The delicious smell of Alex Mackay's cooking hit me as soon as I opened his front door in Wheatley.

His dining room table groaned under an abundance of beautifully-prepared simple fare, from roasted red peppers to

asparagus with freshly-grated parmesan, a cherry tomato frittata, oven roasted aubergines drizzled in herbs and olive oil, asparagus hearts with griddled courgettes, mozzarella salad, hot bread, a ripe brie and cold white wine.

The 31-year-old has had an extraordinarily colourful life, fulfilling all the chef clichs without being nasty, egocentric or dictatorial. He is larger than life with a mane of blonde hair, a huge frame and a library of culinary anecdotes delivered with the enthusiasm of a pig sniffing for truffles, his speech peppered with wild gesticulations.

He smokes Marlboro reds like a chimney, although he says he has given up alcohol.

Though every mouthful is a taste sensation, and typical of his new book Cooking In Provence, it's a mile away from the fastidious and complicated cooking produced by his mentor, Raymond Blanc.

"I got very caught up in the Raymond Blanc flavours of cooking because he has such an amazing palate, but now I'm very comfortable with the kind of food I like, which is this sort of thing," he says. "I have learnt you can't be all things to all men."

Blanc's protegee has long since cut the apron strings, stepped out into the big unknown, and is making a great success of it. Notoriously difficult to pin down, Alex has worked all over the world and never settles into any job for more than three years. However, since getting married three years ago to Jess, a duty manager at Le Manoir, he has made his home in Oxfordshire and spends the summer in Provence where he runs a cookery school, Le Baou.

Alex is a Kiwi, brought up on a small town on the South Island. "I got kicked out of school in New Zealand - not because I was particularly bad, but because I preferred surfing. I was doing a milk round when my boss suggested I get a job in a restaurant washing dishes."

Three restaurants later, Alex was poached by the best restaurant in Wellington, New Zealand's capital, where he completed an apprenticeship. "I loved it. I just loved the whole restaurant world and the whole atmosphere."

At the time there were only three

legendary names in the chef world - Anton Mosimann, the Roux Brothers and Raymond Blanc. Alex had a well-thumbed copy of Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons by his bed and used to marvel at the recipes it divulged. So he applied to work there and when he was turned down, bought a one-way ticket to France, aged just 19, without speaking a word of the language or knowing anyone there.

Alex embraced France, but he was also brought up in the kitchens of hard knocks, experiencing the harsh teaching methods of Burgundy's

Gordon Ramsay equivalent. He worked seven days a week on appalling pay, being constantly berated by chefs who ran their kitchens like military establishments.

"I used to wake up in the middle of the night shouting 'Oui chef'," he remembers. "Our half day off was on Sunday

afternoon, when we had to clean the kitchens. That's when I would race to the launderette before it closed and then would be up ironing my clothes dry before my first shift.

"In one restaurant the head chef wouldn't speak to me for the first two months. I found out later he was a big rugby fan and New Zealand had just won the World Cup. I was just called 'l' tranger', which means 'the foreigner'. Yes, it was quite a lonely time but it was very character building," he reflects.

Alex has no regrets because he soon landed a job in the French Alps, before finally being accepted by Raymond Blanc's flagship restaurant Le Manoir, in Great Milton.

He fell in love with the place, working hard and earning Blanc's friendship. "He is a genius. He went from being a god to a really good mate and even came to my book launch," Alex says proudly.

After a year out in Bermuda, Alex was lured back by the offer of running Blanc's new cookery school and book production, which he did for three years before taking on the Provence venture.

Recently named one of the top ten cookery schools in the world, Le Baou has been a phenomenal success. For the rest of the year Alex is the consultant chef for new London restaurant The Vintry, works on cable TV cookery

programmes and is considering opening his own restaurant in London. So he won't be returning to Le Manoir then? "Never say never," he says.

Alex Mackay is coming to Borders bookshop, in Magdalen Street, Oxford, on Thursday, March 27, at 7pm to discuss Cooking In Provence, which, he says, represents his favourite recipes season by season.