Depardieu, who grew up in the provincial town of Chateauroux, south of Paris, says his parents could only afford meat in the first week of each month - and then it was usually horse meat. Depardieu's love of food is legendary. He owns two Paris restaurants with his French actress-girlfriend, Carole Bouquet. His favorite dish is jellied rabbit with a glass of cold white wine - for breakfast.

"Wine has a soul," Depardieu writes in the 220-page book, replete with dozens of recipes and photos of the crooked nosed actor working in the kitchen and selecting chickens to cook. The wine lover bought his first vineyard more than 30 years ago in Burgundy. He was reportedly tipsy when he insulted an unsympathetic critic of the French version of his cookbook on a talk show earlier this year.

"If I have an ambition still unrealized it is to tend the vines, to produce wine and work like a true artisan," he writes.

The book contains 135 largely traditional French recipes, including bouillabaisse, quiche Lorraine, gratin dauphinois and the dish Depardieu says he often eats for breakfast when he's in the Loire Valley, lapin en gelée (rabbit in jelly). There's also a sprinkling of Italian recipes - Depardieu's favourite cuisine is Italian, not French - and one for sauerkraut, possibly as a sop to the German market. It's not exactly nouvelle cuisine ...

Depardieu says people worry more about their weight than they do about eating good food. His own bulk fluctuates considerably, depending on whether he's dieting or not. When he played Christopher Columbus in 1492, he was trim for the role; in La Dernière Femme, on the other hand, the scales hit 18∫st. I didn't ask, but my guess is that these days, with a stomach that is more beach ball than six pack, Depardieu is some way from his fighting weight. 'In 10 years, I have lost over 45 stone,' he says. 'I gain weight and lose it again in inevitable cycles.'

The recipes in My Cookbook are simple and easy to follow - no over-complicated River Café nonsense here. 'Cooking,' says Depardieu, 'is not difficult. Everyone has taste, even if they don't realise it. Even if you're not a great chef, there's nothing to stop you understanding the difference between what tastes good and what doesn't. That's what's so terrible about the industrialisation of agriculture and the food chain. There are children growing up today who don't know what a lamb, a pig or a rabbit looks like.' Depardieu tells me a story about Jamie Lee Curtis coming to visit him with her daughter at the Château de Tigné. 'There was a cherry tree in the garden and the little girl did not know what it was. She thought that cherries grew in a punnet.'

In many ways the most interesting part of the book is the introduction, entitled 'My Cooking', in which Depardieu talks candidly to writer Karen Howes about his approach to food: about his need to touch it with his bare hands, preferring to dispense with a knife and fork if he can; about his childhood; about his love of markets and fresh produce; about the urge to share food with other people. Depardieu says that he always felt the need 'to feed others', a statement that is borne out by the accounts of enormous meals he has cooked on film sets.