shipping and get it on its way to you.

To celebrate this month’s edition of Cook the Books, I’m giving away a copy of Beyond Baking by Philip Khoury.

How to enter: Entry is free! All you need to do is be a subscriber to this Substack. That’s it!

Subscribe now

Open internationally: Each month, a winner will be drawn at random from my current subscriber list, no matter where you are in the world. In some cases, it might be easier to order the book from a local retailer or site in your country, but I’ll make sure it finds its way to your kitchen, one way or another2.

Entries close for this month’s giveaway on March 20th 2026 and I’ll announce the winner in the next edition of Cook the Books on March 22nd 2026.

Good luck! And thank you, as always, for being here.

Mark + Hiro 🐾

We have just concluded our second monthly gathering of ’s writing group - and once again I come away with a head full of thoughts and more than a few notes on how to improve my own writing.

With these sessions, Mark shares a prompt a week before we meet and you’re allowed (in the loosest sense of the word) 1 hour to write. Then, during the gathering we talk about what came up in the writing, how we approached it and, for those who feel comfortable, we read our words aloud.

Tonight , and read their fantastic pieces out loud - each one completely different, and each a reminder of how uniquely we all interpret the same few words.

The prompt this month was: Food from another place

For me, these prompts seem to fire off memories as soon as I see them. The first thing that popped into this time was a dinner in Tokyo… Here’s what I wrote in the hour:

We were hungry, happily lost and perhaps a little overstimulated. (Which is a total understatement!). Shibuya was a sensory overload in the best possible way. Vending machines that sold everything from hot coffee to mystery meats, giant Godzilla statues that peered over rooftops and music played from stores that we weren’t even sure how to enter. We’d walked from dawn till dusk, until our feet ached and now found ourselves in the neon pulse of Tokyo at night.

Eventually, we turned down a narrow side street, one of those quieter alleys that could have been straight from a Studio Ghibli film. But then again, most places in Japan look like that. As we made our way to the end, we spotted a sign ‘Indian Food’. We looked at each other with a smirk as if saying, why not. Moments later we found ourselves being ushered in by the friendliest host.

Curry arrived in shallow bowls. With fluffy naans and steamed rice and crispy samosas. I can’t remember exactly what we ordered (brain and sieve come to mind), but 7 years on we still reminisce on how it was the best curry we’d ever tasted.

Outside, the city was at full volume - alive with bright lights and noise and energy. Inside, we weary travellers sank into velvet cushions. The walls were draped in heavy crimson rugs and brass elephants watched as the waiter smiling poured Kingfisher into tall glasses.

It could’ve been Mumbai. It could’ve been home. But it was Tokyo. Food from another place, inside another place.

Even if you don’t share your own piece, simply listening to how others build a world, pace a paragraph, or find the emotional core of a story is wildly inspiring.

To join the writing group, along with an Abundance of other fantastic perks - visit Mark’s substack via the button below:

Mark Diacono's Substack

Next time I’ll be sharing what I wrote for my monthly prompt in my brand new series: The Kitchen Table.

Lots of exciting news coming later this week about what’s in store for Taisty Bytes this year!

See you then,
-Mark

It’s the kind of book that makes you imagine yourself elsewhere - holed up in a cosy stone cottage up north somewhere, beside a river, on the edge of a forest. The log fire is lit, there’s fresh bread baking in the oven, something rumbling away on the stove and the fields beyond the window lay under a blanket of snow. I’ve been trying to convince Ben that we should move to the Highlands and get blissfully lost in the wilderness. But alas, he’s not biting. He’s more of a podere in Italy sort of guy.

So for now, living vicariously through Flora’s book will have to do. A window into her winter, her recipes and her deep affection for this time of year.

And it really does feel like a window! The cover image is slightly inset, you can feel the dip beneath your fingers, as if pressing your nose up to a frost-tipped pane, peering into Flora’s warmly lit kitchen. The structure of the book is beautifully simple, taking you through from November through to January - with each month and occasion introduced with gentle notes and seasonal produce lists to guide you through the heart of winter.

The Christmas section is everything you’d hope for, full of priceless prep advice and festive recipes. I didn’t tackle the big day itself this year, but I’ll absolutely be referring back to this book when it rolls around again in a mere ten months.

Flora’s introduction reads like a love letter to the season and it’s made me reflect on why I love it too. It made me think of childhood winters on the farm1… Stomping on frosty puddles. Hunting for the perfect rock to crack the sheet of ice that formed overnight on the horses drinking bath (which was quite literally an old bathtub!) and snow-filled adventures through the woods. Though, we could have done without the ice inside our bedroom windows…

And not forgetting adorning the farmhouse with the sort of magic that only 80s and 90s decorations could conjure. Multicoloured foil garlands strung across ceilings from corner to centre, held in place with drawing pins. (You know the ones, they concertina into themselves.) Tinsel and beaded strings looped up, over and under anything that would hold them. Christmas cards taped to the walls, sometimes arranged into the shape of a tree. And yes, the pièce de résistance… a singing, dancing Santa, who managed to be both beloved and mildly terrifying.

As someone still learning to find comfort in the kitchen, I find it reassuring to see how Flora frames this season - not as a time for rushing or reinventing yourself, but for slowing down, enjoying good food and taking the time to recoup.

Cook the Books is all about spending proper time with the cookbooks we love. In each edition we’ll cook or bake a selection of recipes, photograph the process and reflect on what I’ve made and learned.

Right then, let’s get into it, shall we?

Earl Grey and Fig Scones - p.186

These Earl Grey and fig scones were the perfect way to ease into Winter in the Highlands (and 2026 for that matter).

There’s something about Earl Grey that always makes me feel a bit posh, does it you? So tucking into these warm, split open, with clotted cream and plum jam (cream first, obviously) - felt like the best sort of indulgence needed to start the year off right.

The step of soaking the figs in tea is one I think I’ll steal for other bakes down the line. I’m thinking hibiscus could work really well? They come out soft, fragrant and worked so well in a scone.

I also have to say - I love a scone that’s shaped into a round and cut into triangles. I know the classic is to stamp them out with a cutter, but to me they just seem to work so much better. And look more deliciously rustic, too!

These were light, tender and just fancy enough to make you feel like you’ve got your life together. Well, at least for the length of a pot of tea, anyway.

They achieved tens across the board from my neighbours, and I will no doubt be making them again.

Nutmeg Cookies - p.77

I might not be ready to let go of the festive bakes just yet - and these nutmeg cookies were the perfect carryover from the season.

Soft, delicately spiced, and topped with a slick of icing and a pattern of seeds that made them feel like they belonged in a snowy Scandinavian kitchen somewhere.

There’s something almost meditative about decorating biscuits like these. Even as I muttered curses at my fingers for misplacing nearly every seed, I eventually found myself settling into the rhythm of it.

Florentines - p.62

Recipe number three from Flora’s book is one that’s quickly become a new favourite of mine. I’ve only really gotten into florentines recently, after realising how easy they are to make. Or is it how easy they go down because they’re so bloody delicious!

Either way, there’s something very ‘January treat tin’ about them.

These have a lovely crisp snap to them, which I always think is essential. The chewy cranberries cut through with just the right amount of tang, adding contrast in both taste and texture.

The perfect thing to nibble on while nursing a hot brew after a frosty walk.

Definitely one I’ll be making again and again, with different fruits.

Roasted Squash and Apple Soup - p.16

My first savoury, non-baked recipe of the year!

Flora tells us that soups are always better when the veg is roasted first, and I can now confirm that to be absolutely true. The squash, apples and onions caramelise as they roast - breaking down until soft, sweet and deeply flavourful.

It gives the soup a warm, almost honeyed richness that’s just right for cold weather lunches.

It’s finished off with toasted breadcrumbs and pumpkin seeds for crunch, plus a generous dollop of yogurt for a creamy tang.

And of course, served with a big hunk of bread - because it would be rude not to!

Parsnip Loaf - p198

It’s official, parsnip trumps carrot when it comes to cake. I said what I said.

This loaf might just be the most moist cake I’ve ever made! Tender, spiced and deliciously moreish. The type of cake you keep going back to for ‘just one more slice’ because it’s parsnip, and that’s basically health food.

Flora’s recipe is packed with all the warming spices you’d hope for in a winter cake and the parsnip gives it this subtle earthiness that works beautifully with the sweetness.

It’s topped with a cream cheese icing, a scattering of chopped pumpkin seeds and a dusting of cinnamon.

It barely lasted a day in this house.

Ginger and Honey Cake - p.33

I like to make notes as I go when baking, and the one I scribbled down after the first bite of this was - Holy crap that’s good!

At the time, I was deep into week two of battling the flu, and thought something with honey and ginger might offer a bit of healing.

You start by heating together black treacle, honey and butter. Which, let’s be honest, is always a good sign! The smell was incredible. Once it’s warm and melted, it gets mixed into the dry ingredients, along with chopped stem ginger - which to be honest, takes the whole thing up to solid 100!

Naturally, I had two slices. With a large dollop of double cream. Medicinal, really.

This one’s soft and sticky, warmly spiced, not too sweet and just the kind of cake you want to sink into when you’re feeling under the weather. Or even when you’re not.

Oat Soda Bread - p.191

This rustic soda bread came together in under an hour and feels like exactly the sort of loaf you’d find in a Highland bothy - the kind that seems to whisper ‘butter me, immediately’ as soon as it’s out of the oven.

I listened.

It’s rustic, slightly chewy and has a lovely nuttiness from the oats that makes it feel heartier than your average loaf. A wise man2 once told me to always toast your oats, as this brings out the flavour more - so I did. Warm from the oven, it’s best slathered with butter and finished with a pinch of flaked sea salt on top - which I highly recommend.

Equally good on its own, or served with a bowl of soup or something slow-cooked and stew-y.

Fig and Pecan Porridge - p.182

When it’s wet, cold and stormy outside, there’s really only one way I want to start the day - with a big bowl of porridge, the latest Waitrose Weekend paper and a steady stream of coffee on the go.

As we established last week, I like my porridge thick and was glad to see Flora does too. None of this runny business… this is stick-to-your-ribs, proper winter fuel.

The original recipe calls for prunes, but I swapped them out for some leftover dried figs from the scones we made earlier in the month, (which I again stewed in some Earl Grey) and they worked a treat. Toasty pecans scattered on top add crunch and warmth, cutting nicely through the creamy porridge.

Spot my creative director Hiro - making sure I was getting the shot!

Cabbage with Bacon and Macadamia Nuts - p.210

And with this cabbage, bacon and macadamia nut dish, we bring Winter in the Highlands to a close. And what a way to finish! It might just be the most delicious cabbage dish I’ve ever tasted!

The cabbage is cooked down until tender, with the bacon adding a salty, savoury richness and the toasted macadamias adding a nice crunch that pulls everything together beautifully. It’s one of those recipes that feels far greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s suggested as a side, but I happily polished off a panful bowlful for lunch on its own and was more than content. Sometimes the simplest meals really are the best - especially when they come together in under 15 minutes!

Who knew cabbage could be this good?

So there we have it, fiends - that’s Winter in the Highlands. A book that took me from frosted mornings with porridge to firelit evenings with sticky ginger cake. A much needed reminder that even in the coldest months, there’s so much warmth to be found… especially in the kitchen.

A wonderful way to begin the year, and a book I know I’ll keep returning to.

New for 2026 - Cook the Books Giveaways!

This year, I’m super excited to introduce something new to Cook the Books - the chance to win a copy of our featured book each month!

To celebrate this month’s edition, I’m giving away a copy of Winter in the Highlands by Flora Shedden - a book that’s been pure comfort from cover to cover.

How to enter:

Entry is free! All you need to do is be a subscriber to this Substack. That’s it!

Subscribe now

Open internationally:

Each month, a winner will be drawn at random from my current subscriber list, no matter where you are in the world. In some cases, it might be easier to order the book from a local retailer or site in your country, but I’ll make sure it finds its way to your kitchen, one way or another3.

Entries close for this month’s giveaway on February 15th 2026 and I’ll announce the winner in the next edition of Cook the Books on February 22nd 27th 2026.

Good luck! And thank you, as always, for being here.

Mark + Hiro 🐾

Unless you’re one of the lucky ones who have known all along, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Not just the searching part (although that can be a bloody long journey on its own) but the part that comes after. When you’ve found it.

Last year, I found mine. Food.

And food is a bit of a weird one, isn’t it. It’s omnipresent. Always there, always has been. So it feels like it should have been an easier ‘aha’ moment. But as my grandad would say, ‘you’ve not seen wood fer trees, lad’.

This year we’re officially entering Year 3 of Taisty Bytes and it’s never been clearer that this is the path forward. We’re moving it from side dish to main course (I know, I know - but I love a pun!).

What that path looks is a problem for future me, but for now - heading in this general direction feels pretty great to me.

Hello, if you’re new here I’m Mark - a baker, food writer and photographer.
You’ll also see lots of my sous chef Hiro, too!

I began 2025 with a list of intentions - goals that I was hoping to achieve over the course of the year. Who remembers Beandog Bakery and that cookbook I was hoping to make? Me neither…

If you’ve been with us for a while, you’ll know that last year was pretty rough. Unfortunately, Hiro’s health took a turn and was touch and go at some points. Naturally he became our number one priority. Lots of vets visits, cuddles on the sofa and worry.

But, we saw out the year with him being stable, happy and in a much better place than we could ever have hoped for.

We’ve spent the beginning of this year intentionally slow and enjoying being content.

Despite some setbacks, there were a few things that I was able to check off my intentions list. Pretty huge things, in fact…

1. Cook the Books

This year, I’m making it my mission to actually use them. Enter, Cook the Books. So the idea is: I’ll pick a cookbook and commit to making at least five recipes from it before I move on to the next. No skimming through, realising I don’t have all the ingredients for a certain recipe and putting it back - we’re committing, guys!

And commit we did! What started as a way to actually use my cookbooks and not just collect them, turned out to be one of my most favourite things I’ve ever done. Reading, cooking, photographing and writing about these books have taught me more than I could have imagined about food - how it can be magical, how they can hold memories and how they can form bonds between strangers.

It will come as no surprise that this year, Cook the Books will continue to be a main feature here on Substack - with a few additional surprises to come… more on that soon.

I made some phenomenal dishes over the past year that have pushed my skills in the kitchen and with my photography. Here are a few of my favourites:

2. Writer’s Weekend

Something I’m beyond excited for and feeling incredibly lucky about is that this spring, I’ll be attending a writer’s weekend hosted by the brilliant and Diana Henry! It’s going to be a few days of hands-on workshops, incredible food and creative inspiration, all set in a beautiful manor house not too far from where I live.

I’ll admit that as someone who is painfully introverted, I’m a bit nervous! Stepping into a room full of talented writers sounds daunting. But I have a feeling this will be one of those experiences that sticks with me forever and will be the catalyst for great change.

It’s funny to think that this time last year I was writing about how excited I was to attend this writing weekend. Little did I know at the time just how life changing it would turn out to be.

Rather than me prattle on about how amazing it was here, I did it much more eloquently in a full post you can read here »

3. The Great Taisty Bytes Bake Off Returns!

…could never have predicted that trying to make caramel would leave me wanting to rock back and forth weeping into a large glass of wine…

So stay tuned for Series 2 of The Great Taisty Bytes Bake Off later this year - where I plan on attempting every challenge this time around!

No caramel-induced tears this year for GTBBO Series 2, but unfortunately as Hiro took ill half way through - my motivation and energy for it waned towards the end. We did manage to complete at least one bake for every week however - and if you’d like to read how that went, I wrote a post for each week here »

GTBBO Series 2

I’ve got no neat intentions list this time round, but instead a commitment of going all in. I’ve got lots of ideas and plans, and while I can’t share most of them just yet (don’t you hate it when people do that!) - just know that it’s going to be a bloody exciting ride!

What I can share is that I’ve been working on my application for the Guild of Food Writer’s Newcomer Award (eek!) and the first Cook the Books post of the year, which drops next week: Flora Shedden’s Winter in the Highlands.

Here’s to a delicious, fun and exciting 2026! Thanks for being here.

Twixtmas has seen me, Ben and Hiro (the 3 musketeers) enjoying a slightly slower pace of life - recovering from what I think it’s fair to say was a chaotic year. We’ve eaten ALL the food and somehow the fridge seems just as full as it was before we did the crazy Christmas shop. Watched countless Christmas films, and myself and Hiro have claimed a semi-permanent spot in front of the log burner.

I was unfortunately under the weather in the lead up to Christmas, surviving on little more than porridge and dry toast. As someone who fully enjoys festive feasting, I can’t begin to tell you how painful this was for me! Thankfully, I was back on my feet in time for the big day - but it did mean very little baking beforehand.

Still, I did manage to rustle up a few things as gifts for friends…

First up: Tahini florentines, which I will now not-so-humbly declare some of the best I’ve ever eaten.

I followed El Kemp’s recipe (minus the sesame seeds as I was all out) and they were a huge hit! It’s safe to say that they will be on heavy rotation throughout the year.

Top tip: I don’t know if I’ve made up my own hack or not to get the florentines as round as I did - but this worked for me…

As soon as the florentines come out of the oven, place a cookie cutter over each one and use the back of a spoon to level out and flatten the florentines into the mould. We’ll pencil it in as the ‘cover and spread’ method!

I tried shwooshing them round in a circular motion first as you would with cookies, but it didn’t work very well. But the cover and spread made each one circular and uniform.

I also whipped up some spiced, candied pecans (recipe by Crowded Kitchen)which were dangerously moreish. I made enough to fill up a few spare Kilner Jars to gift to friends, and they went down a real treat.