Olivia Potts

Olivia Potts

Olivia Potts is a former criminal barrister who retrained as a pastry chef. She co-hosts The Spectator’s Table Talk podcast and writes Spectator Life's The Vintage Chef column. A chef and food writer, she was winner of the Fortnum and Mason's debut food book award in 2020 for her memoir A Half Baked Idea.

Yoghurt pot cake: the perfect sugary blank canvas

I’m pretty easygoing when it comes to most aspects of cooking. I don’t think there’s much to be gained from being dogmatic or dictatorial. It’s just supper, at the end of the day. There are, as they say, many ways to skin a rabbit. And cooking is supposed to be about joy; it’s not an

With Eddie Huang

23 min listen

Eddie is an American author, chef, restauranteur, presenter and former attorney. He has recently brought his famous Taiwanese bao buns over the UK, and they are now available at Neighbourhood in Islington and Shelter Hall in Brighton.  On the podcast he tells Liv and Lara about his early memories of cooking with his mother, how

How to make your own burger buns

Do you ever find yourself holding forth on a topic you hadn’t realised you cared about? You know, someone asks you an innocuous question in passing about the merits of slow cookers, or the best way to grow cabbages, and before you know it, 20 minutes has passed and you’re still grandstanding. There are a

Confit: the best (and most delicious) way of cooking duck

Of all the myriad ways of preserving, confit always strikes me as wonderfully improbable. The ability to preserve meat just through cooking it slowly in its own fat feels particularly wild. And the fact that this simple, unlikely process makes the meat more tender, more flavoursome than any other way of handling it only adds

With Sarah Woods

28 min listen

Sarah Woods is an author and cook, who left her corporate job behind to pursue her real passion after reaching the final of BBC1’s Best Home Cook 2020. Her first cookbook, Desi Kitchen, has recently been released.  On the podcast she tells Liv and Lara about her upbringing in a Punjabi household and how she was

Alison Roman: ‘My desserts are consistently imperfect’

Alison Roman’s cooking is a counsel of imperfection. She serves dinner late (fine, as long as you have snacks), gets her guests to pitch in on the washing up and won’t make her own ice cream – ‘it simply will never be better than what you can buy, sorry’. ’Her ‘pies leak, cheesecakes crack and

With Niki Segnit

35 min listen

Niki Segnit is the author of the hit cooking books The Flavour Thesaurus and Lateral Cooking. Her new book The Flavour Thesaurus more flavours: Plant-led pairings, recipes and ideas for cooks, is out this Thursday 11th May.  On the podcast she speaks to Lara and Liv about weird and wonderful flavour combinations, her childhood fascination with Oxo cubes and

Charlotte Royale: a celebration cake fit for a king

The big bank holiday weekend is about to begin. You’ve made that spinach and broad bean quiche. The bunting’s ready for your street party. You’ve crafted a coronation drinking game. But there’s something missing, isn’t there? An itch that just needs to be scratched. Where’s the pizazz? Where’s the cake? As the oft-misattributed quote goes:

Yorkshire puddings: is there anything as satisfying?

My mother, a Yorkshire woman, would occasionally take shortcuts in the kitchen, but not when it came to a roast, and certainly not when it concerned a Yorkshire pudding. She even owned a specific Tupperware shaker for the job: like a plastic cocktail shaker, in 1970s orange colour, with a propellor insert, and a lidded

With Guy Tullberg

25 min listen

Guy is the managing director of The Tracklements Company, providers of artisan chutneys, relishes and preserves, all made in small batches and to traditional recipes.  On the podcast they talk about the joys beef dripping on toast, the thriving food scene in Wiltshire and Guy’s desert island meal.

Womb service: the politics of surrogacy

37 min listen

On this week’s episode: In her cover piece for The Spectator, journalist Louise Perry questions whether it is moral to separate a newborn child from their surrogate. She is joined by Sarah Jones, head of SurrogacyUK and five time surrogate mother, to debate the ethics of surrogacy (01:07). Also this week: In the books section of

Is there anything safe left to eat?

The chapter headings alone are enough to induce a panic attack: ‘Disrepair – how modern diets harm brain health in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood’; ‘How ultra-processed food hacks our brains’; ‘How solving the last crisis in the food system caused the current one’. It’s not a new thing for books examining our food system

Chess pie: how to make the flakiest pastry

Chess pie was, in one sense, new to me when I started learning about it a few months ago. I’d never heard of this favourite of the American South until I came across it in a pie-centric cookery book. But in another sense, it’s extremely familiar – both to me and to anyone who’s ever

With Jonathan Ray

33 min listen

Jonathan Ray is The Spectator’s drinks editor and formerly wine critic for the Telegraph. He has also written several books on the subject of wine and how to buy it.  On the podcast Lara, Liv and Johnny share a glass of wine and discuss his earliest memories of food, his go-to hangover cure and his desert island meal. 

Bring back the savoury!

For a while now, we’ve been living through a renaissance of classical British cooking: a whole host of restaurants have been embracing the joy of the old school, the pies and puddings, the traditional and the retro. But there’s something missing. Bring back the savoury! An Edwardian favourite, a ‘savoury’ was an extra course that

Kugelhopf: a reassuring introduction to baking with yeast

Yeast scares even some of the most proficient cooks. I know home cooks and professionals alike, food writers and fanatics, who wouldn’t think twice about deboning a duck or rustling up a feast for 14, who quail the moment they hear the word ‘yeast’. I understand the trepidation: yeast is a living thing and, as

With Eleanor Steafel

25 min listen

Eleanor is a features writer and columnist for the Daily Telegraph where she writes the the regular food column The Art of Friday Night Dinner. Her new book – of the same name – is released on the 30th March and includes recipes for every kind of Friday night.  On the podcast she reminisces about her mother’s

In defence of chicken tikka masala

Chicken tikka masala has become something of a joke. When, in the late 2000s, it was topping lists of the nation’s favourite dishes, its popularity was seen as an indictment of British cuisine: we nick stuff from other cultures, strip out its character and call it our own. This is all deeply unfair: chicken tikka