10 questions for Rick Stein

What is the first dish you remember making as a child?
Corned Beef Hash – for a fish cook it seems odd that my first memory of cooking should be with this dish made with canned corned beef, potatoes, onions and parsley and flavoured with a little Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. But I watched my mother making it often enough, she used to allow us to eat it with tomato ketchup – this and fish cakes were the only things that she felt ketchup went well with.

What’s the one ingredient you couldn’t live without?
These days, as a result of spending three months in India writing RICK STEIN'S INDIA and filming, it has to be Kashmiri chilli powder.

Greatest tip for home cooks?
Concentrate on doing one dish really well and keep everything else dead simple. Buy in ready-made dishes or get your friends to bring things.

What would be your last meal?
First entrée would be new season’s white asparagus with hollandaise; the sauce flavoured with some of the cooking water from the asparagus. Followed by pan-fried sand whiting with a salad of ripe tomatoes, basil and     olive oil and then fresh strawberries and Chantilly cream, with a drizzle of Maggie Beer’s vino cotto and freshly ground black pepper.

What is your most memorable meal?
A curry of snapper, tomato, tamarind and curry leaves cooked on the beach at Mamallapuram on the Koronadal coast of Tamil Nadu.

Do you own any cookbooks, which ones?
I own about 400 cookbooks. I keep half of them in my Seafood Cookery School in Padstow and the rest are at my house in Padstow, and in Sydney and Mollymook.

What is your greatest fear in life?
Being asked to do Q&As. No, seriously, apart from death; losing my sense of taste.

Favourite place to eat in Australia?
Well, I’ve got to say Rick Stein at Bannisters in Mollymook NSW but it is actually.

If you could invite 5 people (alive or dead) to dinner, who and why?
My wife Sarah, plus a selection of people who I think would get on together because that would be more important than a selection of inspiring individuals who would probably argue. Helen Mirren because I know my wife Sas would get on with her and so would I. Rupert Everett because, though he says the most outrageous things, he’s incredibly funny. Barry Humphreys because I’d be intrigued to see if he would get on with Rupert Everett and, finally, David Attenborough who I suspect would get on well with anybody.

What is your favourite book and why?
ANNA KARENINA because, quite simply, all life is there.