Recently in food Category

Now, Kitchen Rat gets sent a lot of crappy e-mails every day, but a press release that dropped into the inbox today really takes the biscuit.

"Do you have a taste for good food and wine?" it asks. "If so, you may be more likely to cheat (on your partner)."

Who says?  Those fine upstanding citizens at illicitencounters.com, "the UK's largest extra-marital dating site", that's who.

And how did the website come to this conclusion? It analysed the stated interests of its 310,000 members and 'Food and wine' was at number one, with around 144,000 members. Just below was 'Movies and Cinema' (142,000 members). 

Scientific then.

Funnily enough, "getting your rocks off with Debbie from accounts in the back of your Ford Focus" wasn't mentioned as a main interest of the philanderers on the website.

We may be in recessionary times but people are still keen to sniff out a good business opportunity - even those that aren't really there.

On April Fool's Day, property agent Davis Coffer Lyons (DCL) "announced" that it had been instructed to roll out 1,000 new sites for a new edible insect group called 'Love Bug' that had been very successful in the States.

If alarm bells were not ringing about the name (or the number of sites), then the quote should really have given things away.

Brandon Elmon, head of agency acquisitions, said: "We definitely think this concept has legs and will fly. In five years' time, there will be swarms of them."

While a number of clients contacted DCL to commend the joke, a "substantial" number fell for it and were e-mailing for further details, such as size requirements and locations.

One property developer even suggested that the concept would be a perfect fit for a new complex it was building. A DCL agent quietly pointed out there was no such concept after all.

And, Kitchen Rat''s mole at DCL tells us, people are still ringing up and asking about it, despite this announcement on the company website.

Which begs the question - should someone actually create the concept?

The food cooked by top chefs encourages unhealthy eating, according to an independent report from a group of senior dieticians.

Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Jean-Christophe Novelli and John Burton-Race are all noted for using large amounts of cream and butter in their cookbooks, thus promoting saturated fat intake way beyond the recommended daily allowance.

The findings come from The Fat Panel, a collection of dieticians including Sian Porter, a member of the British Dietetic Association. She said: "these recipes are fine for a special occasion, but if you cook regularly from them there is a high chance you will be taking in a lot of fat".

"Nigella, Jean-Christophe Novelli and Rick Stein use the highest levels of saturated fat. If you look at Nigella's egg and bacon pie, it uses butter which is fine for indulgence but not as a habit."

Phil Vickery was also mentioned in the report for using too much saturated fat, but Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith were given a healthy rating by the panel.

 Industry must improve gluten-free offering >>

Rick Stein takes over lease on local Cornish pub >>

He's just completed his first installment of Big Chef programmes, but senor Blumenthal was back on our screens last night for more with his new series looking at chowing down throughout the ages.

Blumenthal is targeting those epochs when large meals went hand in hand with culinary invention. And to kick off he turned to the Victorians.

"It was extraordinary", said The Guardian's TV critic Sam Leith of 'Heston's Victorian Feast'. "Heston lacks telly charisma...lines were delivered with the uncertain enthusiasm of a born lab-tech - but what he does with grub is gripping."

The three-star chef served wacky food to Radio 5 presenter Richard Bacon, former Scud star Rageh Omaar, Dawn Porter, Kathy Lette, Jemma Redgrave and Toby Young.

And what dishes: cow's head soup reduced to a stock cube wrapped in gold foil shaped as a watch, which was then dissolved in water. There was also an Alice in Wonderland-inspired layered liquid infusion with toffee, hot-buttered toast, custard, cherry tart and turkey flavours. And he finished with a six-foot edible garden, complete with olive soil and potato rocks.

According to Serena Davies, TV critic for The Telegraph, "it's great. If food can seem this amazing even when you can't taste it, heaven knows how divine the experience of actually eating it must be".

However, Times television critic Andrew Billen thought the whole thing "utterly pointless". Heston now "flaps around wondering where on television his future lies", he added.

Heston Blumenthal puts on a brave face >>

Heston Blumenthal hopes to reopen Fat Duck this week >>

Heston Blumenthal gets green light to reopen Fat Duck >>

That's the threat according to some British farmers after the latest EU ruling.

Officials in Brussels have banned 22 key pesticides that are used in arable crop growth, including pyrethroid insecticides and pendimethalin herbicides.

They sound a mouthful, and too obscure to matter, but apparently banning these chemicals will significantly raise food prices, and destroy farming communities.

Root vegetables, particularly carrots and parsnips will be particularly affected, say farmers.

And according to Conservative MEP Robert Sturdy, "Banning products that are safe when used correctly will add to already volatile food prices and food shortages."

Using pesticides near schools, parks or hospitals will be forbidden or severely restricted and most aerial crop spraying will be banned.

Well, it doesn't sound like a bad idea to us. And didn't farming communities exist before these 20th century chemicals?

We must work together with the farmers >>

EU directive wins some supporters >>

In a classic example of the bleeding obvious, Cadbury's has placed warnings on its Dairy Milk chocolate bars informing customers of the staggering fact that Dairy Milk actually contains milk.

Before you fall off your chair in surprise, you might've thought a few folks would have cottoned onto this earth-shattering piece of news by the fact the bar has not only the word 'dairy' - a relatively obscure clue - but also 'milk' in its title. Nor does it appear that the Cadbury's logo of a glass and a half of milk being poured into the chocolate bar was enough.  

On the Whole nut bar, the warning states contains nuts & milk - Shock! Horror!

According to the company, the warning is to comply with legal requirements. Surely, the clue, as they say, is in the title.

It's not often the passing of a chef is mourned by the country's president, but French patisserie legend Gaston Lenotre's death yesterday at the age of 88 was commented on by the country's premier Nicholas Sarkozy.

He said: "He succeeded, with his talent and his creativity, his rigour and his high standards, in raising patisserie to the rank of an art,"

Widely recognised as one of France's best ever pastry chefs, Lenotre was instrumental in the devolpment of patisserie as an art, using less flour and sugar and more creams, mousses and fruit flavours.

Paul Bocuse said the patisserie chef was the Christian Dior of the culinary world. 

It may be a global credit crunch but in Japan two sushi bar owners paid a record £70,000 for a rare tuna yesterday. The Japanese Bluefin, which sold at auction for ten times the going rate, weighed 128kg and was split between the two restaurateurs.

It was the most expensive fish (for its weight) sold at Tokyo's Tsukiji market in nearly a decade. Fishing restrictions on locally caught tuna to try and ensure the bluefin's survival have seen domestic fish become highly prized.