What is in your kitchen?

We have a lot of pulses such as lentils, black beans and chickpeas and we also have a wonderful grain called quinoa - which is a sort of 1970s hippy vegetable. We buy our speciality foods like salted cod and dried Chorizo from Brindisa, the Spanish supplier next door to us at the Moro restaurant.

Luckily we have a big garden, where we grow sprouts and broccoli, herbs and salads. We also have fig trees and a Kaffir lime tree, we use the leaves in Thai curries. The idea is that you have your dried staples and you finesse with all the fresh herbs and salads from the garden.

How would you sum up your food philosophy?

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Our top restaurants are much too expensive - food should not cost that much

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As chefs, myself and my wife Sam trust our stomachs and are spontaneous. From our grounding and training, we place a high value on buying the best ingredients at the right time of year and believe that if you do this, you’re half way there. We love exploring new ideas and talking to people about recipes and… we’re greedy. We’re fascinated by recipes that have been cooked for hundreds of years. In the restaurant we make an ancient Egyptian molokai soup, made with molokai leaves from Egypt and Cyprus. It’s wonderful to think that this soup was around in the ages of the Egyptians and we’re still tasting it now.

How has British food and our attitude to it changed in your lifetime?

When I was younger there were more local shops. These were later replaced by supermakets but have now been replaced again by corner shops. Thank goodness for the new waves of immigrants otherwise we would have no corner shops. In my area there are Indian and Vietnamese shops and they offer a very exciting way of shopping.

I like the new transparancy in food labelling, especially the traffic light symbols that indicate whether a food is high in salt or fat. Manufacturers have always been sneaky and if you’re not educated about what you’re eating then you can be easily fooled.

Supermarkets are now telling people how to eat more seasonally which reduces the air miles. We’ve become a more conscientious nation and we are re-educating ourselves about when to eat and when not to eat - it’s good for the pocket, for flavour and the environment.

What annoys you about food culture in Britain?

If you’re brought up on second-rate English vegetables because the farmers always pick them at the wrong time, then obviously you’re going to have a country that isn’t keen on vegetables. It’s a vicious circle. I love supporting English farming but sometimes British farmers shoot themselves in the foot. We wait all year for fresh organic peas or runner beans and then the farmer thinks that he’ll make a bit more money if they’re a bit bigger or weigh more. So he leaves it a bit longer before picking his produce and you end up with these awful hard bullet peas and stringy runner beans.

I find it very exasperating, because I think that these farmers are so naive that they don’t even know when to pick their own vegetables. It’s as if they don’t cook themselves.

What is Britain's best-kept food secret?

I’m a bit of a romantic. I love the journey to school with my son, people don’t realise it but, there’s food all around us right on the streets, just falling off the branches. You just have to look up at the right time of year. I have a special instrument, it’s a 20 foot bamboo with teeth and a sack attached to the bottom of the teeth. You can pull the fruit off the trees and it drops into the sack below. You can just get this delicious food, better than any fruit you’d get in the supermarkets - and it’s free.

The other thing that we’re very big on is eating weeds, if you have a garden or if you’re walking past a canal, you can pick up weeds such as tickweed, mallow, nettes and, of course, dandelions. You can put them in soups and salads, or mix them with spinach when you’re cooking it. You have to remember that you’re not a victim to weeds they’re a victim to you.

Do you prefer eating in or eating out?

I like both, but we have small children so we don’t eat out the whole time. This weekend we’re going to Mudchute farm on the Isle of Dogs. There’s a wonderful chef there who does brunch, homemade teas and Sunday roast.

Isle of Dogs is such a wonderfully bizarre place, where old London and new London meet. You take the docklands railway down - it’s like being in Manhattan.

We also quite like Sweet and Spicy on Brick Lane. It’s simple, honest ethnic food, deliciously authentic. At number 25 Green Lanes is a place called Saray Lahmacun Pide & Kebab Salonu, they do wonderful Lahmacun (Turkish pizzas).

What is the next big (real) food trend?

I think there are two extremes going on at the same time. One is the “small plates” trend, where you have lots of little tastes. On the other there’s a supper club trend where chefs will rent out an old pub and sell tickets to friends for a “no choice meal”. Where you’re guaranteed that the ingredients are absolutely at their very best and what you’re eating is to die for.

Samuel and his wife Samantha have just published a new book called Moro East, in which they share the secrets they have learnt on their East End Allotment. Click here to buy this book

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