CHEF and TV personality Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall really, really wants us to eat more vegetables.

The 52-year-old who lives in East Devon, has made a career out of committing to seasonal, ethically produced food, and is best known for hosting Channel 4 series River Cottage, which documents his efforts to become a self-reliant farmer in rural England.

His TV ventures have led to huge campaigns aimed at reducing food waste and changing EU fishing policies, and also the publication of several cookbooks, including his hugely successful first vegetarian cookbook, River Cottage Veg Every Day back in 2011, which set out to make plants more appealing.

Now Hugh's back with Much More Veg and a selection of new recipes dedicated to inspiring people to become less dependent on meat - but this veg book is also vegan to boot.

Hugh said: "It was so close to being vegan anyway, and I thought, actually, the most inclusive form of cooking is vegan cooking, especially as I was already talking about vegetables in their unadulterated form - making the best out of all our plant ingredients."

Hugh himself is still a carnivore so does he truly think you can make plant-based meals as delicious as ones that contain meat?

He added: "We know how easy it is to make meat delicious - you put salt and pepper on it and you put it in a frying pan and the caramel flavours are delicious.

"The problem with veg, for so long is we've steamed it and boiled it and we haven't done enough.

"With veg, we can caramelise the edges, we can add a little spice, we can use amazing, funky dressings - all those things will bring up the natural flavours of vegetables, which incidentally, are already pretty tasty."

River Cottage Much More Veg by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is published by Bloomsbury, priced £26. Photography by Simon Wheeler.