I love those Q&A features in newspapers. "What is your favourite smell?", "Who is the love of your life?" Friends would be disappointed if I answered one honestly, though. For "Where were you most happy?" I wouldn't say the birth of my children or my wedding. I would say anywhere that I have sat with a kir in one hand and a menu in the other. My most blissful times have been in restaurants, and it isn't just the food. It's also what they confer: they suspend time. The few hours you spend sitting there are for the perusal of pure pleasure.

All of my favourite restaurants are owned by self-taught chefs. First up is Le Bistrot du Paradou near St-Rémy-de-Provence, where there is no choice on the menu. There is no wine list either (the chef-patron, a former bank manager, simply offers red or white), but I know I will eat the kind of food for which the French are rightly famous ? beef with marrow, tarte aux pommes. The time I went on a cold December day, my four-month-old baby in his car seat on the table, tucking into a wintry grand aioli, was a special one. I offer my version over the page.

The second restaurant is famous – Chez Panisse in California. I remember stumbling across the cookbook when it first came out and feeling shivers run down my spine. Charcoal-grilled pork with roasted peppers followed by cookies and a bowl of fresh cherries? It took guts to offer this as restaurant food. I was desperate to eat there but didn't manage it until I was 30. I was so excited I had indigestion and had to sit outside sucking Rennies for 15 minutes before going in. But at last I had the dish I had longed to taste, the almond stuffed pears with late-harvest riesling ice cream below.

My last place is the Sportsman near Whitstable in Kent, a dining pub with a chef-owner, Stephen Harris, who is obsessed with food and 'terroir' – how to produce the most intensely flavoured rhubarb sorbet, where to find a pig that tastes of the apples and acorns on which it has fed. He is also a great magpie, stealing and modifying ideas from the world's starred restaurants. It's another simple place – bare boards, no real 'décor' to speak of – but they churn their own butter and boil seawater to produce their own salt.

As I watch the antics of celebrity chefs I muse how none of the cooks mentioned above has a television series; they are in the business only of offering great food. I'm off to find my mobile. Time to make a reservation.

Chicken-Liver Pâté with Mushroom Carpaccio

You are probably thinking there is too much going on here. But it works.

Serves 8

For the pâté:

500g free-range chicken livers
500ml milk
200ml dessert wine
1½ tbsp groundnut or sunflower oil
1 tbsp brandy
200g unsalted butter
1 tbsp coffee liqueur
1 tsp salt

For the carpaccio:

18 medium-size button mushrooms
parmesan, to garnish
squeeze of lemon
extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
1½ tbsp cep powder (dried ceps blitzed in a blender)
½ tart green eating apple

Soak the chicken livers in the milk for two hours. Reduce the wine to a syrup and keep it warm.

Go through the livers and remove any green bits and connective tissue. Dry with kitchen paper. Heat half the oil in a frying-pan. Fry the liver in two batches, using the rest of the oil for the second lot. They should still be pink in the middle. Deglaze the pan with the brandy.

Put the warm livers, pan juices, wine syrup, diced butter, coffee liqueur and salt into a blender. Blend at high speed until you have a very smooth, shiny pâté.

Pour the mix into a shallow tray and cover with clingfilm. Put in the fridge to set for at least six hours, but take out 20 minutes before serving.

Slice the mushrooms wafer-thin and arrange on eight plates. Grate some parmesan over the mushrooms, then drizzle with extra-virgin oil. Season with lemon, and a restrained sprinkling of cep powder.

Peel and core the apple and cut into fine slices. Squeeze lemon juice on these too, to stop them discolouring. Put a couple of slices on each plate.

Dip a spoon into boiling water and use it to make quenelles out of the pâté. Place on the apple and serve.

Cold-weather Aioli

It's hard to get hold of good salt cod so I find it easier to make my own. There's nothing to it. This is also very good, though not authentic of course, with poached unsalted cod.

Serves 8

1.5kg piece of filleted cod, skin on
rock or sea salt
300ml white wine
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 small bunch parsley
1 stick celery, chopped
1 bay leaf
a few black peppercorns
8 eggs
16 medium carrots
1 cauliflower
2-3 bulbs of fennel
500g small waxy potatoes
300g tenderstem broccoli
1 tin white beans or chickpeas
extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
bunch of watercress

For the aioli:

4 cloves garlic, peeled
3 large egg yolks
450ml fruity virgin olive oil
juice ½ lemon
ground white pepper

To salt the cod, put a layer of salt about 1cm thick into a container big enough to hold the fish. Set the cod on top, skin-side down, then com­pletely cover with another layer of salt. Cover and put in the fridge for 24 hours. The next day remove the cod (the salt will have turned to brine) and rinse in cold water. Cover with fresh water and soak for 24 hours, changing the water three times. It is now ready to cook.

To make the aioli, crush the garlic with a little salt and add the egg yolks. Mix until shiny. Beating either with a wooden spoon or an electric whisk, start adding the oil in tiny drops. Make sure each drop has been incorporated before you add the next. If it splits, start again with a new yolk, and gradually add the curdled mixture to it, going slowly. Add the lemon juice bit by bit at the end, tasting as you go, and season with salt and ground white pepper. Don't worry if it's thick; it's meant to be. They don't call it 'le beurre de Provence' for nothing.

Make a court bouillon by putting enough water into a fish kettle, or large saucepan, to cover the fish (do not actually put the fish in yet). Add the white wine, onion, parsley, celery, bay leaf, peppercorns and some salt. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and let this simmer for an hour.

Half an hour before you want to serve the fish, bring the court bouillon back to the boil then turn it down to a very gentle simmer. Lower the cod into this, cover, and let it poach for 25 minutes, by which time it should be opaque and cooked through. Check on the fattest part.

While the fish is cooking get on with the eggs, boiling them for 10 minutes, and prepare the vegetables. They don't have to be served steaming hot but they should at least be lukewarm, so you have to back-time the cooking to make sure they're all ready with the fish. Wash the carrots and snip off the fronds, leaving a little bit of greenery behind. Scrape them and put them in a pan of water.

Remove the leaves from the cauliflower and break it into florets, discarding the core. Cover this with water as well.

Cut the ends off the fennel, plus the fronds, and remove any tough outer leaves (keep these for soup). Quarter each bulb lengthways, and cut out the core, leaving enough just to hold the pieces together. If you are using large bulbs, cut each piece in half again. If you're doing this in advance, squeeze lemon over it so it doesn't discolour.

You can either steam or boil the vegetables – the potatoes and carrots take the same time, about 15 minutes, and the cauliflower, which should be al dente, takes about eight. The fennel and the broccoli should cook for just four minutes and then be drained really well. Warm the drained and rinsed beans in olive oil.

Shell the eggs and halve them. Put them on a huge warmed serving platter with the vegetables, leaving space in the middle for the fish.

Season with salt and drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil. Lift the fish out of its liquid, remove the skin and place in the middle of the platter with a small bunch of watercress. Drizzle with more olive oil and serve the aioli in a bowl alongside.
© Stella magazine/The Sunday Telegraph