Food from Wales. The people, their stories. The land, the history, the culture. Laverbread, sheep farming; markets and chippies.
My aim is to explore Welsh food, and everything around it – with as few preconceptions as possible. Updates, extracts and articles here.
The book is out now with Calon, an imprint of the University of Wales Press and has received very kind reviews:
“One of the best food books of 2022 (and that’s a very competitive field this year)“
Sheila Dillon, BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme
“If you want to know what it means to be Welsh in your heart and soul, read this book … In spare and elegant prose, Carwyn Graves tells the story of a land of beauty, hardship and plenty through the food that’s set on the table and the culinary traditions that live on in memory – for now … a book so full of memories it moved me to tears.”
Jasper Winn, author of Paddle and Water Ways
“Enthusiastic, erudite, entertaining and enlightening… Just the kind of erudite and enthusiastic guide needed to propel one to Wales to discover for oneself the unsuspected diversity and regionality of traditional foods that Carwyn Graves links to landscape, history and tradition.”
Elisabeth Luard, Chair, Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, author of European Peasant Cookery.
For a taster, here’s the contents page:
Preface (by Patrick Holden, former director of the Soil Association)
Introduction: On Welsh Food Stories (extract here)
1. Bara/ Bread
2. Caws/ Cheese
3. Laver/ Lawr (extract here)
4. Cig Oen/ Lamb
5. Halen/ Salt
6. Menyn/ Butter (extract here)
7. Seidyr/ Cider
8. Sglodion/ Chips
Postscript
Select Bibliography
Bwyd Cymru. Cynnyrch y tiroedd a’r moroedd hyn, a chyfran o’r hyn mae’r Cymry yn ei fwyta. Nid cadwyn di-dor, o bell ffordd; ond stori y gallwn ni ei pharhau i’r dyfodol, os mynnwn ni.