My Life On A Plate: Tom Parker Bowles

Tom Parker Bowles is a food writer, TV presenter and the author of The Year of Eating Dangerously (Ebury)

My favourite restaurant: I think Café Anglais at the moment. A wonderful room, brilliant menu and great food, it's also the sort of place designed for a long lunch or dinner.

Comfort eating: Cottage pie and peas is pretty unbeatable, or chicken stock spiked with chillies, fish sauce and lime juice, and a pile of rice noodles sitting in the bottom. And a slow cooked ragu sauce, which blips away on the cooker all afternoon, then served with penne and piles of parmesan, is pure bliss.

My top cookbook: Probably Jane Grigson's English Food. It's a classic – elegant prose, serious research, brilliant recipes and a dry sense of humour. Also anything by Alan Davidson and Simon Hopkinson.

The food shop I can't walk past: Asian supermarkets are a particular problem. Also, Fortnums, Mr Christians (my local deli) , Grocer on Elgin, and Kingsland, my brilliant local butcher.

What's in my fridge: A bowl of last night's rice, a vac-pac of dried shrimp, a big bottle of fish sauce, a few chilli sauces, ketchup and mayonnaise. And some pretty stinky Cashel Blue and a few bottles of beer.

Tom Parker Bowles presents Market Kitchen on weekdays at 7pm on UKTV Food; The Year of Eating Dangerously is out now (Ebury Press, £7.99)