“I believe in buying locally, working with seasons and trying to support producers by looking at adapting the way one cooks to what is available and plentiful.”

Sophie Grigson is an award-winning English food writer, broadcaster, teacher and cook. In 2019, she moved to Ceglie Messapica, in Puglia, Italy, which inspired her latest book, A Curious Absence of Chickens and TV series, Sophie Grigson: Slice of Italy.

She is a keen champion of domestic cookery – in other words eminently practical, and keen on eating well. She has written some 20 books, including ‘Spices’, published in 2011, ‘Vegetables’, ‘The Student Cookbook’. ‘Organic’, co-authored with the late William Black, won a Jacob’s Creek Hardback Award. She also received the Guild of Food Writers Cookery Journalist of the Year Award in 2001.

She has presented shows for the BBC, Channel 4 and UKTV Food. She has also filmed Sophie in the Souk, Sophie Grigson in the Orient, Sophie Grigson in the Home Counties, Sophie Grigson in Thailand, and Sophie Grigson in Jordan for The Travel Channel.  

Her new book, provisionally entitled Exploding Tomatoes, will be published in 2024.