One of the most important aspects of gourmet food is using fresh produce. This means that most restaurants have seasonal menus to reflect what is available throughout the year.

Chefs are often at the forefront of campaigns for seasonal eating Jamie Oliver and his School Dinners project is perhaps the most well known.

Australian chef Curtis Stone believes in cooking what's in season. He's been hailed by Gordon Ramsay as a rising star' and it's not difficult to see why.

After being head chef at Marco Pierre White's Quo Vadis restaurant for four years, the laidback 30-year-old has just finished filming the third series of his hit Australian TV show, Surfing The Menu, as well as completing his first solo cookery book, Cooking With Curtis.

Curtis said: "The way it works now is that everything is available pretty much all year round, so you can find asparagus on the shelves in the middle of winter and so on. Whenever something is in season it's at its best, and also it's at its cheapest because it's in abundance, but to me it's also when we should eat it it just makes sense. For example in summer the fruits are really full of water and they're sweet and that's because we need rehydrating and more energy because it's hot.

"And in winter, food is much heavier and stodgier and that's because we need more fat on us in winter it's just natural. It's almost like Mother Nature has sat down and worked out exactly what belongs where.

"It just seems ludicrous to me to fly asparagus from abroad in the middle of winter it's bad for the environment as we're transporting produce unnecessarily, and it doesn't really taste as it should because it's been out of the ground for four or five days by the time we get it."

"However, knowing which foods are in season at any given time of year can be difficult, and Stone admits it is certainly not something that society places much importance on these days.

"If you work in a city and you walk into a supermarket to find that everything is there, then how are you supposed to know? I mean, it's not like we're taught that kind of thing in schools.

"I guess it's a bit of an effort to try to get people away from eating peas in winter or whatever. But if we stop demanding it, then they will stop supplying it.

"We all have to use supermarkets but try to stick to what is grown locally and support local producers also try going to local fruit and vegetable markets.

"You really are what you eat and good, unprocessed food makes you really happy it brings you no pleasure to eat rubbish!

"I don't think you get fat if you what comes out of the ground, you get fat if you eat what comes out of a bag," Curtis laughs.

What's a signature dish?

All famous chefs have their own signature dish. They can range from expensive delicacies such as Gordon Ramsay's bizarre sounding cappuccino of white beans with grated truffles to a dish as simple as home-cooked lasagne. Every signature dish can be regarded as the chef's speciality their perfect creation. Next time you eat out, find out the chef's signature dish and give it a try.