You might recognise my friend and colleague Steve Lamb from the River Cottage TV series, where he provided the northern charm and cheekiness that made him a perfect foil for laid back Gill Meller and earnest Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. He’s written River Cottage handbooks, hosted stages at festivals and taught legions of students to cure and smoke meat and fish and make simple cheeses. He’s at his happiest with his beautiful family around him, camping their way through the summer months with a menagerie of different animals in tow. He gives a good hug and he’ll always remember to ask about the things that matter to you, because under all that banter, he’s an absolute sweetheart. He makes me laugh - a lot - and you can’t ask for more than that.

JP McMahon may well be the least starry Michelin starred chef I have ever met. He’s warm, chatty and down to earth, with a delightful sense of the ridiculous and a tendency to minimise his many achievements. In fact you could be fooled into thinking it’s simply his irrepressible energy that carries everything along, but JP is thoughtful, learned and delicate when he needs to be. He draws an incredible calibre of speakers to his Food On The Edge festival each year, has written a wonderful book on Irish food and even found time to study for a PhD. His Galway restaurants range from freshly baked pastries and coffee at Tartare and tapas at Cava to more curated plates at Aniar (meaning, ‘from the west’). What ties them all together is a focus on supporting and celebrating what is local. It’s what all restaurants could and probably should do to help preserve the uniqueness of the place they are in. The pandemic has hit restaurateurs hard, but particularly so in Ireland where sanctions have remained longer than in the UK. I hope that JP can hang on in there, because we need more of his passion and compassion to help us see what is wonderful around us.

Tim Hayward is a big warm bear of a man with a wicked sense of humour, an aversion to ‘woo woo’ and a muscular writing style that belies his soft underbelly. He’s a food critic, regular on radio programs such as The Kitchen Cabinet and author of many wonderful books (find links below). His latest book Loaf Story is a love story to bread told as a series of food memories, which you can enjoy even if you can’t actually eat the exact stuff referred to in the book. In fact, it may be quite cathartic if you have issues with gluten!

We explored the nature of authenticity in food, touched on preserving national food identity and how that makes liberals uncomfortable, admitting you may have food issues even when you thought you didn’t and Tim shared his experience of surviving a nasty brush with COVID 19. I could have talked to him all day, but alas we both had lives to return to.

This week’s conversation is with my dear friend Kylee Newton of Newton & Pott, (makers of gorgeous small batch preserves) and author of The Modern Preserver (a modern classic for home preservers). She was a photographic printmaker for Wolfgang Tillmans before discovering a talent for combining flavours in the most mouthwatering way - simple, well chosen ingredients introduced to each other and jarred for enjoyment at a later date. She has no formal culinary training, except a lifetime of cooking and tasting and a palate that needs no education. Like me she loves to teach and her straight forward Kiwi character makes her a joyfully unvarnished person (my favourite kind). I knew as soon as I met her that we would be friends and I feel as though I have known her forever. The result is a giggling catch up between two women who love to muck about and a celebration of Kylee’s Nan who raised eight children by herself and still found time to put a plate of freshly baked scones on the table for her 23 grandchildren. Kylee talks about her efforts to recreate the perfect scones of her childhood for her forthcoming book and how the process took her right back to basics, learning to bake by feel and not numbers.

My dear friend and sometime colleague Mark Diacono agreed to have a chat that we had imagined would be a fond ramble through lardy cakes and 1970s Findus pancakes (mostly things with cake in the title actually), but instead turned out to be a blushing confessional of the time that Mark woke up in a commercial oven dressed as Boy George after drinking a mixture of alcohols that I’ve yet to find a reference to in any cocktail literature because it sounds disgusting (Mark insists it tastes like cream soda). Despite what this might lead you to think, Mark is a gentle, thoughtful man and a brilliant writer. I could (and sometimes do) spend hours talking to him about everything and nothing and feel that the time was very well spent. His plaudits are many - ex River Cottage head gardener, grower of unusual edible plants, author of many award winning cookbooks and regular columnist on food and gardening. Whatever he’s currently into, he’ll make sure you’re into it too after a few minutes chat. Infectious enthusiasm I think they call it - like a culinary spaniel with a very exciting treasure he found on the beach.