There's something about food.

When I read a story that uses food to help tell it, suddenly I'm doing more than reading.

I'm feeling the food in my hands and I'm smelling and tasting it.

I'm hearing the chopping or the crackling or the sizzling.

I'm associating it with my own memories. Cooking and eating

is one of the most sensory experiences we have, and that makes food writing one of my favorite

kinds of writing ever. For me, it's transportive, and it's the perfect vehicle for stories.

My colleague Ravinder Bogal agrees.

I remember Nigel Slater saying to me, you know, I'm not interested in the recipe for a lasagna.

I'm interested in the recipe for your lasagna and what the story behind it is. And I think that's it. It's the stories that make the food.

Ravindor's family is from India. She grew up in Kenya, and she has a restaurant in London now called Jekoni. Her columns in the F.T. and her cookbooks are all infused with stories from

these places. She recently joined me on stage at the FT Weekend Festival with two other food-based storytellers,

Angela Hui and Kitty Tate, to talk about the power of food writing.

We're going to share the best parts of that conversation with you today.

Angela is a journalist. She recently wrote a very popular memoir about working at her parents'

Chinese takeaway in rural Wales.

It's called Takeaway, Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter.

Kitty is just 19 years old, and she is one of the most popular bakers on Instagram and TikTok.

Kitty owns a bakery with her dad in Oxfordshire, and they wrote a beautiful book together about baking and how

baking saved her life, called Bread Song.

This is F.T. Weekend. I to a panel that I am really thrilled to host. It's kind of my dream panel.

So I'd love to start by hearing first how you came to tell your stories through food. I know it's different for all of you a little bit.

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