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My mum and my husband are from Irish backgrounds, so we have a lot of potatoes. Chips, mashed, boiled, new potatoes, I love them all. Even the slightly wonky ones like Duchess potatoes that go up in a little spiral.

I cook mostly vegetarian vegetable and bean stews. Quinoa salads. I make my mother-in-law's recipe for chicken and barley stew all the time.

I make a lot of soups, and I love stews. My mother's a big foodie. She went to culinary school in New Orleans and has an oyster-artichoke soup recipe that has no cream in it but it tastes so creamy.

There is a charm in making a stew, to the unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what the result will be, and whether any flavour save that of onions will survive the competition in the mixture.

I basically have the diet of a 19th-century Irish navy, apart from the litre of stout a day. It's meat and potatoes and bread and cheese: those are my four food groups.

I'm vegetarian, but I love Thanksgiving dinner: faux turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes.

Dinner is often a stew of beans or legumes, which are awesome for dieting; they give you that meaty satisfaction and both are excellent with whole grain rice or bread.

I am not a fine chef, but I can certainly get dinner on the table for 14 people. With that many, I try to keep it simple: salmon, mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, and salad.