Back with a new cookbook, the food writer talks Ella Walker through How To Eat A Peach.

Menus are usually things you quickly scan before discarding, that you spill red wine on, or fold up to stabilise a wobbly table leg. For food writer Diana Henry though, menus are so much more than that, and not purely the domain of restaurants either.

"At the weekend, I've always got friends calling me asking, 'Di, what can I do for a starter that's really quick?', or they'll have decided on the main course but will say, 'What can I do for a pudding?'

"I'm always telling people what goes with what," she explains. "I love the challenge of standing in the greengrocer's and putting things together."

A resource not just to her friends, the Sunday Telegraph and Waitrose Weekend writer's new cookbook, How To Eat A Peach, combines her love of matching ingredients with planning meals. "I love putting menus together for no reason whatsoever," she says, remembering how she'd jot down food plans as a teenager, filling a 'fantasy' notebook with meals she'd cook in an ideal world.

She began having people round for supper when she was about 16 (her parents had parties, not dinner parties), and the menu planning never ceased: "I do it now still - I think of a menu, and then I think about who would like to eat it."

Cooking is about knowing when to stop

How To Eat A Peach was inspired, both in title and content, by an evening Henry spent in Italy, watching a group of Italians slicing white fleshed peaches and dropping them into glasses of ice cold Moscato, only to drink the liquid and then pick out and eat the soft fruit, sticky and plump with the booze.

"It's such a lovely way to end a meal, but is also a really good approach to cooking," says Henry. "It's about knowing when not to do anything, and when something is just elegant and lovely in itself."

The book, as a result (with a peachy, softly furred jacket), helps you tread the line between "when to not do very much, and when to do very much". Just don't expect it to be about 'entertaining'...

"I hate that word," says Henry with a grimace. The word "hosting" gets similarly short shrift: "I just have people in!"

Food can help you travel and explore - even if you're stuck in one place

The collection is woven through with a sense of place, with each chapter grounded by a moment in time, a memory of a place, a season, as well as a single, or set of, ingredients. "Each menu is its own little world," says Henry, flipping through evocatively titled examples like, 'Drunk on olive oil', 'Take me back to Istanbul', and 'Monsieur Matuchet plays the piano'.

"One of the main reasons I cook is to go back to places; or go to places," she explains. Henry, now London-based with two sons of her own, travels a lot (Russia is a current focus), but didn't as one of four children growing up in Northern Ireland ("The way I travelled was by reading, and by cooking - I so wanted to go elsewhere, desperately").

"It seems crazy, but in the mid-Seventies, you couldn't get peppers and aubergines in Northern Ireland - those were exotic" she says, recalling how she wrangled her greengrocer into ordering them especially so she could make ratatouille. "If you've never cooked aubergine before, that melting texture and that taste which is hard to say what it is at all - that was the way I went places."

Aged 15, she finally went abroad for the first time - to France on an exchange trip, where a boy taught her to make perfectly lacy crepes (she still has the recipe written on blue airmail paper and it's recreated in the book, with added sauteed apple and caramel), before years of Easters spent in Normandy and Brittany followed. The memories are stirred intrinsically into chapter one, 'Cider and gitanes', while the time she went to meet a man about a horse in a bar with her father in Spain ("It had these great leather chairs and smoke in the air") defines 'Darkness and light', where squid ink and rice are paired with romesco sauce.

Food doesn't have to be complicated, but it should involve care

Henry did train at Leiths Cookery School, and formerly worked in TV, but considers herself a home cook ("I don't especially like complicated stuff"), and says she couldn't be a professional chef because she'd grow too bored making the same dishes on repeat. "And I'm slow, and I'm really messy."

Instead, she spends her time constantly thinking about combinations, asking herself: "What is good with that? You think about flavour and texture; you think about what you want in your mouth - lots of cooking is about contrast."

Her recipes often develop as ways to solve problems - for instance, what to eat when it's too hot to cook, or, when you're having people over and one of your dishes requires a lot of effort (like Henry's apricot tart: "It's one of my favourite things"), how to surround it with plates that are simple (like her courgette fritters hot out of the pan, and roast chicken with lemon).

"It's about having a little bit of thought." And no one's food is more thoughtful than Diana Henry's.

How To Eat A Peach by Diana Henry, photography by Laura Edwards, is published in hardback by Mitchell Beazley, priced £25 (octopusbooks.co.uk). Available April 5.

HOW TO MAKE DIANA HENRY'S CRAB, TOMATO AND SAFFRON TART

STANDFIRST] This tasty tart will keep guests happy.

"This is one of my best dishes and I've been turning it out every summer for years," says food writer Diana Henry. "It's rich, but the custard is delicate. Prepare the components the day before, then you just have to fill the tart case and bake it."

Here's how...

Ingredients:

(Serves 6-8)

For the pastry:

250g plain flour, plus more to dust

150g chilled unsalted butter, chopped

Good pinch of sea salt flakes

1 egg yolk

For the filling:

4 plum tomatoes

15g unsalted butter

1/2tbsp regular olive oil

1 small onion, very finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of caster sugar (optional)

Squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

200ml double cream

Generous pinch of saffron threads

100ml creme fraiche

1 large egg, plus 3 egg yolks

200g white crab meat

50g brown crab meat

To serve:

Whatever you fancy - but Henry recommends a green salad, or green beans with toasted almonds, and potatoes if you like.

Method:

1. To make the pastry, put the flour, butter and salt into a food processor and whizz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Mix the yolk with half a tablespoon of very cold water, add it and whizz again. The pastry should come together into a ball. Wrap it in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, then roll out on a lightly floured surface and use to line a 23cm loose-bottomed tart tin. Prick the bottom with a fork, then chill in the fridge or freezer until cold and firm.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 and put in a metal baking sheet to heat up. Line the pastry with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Bake the pastry case, on the hot baking sheet, for 14 minutes, removing the paper and beans after seven. Leave to cool.

3. Plunge the tomatoes into boiling water and leave for 20 seconds, then remove. Skin, halve, deseed and cut the flesh into slivers. Heat the butter and regular olive oil in a frying pan and cook the onion and tomatoes gently until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic, season and continue to cook until you have a thick puree. Taste. If the tomatoes didn't have the best flavour to begin with, it will benefit from the tiniest bit of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice. The puree should be dry, not at all wet. Spoon it into the pastry case.

4. Put about 50ml of the double cream in a saucepan and add the saffron threads. Heat until just under boiling, then stir until you can see the saffron colouring the cream. Leave to cool. Mix this with the rest of the double cream, the creme fraiche, egg and egg yolks. Season well and gently stir in all the crab. Slowly pour into the tart case.

5. Return the tart to the hot baking sheet and cook for 45 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and the filling just set in the middle (it should still have a little give, as it will continue to cook out of the oven).

6. Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then remove the tart tin and serve. I think this only needs a green salad, but green beans with toasted almonds are also good, and some people always want potatoes.

How To Eat A Peach by Diana Henry, photography by Laura Edwards, is published in hardback by Mitchell Beazley, priced £25 (octopusbooks.co.uk). Available April 5.

HOW TO MAKE DIANA HENRY'S GOOSEBERRY AND ALMOND CAKE WITH LEMON THYME SYRUP

STANDFIRST] A summery cake, perfect for eating outdoors.

"This is a pale pudding - soft green and cream - which seems just right for early summer," says food writer Diana Henry. "I serve it with extra gooseberries, poached, but you don't have to."

Ingredients:

(Serves 6-8)

For the cake:

125g unsalted butter, softened, plus more for the tin

125g caster sugar, plus 5tbsp extra

3 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten

75g plain flour, sifted

2tsp chopped lemon thyme leaves

Finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

75g ground almonds (preferably freshly ground)

3/4tsp baking powder

350g gooseberries, topped and tailed

For the syrup:

4tbsp granulated sugar

Juice of 2 large lemons

2tsp lemon thyme leaves

For the poached gooseberries (optional):

75g granulated sugar

2 lemon thyme sprigs

500g gooseberries, topped and tailed

To serve:

Thyme flowers, if you can find any

Icing sugar, to dust (optional)

Sweetened creme fraiche, or whipped cream

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas mark 5. Butter a 20cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking parchment.

2. Beat the butter and the 125g of caster sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition. If the mixture starts to curdle, add one tablespoon of the flour. Put the lemon thyme leaves in a mortar with the lemon zest and pound together to release the fragrance. Add to the batter and briefly mix.

3. Fold in the rest of the flour, the almonds and the baking powder, using a large metal spoon. Scrape into the tin. Toss the gooseberries with the remaining five tablespoons of caster sugar and spread over the top. Bake for 30 minutes. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

4. To make the syrup, quickly heat the granulated sugar, lemon juice and lemon thyme leaves in a saucepan, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. Pierce the cake all over with a skewer while it is still warm and slowly pour the syrup into it. Leave to cool a little, then carefully remove from the tin and put on a serving plate.

5. Meanwhile, make the poached gooseberries. Heat 175ml of water, the granulated sugar and lemon thyme together in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Add the gooseberries and cook over a medium heat for four minutes, or until the fruit is soft but not collapsing (most of the berries should still hold their shape). Leave to cool.

6. Any thyme flowers you have will look lovely on top of the cake. You can leave it as it is, or dust lightly with icing sugar just before serving, with sweetened creme fraiche or whipped cream and the poached gooseberries on the side.

How To Eat A Peach by Diana Henry, photography by Laura Edwards, is published in hardback by Mitchell Beazley, priced £25 (octopusbooks.co.uk). Available April 5.