Local feast

Australian food writer Jill Dupleix has made Notting Hill her home and found it the perfect place for inspiration for her latest recipe book

Above: Australian food writer Jill Dupleix cooks with Notting Hill-bought produce

You could shop and cook every day for a year around here, without eating the same thing twice. I know, because that’s what I do. My last four cook books were all devised, tested and executed within walking distance of Notting Hill Gate. (I refuse to have a car in central London, so it has to be walking distance).

My recipes might be simple to do, but they range far and wide in terms of influence, from Japanese-inspired simmered chicken with long white radish to Italian roast chicken. So I’m just as thankful for shops like Tawana Thai [3 Westbourne Grove], with its twice-weekly deliveries from the Bangkok markets, as I am for my two master butchers, C Lidgate of Holland Park and Kingsland in Portobello Road.

I’m spoilt for choice with fish shops, and often walk back and forth between Kensington Place Fish Shop and James Knight (the old Chalmers & Gray) on Notting Hill Gate, debating the relative merits of whole snapper for the barbecue versus bream fillets for the pan.

As much as I love the quality of Holland Park, with Michanicou [2 Clarendon Road] for fruit and veg, Maison Blanc for pain levain and Jeroboams [96 Holland Park Avenue] for cheeses and charcuterie, I shop more and more in the opposite direction, down the bottom of Queensway in Bayswater.

For Greek, I can find Greek basil, good feta, and watermelon at The Athenian in Moscow Road, W2, which is picking up again after one of the brothers sadly died earlier this year. Equally sadly, they don’t flirt with me anymore. In fact, very few shopkeepers flirt with me around here – is it me, or is it them?

There is a large new Oriental food store next to Whiteley’s that looks promising, and around the corner are the friendly Andalucia and Al Faroulah ( ‘The Strawberry’) Middle Eastern grocery stores, where I buy everything from merguez sausages and Welsh lamb cutlets to chickpeas, beans, yoghurts and cheap canned tomatoes.

Thank heavens for Garcia in Portobello Road, who don’t just do brilliant Spanish food, but have my favourite pasta for bolognese (De Cecco cavatappi corkscrews), good olive oils and lovely terracotta dishes for my weekend tapas lunches.

My new book, Lighten Up, is full of lighter, healthier food like grilled chicken with salsa verde, breakfast burritos with smoked salmon and pears poached in spiced tea, and I found, as ever, that the simpler the cooking, the better and fresher the produce must be. I haunted the Portobello Road market for good fruit and veg, the Farmer’s Market on Saturdays behind Waterstone’s, for herbs, salad green, Isle of Wight tomatoes and apples, and the admittedly charmless Holland & Barrett for all my seeds, grains and porridge oats.

On the rare occasions I’m not cooking, then it’s a quick trip to Ottolenghi or Alistair Little at Tavola for something divine, or dim sum at Royal China or Pearl Liang.

A macchiato at Carluccio’s on Westbourne Grove will keep me going long enough to get back home via The Grocer on Elgin for one of their lamingtons, an Oz treat of delicate sponge soaked in chocolate and coated in coconut. You can take the girl out of Australia and put her in Notting Hill, but you can’t take Australia out of the girl.

Lighten Up: A Healthy New Way to Cook by Jill Dupleix is published this month by Quadrille (£16.99)