Episodes

  • Against Food as a Benign Good with Lottie Hazell

    Against Food as a Benign Good with Lottie Hazell
    May 3 2024
    Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

    This month: Piglet by Lottie Hazell.

    I first came across Lottie’s writing when she contributed to the first Lecker zine I curated and published in 2019: Plum Jam, a piece of short fiction about a funeral, an underset blancmange and a broken tooth. I still remember how the piece unsettled me, placing complicated family relationships alongside difficult or reluctant pleasure derived from feeding others; or being fed by others. Her debut novel, Piglet, came out earlier this year and its writing is deeply rooted in what food can mean to us: physically, emotionally and socially.

    I loved talking to Lottie about Piglet so much! As you’ll hear me tell her in the episode, it was such an interesting experience to encounter such luscious, detailed writing about food in a fictional setting, particularly set alongside scenes of such discomfort. The book made me squirm, in a really intriguing way and I loved how the dishes and tablescapes Piglet makes and consumes dressed the set of her home and work lives.

    Heads up that if you haven’t read the book, we do talk about specific plot points in it so if you’d prefer to be spoiler free, go and read it first! And the book does touch on themes of body image, weight and some implied references to disordered eating, so if those topics are sensitive to you please take care.

    You can find a transcript for this episode at leckerpodcast.com.

    Piglet is out now, published by Doubleday. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

    Buy a copy of either/both of the Lecker zines on BigCartel. You can also order print-on-demand merch at Teemill.

    Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

    Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.

    I'm speaking at Interesting24 on 15th May at Conway Hall in London! Buy a ticket to come and watch me talk about kitchens.
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    45 mins
  • Sit Slurp Leave with Tim Anderson

    Sit Slurp Leave with Tim Anderson
    Nov 30 2023
    Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

    This month: Ramen Forever by Tim Anderson.

    Ramen has ended up as a cornerstone of Tim Anderson’s life. As he writes in the book, it was originally his love of ramen - as well as Japanese food more broadly - that took him to live in Japan, which steered the course of his future in many ways, including meeting his wife. Avid food TV watchers in the UK may also remember that ramen was at the heart of his Masterchef story; when he won the series in 20211, ramen was his winning main course in the final. He previously ran a ramen restaurant in Brixton, Nanban, which opened in 2015 and closed in 2021. But although he’s got five cookbooks already to his name, he’s never written a book entirely about ramen….until now.

    Ramen Forever is out now, published by Hardie Grant. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

    Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

    Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
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    51 mins
  • The Food of a Proud Island Nation with Clarissa Wei

    The Food of a Proud Island Nation with Clarissa Wei
    Oct 30 2023
    Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

    In Made in Taiwan, Taipei based journalist Clarissa Wei beautifully captures the food and spirit of this proud island nation, and brings it to life on the page. The book is stunning - you’ll hear more about the thought and consideration that Clarissa and her team put into how it looks as well as what it says later in this interview -and it examines the current state of Taiwanese food in incredible breadth and depth. For me, someone completely new to the food of the country, it’s a beautiful and rich education.

    It was such a pleasure to meet Clarissa via video chat and talk about this book, which involved an astonishing amount of research and recipe development on the ground. I’m a big fan of her work as a journalist - the podcast series she made with Whetstone Radio Collective, Climate Cuisine, is one of my all time favourite listens - and it was so interesting to hear how she approached this book, the subject of which is something hugely personal to her but one which she wanted to approach journalistically, and write as an act of documentation. We talked about how missing home through food sometimes takes unexpected, shifting forms, her culinary collaborator on the book Ivy Chen, and why it was crucial that Made In Taiwan moved away from its original proposal as a “cosy” cookbook and became something deeply political.


    Made In Taiwan is out now, published by Simon and Schuster. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

    Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

    Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
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    43 mins
  • S7 Ep3: A Common Language (Good Bread #3)

    S7 Ep3: A Common Language (Good Bread #3)
    Oct 22 2023
    Is it possible or productive to organise around a common language in order to reimagine how we produce grain and bread? In the third and final part of Good Bread, Kim and Ruth reflect on some of their experiences working on the project and consider what the future of good bread might look like.

    Good Bread is a three part series made with Farmerama exploring The Body Lab, a participatory arts and research project by baker Kimberley Bell and artist Ruth Levene considering standardised grain testing and the possibility of reimagining measurement within the system that surrounds bread production. 

    The Body Lab is funded by Farming The Future.

    Good Bread is hosted and produced by Lucy Dearlove.

    Thanks to everyone at Farmerama who has helped on this series in various ways: Jo Barratt, who was a fantastic exec, Abby Rose, Dora Taylor, Olivia Oldham, Annie Landless, Eliza Jenkins and Lucy Fisher. The music is by Owen Barratt. The artwork was by Hannah Grace. 

    Thanks also to everyone else who has been part of the series: Fred Price at Gothelney Farm, Rosy Benson at Field Bakery + Mill and Chris Holister at Shipton Mill. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Breadline!

    Make sure you listen to Cereal, Katie Revell's Farmerama series about bread.
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    39 mins
  • S7 Ep2: The Price of Consistency (Good Bread #2)

    S7 Ep2: The Price of Consistency (Good Bread #2)
    Oct 15 2023
    Consistency is at the heart of industrial bread production, from the field to the mill to the oven. But what is it costing us?

    Good Bread is a three part series made with Farmerama exploring The Body Lab, a participatory arts and research project by baker Kimberley Bell and artist Ruth Levene considering standardised grain testing and the possibility of reimagining measurement within the system that surrounds bread production.

    The Body Lab is funded by Farming The Future.

    Thanks to Shipton Mill for their openness and generosity in allowing the Body Lab to explore these ideas

    Good Bread is hosted and produced by Lucy Dearlove.

    Thanks to everyone at Farmerama who has helped on this series in various ways: Jo Barratt, Abby Rose, Dora Taylor, Olivia Oldham, Annie Landless, Eliza Jenkins and Lucy Fisher. The music is by Owen Barratt. The artwork was by Hannah Grace. 

    If you haven't already listened to Cereal the previous Farmerama series about bread made by Katie Revel, I can't recommend it highly enough!
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    39 mins
  • S7 Ep1: What is Good Bread? (Good Bread #1)

    S7 Ep1: What is Good Bread? (Good Bread #1)
    Oct 8 2023
    How is the quality of bread measured by the system that produces and consumes it? 

    Good Bread is a three part series made with Farmerama exploring The Body Lab, a participatory arts and research project by baker Kimberley Bell and artist Ruth Levene considering standardised grain testing and the possibility of reimagining measurement within the system that surrounds bread production.

    The Body Lab is funded by Farming The Future.

    Thanks to Shipton Mill for their openness and generosity in allowing the Body Lab to explore these ideas.

    Good Bread is hosted and produced by Lucy Dearlove.

    Thanks to everyone at Farmerama who has helped on this series in various ways: Jo Barratt, Abby Rose, Dora Taylor, Olivia Oldham, Annie Landless, Eliza Jenkins and Lucy Fisher. The music is by Owen Barratt. The artwork was by Hannah Grace. 

    If you haven't already listened to Cereal, the previous Farmerama series about bread made by Katie Revell, I really urge you to. 
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    30 mins
  • What is a National Dish? with Anya von Bremzen

    What is a National Dish? with Anya von Bremzen
    Sep 21 2023
    Welcome back to the Lecker Book Club. Every month I’ll pick a newly released food related book and talk to the author about the process of writing it. I’ll also be writing about it on Substack and Patreon. Join me there as well!

    Conversations around food often - rightly - touch on attribution, ownership and identity, especially when it comes to certain dishes. But the subject is so, so complicated and many dishes we consider to be deeply entrenched within a country’s culinary history and culture are no more than PR exercises dreamed up a few decades ago. 

    In National Dish :Around the World in Search of Food, History and the Meaning of Home, Anya von Bremzen explores whether we can find nationhood on a plate - and what it says about us that we’re so obsessed with looking for it there.

    I loved this book. It’s fascinating and surprising but also Anya is such a great, dynamic writer that you feel like you’re on the road with her: party hopping at the Semana Santa in Seville, in the boardroom of an instant ramen company in Tokyo, learning to roll out the perfect pizza dough in Naples, drinking midday mezcal in Oaxaca. 

    Anya and I spoke via video call a couple of weeks back, coincidentally on the day the book came out in the UK.

    National Dish is out now, published by ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press. Find all of the Lecker Book Club reads on my Bookshop.org list.

    Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

    Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
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    34 mins
  • Moving House, Moving Kitchen

    Moving House, Moving Kitchen
    Sep 8 2023
    Stories of moving house, and moving kitchen.

    Episode contributors:

    Ruby Mason
    Ruby is an editor at SAND, a Berlin-based journal of contemporary writing and art (www.sandjournal.com)

    Margaux Vialleron
    Margaux writes the newsletter The Onion Papers: https://theonionpapers.substack.com/

    Maria Agiomyrgiannaki
    Maria is originally from Crete, now living in London. You can find her on instagram.

    Stephen Rötzsch Thomas
    Stephen writes the newsletter Ideas With Legs: https://ideaswithlegs.substack.com/

    Matthew Curtis
    Matthew is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief at Pellicle. 

    Eli Davies
    Like her doctorate, much of Eli's work is focused around women and home building; you can read some of it on Tribune here. She is currently writing a book about single women and cooking.

    You can listen to Kitchens if you haven't already! And buy the print zine too.

    Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.

    Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
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    35 mins