Richard McKenzie tells a good story. Shortly after moving to Ireland, he was in an Irish pub during a particularly good session. Looking at one man, who was jigging furiously while holding an unspilled pint of Guinness in his hand, he turned to his wife and remarked: "That's exactly how my father used to dance". She simply replied: "That's not how mine did". This is undoubtedly true - Fred Astaire, father of Ava Astaire McKenzie, was famous for any number of dance routines, but doing a set of Fallai Luimni without disturbing a single drop of stout was not one of them.
Ava Astaire grew up surrounded by West Coast luxury - marble bathrooms, maids who asked which fresh juice would be required in the morning and any number of close family friends who just happened to be Hollywood idols. She first came to Ireland with her father to stay with her aunt Adele (Lady Charles Cavendish) at Lismore Castle at the age of 12 and describes herself as "enchanted from the start".
She returned with her husband, Richard McKenzie for a gorgeous long summer when they married in 1970, and in 1975 they moved here lock, stock and barrel.
Life at Clonlea, the farmhouse in west Cork where they have lived for part of the year ever since, sounds fairly idyllic - Richard is a painter who "follows the light around the place" and Ava does the garden and cooks. Both in person and in her book, At Home In Ireland Ava is alarmingly pleasant, down to earth and full of practical wisdom.
She describes begging hair trimmings from her local hair dresser to bury among the bean rows (a great source of nitrogen, apparently) and creating a dish called Mussels in Guinness because she hated to see a half bottle of flat Guinness go to waste.
This is not, however, a straightforward recipe book. Recipes are interspersed with anecdotes and tips, and unsurprisingly a fair few well-known names crop up. Fred Astaire came to Ireland often and filmed The Purple Taxi with Peter Ustinov here in 1976, but stayed in Clonlea with Ava and Richard only once. He was so cold that he wore all his clothes to bed.
Indeed when the pair first announced their plans to move to Europe in 1972, Fred gave Richard an overcoat to ward off the legendary European cold - "He was a man who'd wear an overcoat in LA," snorts Richard. It was the coat he wore when dancing with Ginger Rogers to the tune of A Fine Romance, and although Fred didn't see its significance, Richard felt quite unable to wear it and ended up giving it to a museum.
There are plenty of other names and faces from the McKenzies' table over the years - the novelist Molly Keane shared her recipe for kedgeree with Ava; Boris Karloff's wife Evie sent a card made from dried flowers plucked from one of Ava's table centrepieces; Michael York dropped by for salad sandwiches; Rabbi Julia Neuberger always makes hummus for the annual regatta picnic, and Maureen O'Hara (who doesn't like spinach) and Angela Lansbury are frequent lunch guests.
There is a certain prurient interest in hearing tales of the meals of the rich and famous, and Ava originally didn't want to do a book, for that reason. "I thought everyone would just think I was trying to cash in on being Fred Astaire's daughter. But so many people said I should, that I just wrote it in the end."
When Ava and Richard arrived to Clonlea in 1975, it was to a very different lifestyle than the Beverley Hills one that they both knew. There was little in the way of fresh local produce in those days, so they immediately started planting things such as artichokes, spinach and squash as well as more down to earth vegetables like spuds, carrots and onions. The small garden has now spread over an acre of their land and includes ponds and orchards as well as masses of flowers and herbs.
Ava admits that most of the recipes in the book have evolved from other recipes, adapted to fit in with the local produce and given the trademark twist of the creative cook.
There is an ingenious recipe for leg of lamb cooked in a bed of hay, a simple idea for savoury rosemary pastries, as well as six different recipes for cooking cabbage. Picnics are carried in wicker hampers and there are always tablecloths and matching plates, even if the table is a clump of rocks or a few bales of hay. Parties are planned months in advance and Ava includes ideas for centrepieces and timetables counting down to the big day. However, all this perfectionism is tempered with a slow-moving and cyclical portrait of life in the country, where things will "do" and nothing is taken for granted. "It's the way we live in Ireland," says Richard, "It's comfortable, it's at a nice pace and we enjoy it."
At Home In Ireland by Ava Astaire McKenzie is published by Roberts Rinehart priced £12.99
Turn Left At The Black Cow by Richard McKenzie is published by Roberts Rinehart priced £14.99