How GBBO's Ruby Is Re-Imagining The Cookbook

Appearing on a cooking show certainly has the capacity to change someone's life. Kwame Onwuachi started out as a contestant on "Top Chef" before later returning as a guest judge. Then there's the tale of Kenneth McDuffie, who credits "Hell's Kitchen" with actually saving his life.

For many, the transformation can launch a new career as a cooking guru. Going on "The Great British Bake Off" granted anxious nuclear physicist Dr. Rahul Mandal the opportunity to write his very own "cakebook" (via Instagram). Now, another alumnus of "GBBO," Ruby Tandoh – known for her involvement in the 2013 season — will be offering up her newest book. Though, it seems Tandoh has made something much more than your average cookbook.

Entitled "Cook as You Are," this book goes deeper than mere recipes. Tandoh told In Digestion (via Eater) that she finds cookbooks to be "a very limiting form [that] gets framed as the One Way to share knowledge about cooking and food traditions." It seems she is setting out to change all that.

Ruby Tandoh is known for being outspoken about many matters, including social equality. She wrote in Heated that "'Bake Off' has become a strange vehicle for change." Her reference was to the fact that so many bakers of color have come out of a show that, as Tandoh puts it, is still "steeped in the symbolism of an old-fashioned, implicitly white Britishness."

It is this type of thought-provoking insight that Tandoh has become known for, and it is that same awareness that has seemingly fueled the way "Cook as You Are" was written. Learning from the response to her previous books, she had a better understanding of the weight her words carry. "You realize that whatever you say about food, people are going to take it," Tandoh told Bad Form. "Not everyone's going to take it super seriously, but it has the power to shape people's relationships with food."

"Cook as You Are" is aimed for a release in the United States in November of 2022. It is the follow-up to Tandoh's previous unique books, "Crumb," "Flavour," and "Eat Up!: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want," all of which carry the author's unique perspective and attempt to challenge the cookbook format with philosophy and societal reflection.