MasterChef winner Mat Follas runs The Wild Garlic, which now has room for overnight stays.

With the exception of Thomasina Miers, the most recognisable MasterChef winner is surely genial, goateed Mat Follas, who scooped the title last year showcasing his love of foraged food. Victory has enabled the Dorset-based former IT consultant to follow his star. The Wild Garlic is it, a small, unassuming restaurant in tiny Beaminster (I say tiny because one minute you're approaching the town square, the next – if you do not park right away – you will be swept out of town by the tide of traffic, next stop, Bridport).

Gastronomes will, of course, have read the opening reviews last year. The reason I am coming is to try out a new apartment, just opened above the restaurant. It proves a devil of a job for me to book the apartment and get a table on the same night, but eventually I pull it off.

My private domain is reached via a staircase from the restaurant (or a side door when The Wild Garlic is shut). So here I am, in the late afternoon, watching the light fading through the stone mullion windows and the 4x4s emptying out from the square.

I'm in the large bed-sitting room looking through to a kitchen-diner, off which is a shower room. I like the personal touch – a good eye has put this together, it's a personal selection, rather than handing over cash to Laura Ashley's design service and saying, "There you go, get on with it." Purple velvet, orange leather, black and white toile de Jouy, a bit of Ercol furniture here, and Scandinavian glass there. It's a posh bedsit, that's what.

Time for a bit of my own foraging. Disappointment. No little plate of brownies to have with a cup of tea. There is milk, butter and – nice touch – a bottle of wine in the fridge though, and a basket on the counter-top contains tea and coffee things and Dorset cereals. It's on the basic side, however, and I cannot find a teapot or cafetière.

The Wild Garlic's apartment.
Photograph: Philippa Gedge

No news tonight, either – the telly is only a DVD screen. When I ask about the heating though, chef himself comes up to sort it. Blimey.

Dinner, with a friend (Sophy has been itching to come for months), is everything we'd hoped and more. Exciting food, served by smiling and knowledgeable staff, in an unponcey atmosphere.

An inter-course amuse bouche arrives after the starter of hand-dived scallops with garlic on seaweed and salad of butternut squash and goats' cheeses. It's a plate of tiny leaves, nasturtium, oyster leaf, red sorrel and red Russian perilla.

"Bloody good – worth the money, which most restaurants round here aren't," says my pal, savouring every mouthful of her £20 plate of rose veal fillet with  

almonds. Venison, the best I've ever had, comes on a bed of the only red cabbage I've ever liked and accompanied by a mini game pie. By the time autumn berry clafoutis and chilli chocolate soup turn up, we've slowed to a crawl. All credit, we agree, to Follas, frankly, for opening off the beaten track, but thank goodness I only have to get upstairs.

The Wild Garlic is a bijoux restaurant-with-a-room, but I can't help thinking that very soon Mr Follas and his worthy team are going to need more restaurant – and more rooms.


What to do in the area: By the locals

A pub meal
The Fox & Hounds (foxandhoundsinn.com) in Cattistock is a warm and friendly country pub, where Scott, the Landlord, serves great food. This is my "local", not that I get there very often any more and it's the place where I had my first experience of running a professional kitchen. Before I opened my restaurant, Scott & Liz were generous enough, or foolish enough, to invite me to do a couple of try-out nights at the pub, where I designed the menu and cooked it. It was very stressful but made me realise just how much fun cooking professionally could be; it was an unforgettable experience.
Mat Follas, co-owner of The Wild Garlic

Take a hike
Lying in the hills of west Dorset, the town of Beaminster is a hub for walkers. One of my favourite hikes takes you from St Mary's church in Beaminster, via St Mary's in Netherbury, and ending at St Mary's in Stoke Abbott. It's about five miles in all and there are pubs at both ends. The walk takes you past Parnham House, once the home of John Makepeace and his furniture school, then on to Netherbury and Stoke Abbott, two of the prettiest villages in Dorset.
Amanda Follas, co-owner of The Wild Garlic

A shopping trip
The historic square in Beaminster is surrounded by 18th- and 19th-century houses of golden limestone. Although there's a small supermarket in the square, Beaminster has managed to buck the usual high street trend and retain a glut of independent retailers. There's the Green Drawers eco shop (greendrawers.com), Cilla & Camilla (gift shop), Strummer Pink (interior design), @Home (kitchenware), three ladies' clothes shops, four cafes and two galleries, not to mention wonderful local food producers Nick Tett (family butcher) and Fruit 'n' Two Veg. AF

Surprisingly Bridport (six miles from Beaminster) has one of the best hat and millinery shops in the UK. T Snook (snooksthehatters.co.uk) was founded in 1896 and is on West Street. This year saw the first Bridport Hat Festival, held on the third weekend in September, and it is likely to be an annual event. If you wear hats, a visit to "the greatest little hat shop in the land" is a must.
John Dean, Colly Farm Bridport (collyfarmbridport.co.uk)

A day trip
Take the kids to quirky West Bay near Bridport to enjoy an excellent rope-themed playground that recalls the area's rope-making history. Follow that with fish and chips on the pier as the sun dips into the sea. (Boxing Day sees the West Bay Wallow, a fancy dress swim for charity. Brr!)
Shirley Samways, Cafe@AnnDay (annday.co.uk)

The village of Symondsbury lies a mile west of Bridport and nestles under Colmers Hill, a landmark in the area. It is a typical west Dorset village, with its manor house, tithe barn and church. Park and visit the pottery in Manor Yard, before walking up Duck Street from where you can walk to the top of Colmers Hill and have a stunning view of Golden Cap and the Jurassic coast. If you wish, you can walk on and join the Monarch's Way, the escape route taken by Charles II in 1651 as he fled to France after the battle of Worcester. On return, your efforts deserve a stop at the Ilchester Arms in the village, where you can enjoy a drink and an excellent meal by a roaring fire. A warm welcome is a given! JD

Local culture
The first week in November sees the annual Bridport Literary Festival, which started last Friday and ends tomorrow (7 November). Still on the bill are talks on Rosamund Barlett's Tolstoy biography and a talk by economist Howard Davies on the financial crisis. Events are held at the Bridport Arts Centre and the Bull Hotel. For full details of the schedule see bridport-arts.com/bridport-literary-festival. JD

Theo Langton imparts local knowledge to the group.
Photograph: Neil Turner for The Guardian

I'm not an outdoor girl. As far as foraging for food goes, I'm less the wilds of Dorset, more the aisles of Waitrose. So how do I find myself eating plants picked from a wet and windy beach on the south coast? I'd like to say, as a trainee chef, it's because I'm passionate about discovering new ingredients – but that would be a lie. No, I'm here because I'm addicted to TV cookery programmes, so when the opportunity to meet a real-life Masterchef arises, I jump at it. Even though it does involve being outside. In the rain.

I have signed up to take part in a foraging day run by 2009 Masterchef winner Mat Follas. For me, Mat was one of the programme's most memorable contestants, a New Zealand-born IT manager with a passion for wild and foraged ingredients. He now runs a successful restaurant, The Wild Garlic, in Beaminster, Dorset, and this summer launched a series of foraging days, giving diners the chance to join him for a morning's exploration of the local environs, followed by lunch at the restaurant.The day starts at 9.30am, when the group meet Mat and guide Theo, a fascinating local character whose family are all ardent foragers and also live entirely without electricity. If anyone knows about living off the land, you trust he does. Despite the rain, everyone is eager to get going.

No sooner than we've set off, Theo stops us. He points to some leaves sprouting from a grate in the road. I'm no gardener but my first guess would be weeds. Apparently not. It's hairy bittercress, an edible leaf related to mustard, which works well in salads.

Clocking the worried faces, Theo stresses he's notadvocating truffling in the gutters, but merely pointing out that these ingredients are on our doorstep.

After examining some ground elder in an overgrown garden (again, good in salads) we continue into the countryside. Forestry work prevents us from exploring the best mushroom-picking areas, so we focus on the hedgerows. The double act between Mat and Theo works well, with Theo explaining the traditional uses of what we spot and Mat focusing on how he uses the ingredients in the kitchen. We discuss an endless trail of plants – I doubt I'd have the confidence to identify them all again but many stick in my mind: the silver birch tree that yields sugar, the jack-by-the-hedge seeds that taste of wasabi and the hogweed seeds that burst with cardamom flavour, which Mat uses in his chocolate brownies.

Briefly we take shelter in a copse, apparently home to an abundance of wild garlic in early spring. Wild garlic typifies what Mat loves about foraging – an ingredient that can be used in numerous ways at every stage of its life cycle: the flower petals in salads, the older leaves wrapped round meat, the bulbs roasted. Here, he also explains the ethics of foraging, encouraging us to be mindful of where we are, who owns the land and the importance of not stripping an environment. Taking just 10% of a plant is almost too much, he warns: "If it's been taken unethically then the food just won't taste good."

After a tea-and-brownie stop back at the restaurant, we head out again by van to explore the shore. The pebble beach is a forager's paradise, littered with patches of bluey-green sea kale and bushes of rock samphire. As the wind picks up, some of us (me included) retreat to the van while others continue with Theo along the coast. We pick them up at the end of their trail and head back for lunch.

On the menu today: watercress soup with red cress and quail's egg served with foraged leaves; locally sourced crayfish salad with crayfish consomme; and tangy sorrel ice-cream with apple and lavender jelly, wild raspberries and borage flowers. These days we're so used to a standard roll call of flavours when we eat out, it's a genuine surprise and pleasure to taste something you have never tried before. My day with the Masterchef has more than lived up to expectations. May many more people take a foraged leaf out of Mat's book.

Dusk is the time to descend on Puckden Wood. I walk to its heart, open my arms then breathe in lungful after lungful. The flowers of May cover the ground as extravagantly as had the falls of January's snow, and every year this great explosion of ransoms leaves me spellbound. My children are normally about as keen on walking as Pauline Prescott is after a fresh blow-dry but come May even they will down their Wiis and race to the woods. April's sweet sweep of bluebells had seemed beauty itself, until summer's white shroud. Early evening is when deer break cover and in their flight they trample the delicate flowers that could so easily be lily of the valley, and this fills the wood with a powerful aroma of garlic.

I realise that brand-wise, garlic has work to do. The marketing men would consider its pong a definite negative. Its image is down there with Ratners and New Labour while even the prettiest lips parted to reveal garlic breath will send most us recoiling faster than from a Greek bearing gilts.

But in the woods I can't get close enough to wild garlic. You would kiss this with gusto. If it weren't for its unsexy reputation Jennifer Aniston would have declared it a scent and bottled it as "Amorous: the Aroma" or "Whiff of the Wild – For Women".

So I'm delighted to see garlic being rehabilitated. A restaurant has been opened called Wild Garlic, and it's sensational. The chef is Mat Follas, the IT geek now reigning as Masterchef. And serendipitously his inspiration is Denmark's Noma, just declared the best restaurant in the world. Follas had a stint at Noma while filming Masterchef and impressed its chef, Rene Redzepi, as he did viewers. As I await a table there – Copenhagen's tourist board claims 100,000 people around the globe are in the queue – I'm intrigued to see how its ethos might work in Britain.

Noma goes way beyond the usual "local produce" mantra, avoiding even olive oil. When I interviewed Redzepi recently he spoke of sending his chefs foraging, garnering extraordinary ingredients: cloudberrys, wild beach roses, musk ox. He talks with near-religious solemnity about venturing out with "cold fingers" to pick "the first shoots of spring".

True, many British restaurants now decorate dishes with "foraged leaves" but these sometimes add about as much flavour as the cellophane packaging to a sandwich. Follas claims to employ three foragers. I'm not sure wild garlic is the greatest challenge to the forager's craft seeing as you can smell it several fields away but the name does symbolise Noma's attempt to re-connect with nature. If Heston Blumenthal is exploring the future, Noma is pioneering the past.

Beaminster is a small town with a big appetite. On a soaking midweek evening two food vans do a bustling trade while inside the simple, rustic restaurant every table has been snared. As soon as chefs acquire even the stringiest reputation they often desert to shoot some dire cookery show, but within minutes of us sitting before our rough-hewn table Follas enters the dining room. He is bearing a giant brill of proportions almost as generous as his own. Our eyes had wandered elsewhere on the brief but tempting menu but who could resist that brill? Redzepi also brings food to table, declaring there is nothing like facing customers out front to raise his game out back. Follas is rugby-tackled by another customer rhapsodising: "That's the best pigeon I've ever tasted".

I order a starter of spelt and nettle risotto with confit rabbit, and I'm tempted to do bunny hops of joy. Spelt grain makes this sturdier than conventional risotto, while pine nuts add crunchiness and nettle pesto round the edge lends intrigue. Like all Follas dishes it's perfectly seasoned, but it's the strong flavour of rabbit that wows. Faultless.

Diana tries crab pâté with cucumber and pickled dill, stunningly presented with nasturtiums and resting on chicory leaves which somehow escape bitterness and are instead young and juicy.

Unusually an amuse bouche arrives after the first course by which time our mouths are already laughing merrily. And rather than some frothy nonsense this is proper grub: smoked venison, so tender I long for it all over again.

And so to brill, arriving not so much on a plate as a giant flying saucer. There are no tricks, just consummate cooking of fine fresh fish, lifted powerfully by lemon and caper butter. Fillet of beef with – another seasonal touch – asparagus is another simple perfectly cooked winner, the only twist coming in wonderfully smoked mash.

Puddings don't win quite so many garlands. A lime tart has good texture on thin short-crust pastry and is well caramelised, but where's the lime? It tastes more like thick baked custard. Hot chocolate is better, with cream poured into the gooey middle lightening the richness.

But these are quibbles as trifling as a foraged Jack-by-the-hedge. If the burghers of every country town could enjoy a restaurant like the beaming folk of Beaminster's, we Britons would be happier bunnies.

Best of all there is nothing poncey about this place. A note on the menu states: "If you have had great service please leave a tip; if you haven't, don't." Just so.

Now when I amble over to Puckden Wood I will still be thinking of aromas – but they will be calling me back to Beaminster.

Mat Follas cooks over on an open fire.
Photograph: David Mansell

I used to go camping in a serious way, with nothing more than a backpack and freeze-dried meals to sustain me. Now, however (I'm not sure whether it is because I'm wiser, or just older), I like a little more comfort, and I want my food to have flavour. Some of the old campfire favourites – bacon, eggs, sausages, beans – are fine, but you don't want them every day, and they tend to be heavy with fat and salt.

To get more variety, the key is to go for different flavours and, while you are at it, why not try some dishes that are not that practical to make at home? Cooking on an open fire is the ideal opportunity for messy cooking: charred jacket potatoes, fish cooked in clay, or an American-style rack of ribs with a dry, spicy rub. This is the sort of cooking that, if attempted in suburbia, would have the neighbours complaining about the smoke or phoning the fire brigade.

When you are camping, you don't take your kitchen scales; you do everything by eye and instinct. All you need is some basic equipment (a good knife, a grater, strong plastic bags that seal, and, if you're not backpacking, a heavy casserole dish), essential flavours (salt, pepper, powdered chilli, allspice, garlic, sugar, ginger, thyme, lemongrass, fresh limes, soy sauce) and some sunflower oil. Here are some of my favourite ideas for meals; use them as a starting point for your own dishes.

Kebabs
Put some prawns in a plastic bag with chilli, oil and lemon. Shake it about, leave for an hour or so, then skewer the prawns and cook them over the fire.

If you prefer meat, mix up some peanut butter with oil and chilli to make a satay sauce. Chop pork, beef or lamb into small cubes and place in a bag with the sauce. To marinate the meat more deeply, add a teaspoon of plain yoghurt if you have some, shake and leave for a couple of hours before cooking.

Wild salads
If you put salad leaves in a sealed plastic bag with a dribble of water, they will keep for a few days. Supplement with foraged wild garlic, dandelions and primrose flowers (assuming you can find these in a dog-and-pesticide-free area). Drain the excess water from the salad leaves.

Chuck some oil, a little lemon juice, a few drops of vinegar (if you have it) and a pinch of salt into a new bag. Shake, then add your salad leaves and wild leaves. Shake again and serve.

Charred jacket potatoes
Wrap the potatoes in foil and chuck them in the ashes for at least half an hour. They should end up black on the outside. Hold them in a thick cloth to prise them open and scoop out the middle. They will be steamy, and delicious with butter.

Clay-baked fish
There are two schools of thought on cooking fish in a fire: you wrap it in either damp newspaper or clay. I lean towards clay as it is easier to handle, and feels more natural. To find clay, you need to look along the edges of a creek or stream.

Roll out a pencil-sized piece, and if you can wrap it around your finger without it breaking, then you've got good clay. Roll-out a 1cm thick sheet

of this clay and place on it a gutted fish stuffed with a few interesting flavourings (wild garlic, a lime, ginger, lemongrass). Wrap the fish in the clay, ensuring there are no air gaps, and carefully place it in the hot ashes, covering with more glowing, hot ashes. Leave it to cook for 40 minutes to an hour.

Spatchcock chicken or ribs
Cooking meat skewered on some branches is great fun and impresses the kids like nothing else, except perhaps cooking fish in clay. Spatchcock a chicken – its easy! – or get your butcher to do it; or use a rack of ribs instead.

Make a dry rub using roughly equal quantities of allspice, crushed garlic, grated ginger, sugar, chilli powder and salt. Then rub thoroughly over the chicken or ribs. Skewer your chicken with crossed branches poked through the legs on opposite sides, in an X shape. Prop the meat above the fire – if the heat is right, the meat should start charring after about five minutes; cook for 15 minutes in total. Check the juices run clear by poking the thickest part of the meat before serving.

Bonfire puddings
Simple banana halves fried in butter never fails. There is no need to add sugar, although leftover Easter egg works well with this.

If you're feeling more ambitious, try this "bonfire clafouti": cover the bottom of a cast-iron casserole dish with a layer of pear or apple halves, make a thick batter using a packet sponge cake or muffin mix, and pour over the fruit. Place the lid on the casserole dish and balance it above the hot ashes (there needs to be an air gap under the dish to stop it from burning). This is a fantastic way to finish your bonfire dinner.

These are my favourites, tried and tested, but I'm always keen to hear new ideas. So what inspired campfire dishes have you come up with and which have ended in disaster? Also, what's good to drink with a charred dinner? I'm a bit biased - I like a certain well-known stout with most things, but a bottle of wine is also guaranteed to taste better drunk in the fresh air around a fire.