Matt Wilkinson and his simply dressed salads come to Canberra

Matt Wilkinson loves to talk. He can't help it - and he's very good at it. We've discussed everything from asparagus to Parliament House, where he'll be presenting to a group of politicians, to the shopping trolleys of Barnsley, in south Yorkshire, where he grew up. It's not until 20 minutes in that we realise we should probably talk about his new cookbook.

That's Mr Wilkinson's Simply Dressed Salads - a collection of seasonal recipes that are all about the salad as an elegant meal. They're not just arranged by season but also by the gradual shape and shift of the earth and the weather. "It's autumn - but it's 24 degrees in Melbourne today. This is not autumn!" he says. "Mother Nature defines herself, we don't define her through time. So mid spring, late spring, early spring, all start to change through the rain, the soil." He's particularly taken with the indigenous concept of six seasons rather than four.

So there are salads for late summer shading into early, warm autumn, and recipes that will take you into mid winter and out again. "And then you'll find at the end of each section there's a salad dressing family tree," he says. "Most home cooks, they cook up one recipe and they've got a bit left over. So if you do make a bit of a prawn vinaigrette, here's something else to do with it. It's the bomb on pasta."

Wilkinson will be in Canberra next week - he says he's looking forward to catching up with Sean McConnell at Monster, and exploring more of the district's wines. Fans will be able to catch him at a book signing at Harry Hartog in Woden. But he'll also be heading up to Capitol Hill with the lobby group Horticulture Innovation Australia, giving a quick cooking demonstration to the politicians and then talking for a little while about the import and export of Australian produce. "I'm an import myself," he laughs, in his broad Yorkshire accent. But he thinks of himself as Australian and calls Australia home - except when it comes to the cricket and the rugby (purists may take this to be a rather crucial exception).

He says Australia needs to consider itself an "internal importer" of food, taking produce from one state or territory to other parts of the nation, and people should make an informed choice when they choose to buy their fruit and veg out of season, shipped in from across the world. "I found out the reason why we import say asparagus is that we export so much and it's a trade ageement that we have to take X amount from Mexico, Peru and Thailand," he says. "I was at Spud Bar the other day... and I got told there was a worldwide shortage of quinoa. There isn't a worldwide shortage, it is stockpiled. Someone higher up the chain says, "No, we're not releasing this much, we want this much so we're going to put the price up and then we're going to release this much" and then everyone's got quinoa again, well before the actual season of quinoa. When you make food a commodity, it changes.. and we the simple people down the bottom, who don't have control, food is then a commodity and we don't know about it, information stops getting given to us or we're getting fed propaganda about food."

It's not something Wilkinson has much time for at his Brunswick eatery, Pope Joan, in Melbourne, which features a kitchen garden and plenty of seasonal cooking. He struck out on his own with "business sweetheart" Ben Foster four years ago after stints at the Michelin-starred Restaurant Martin Wishart in Scotland and Vue du Monde. It's laidback breakfast cafe by day, cosy restaurant by night with an emphasis on local produce served casually. A grocer and smallgoods store, Hams and Bacon, soon opened next door and he and his business partners have plans for a milkbar. Wilkinson's also one of the brains behind the aforementioned Spud Bar chain, a branch of which has opened in Canberra and serves up hot potatoes with a variety of custom toppings.

He's won praise for his sustainable ethos but reckons we might sometimes take our food far too seriously. "For me, my main incentive is not to be healthy, green or good for the environment but I just simply want the best tasting thing for myself. As a professional chef and as a home cook, I want my customer, and more importantly my children, my wife, myself, to eat the most tasty food. It hasn't been cold refrigerated and it's going to be the tastiest and I'm halfway winning. Even if I overcook it, even if I'm like my nan and overcook everything, it's still going to taste better," he says.

Wilkinson talks about his grandfather - who went down the mines as a boy and spent his whole working life there. Every day he came home, wiped away the dirt of the mines ("you only had a bath four times a year") and changed into a suit to eat a (possibly overcooked) dinner with nan and the family. He grew his own veg, not because it was trendy, and always kept a passionfruit vine for the flowers, which he would snip and put into his buttonhole whenever he went out. It's that image - his granddad's suit with a little passionflower tucked into the buttonhole - that adorns the cover of the new book.

And if you do flip open Mr Wilkinson's Simply Dressed Salads, pick up some fresh local ingredients and turn them into a perfectly composed light dinner or gourmet work lunch, don't go overboard. "If you take a salad and overdress it, it becomes stodgy and it changes the texture and overpowers it. The marriage of the dressing and the food plus texture [makes it a great salad] but if you get the marriage perfect, it's simply dressed," he says. "And that's a real salad."

Mr Wilkinson's Simply Dressed Salads is published by Hardie Grant. $49.95. Matt Wilkinson will be at Harry Hartog for a book signing on March 19 at 2pm.

Cured mackerel, nasturtium, coconut and rhubarb salad

This is a dish from the night-time menu at Pope Joan. I truly love it, and its inspiration comes from a dinner my good friend Mads Refslund and I did years ago. It sounds a little strange, but hey, so are Mads and me…

Serves four as a plated starter

5 organic rhubarb stalks (I get mine from Bridge Farm organics)

2 tablespoons caster sugar

juice of 2 lemons

1 young coconut

1 slimy mackerel, skin on, filleted andpin-boned, then cut in half lengthways; if unavailable, try bonito or a small kingfish fillet

2 burrata, or you can use 250g goat's curd

3 radishes, trimmed and cut into thin matchsticks

12 nasturtium leaves, washed

8 nasturtium flowers

½ tsp Otway Forest dried shiitake mushroom salt (or you can grind 2 dried shiitake mushrooms in a spice grinder with 2 tbsp sea salt)

Wash and finely chop the rhubarb, then place in a small pot with the sugar and half the lemon juice. Stew gently over a medium heat until all broken down, about 12–16 minutes, keeping a close eye on the rhubarb and stirring all the time. Take off the heat to cool.

This is a lovely way to stew rhubarb, like me Nan used to do. It makes quite a bit, but keep it in the fridge for up to 1 week and have it for ya breakfast.

Take the young coconut and smash it open, reserving the juice. Then gently scrape out the flesh using a teaspoon. Give the coconut a little wash in the juice, then discard the juice.

When ready to serve, sprinkle the mackerel with the remaining lemon juice and let sit for 2–3 minutes to absorb. Slice each fillet into five pieces. If you have a kitchen blowtorch handy, use it to crisp up the skin of the mackerel; otherwise just serve it raw.

Tear the burrata over each serving plate. Dollop the rhubarb around the plate, add the mackerel, then lay pieces of coconut and radish around. Scatter with the nasturtium leaves and flowers, then season plentifully with the mushroom salt.

Great with a riesling or a chardonnay.