Diana Henry is a writer who stole up on me. I first came across her through

her column in the Sunday Telegraph and I was caught, though at the beginning I couldn't quite see how she was catching me.

I tore out a lot of her recipes, used them, and discovered as so many people do that her food is deeply pleasure giving. Her enjoyment of

ingredients, cooking and eating just comes off the page and she can write which of

course is the way she was hooking me, though that skill isn't something separate

from the appeal of her food. Her book output over the last 15 years amazes,

nine so far, and another due out later this year, many bedecked with awards.

When I spoke to her recently in a marquee in Bristol as part of the Food Connections Festival,

she was just back from New York

where she'd won a James Beard Award,

The Tops in Food Writing, for her most recent publication,

A Bird in the Hand.

If you've not yet discovered her work, here's an example of how she

draws you in, a passage from her first book, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons.

Spices embody our love of the exotic.

Stored in little packets, glass jars, boxes or tins,

every ingredient is rendered special. They are small postcards from the edges of the world, synonymous

with the East and Arabia, even when, as with Kumin and Coriander, their provenance is actually

the Mediterranean.

Empires have been built on the back of them.

They have always enchanted.

Two of the most alluring are saffron and cardamom.

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