Chef, author and restaurateur, Allegra McEvedy, on food priorities, pretentions and the problems with perfect peppers - first published on Channel 4 Food

So how did you come to be involved in the Real Food Festival?
The reason I offered to do it was I went to an amazing talk that Raymond Blanc gave at the House of Lords that made real sense, about how there are people in the countryside who are making great produce, whether it's growing chard or making tea or baking bread, just simple things. But the route through to cities, where people really want that stuff and can't get hold of it, has been disrupted over the last 20 or 30 years. It was really on that basis that I decided I would give my support to the Real Food Festival.

What do we mean when we talk about 'real food'?
If you think of fruit and veg as being like us; we don't all look like Donna Air. She is the perfect pepper and then there are all of us - to me that's what I understand to be real food. Things that haven't been through the mill so that they all look the same; they've got the stamp of individuality, whether it's what the pigs have been fed on or whatever it is. It's got a kind of individual stamp rather than just a bland uniformity.

Do you think the debate about real food might get lost a little during these tough economic times?
It's tough trying to send out these messages at a time like now. It's like when I talk about cooking for my recipes, I just say 'buy the best ingredients that you can afford', because if the best you can afford is a battery £1.60 chicken then that's better than no chicken at all at any time. But we're all living through this and with things like potatoes that cost next to nothing - whether it's the organic ones that are 25p a pound or the ones from Tesco for 16p a pound - you probably can afford that because you're not going to eat pounds and pounds of potatoes.

Look at each individual case of everything that you're going to buy, rather than just saying 'I have to buy the cheapest out there', 'I have to buy the basic range' - because there are going to be examples when that's not exactly true for every family in Britain. It's a question of whether you can take the time and trouble to work out what you can pay a little bit more for.

What's your top tip for eating on a budget?
Go for very, very cheap base ingredients, so rather than starting out with pork chops start out with something that's a little bit cheaper. And don't be stupid about simple things like making your own stock. It instantly provides flavour and is basically free. The butcher will give you the bones for free and when you've got that you're half way to having a beautiful chicken casserole or stew. It's just about using your time and your money wisely, rather than going for boeuf en croute and disappointing yourself.

Do you think as a nation our relationship to food is improving?
I feel that in my lifetime things have got a lot more sensible. Take something like nouvelle cuisine where you cook something really tiny, throw the rest away and you're left with something that's not very filling or very nutritious on the plate. I mean the fact that we've moved on so far from that. The strap line over my [Real Food Festival cooking] demo was 'wholesome food on your table' and do you know what? That's OK, that's not a bad thing to be known for. Not peeling a potato into the shape of a cockerel. For me I feel like I've seen an improvement from when I started cooking. Just in terms of waste. There's a lot of talk about waste today and I think that's really valuable.

There's also a greater interest from people in terms of cooking. I went to a posh school in London and when I said I was going to become a chef, this is no joke, people looked at me like… I might as well have said I was going to be a steam trucker. Now there's a massive interest in becoming a chef and in cooking and I think that's a great sign.

You've done some work on the Soil Association's Grown in Britain Cookbook; do you think as a nation Britain should be more proud of its produce?
People say 'how do we know if something's in season in Britain?'. If you go into your supermarket and it says 'grown in Britain' on it, it's in season. They may not have a seasonal section but if it says 'British', then it's in season. There's obviously lots of great things about having so much immigration and so much free movement of people; you can get such a great mix of people, food shops, produce, all of that - and I really enjoy that. But with that there's a little bit of us that's lost what our base ingredients are. And people tend to think they're not interesting; onions, potatoes, carrots, apples… they want the more exotic stuff.

What's the ultimate British dish?
Can I say fish pie with peas and ketchup?

So what are you working on at the moment?
My latest book is called Economy Gastronomy and it's a great title because it does what it says on the tin. It's about how to halve your food bill and eat twice as well, whether it's not throwing stuff away, buying more wisely or doing a little bit of planning without making it seem really dry. We're all generally in for at least two meals a day so why not do something at the weekend that means you're set for those, instead of faffing around and reaching for a takeaway meal or grabbing a kebab because you're starving. So just really simple messages like that, that are achievable. Sometimes with food, and particularly with chefs, you get a lot of people on their high horse saying you should be doing this and you shouldn't be doing that. This is much more like try this, give it a go and if it works for you hopefully you'll spend less and eat better