Michelin starred chef Tom Kerridge is back on our television screens in a food truck travelling the UK

“It was like and old-style TV cookery show going up and down the country meeting farmer and cooking produce we found– like we did before Covid

“It was a really lovely old fashioned way of talking to farmers and producers about Mother Nature and celebrating a singular ingredient.”

Tom Kerridge Cooks Britain the series is due out this month and the accompanying book with scores of tasty recipes inspired by the producers he met along the way, is out now.

"Everything we do at our restaurants and pubs has been produce led, it’s always about ingredients. We are just the last little bit of the process,” says Tom.

"You go from how long the carrot is grown or the seasonality of fresh peas through to 18 months to two years of animal husbandry. Cookery is the last little bit. That’s the way we have always looked at it as chefs and so when it came to doing a TV series and writing a book about it its a very easy connection but the nice thing about it was the recipes we have put together have all been about simplicity and about the ingredients which makes it very user friendly and easy for people to do at home. It’s less chef led and more produce led.”

He said the places they visited and filmed were very much dictated to by Mother Nature and the seasons in particular, but also by the producers themselves.

"You want to meet people who can talk about what they do in a really lovely and passionate way.”

It took nine months to film and then a year to put the book together. “You can write a recipe for asparagus and even take pictures with stuff in but the reality of actually getting that produce out of the ground is very different.”

So what was the highlight of his culinary journey?

"The points that actually stood out for me weren’t the protein led bits – the piece of fish or the beef cattle – it was the amazing flavour and passion that people had for vegetables – the guys that were doing tomatoes or the guys that were growing mushrooms or doing red fruits. It became much more about the vegetables and the fruit growers. Normally as a chef its all about celebrating the protein, but it was nice to see something that was a little different it was a nice uplift that wasn’t quite what I thought I was going to get.”

He says although most people still base their meals around the protein first, we are looking deeper at what we cook.

"I do think we are looking more at what we have with the protein, and what style are we going to have. Because we’ve become so globally rich in the Britain – we are culinary magpies – we are looking deeper into what we cook and looking at the bigger picture and the dish as a whole – its no longer just meat and two veg it’s become more how are we doing the veg and then it becomes very celebratory.”

However, Tom says it was protein, in fact beef, that drew him to a farm in the very top of North Yorkshire.

“An animals flavour profile is better for me when they have been reared in an area where the conditions are more rugged. It’s like an animal is on a fitness course – they are the SAS of animals.”

He was filming in Yorkshire at the back end of last year “I was wearing a coat a beany hat but then again most of the times I’ve been to Yorkshire I’ve worn a coat and a beany hat.”

When not at his Michelin-starred Hand and Flowers and The Coach, both in Marlow, or on a television screens, he is judge of the Great British Menu among other programmes, Tom is a proud dad of eight year old son Acey who keeps him busy. Tom is married to the sculptor Beth Cullen-Kerridge.

"He’s an absolute unit,” he says. “He’s eight years old with size six feet and hands nearly as big as mine and rugby is his thing.” When we speak Tom and Acey had just returned from his first proper rugby tour.

"My time off is spent hanging out with him.” Tom’s parents divorced when he was 11. His father had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when he was six and died when Tom was 18, but it was his mum who brought up Tom and his brother, and had the biggest influence on his life.

“I grew up in a single parent family and so I didn’t have a father figure to look up to and learn from and so I am learning at the same time as he is.”

He has built a good team around him , he says, which means he is able to enjoy time with his family.

"I’m very lucky that I have a lot of people in the business who have been with me for years and years and so although I am still very hands on we’ve built this wonderful family of people together. I miss massively not being the guy cooking the meat and fish but I also recognise that if I’m that person there is no growth in the business.

"It’s a bit like being the football manager who used to be the player you long for those days of scoring goals at Wembley but you still also have to be realistic and realise that we have to build and move forward.”

He says hospitality was still having a very difficult time post Covid and he was consolidating a the moment while they weathered the difficult economic storm.

“Every single business that hospitality buy off, their costs have also gone up. There isn’t a single thing that comes into our business that hasn’t gone up whether its the loo roll or the utility bills. It’s very difficult. Some places that are busy but still aren’t making a profit. Most places are saying if we can just get through the next couple of years we are good with that. We’ve had some high profile closures and I think sadly there will be more.”

It is ten years since Tom, now 50, managed to lose 12 stone in five years (he weighed 30 stone) through a combination of swimming, ditching alcohol, cutting down on carbs and using the dopamine diet.

“I still work very hard to get in the gym every day. As you get older you are constantly trying to battle daily making your life work,” he says.

Considering the difficult time the hospitality industry is having at them moment would be support Acey if he decided to follow in his dad’s footsteps.

"Its the best industry in the world,” says Tom. “You get to travel the world and meet loads of brilliant people and goon adventures just because you can shake pots and pans a cook a little bit. If he chose it I would embrace him I’d be very happy.”

Tom Kerridge Cooks Britain by Tom Kerridge (Bloomsbury Absolute, £25 hardback)