Ballymaloe House

I was recently trying to remember the best meals I've ever had and I thought my visits to Ballymaloe House in Cork. It's a famous cookery school now but when I went in the 80s it was just a country house hotel and farm with a fantastic restaurant. The food was all fresh and locally sourced and I remember hearing Myrtle Allen on the phone to her son Rory in the mornings checking what was available so she could decide on the menu. They understood seasonal food and Slow Food long before it became fashionable but they were never precious about it, they just saw it as normal. The food was amongst the best I've ever had but there was no stuffiness about the place, they used to come round and offer seconds.

I love the idea that good food should be free of pretension and snobbery and I think Ballymaloe was a huge influence on me. I'd rather eat a dinner made of the best rare-breed free-range eggs than eat a factory farmed chicken, quality not quantity.

Dieting is so often about making sure you fill up on quantities of low-fat, low-calorie, low-quality foods and there's always been a part of me that hated that. I have always chosen to have a small amount of good butter rather than a lot of low-cal spread and one of the reasons that Beyond Chocolate resonated with me was that it encouraged me to eat the best foods I could possibly afford and enjoy them.

My parents couldn't afford a long stay at Ballymaloe but they chose to take us there for a few days rather than a longer trip to a less wonderful place. I must remember to thank them.