Qin Xie was recently invited to learn about matcha as the latest superfood trend to sweep the UK but it has raised a question or two in her mind…

I’ll be honest. I’m reviewing this new Ocado range because at the moment I’m on the famine side of feast or famine – the downside to being freelance – and since the ‘feasts” have in truth been famines, it seemed the only real feast I’d ever get was the offer of some French picnic goodies. Bread, cheese and jam. How easily I am bought.

Make your week a meaty easy one with Donald Russell’s Meal Planners. We tried a sample and found the idea sound and the meats quality and all at a fair price.

Chef’s rubber Croc shoes seem at odds with the mud we’re tramping through, but then so are his chef’s whites. ‘I’ve got big plans,’ says Lee Streeton Executive Chef at the spanking new Syon Park Waldorf Astoria hotel while waving his arms around. ‘This land is mine!’

Among all the courses and activities for young people there are a growing number of cookery courses and schools for children popping up all over the UK. These courses are usually hands-on, a little bit messy and, crucially, lots of fun with cookery parties proving to be popular and offshoots running in schools, homes and village halls.

For those of you for whom Stratford-upon-Avon summons up visions of hags around a cauldron […]

A converted pub in a previously neglected backwater, A La Cruz’s interior is enlivened by fancy wall art and it’s a fresh, clean place. The asador burns brightly and next to it is a barbecue of the crudest kind, its cooking grill simply raised or lowered by a chain pulley. It’s simple but it’s also an art and head Chef Adrian Cocco keeps a close eye on it, manoeuvring steaks of all shapes and sizes, as well as plump chorizos and ribs, around carefully.

We give ProCook glass digital scales a trial in a small, urban kitchen to discover that dishes with proper cooking measurements are hard to fault.

Ever wondered how a chorizo gets its intense, smoky flavour, how a Frankfurter gets its distinctive colour or how a Milano salami gets its unique texture? If the answer to these or any other sausage related questions is yes, then Leith’s School of Food and Wine has a new course devoted to sausage making that could be just what you’re looking for.

Executive head chef of the Embankment’s impressive new Corinthia hotel, Garry Hollihead is rightly proud of his British produce. He took Foodepedia along to meet some of the producers that make his menu special.