Rosemary Shrager

Rosemary Shrager's cooking is in the mould of the celebrated women restaurateurs who brought renown to the cuisine of Lyon at the start of the last century, being a combination of solid technique and intuition. Before she opened her cookery school at Amhuinnsuidhe (pronounced "Aven-suey") on the island of Harris, the self-taught cook had worked for Pierre Koffmann and Jean-Christophe Novelli, had been a personal cook for a branch of the Mountbatten family and had run her own restaurant.

The school, part of a 50,000-acre sporting estate, overlooking the island of Taransay, has access to the freshest fish and crustaceans caught in waters off the Western Isles. When she says she has the "finest lobsters in the world", she speaks with the authority of a chef who has cooked the best that London can offer and knows hers are better.