Chef Wise

Jimmy Doherty has partnered with AB InBev to bring the countryside to the city through a unique immersive eating experience, celebrating the superfood 'Barley' - a key natural ingredient in beer. What: The Barley Beerstro is bringing the countryside to the city this July, serving long lunches right in the middle of a 'barley field' created with real barley and technology, with a six course tasting menu designed by farmer and food personality Jimmy Doherty. Launching at Barbican Conservatory, London, the unique pop-up restaurant will be available to the public and will be accompanied by some of the world's most popular Global and speciality beers. The menu will pay homage to the natural ingredients found in beer, with particular emphasis on barley. Barley is a key ingredient in beer and a super-food containing many nutrients, minerals and vitamins. It is rich in energy, low in fat and high in antioxidants*. The one of a kind six course tasting menu cr...

Loaf, the new free iPad cooking app challenging and re-imagining the conventional recipe, launches on the App Store today. The foodie-lover's platform is an interactive cooking community for enthusiastic home cooks to save time, track progress and cook stress free. Select. Swipe. Share By swiping right for each step of a recipe, the interactive animated design ensures simple execution of even the hardest instructions, bringing a welcome end to re-reading and overanalyzing confusing, text heavy recipes. As the culinary landscape has changed so drastically in recent times, the humble recipe format has seen no real change in over a thousand years. Loaf has been built to reimagine the recipe experience for millions of home cooks in search of the ultimate cooking companion. As well as dissecting and overhauling the age-old recipe format, Loaf is growing a global community of passionate foodies, with a digital cookbook containing 3,500 recipes from over 50 chefs, food...

Britain Gets an Education on Salt For years here in UK there have been many stigmas about salt: its use, overuse, and how bad it is for us. This is about to change! It's time to educate Britain on the unique powers of salt.  America's leading “Selmelier,” or salt expert, Mark Bitterman is coming to London to change the way the population views and uses salt in everyday life. He has a vast knowledge of salt acquired over many years of traveling the world.  Mark will look to share his knowledge along with the facts, and he challenges us to look behind the iodized curtain and discover what a difference salt can make to our food and the way we cook. Mark is the author of “Salted, a Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes” a best seller in the USA and winner of The James Beard Award. He will be launching this book in the UK along with his other title “Salt Block Cooking” on the 4th September at an event in London. Mark will be talking ab...

Mums and dads will have life made a little bit easier this summer thanks to new cooking courses for 4,500 children across the UK. The fun courses will help tackle fundamental gaps in children's kitchen knowledge. The courses have been launched at the same time as research that finds over two thirds of parents worry that children are growing up without basic cooking skills and 75 per cent of children have never boiled an egg. Thousands of mums and dads will have their lives made easier this summer thanks to a brand new series of special Farm to Fork Cooking courses for children. The courses will be run jointly with The Children's Food Trust and will take place in 50 Tesco stores right across the country every week throughout August. An estimated 4,500 children aged between 5 and 13 will take part. As well as providing something educational, fun and free for children to do in the summer holidays, the courses will help tackle fundamental gaps in children...

Romilla Arber is neither a former model turned cook nor is she a celebrity chef with a number of restaurants and her own TV show.  Romilla Arber is an award-winning cookery writer and through her firm belief that good, home-cooked food should be what we eat, her charity The Food Education Trust has donated over £30,000 to schools and charities throughout the UK. Unlike many high profile chefs’, she has put her money where her mouth is!  Thousands of children and adults all over the UK from Newcastle Upon Tyne to Bristol, Poole, Essex, Berkshire and Leeds have reaped the benefits of the donations The Food Education Trust has made. “I firmly believe that the UK’s obesity epidemic is partly down to the lack of food education and knowledge available in the UK. Many people up and down the UK lack basic cooking skills and simply open a box or packet and heat the contents for their dinner, not realizing what this is doing to their health. These processed foods are high in...

Tesco has partnered with SORTEDfood, one of the world's largest social media cookery channels, to help inspire a new generation to fall in love with cooking and food.  The partnership, which is a media first, will showcase Tesco’s passion for food. SORTEDfood has over 800,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel, with over 4million monthly views. With many video recipes the result of the SORTED community's suggestions or requests, engagement levels are the highest of any food based YouTube channel. Originally school mates, Ben, Barry, Jamie & Mike now dedicate all their time to running the channel where they release video recipes every few days to share with everyone from first time cooks to passionate foodies. Simple recipes are complemented with a heavy dose of entertainment, and tips or twists are often suggested by the community. Tesco’s first content will focus on cooking with everyday essentials and products where prices are down and staying down.  ...

The nation is set to go football crazy once again and a new study reveals what UK shoppers feel about brands exploiting the World Cup, in terms of product and pack promotions and sponsorships. While a quarter of people polled think World Cup promotions on packaging help the excitement to build, and 18 per cent said they would be more likely to choose a product if it showed a World Cup promotion, over half are disparaging of brands getting involved in World Cup promotions which is more than the number of people that claim to have seen a food and drink brand with a World Cup in-store promotion. In the survey, carried out in the last week of May, just over a quarter of people are open to trying Brazilian influenced foods as well as limited edition products launched by companies for the World Cup, presenting ways for brands to engage with new and existing consumers. Females in particular, claim they are more open to trying Brazilian cuisine. "Food and drink manufac...

"The 11 year old child from King’s Lynn has forced obesity into the headlines again. It is right that the police became involved as obesity isn’t just a question of your clothes not fitting or being bullied at school it has long-term, severe, debilitating health effects that can continue for generations. Quite simply, the matter has to be tackled by a tax on sugar and processed foods high in fat.  In this way, as with cigarettes, people will be persuaded not to continue to eat confectionary and processed foods.  The government needs to be brave and public health campaigns do need to encourage people to cook from scratch again and not rely on fast food and meals prepared in industrial units. The idea that we don’t have enough time to cook is a myth perpetuated by the food manufacturing industry and they get rich on our indolence. There is a direct correlation between societies who don’t cook and high obesity rates. It is as simple as that.” Exclaims Romilla Arber. ...

What makes a roast potato golden? How does custard thicken? Why is 5OC to 63C the ‘danger zone’? And is too much sugar bad for a cake? The science of cookery is fascinating, and being able to understand and explain why food behaves in certain ways a crucial part of food technology lessons. But with so much to know the subject can be daunting. Award-winning food teacher Barbara Monks (thecookeryteacher.com) has taken the science and distilled it into four booklets designed to help lesson planning and accompany practical cookery sessions. Each booklet takes commonly asked question as its theme and title: Is it Done? Is it Thick?, Will it Work? and Is it Safe? These are answered in straightforward, jargon-free explanations of the science of browning, thickening, how ingredients work together and food safety. The booklets offer teachers, and their students, informative insights into ingredients and processes, allowing them to develop creative, technical and practica...

The Food Education Trust ( www.foodeducationtrust.com ) has revolutionised food technology lessons at St Aldhelm’s Academy in Poole by providing an extensive range of modern, up-to-date, catering and cookery equipment. The donation, the largest to date awarded by the Food Education Trust, worth in excess of £2750, has enabled the school to significantly improve the cookery lessons it provides as part of the national curriculum, as well as extra-curricular activities. Adrian Clarida, food technology teacher and head of the food department at St Aldhelm’s Academy, comments, “Thank you so much for your assistance with our need for catering equipment. It’s such a popular course with in-excess of 100 students studying some form of catering subject from KS3 to 4. The new equipment has made a tremendous difference to the attitude of the young people as they feel they have decent quality resources to use. I have definitely seen an improvement in their practical sessions. Many, many...

Enjoy a feast for the senses, learn some new culinary skills AND take some time out to pamper yourself with Middle Piccadilly's new retreat 'Healthy Food-Radiant Living' Escape to the beautiful Dorset countryside and brush up on your cooking skills with this tailor-made three-day culinary retreat designed to teach you vegetarian food made easy, healthy and delicious! Owner and resident Chef, Dominic Harvey will teach you how to prepare some of his signature vegetarian meals, including mains and desserts, in two 2-hour culinary workshops over the course of three days. This is one food experience you won't want to forget! When you're done with all the cooking, enjoy a detoxifying Green Tea bodywrap and a relaxing Therapeutic Massage. Specifically designed for groups of two, three or four people and only available in June, special offer applies. Middle Piccadilly is a rural, family-run holistic retreat in Dorset. A true sanctuary for retreati...

Helping children reach their potential is vital.  A donation for £2300 from The Food Education Trust ( www.foodeducationtrust.com ) has enabled a group of pupils at Patchway Community College, Bristol, enhance their social skills, improve their behavior and accomplish tasks through learning about food and how to cook. The Social Skills and Intervention Group at Patchway Community College is largely comprised of hard to reach and vulnerable children, many of whom find it hard to interact and communicate with others. “Food education is about much more than learning how to cook” comments the Food Education Trust founder and award-winning author, Romilla Arber.  “So many other subjects come up when you talk about food; geography, history, environmental issues, politics, science, literature and maths; the opportunities are endless.” The equipment provided by the Food Education Trust has assisted these pupils enormously.  It has aided their personal development ...

World renowned Leiths School of Food and Wine have brought their Essential Cooking Certificate  bang up to date with contemporary recipes and top tips. This hands-on fast paced 4 week course is ideal for those wishing to learn the maximum number of cookery skills for a professional environment in the shortest period of time. Whether considering a new career or fending for yourself after leaving home, the revamped Leiths Essential Cooking Certificate teaches all of the essential skills required for a lifetime of confident cooking.  From comforting classics to cutting edge creations, the course covers skills taught during the first term of the renowned Leiths Diploma and is a unique opportunity to master the building blocks of cooking in just four weeks. With demonstrations and hands-on cooking under the guidance of Leiths expert teachers, the course focuses on cooking seasonally, entertaining on a budget, kitchen management and simple but effective presentation...

Romilla Arber, author of the award-winning cookery book “What’s for Dinner? Second Helpings” and founder of the charity, The Food Education Trust ( www.foodeducationtrust.com ) is urging people not to embark on faddy diets or to pledge to lose an unrealistic amount of weight in a short time. Instead, Romilla would like to see people make a New Year’s Resolution to feed the family healthy, home cooked meals each day. If this sounds a little daunting, “What’s for Dinner? Second Helpings” has a recipe for each day of the year, comprising of seasonal produce with meat, fish and vegetarian options. A diet comprised of home-cooked meals with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables can decrease the chances of developing high blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes and weight gain.  “Many faddy and gimmicky diets do not work in the long term.  Weight is lost initially however, many people end up heavier due to the fact that these diets simply cannot be maintained in the long term....