What do you think viewers will find most surprising about ethnic food in Britain in 2008?

The idea behind New British Kitchen was to see how Great Britain has influenced the food of different cultures living here. Actually what we discovered was that they stayed quite true to their own cultures and brought ingredients to Britain and we've been influenced by them more. For example Portuguese custard tart has not changed at all, it's no different.

Do any of the newer wave of cuisines in this country like Polish or Korean, have the potential to be as popular as Indian or Italian?

Korean cuisine has a massive potential because it's so vibrant, because it is so healthy and although it's complex in flavour it uses few ingredients and actually is pretty simple to make. Korean is hot and I think it will be one of the next big things.

Is there anything from the series that you will be putting on the menu at Smiths?

We're definitely playing with dishes which use kimchi - which is a Korean vegetable pickle because it's delicious.

You have some great banter with Hardeep throughout the series, has he forgiven you for not awarding him Celebrity MasterChef title?

No, he's never ever forgiven me but I will stand my ground! Hardeep is a good cook, a very good cook, a brilliant cook, but in MasterChef there can only be one winner. But it was cool to work with him.