Food for Thought

My husband Chaz and I spend probably 90% of our time talking about food. The balance changed though when our baby, Wolf, arrived in November. Conversation was now split 50/50 between Wolf and Food.

Chaz is the most incredible cook. He is renowned with all our friends and family for the way he can magic up incredible feasts just like that and stay as cool as cucumber the whole time.

When we first moved to France, our plan was to earn our living through food. We were going to write a cookbook. Start a sushi restuarant in St Tropez. Provide luxury picnics for the mega yachts up and down the Cote D'Azur. Evidently, none of the above have happened yet but we are always dreaming of somehow making our millions through food.

So we talk and think about food a lot. We talk about what we're going to cook for supper when we're eating our lunch. Our house is bursting with cookbooks and my ideal bed time read is lots of take out menus. One of the best presents I've been given is a subscription to Delicious magazine from my Mother in law, Suze. You're basically getting a new cookbook every month. I never really make anything from them, just like looking at all the recipes and photos and make myself hungry.

For the last year or so my best cook book has been Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible. There aren't a lot of photos - usually a prerequisite for whether I'm going to like it or not but the recipes and way that it's written is brilliant. It's written in such a chatty, familiar way that makes you feel Tamasin's there helping you herself.

Nigel Slater is another of my faves. Not so much his books- I haven't read many of them yet but he had a great program on TV called Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers. Not only were the recipes very delicious looking but it was filmed in his house in London in the most divine kitchen I've ever seen. A huge open room, wooden floors, massive open windows, clean white walls, with beautiful random bowls here and there and a splashes of colour from the pots of basil and coriander in the corners. Despite my love of clutter, Nigel's kitchen is top of my dream kitchen list.