NOTHING is quite as bracing as a cup of tea with Clarissa Dickson Wright.

Formerly one half of the Two Fat Ladies, the larger-than-life cook loves hunting, fresh meat from the butcher and chewing the fat.

But it's a while since you last saw her on television. "Blair was trying to ban everything I stood for... and Alistair Campbell ran the BBC," she says, as explanation for her absence.

While she's here to talk about her new one pot cookbook, Potty, the cook is equally as excited about becoming flavour of the month again.

Since New Labour's exit, Dickson Wright says her agent has been inundated with offers and she's just back from a bout of filming.

"I always said that when there was a change of government I'd be back on television. The old lot hated Clarissa And The Countryman [her second BBC series]. I was making television about all the things Blair was trying to ban and get rid of – like farming."

While the former PM might disagree with her interpretation of history, it's a fact that Dickson Wright marched with the Countryside Alliance against the last Government's controversial Hunting Act, and has always been keen to voice her disapproval over any perceived lack of support for British food and agriculture.

For the past few years, the aristocratic cook and former alcoholic (who managed to drink her way through a £2.8 million fortune in her early years) says her professional life has revolved around writing books.

"When the publisher Hodder approached me with this idea, I said, 'Oh God no' because, having been a cookery book seller for 20 years, I knew that one pot cookbooks are always rather dreary."

Still, she likes a challenge, and soon began experimenting with the idea.

"There are lots of variants on what constitutes a pot," she laughs. "I remembered the eggs and bacon in a tin mug idea from when I was rector at the University of Aberdeen and was rustling up food for the students."

Luckily for Dickson Wright, having written 16 cookbooks she now has "a palate in her head".

"I lie in bed thinking about what to do. I think about a chicken, add flavours to it and then I get up and make it – and nowadays it virtually always works."

She describes her style of cooking as very simple. "It's all about the quality of ingredients. But while your food will be ten times better if you've got a good fishmonger and a good butcher, if you get the flavours right it will still be good.

"Although if anyone who's read more than one of my books still buys their meat in supermarkets, I'm surprised they're still buying my books."

Having just completed some filming for a new series, The Great British Food Revival, to be broadcast in January 2011 on BBC Two, she says she wishes people would focus programmes on food, rather than celebrity chefs.

But Dickson Wright's a little more hopeful about the state of British agriculture now there's been a change of government.

"A few years ago I went up to a Defra stand at the Yorkshire Show and there was no mention of British food, or farming. So I asked about it and the man on the stand said, 'We can import it cheaper'.

"Now we have a Defra minister who's a farmer, Richard Benyon, and Jim Paice, who comes from farming stock and knows a thing about British food and farming."

Here are some of Dickson Wright's recipes to be going on with.

TAGINE OF CHICKEN WITH GREEN PEAS AND PRESERVED LEMONS

(Serves 4)

1.5kg chicken, with the flesh cut off the bone and cut into 2.5cm (1 inch) pieces

2 large onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

6 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley

6 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

half tsp ground cumin

salt and pepper

8 tbsp olive oil

2 preserved lemons, cut into quarters and the pulp removed

700g peas, fresh or frozen

3 tbsp butter

Put your chicken pieces in a bowl and add the chopped onions, garlic, parsley, coriander, cumin and salt and pepper to taste. Add the olive oil, mix everything well and marinate for at least two hours or overnight.

When you are ready to cook, transfer everything to your tagine or casserole, add just enough water to cover the meat, and simmer over a low heat for 45 minutes. Add the preserved lemon peel, the peas and butter and cook for another 15 minutes.

This dish should be served with couscous, which simply needs to be put in a bowl and covered with boiling water, according to the instructions on the packet.

PROVENCAL FISH STEW

(Serves 4)

2kg mixed whole fish of medium size, cleaned and scaled (red snapper, grey sole, mullet, whiting or similar)

500g further fish (cod, halibut, sea bass), trimmed and thickly sliced

500g conger eel cut into 4cm slices (optional)

500g soft-shell crabs (optional)

10 prawns, peeled and the heads removed

250ml olive oil

1 tsp mixed herbs: thyme, savory, oregano, marjoram, or whatever you choose

100ml pastis: Ricard, Pernod or Marie Brizard

500g white parts of leeks, finely chopped

2 medium onions, finely chopped

750g well-ripened tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped

1 strip of dried orange peel

salt and black pepper

2.75 litres fish stock

1 French loaf, slightly stale, sliced

6-7 garlic cloves, peeled

Spread out the fish and seafood on a large platter and sprinkle them with four to five tablespoons of olive oil, the herbs and about half the pastis. At this stage you can add a pinch of powdered saffron, if you happen to have it, which will give a nice colour. Rub these well all over the fish and leave them to marinate for an hour. Heat the remaining oil in a large saucepan, put in the leeks and onions and cook gently in the oil for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Then add the tomatoes and the dried orange peel and cook for five minutes longer. Salt lightly and add a good amount of freshly ground pepper. Raise the heat under the pan and add the fish stock and the remaining pastis. From this point, it'll take you 15 minutes to finish the dish. Keep the pan over a good heat.

Add the fish in three different batches: the conger eel and firm-fleshed fish should go in first, then any crustaceans. After five minutes add the larger specimens of the more tender-fleshed fish, such as the sole, then the smaller, soft-fleshed fish (this all depends what kind of fish you're using, so use your brains and your imagination).

While the fish is cooking, rub the dried bread slices with the cloves of garlic. Allow one medium-sized clove for three slices of bread. Bring to the table and put the dried bread in the bottom of each serving bowl, and then pour over the broth and divide up the fish.

Potty: Clarissa's One Pot Cookbook by Clarissa Dickson Wright is published in hardback by Hodder, priced £20. Available now.