Kate

He’s cooked for royals and prime ministers – and now makes herself at home in David Herbert’s kitchen for scones and tea, to hear all about the food writer’s latest book

In a cosy dining room filled with light, art and floor-to-ceiling shelves of beautiful crockery, Australian cook and writer David Herbert is apologising about the baked goodies on the table in front of us: “They’re not the most attractive-looking scones,” he says, with a smile.

This is a man who has cooked for the Queen Mother and two Australian prime ministers and worked with Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver but David is as modest as they come.

His cheese scones, spread liberally with butter on a silver knife, are light, fluffy and impossibly moreish.

We’re having afternoon tea at his West London home to discuss his cookbook, David Herbert’s Best Home Cooking, which is a collection of recipes from his weekly column in The Weekend Australian Magazine.

Although the 56-year-old now calls the UK home – he’s lived here on and off for decades – he’s sent two recipes a week back to Oz for the last 16 years.

His column is very popular and David says letters from fans have, on occasion, moved him to tears, including one from a woman who says she carries his tomato soup recipe around with her in her handbag because it’s a constant in “an abstract world”.

David grew up surfing with dolphins and fishing in Nelson Bay, a seaside town on Australia’s east coast – but it was cookbooks that fascinated him most.

“I used to go to the library as a kid and borrow cookbooks from the shelves and go to bed at night thinking about them.

“I remember my father’s sister, who was quite sophisticated and lived in the city, telling us about how she went to Russia and had this dish that was a slice of salami under the grill and they popped an oyster in it.

“I went to sleep for weeks thinking about how delicious this oyster and salami dish would have been; food always seemed to fascinate me.”

David has now notched up six cookbooks of his own. His latest is aesthetically simple but beautiful, with a black cover – a la vintage Delia.

“The people that inspired me were always domestic cooks; mostly female food writers who weren’t chefs,” he says.

“From the 70s, I had Katie Stewart’s cookbook and loved it because it was really practical, simple food that always worked.

“People think they want to cook cheffy food at home but, in fact, it’s just stressful. Cooking should be easy, uncomplicated and you want to have a nice time.”

When he first came to England, he got a job as cook in a country house in Norfolk – and would be sent to cook for the late Queen Mother when she was at Sandringham.

He returned to Australia to become the prime minister’s private cook, throwing last-minute barbecues for 20: “You’d always have stuff backed up, you just had to stretch it.”

Drawn back to the UK again, he was taken on as food editor for Sainsbury’s Magazine, which Delia Smith set up and then became food editor on Easy Living magazine.

Nowadays, he’s branching into pottery – making cups and saucers in a kiln, which is clacking away in his conservatory – but he still likes nothing more than trying out new recipes for his column in his modest kitchen and sharing them with his partner Francis.