On hearing about this beginners’ day-long course, I hotfooted it, via sweltering tube, to cool and leafy Hampstead. The African cookery school Akhaya is run by Jenny, a young woman of Nigerian descent just setting up business. We were welcomed with fresh mint and rooibos tea as well as charming applause the second we individually stepped through the doors.

With the aim of finding ‘Real France, Real Close’, Douglas Blyde takes the Eurostar to the flatlands of French Flanders…

If you thought Yurt was a noise kids made when confronted with broccoli, then you’ll be surprised to discover the truth. Anita Pati eats a fabulous dinner in Riverford Farm’s marvellous traveling tent of eco-gastronomy.

Meat is not the only thing on the menu from Brazilian star chef Jose Barattino. As part of Festival Brazil on the Southbank, Jose has come over to inject Brazilian modern and traditional cooking onto the menu at Skylon. We meet him and have a taste of what’s on offer.

The terrible thing is that dishes served today all too often have no aroma. The times I’ve painfully bent down until my nose was buried in the plate to try and detect some olfactory clue are legion. Yes I am the man over at the corner table, apparently about to snort his meal like a gastro Keith Richards.

Fresh fish all the way from Cornwall to SW16 and so perfect we couldn’t do better if we lived by the sea ourselves instead of by the Brighton Road. We take delivery of a consignment of Cornwall’s finest courtesy of Fish for Thought and seek out some great recipes to make the most of them.

His mother being Genoese, Douglas Blyde was particularly interested to attend a workshop by Liguria’s most esteemed confectioner, ‘Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano’. He headed to Richmond’s most esteemed greenhouse, ‘Petersham Nurseries’, to find out more…

These are no ordinary olive oils destined for the bulk purchase market, because as their creator Rosa explains, the total production of olive oil from her estate is but a tiny drop in the olive oil ocean worldwide. Instead these are fine gourmet oils, to be used as an ingredient in cooking not simply as a means to an end.

Home coffee makers promise a lot but rarely deliver. Gleaming machines with intricate plumbing, sleek looks and fancy ad campaigns they invariably make all the right gurgling noises but deliver coffee as weak as water. So we viewed the Nespresso machine with cynical eyes. God knows we need a decent coffee machine in the office; the price of decent coffee around Carnaby Street is high even for the directors and totally prohibitive for the interns who already sleep under their desks to save money.

In a one man effort to drain the international supply of Prosecco, we send dedicated dipsomaniac, Douglas Blyde to Venice with premium producer, Bisol…