How to Cook a Book
Gaz Oakley on Plant to Plate
How on earth I was going to get through that pile of EXCELLENT books in the in-tray I showed you last week has led to a bit of an epiphany.
I’m already scheduled up to mid July on Cooking the Books, and the publicists are already getting excited about October’s BIG releases. But hey, there’s another place where my community loves to talk about books, where I can double, maybe even triple up right here on Substack every week, with soupçons of the best of the latest cookbooks and mini chats with authors who have important things to say about the way we eat.
The last time I met Gaz Oakley was on the delicious. podcast for delicious. magazine back in 2018. We shared an insanely delicious lunch at Mildred’s Vegan where co-authors Sarah Wasserman and Dan Acevedo were serving us extraordinary dishes from their book of the same name. I still use that book for my food writing and yoga retreats.
Gaz and I chatted then about an epiphany which took him on a stratospheric ride from jobbing chef to vegan cooking sensation. Seven years on, he tells me about his latest epiphany in Plant to Plate: Delicious and Versatile Plant-Forward Recipes.
The book is packed with 100 gorgeous plant-based recipes (Strawberry and Lavender Welsh Cakes, savoury Stuffed Harissa Onions, Tomato, Thyme and Almond Upside Down Cake for example) all inspired by Gaz's own kitchen garden just up the mountains in the Welsh countryside from where I grew up in Abergavenny.
It’s all about getting the best out of his plants, with recipes both gastronomic and medicinal. And of course, they’re all vegan. As the queue for his event last Friday began to snake outside Brighton Waterstones, I asked him how he felt about being in the top vegan-friendly city in the UK where there are 7.9 vegan restaurants and 8.3 vegan takeaways per 100,000 people… Click to listen.