Great British Menu – Home Banquets – Interview & Book Review

Great British Menu Book – A cookbook celebrating the 20th series with a selection of dishes that made it to the banquets over the years and ones that were incredible that didn’t quite get there.

Great British Menu has become a British institution, a showcase of the nation’s top chefs as they compete for a spot in a glorious British banquet. It’s the one show most professional chefs want to be on and has launched the careers of many chefs who are now household names. To celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary in 2025, Great British Menu: Home Banquets cookbook has been published. It brings together showstopping recipes from the show’s entire run – starters, fish courses, mains and desserts, representing every region of the British Isles.

Our co-founder Mecca Ibrahim spoke to the show’s Series Producer Avril Beaven who collated all of the 80 recipes for the book and worked on the production of this stunning book.

“This beautiful book encapsulates all of the love, care and mind-blowing skill that the chefs have brought to bear in the Great British Menu kitchen over the last 20 years. It is a true celebration of the excellence that makes our beloved competition mean so much to so many, both chefs and viewers alike.” wrote Great British Menu host Andi Oliver in the foreword.

Andi Oliver – revealing Great British Menu Book

Anyone who’s been to my house, or seen some of the reels I’ve put up about the amount of cookbooks I own, know that I have a lot of cookbooks. The average person in the UK only owns eight cookbooks (according to Waitrose Cooking Report 2023). I probably own about 200.  I’ve been working professionally in the food industry since 2011, but even prior to that I’ve had a love a cooking and therefore cookbooks. However, even though I’ve been an avid viewer of Great British Menu, I’m pretty certain I don’t own a copy of the previous Great British Menu cookbooks.

There have been a number of Great British Menu books published back in the days when Matthew Fort, Oliver Peyton and Prue Leith were judges. So that led to my first question for Avril Bevin:

Who initially came up with the idea to do a Great British Menu book this year, as I don’t think there has been one since 2007?

With the twentieth year coming up and the team at Optomen having just completed a BBC Book with Sort Your Life Out, they felt it was time to have another GBM book. This would incorporate banquet dishes from across the series’ plus those dishes that didn’t quite make it but were highly scored with the judges.

Onto the rest of my interview with Avril Beaven

How much were the original chefs involved in editing the recipes – not only for scaling down, but also making sure they would work in home kitchens?

I was in touch with the chefs that were selected all the time to make sure that the recipes made sense, that the quantities and ingredients were all accurate. The beauty of our programme and these recipes is that they are the  best chefs in the country and these recipes are meant to be difficult, that’s what makes them winners, so there wasn’t any adaptation for home kitchens in terms of the equipment and ingredients. We included a notes on recipes and methods at the front of the book to help navigate some of the equipment. We wanted to keep the recipes as authentic as we could.

Golden Snitch – Ruth Hansom  Canape in Great British Menu Book – photography  Cris Barnett, food styling Ben Boxall

Quite a number of technical tools/equipment are used in the book, which would you say were the MOST essential to invest in for the home cook?

For me one of the best pieces of equipment is the Thermomix, not only does it blend, it cooks at the same time, so much you can do with it. My other piece that I’m fortunate to have in my kitchen is an ice cream maker – I’ve got a sweet tooth so for me this is fabulous and the ice creams in this book are to die for!

The same with ingredients – which professional “cheffy”  ingredients are key to have in your store cupboard?

For me Maldon salt is essential, I think people underestimate how much salt to use to bring out the best flavour in the ingredients. I also think that all of your vinegars, sherry, cider, balsamic are great to have in the cupboard along with some dried seaweed!

Bananaman – Tom Shepard Dessert in Great British Menu Book – photography  Cris Barnett, food styling Ben Boxall

GBM is very much known for its props although we are seeing a greater emphasis on making sure the dishes stand up in their own right. How did you work with the stylists / photographers to make the recipes look achievable?

We made a decision early on that we wanted the dishes to look achievable for the home cook, so making the photos look accessible was important.  There were some dishes that had to have a certain mould, like Tom Shepherd’s Bananaman dessert but you could easily do this with a rectangle mould. We wanted all the photos to feel like a body of work, so making sure that they were all styled in a way that looked sophisticated, but approachable was key.

Having not been involved with a book before, it was great to be able to see the dishes being prepared and then how the photographer and the stylist went about to get the perfect shot, the attention to detail of both Cris, the photographer and Ben the stylist were brilliant and they really made those dishes, look not only doable, but also high end. I think one thing that they really worked on was making sure that you could almost see every element that was in the recipe, which I know visually really helps to recreate the dish.

Inspiring Women – Richard Bainbridge Dessert in Great British Menu Book – photography  Cris Barnett, food styling Ben Boxall

With 20 years of recipes to choose from – were there any that you knew straight away had to be included in the book?

100% there were a handful that I was keen to have in the book. I’ve worked on 9 series and was a fan before I worked on it so I knew the ones that I wanted to include. We were sure to make sure all regions and nations were represented, but also that there was a smattering of chefs from almost all the series, plus a good range of ingredients, so we didn’t end up with 15 venison dishes and 10 turbot dishes.

Gemma Austin’s Open Sesame was a must, as it was so visual and it scored all 10s from the judges and just didn’t make it to finals week, the same with Elly Wentworth’s Scallop dish from the Olympic year, that was outstanding. Going back Aktar Islam’s winning fish dish from series 5 and Richard Bainbridge’s trifle from the WI celebration in series 10, for me these were some of the first on the list.

At the beginning I had over 150 recipes I wanted to include but had to cut it down to 80, which was tough, as I know most of these chefs and wanted them to be part of the celebrations.

Maxwell’s Colour Wheel – Winning fish course in 2021 – Roberta Hall in Great British Menu Book – photography  Cris Barnett, food styling Ben Boxall

How often do the public request recipes from the show to create at home? Do they have favourite dishes or chefs?

Lots of people are always asking on social media about the recipes for the dishes.  When Sabrina cooked her fish course for the second year in a row, there were lots of people asking for that recipe and also for Spencer Metzger’s cigar dessert. It’s lovely to see the public get behind our chefs, a lot of the viewers plan their culinary getaways after watching our series, which always makes me feel proud of the programme that we make and the talent that we find.

We love that there is a section on pre-desserts – however it’s the shortest section in the book – do you see a growing trend for pre-desserts amongst home cooks & in general are there any other trends that Great British Menu may have influenced?

Yes pre desserts for me are something fun to get you in the mood for desserts. I love that there are a few in the book to whet the whistle of the home cook, I’d like to see more of it. I think that every few years there are certain dishes and certain trends that tend to crop up. We went through a few years of having savoury custards on the programme and this series there appears to be a return to the classics like a barigoule. I think that we’ve also showcased that plant based food isn’t just always mushrooms, these chefs put lots of work into creating dishes that are of a certain level.

Winners Wreath by Samira Effa  in Great British Menu Book

Would you like to sum up your experience of working on the Great British Menu book?

Having worked on Great British Menu for 9 years, these chefs feel like friends and to see them do well is brilliant, I wanted to highlight the chefs’ amazing skill and imagination. I cast some of the chefs right at the beginning of their career and their success on the programme shined a light on them, so to see new chefs coming through our doors and going on to get stars, rosettes and recognition for their cooking is brilliant.

This book was something that I’m proud to have been involved with and looking back over the years of chefs that have moved through our kitchen, it truly is a privilege to have tried their food and seen them cook, but now to give a stab at making it myself fills me with excitement.

Great British Menu Home Banquets is published by Penguin Books. It is available to buy from the online bookshops here. 

Great British Menu Series Editor, Antonia Lloyd, is an Ambassador for Women in the Food Industry and was involved in the production of the book. You might like to read some of Antonia’s features for us including Top of the Plants on Great British Menu and Filming Great British Menu during the Pandemic.

Don’t forget to catch our interviews with the great women competing in Great British Menu 2025 – you can find them all here.