My Life On A Plate: Allegra McEvedy

Allegra McEvedy is a co-founder of healthy fast-food chain Leon. The author of several cookbooks, she cut her teeth at Robert de Niro's Tribeca Grill in New York.

My top table

Eating lunch with no one else in sight, right on the lip of the Ngora Ngora crater [in Tanzania] on honeymoon.

Comfort eating

A good fish pie (which must have hard-boiled egg in it), peas and ketchup.

My favourite cookbook

I use cookbooks in a fairly odd way, tending to flip through the index for thought-provokers rather than using the actual recipes in the book, but for all round ability, it would have to be Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food.

The food shop I can't walk past

There are a few, but Alistair Little's delicatessen, Tavola (155 Westbourne Grove, London W11, 020-7229 0571), is the one. Kid in a toyshop!

What's in my fridge?

A pint of trotter stock; two brined poussin; a lot of Leon chilli sauce that I keep recipe testing for a new book; two flat slabs of bacon that I brined myself; a jar of Polish horseradish (leaps and bounds over the English stuff); and a lot of sake.

' Leon: Ingredients and Recipes for the Good Life' is out in the autumn, £20