Writer Diana Henry: Growing up in Northern Ireland makes me appreciate the food I have now

Plus recipes for pumpkin tarts, beef pie and an autumnal upside-down cake

Food writer Diana Henry has updated her 2005 cookbook, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow (Chris Terry/PA)

Food writer Diana Henry will never cease to be amazed by pumpkins, because they just weren’t something she encountered growing up in Northern Ireland.

She first fell in love with the idea of pumpkins in primary school, when her teacher read out books from the Little House On The Prairie series, set in the American Midwest in the late 1800s.