Tell us about your favourite food memory from your childhood...

We spent a lot of my childhood at my grannies in the countryside. She was European and had that fanatic attitude towards cooking where it was almost part of her soul. I used to sit next to her on the Aga while she cooked, chatting away and enjoying the sounds and smells of the pots and pans in her kitchen. We had two rituals there that just feel so nostalgic to me, and I wish she was still around so we could enjoy them one more time. We’d stay up late playing cards at the kitchen table, she was lethal at racing demon and would never let us win, but just before bed she’d make us cinnamon toasts and cocoa that we’d sip and eat in the warm evening light. Then in the morning we’d wake up and make waffles together at the kitchen table, with bacon and lime pickle, while doing the crossword.

What would your advice be to someone who is new to cooking and is looking to put more love into the ritual of preparing food at home?

I would learn to make a few dishes really well, something epic like a slow cooked stew, roast chicken, lasagne or braised short ribs. Watch some videos online, find them in a great cookbook and really make it your mission to become damn good at, let’s say, a chicken pie. These kinds of classic recipes have real technique to them, they take time and effort and will teach you lots about cooking. So put some music on, open a bottle of wine and enjoy the slow methodical process. Then have some friends over, make it a bit of a ritual and be proud of just how well that meal goes down.

Tell us about one of your cooking rituals at home... What’s your favourite thing about having friends and family round for dinner?

I have a local friend, Ali, who makes a living hand-diving for scallops. The coast here in Dorset is covered with them and, fished this way, it’s a very sustainable thing. So, say I’ve got some friends down and I want to give them a special treat. On a warm Summers evening we’ll go and meet Ali on his boat and grab a sack of just caught live scallops. We head down the cliffs onto a secret little beach with a cooler of beers and make a driftwood fire with seaweed and dried logs. All you do is open up the scallops, add in some garlic or nduja butter and cook them directly in the embers using their shells as little frying pans. They bubble in the molten butter. Remember to bring really good bread to dunk in the butter and a squeeze of lemon. It is a spectacular meal. When they are that fresh you wouldn’t believe the flavour and with the crackle of the fire, sound of the sea and warm summer air, it’s one of those special moments where food transcends being just food… and becomes the ever-important link between experience, friendship, nature and the land.

Tell us about one of the most memorable meals someone important in your life has cooked for you…

This is a hard one. I come from a family of cooks, so there’s been a lot of special meals over the course of my life. When we were ill, mum used to make a stunning chicken soup that she’d bring to us in bed, and it was always so nurturing and comforting. When I was really young I was obsessed with hot buttered toast and hot cross buns. I remember being fascinated at how dad was able to get the toast still so hot but covered with melting butter thick enough to leave teeth marks, it was such a ritual of ours in the morning. At that age I didn’t have the coordination to butter toast fast enough and whenever I tried to make it myself it would always turn out cold. I remember really watching him, awed at the magic and I think that was probably the beginning of my journey into the world of cooking. Lastly, my granny was really into her offal, I’m talking Ox tongue, livers and hearts, which as kids we of course absolutely loathed. But she would make them no matter what, and I’d be stuck at the table with my brothers, staring at a plate of cumin spiced lamb livers with tzatziki and pitta’s, not allowed to leave until our plates were clean. She’d sit there, with a firm but knowing smile reading the paper and egging us on. I was always quite good at just wolfing it down while still hot, but my poor stubborn brothers would be there for hours. And while it was a source of frustration at the time, I love her for it now. Teaching us that valuable lesson, of nose to tail eating, the preciousness of ingredients and that you can learn to like anything. Which opens up a whole world of flavours, especially when travelling abroad.

QUICK FIRE

Taste that most makes you think of home: A fresh egg from my chickens, with a proper coffee and good bread.

Favourite song to cook to: Confirmation (SSBD) by Westerman

You have friends coming round for an impromptu dinner, what do you cook? Sardine puttanesca

What do you cook when you don’t have many ingredients in the house/you haven’t been shopping yet? Egg fried rice with chives and chilli sauce

Your most proud career moment to date: each spring when my sheep and goats are pregnant, there’s always a few tricky births. Where the baby is presenting the wrong way or its too big and you need to go in and untangle its legs, to pull it out and save it and the mother’s life. The first time I had to do this, I was on my own, in the rain with no experience whatsoever. The first spluttering coughs of that little baby and the mothers total understanding that I was there to help will stay with me forever.

Best place for a tasty dinner in your local area: Emilia’s in Ashburton after a long walk on Dartmoor.

Favourite winter lunch: Slow cooked pork with prunes and sage.

Best winter cocktail: I’ve completely fallen in love with Botivo, a great non-alcoholic bitters with a wedge of grapefruit and splash of soda water.

The ingredient you’re most looking forward to incorporating into your dishes this season: I’m really looking forward to the return of Cavolo Nero, really good pumpkins and purple sprouting broccoli.

Read Julius' Book The Farm Table by Julius Roberts (Ebury Press, £27)

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Photography by Elena Heatherwick