This is a way of eating, it is definitely not a diet

Poldark star Robin Ellis shows MARION McMULLEN how to eat healthily the Mediterranean way

POLDARK actor Robin Ellis has been cooking his way to health since being diagnosed with diabetes. Robin became a TV heartthrob when he starred in the landmark 1970s BBC drama Poldark, but now gets standing ovations for his food and runs popular cookery workshops at his home in rural south-western France. He focuses on simple, delicious and healthy Mediterranean cuisine, making the most of fresh local ingredients, and his dishes have won top reviews from fellow thesps, with Harry Potter actor Imelda Staunton exclaiming: “How can food this good be good for you?!” and Red and Bourne star Brian Cox saying: “Once tasted, never forgotten!” Sir Derek Jacobi adds: “I can highly recommend Robin’s delicious recipes, some of which I have had the pleasure of sampling at his table in France.

“The recipes have all the richness of classical Mediterranean cooking.

Enjoy yourselves, as I have, with this mouth-watering cornucopia!”

Robin was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1999. He had no symptoms, but he took the diagnosis seriously as his mother had suffered with Type 1 diabetes. He and his wife, Meredith, moved to France the same year and he is now known locally as the “Anglais who cooks”.

By changing the way he ate and taking more exercise, Robin was able to control his blood sugar sufficiently to avoid taking medication for six years, and the 78-year-old shares his lifetime collection of healthy and simple recipes in his latest book Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking:

Delicious Seasonal Dishes for Living Well with Diabetes.

Robin says he is not a fullypaid up vegetarian, but has not eaten beef for more than 20 years. “I am no missionary,” he says. “Rather, like Fagin in Lionel Bart’s musical Oliver!, I am a reviewer of the situation.” Mediterranean cuisine is among the healthiest in the world and a vegetarian diet has been proven to be good for people with diabetes – there are an estimated 3.7 million in the UK. Robin’s seasonal vegetarian dishes avoids carb-heavy pastries or potatoes and meat substitutes – not traditional staples of the Mediterranean diet.

Robin says: “Diets are problematic because they are restrictive. ‘Cut it out!’, they cry; ‘Give it up!’ – they start with a negative.

“The Med way to eat does not wag a finger. It encourages.

The result is that the way we eat can become habitual, an everyday thing, and with any luck, something we are reluctant rather than relieved to give up. This book is all about a way of eating; it is definitely not about a diet.”

The new offering is Robin’s fourth cookbook and he serves up recipes for every season.

“The defining quality of summer food is colour,” says Robin. “The stands at markets are bursting with it, blindingly so. Here is colour in abundance and it makes my heart sing.”