Interview: TV chef Ainsley Harriott

He brought some of that joie de vivre to Canary Wharf this week. So what is it that makes him so chirpy?

He said: "I've been very lucky in life, whatever I've done. Even when I was training as a chef and I'd have to stay behind to clean all the copper pots and rub down the stove because I was late for work, it didn't bother me. I'm one of the happy ones in the family."

The astonishingly youthful 52-year-old was in typically ebullient form as he signed copies of his latest cookbook, Just Five Ingredients, at Waterstone's in Jubilee Place Mall on Monday.

Like many chefs these days, simplicity is the watchword in the modern kitchen.

He said: "I was constantly asked by people to come up with something a little bit more simple. Chefs on television all pretend it's just as easy for people at home, but realistically they don't want to be looking at five or six pots or pans, or, dare I say it, five or six ingredients. Anything beyond that suddenly starts to get panicky.

"There are 120 recipes in the book, with five ingredients or less - excluding salt, pepper and oil, which I think most people have. Unless you are one of those bachelors where the only oil you have is in your bathroom."

Harriott believes his book is ideal for people looking to save money as belts are tightened in the recession.

He said: "There are a lot of recipes that do lend themselves to the credit crunch. But more importantly the recipes lend themselves to people who want to cook at home, perhaps because they aren't going out to eat so much - it was once or twice a week but now it's once or twice a month.

"You can look in it and you know you're not going to get too wound up. You've got a few friends over and it can be really stressful, but a lot of these are one-pot things you can just shove into the oven."

He is clearly still passionate about food, and he admitted he had to think up a new angle for his new book.

He said: "Unless you've got a big primetime series and sell the food through the screen you've got to come up with a very decent idea.

"When you've been doing something for a while, like presenting, and you aren't out there cooking all the time, you think you've got to come up with a decent idea, something that you know works in your own home and something a lot of people know will work in their own homes too. That's where the book came from."

Ainsley's campaign this year is to get people baking their own bread.

He said: "It's one of the great recipes to make you feel you can cook for anyone. It appears to be the most difficult thing in the world but it's the easiest.

"A bit of active yeast or if you want to try the old Irish soda bread all you need is a bit of buttermilk and a couple of different flours, stir it in.

"Try the easiest banana bread in the world, which is just banana blitzed down with self-raising flour, bit of sugar, couple of eggs, splash of milk, into a tin, pop it in the oven at 150 degrees for one and a quarter hours and bang, delicious banana bread. If you want to throw some walnuts in or sultanas you can. Lovely."

Ainsley is best known for presenting Ready Steady Cook, a BBC staple for the elderly, unemployed and students on weekday afternoons since the early 1990s. He revealed he is staggered by the success of the show, which will start shooting its latest series next month.

He said: "It's extraordinary. I can't believe it sometimes. We've nearly done 2,000 shows now and I've been absolutely amazed.

"When they asked me to present Ready Steady Cook in 2001 it wasn't doing that well at the time. It had been this fabulous programme raking in millions of viewers.

"But we seemed to have turned it around, we made it happen. That was in 2001 and now we're here in 2009 and it's still happening.

"The format is so strong. It's been sold all over the world."

Ainsley believes the surprise element, where chefs have to come up with recipes from ingredients they have not selected themselves is a crucial part of the shows appeal.

He said: "It's true, they don't know what's in the bag. More importantly they don't want to know because if you know what you're cooking, a la Masterchef, and it goes wrong it's pretty depressing, frustrating and annoying.

"You go away thinking I should have done this and that, I practised it enough times.

"A lot of programmes now people have been practising, things like Masterchef. You can tell that people have practised and practised. Sometimes when you look at a bag of ingredients you just want someone to get on with it. The chefs have never seen it before.

"When it's ingredients you've never seen before it allows the maybe into the equation and I think that's kind of healthy for everyone.

"Then there's me. I keep it buzzing and add a little bit of humour to it, not everyone wants to be told how to cook with a finger pointing at them. It adds a lightheartedness, it makes the whole programme a lot more attractive.

"Then we've got the 10 minute quickie at the end. I think it's just worked. Maybe we'll be talking about the 3,000 in a few years time and I'll be carrying my zimmer frame."