Trish Deseine - My new cooking heroine and France's answer to Nigella Lawson

I totally ADORE Trish Deseine... She is down to earth, laid back and beautiful and cooks so well.... and lives in France.....

She has had 3 different series of cooking programmes on television here in Australia - Trish's Paris Kitchen, Trish's Mediterranean Kitchen and Trish's French Country Kitchen and I think these were made for RTE (an Irish TV station ?) as I had certainly never heard of her when I lived in UK and never seen any of her programmes there either.... However, I am now a keen fan and never miss a programme (when I am not here Mr SE records them for me too and then I have a blissful afternoon catching up with them all one after the other - just heaven!) Even the music she has in the background and at the beginning of each programme is wonderful and so catchy... (as I type the theme tune is going round in my head - Da da dat da darr dat da darrrr! - sorry but you would know what I mean if you have seen a programme!)

I decided to delve a little deeper and learn a little more about Trish who is in fact British and was born and brought up near Belfast. Astonishingly she was unknown in UK until recently when she wrote her first book for the UK market - 'Nobody Does It Better', - a collection of recipes and an exploration of the French style of cookery. She does agree apparently that it is a provocative title - she says "But French home cooks ARE better than English ones" ..... Amazing then it seems that she has got away with 'telling the French how to cook' in the form of ALL her earlier cookery books - she has sold more than 6000,000 of them and, amazingly all in French!! Bestsellers such as 'Je Veux du Chocolat' have now been translated into eight languages and have won several international awards. She has been featured not just in main French specialist food magazines but also in the mainstream Paris Match and Figaro too.

She says that the French see the irony in her writing cookery books for them . They call me an OVNI [French for UFO] because they can't classify me," says Deseine. "But they think all Brits are eccentric and they admire that, like they admire our passion. And they are fascinated by the trends coming out of the UK. London is a real style capital for them."
Trish Deseine has been in love with French food since she worked as a teenage au pair in the Vendée. "The mother was a fantastic cook and showed me how to shop well, build relationships with shopkeepers and care about quality."
While studying French at Edinburgh University, she fell in love with a French businessman. They moved to France, married and Deseine became involved in her husband's mail-order company which sells professional-quality food to the public.
She developed recipes using the products and was demonstrating them at a trade fair when she was spotted by the publisher Hachette.
Her book of simple, accessible recipes, 'Petit Plats entre Amis', was an immediate hit, a breath of fresh air in a market chock-a-block with heavy tomes by professional chefs.

Now separated and with four school-age children, Deseine entertains frequently. Small extra efforts go a long way, but that doesn't have to mean slaving away in the kitchen, she insists.

Does anyone else know about Trish Deseine and if so, what do you think? I for one am totally hooked!!