Clarissa Dickson Wright's summer pudddings

Growing up in my family, food was the only unifying factor. My father was a gourmet of considerable seriousness, and the food produced by our cook Louise, who had trained at Chatsworth and worked hand in glove with my mother, was always of the best standard. On weekdays, I was allowed to choose what I wanted to eat at lunchtime (within reason, of course), provided I ate what was put in front of me in the evening. This meant that I ate a more varied array of dishes and ingredients than your average child. Moreover we travelled a great deal. We stayed in luxury hotels, but ate at roadside shacks and local restaurants as well.

It was in Brazil at the age of four that I first realised that people in different countries ate different foods, and feijoada remains one of my favourites. Also, with my mother being born in Penang and my grandfather having lived in Singapore, Chinese and Malaysian dishes were a strong influence, too. I have spent time in the West Indies and love their dishes, and, of course, Europe had not yet been Americanised in my youth. Recently, I was in Brussels and found that the little rest aurant that I used to go to in Galeries St Hubert, with my grandmother and my Belgian aunt Emmy, was still there and still serving the best eel in green sauce. The waiters were just as rude and the service just as slow, but the food was just as good.

The idea for a book on comfort food came about when I was touring for my autobiography, Spilling the Beans. At each and every question-and-answer session following my talks, the same question came up: what would I cook when I got home? And – because, by the end of the tour, I had been away for three-and-a-half months – the answers to this question became: any food, sweet or savoury, that I fantasised about while I was on the road.

From the book I have chosen three recipes for simple, sumptuous summertime puddings: I hope you enjoy cooking, and eating, them all.

• Clarissa’s Comfort Food by Clarissa Dickson Wright (Kyle Books, £15.99) is available to order from Telegraph Books at £9.99 + £1.10 p  & p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk