In 2014, I dedicated part of the year to travelling the UK talking to chefs. In truth, that's how I've spent every year since 2004 when I began my freelance writing career. But last year was a bit different. Instead of the usual collection of random jaunts to fulfil a series of unconnected commissions from various newspaper and magazine clients, I made a plan. I wanted to write a book.

I drew up a list of a dozen chefs covering as wide a geographical spread as I could reasonably manage. Each was either in their first head chef position or the owner of their first restaurant. The aim was to connect with a new generation of chefs who had worked for some of the biggest names in the business - Gordon, Heston, Jamie, Raymond (Blanc) et al - but who were forging a new style of British cooking quite different from their mentors. That list included Mary-Ellen McTague (Aumbry, Manchester), Neil Rankin (The Smokehouse, London) and Gary Usher (Sticky Walnut, Chester) as well as double Michelin starred chef Simon Rogan (L'Enclume, Cartmel, and Fera at Claridge’s, London) who is included in the book as a Godfather figure of the new wave of British chefs.

Over the last few years, my work as a food, drink and travel author, journalist and restaurant critic had brought me into close contact with a worldwide trend, a new culinary nationalism where chefs were rejecting globalism and rediscovering the culinary specialities of their immediate locality. I realised that I probably knew more about the phenomenon as it had manifested itself in Chicago than I did in Chester, so I made a conscious decision to try and re-connect with home grown cooks.

Working for the national press, there is always a focus on attracting the publication's general readership to its food and drink pages, rather than catering for the committed foodies. It's a logical and commendable policy, but one that does tend to rely on the same old names to grab the readers eye. While it's always a joy to speak to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall or Michel Roux Jr, it does mean that there is less and less opportunity for new, non-TV names to break through. On a personal level, it meant that I'd began to lose touch with a younger generation of chefs.

I was fortunate enough to have indulgent American editors who trusted my judgement enough to commission the interviews to be published on the website of the highly acclaimed Food Arts magazine. The magazine suddenly folded in September last year which was heartbreaking for everyone involved. It also meant that only half of the interviews were published in a shortened article form, but it was enough to fund my trips and make the self published book feasible without resorting to some sort of crowd sourcing which seemed a little over the top for what is essentially quite a simple undertaking.

The book is based on a very straightforward idea and has a simple format. I spoke to each chef for between one and two hours, going into detail about their careers, their approach to cooking and the business of running a restaurant. I transcribed the interviews in full (or had them transcribed, it's a tine consuming process when you can only type with two fingers) then spent hours editing them into readable text, extracting repetitious and broken sentences, removing or re-ordering tangential asides and creating a narrative.

From that emerged not only the individual stories of the chefs, but a very vivid picture of what it takes to make it as a chef at the highest level, the extraordinary work that goes into a restaurant dish and the sacrifices the chefs make in dedication to their businesses and their craft. Although the restaurants are varied - neighbourhood bistros, rural restaurants with rooms, country house fine dining and smart city centre joints - many similarities in techniques, ethos and type of ingredients emerged. The new wave love all things fermented and pickled, foraged, home made, organic and rare breed, all things exemplified in the cooking of Simon Rogan, whose name came up time and time again when I asked the chefs for someone they admired.

There is a very definite turning away from the elaborate games of molecular gastronomy where nothing is what it seems and evoking 'childhood memories' seems to be the ultimate goal, towards capturing the essence of an ingredients flavour and presenting in as natural way as possible, even if that sometimes means employing a range of modern, flash kitchen equipment to achieve that aim.

Researching and writing Kingdom of Cooks has been one of the most fun and rewarding projects of my writing career so far. Of course eating at all these amazing restaurant was great, but even better was getting an real insight to the people behind them and discovering over and over again what passionate, driven and wonderfully hospitable people they are. I hope I've captured that in the book.