Darina Allen's appetite for life is still growing as she hits 70

On the occasion of her 70th birthday this month, Joe McNamee talks to Darina Allen about her life in food, a journey that has grown increasingly radical with each passing year.

The first time I saw Darina Allen on her new RTÉ cookery programme, Simply Delicious, in 1989, I was disdainful. Freshly returned from London, having ‘survived’ an assortment of institutionally cruel, even more institutionally hedonistic professional, all-male kitchens, I was in the Keith Floyd camp.