Gill Meller

The sound is variable on this episode due to remote recording via Zoom, but it’s a fun chat with lots of silliness and a good amount of heart. We talked about everything Steve ate as a child being fried in lard, loving the simplicity of charcuterie, poking people in the stomach and playing the fool and why he loves nothing more than travelling about with his wife, beautiful girls and a host of animals.

We spoke about conquering the fear of the high diving board, kids that won’t eat veg and allowing them to find their own way with food, trying to bring a live lobster into a theatre, JPs bus tour of shame and what makes him cook. He’s a self effacing, ridiculously talented treasure.

This week’s conversation is with my dear friend Kylee Newton of Newton & Pott, (makers of gorgeous small batch preserves) and author of The Modern Preserver (a modern classic for home preservers). She was a photographic printmaker for Wolfgang Tillmans before discovering a talent for combining flavours in the most mouthwatering way - simple, well chosen ingredients introduced to each other and jarred for enjoyment at a later date. She has no formal culinary training, except a lifetime of cooking and tasting and a palate that needs no education. Like me she loves to teach and her straight forward Kiwi character makes her a joyfully unvarnished person (my favourite kind). I knew as soon as I met her that we would be friends and I feel as though I have known her forever. The result is a giggling catch up between two women who love to muck about, a celebration of Kylee’s Nan who raised eight children by herself and still found time to put a plate of freshly baked scones on the table for her 23 grandchildren. Kylee talks about her efforts to recreate the perfect scones of her childhood for her forthcoming book and how the process took her right back to basics, learning to bake by feel and not numbers.

My dear friend and sometime colleague Mark Diacono agreed to have a chat that we had imagined would be a fond ramble through lardy cakes and 1970s Findus pancakes (mostly things with cake in the title actually), but instead turned out to be a blushing confessional of the time that Mark woke up in a commercial oven dressed as Boy George after drinking a mixture of alcohols that I’ve yet to find a reference to in any cocktail literature because it sounds disgusting (Mark insists it tastes like cream soda). Despite what this might lead you to think, Mark is a gentle, thoughtful man and a brilliant writer. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours talking to him about everything and nothing and feel that the time was very well spent. His plaudits are many - ex River Cottage head gardener, grower of unusual edible plants, author of many award winning cookbooks and regular columnist on food and gardening. Whatever he’s currently into, he’ll make sure you’re into it too after a few minutes chat. Infectious enthusiasm I think they call it - like a culinary spaniel with a very exciting treasure he found on the beach.

A discussion of the wonders of mushroom picking and how Cliodhna realised as a child that she really did like mushrooms after all, when she went on a dawn foray with her Aunt and Uncle. Cliodhna talks about the cure-all powers of a good broth and the magical delights of mushroom and nori powder.

A rambling conversation with gluten free baker and author Alanna Taylor Tobin. Touching on some of her memories growing up with hippy parents in Topanga Canyon, her Bubba's blintzes, wanting to be a pastry chef from childhood and dealing with her own health by eating a grain free diet.

Gill talks about the first fish he caught, cooking mushrooms in a tree and not poisoning himself, worrying he had poisoned a celebrity, the pull of cooking outside over fire and his lovely mum, who passed him a wooden spoon full of soup when it was his turn to become the chef of the house.

Author, blogger and gluten free baker Aran Goyoaga shares some of her food memories of growing up in the family bakery in the Basque country in Spain. She talks about healing herself from an eating disorder, how her emotions motivate her and remembers the exquisite comfort that a bowl of simple cinnamon scented rice pudding can bring.