Foraging for wild foods with my little basket on my arm is definitely up there with my favourite pastimes.

Well Christmas is well and truly over for another year.

I was in Copenhagen, the capital of the Nordic food scene, to attend the MAD Food Symposium and The World Food Summit. Both were inspirational.

Wow, the food is fantastically good in Australia. I’ve just come back from a two-week trip to promote my new book Grow Cook Nourish. A whistle-stop tour where I visited Sydney, Melbourne, Byron Bay and Tasmania.

Jeff Gordinier has lunch with Massimo Bottura, the man voted the number one chef in the world.

Sage is a select band of Irish restaurants determinedly questing for that elusive modern Irish cuisine in the manner prescribed by Redzepi. 

I love the creative side of cooking. It is what keeps me doing it.

Thanks to René Redzepi and his team at Noma, food tourists from all over the world are beating a path to the Nordic countries to check out the food revolution that this iconic restaurant has sparked.

René Redzepi ignited an international culinary revolution with Noma, his restaurant focused on wildly innovative Nordic cuisine. Now, believing that Mexican food is the next big thing, the Scandinavian wunderkind eats his way across the country.

ONCE again, it’s that time of the year when I make a ton of New Year resolutions that despite all the evidence to the contrary I’m totally sure I will keep.

I’m just back from the MAD Food Symposium in Copenhagen, one of the craziest and most influential food events on the planet.

AFTER months of build up and careful planning by Rory O’Connell, Rebecca Cronin, Colm McCan and the Litfest team the second event came and went in a whirlwind of exciting workshops, debates, lectures, tastings, demos.

The second Kerrygold Ballymaloe Litfest of Food & Wine ended last night where it all began just 48 hours previously, in the ‘Big Shed’ at Ballymaloe House in East Cork.

THE excitement is really mounting, it’s just a week to this year’s Lit Fest at Ballymaloe, May 16-18.

AT 9.30am on a glorious Saturday last year, I paused at the entrance to the Ballymaloe Grainstore; was I really going to pass up a rare blast of Irish summer sunshine to instead sit indoors and listen to two guys talking?

Ahead of his first visit to Ireland next month for the Ballymaloe Litfest, René Redzepi talks to Joe McNamee about his culinary revolution.

NOW that Christmas is over and New Year’s resolutions are still fresh in our minds why don’t we all decide to spend even a couple of extra hours a week having fun in the kitchen with all the family, cooking from scratch and saving money to boot.

Looking for a gourmet getaway? Pól Ó Conghaile tips the world’s top foodie destinations, with a smorgasbord of suggestions on where and what to eat when you get there.

René Redzepi and Yotam Ottolenghi have been booked for Ballymaloe LitFest 2014.

THE theme of this year’s MAD Symposium, held in a red circus tent in Copenhagen, was guts — this was interpreted in a variety of ways from intestines to raw courage by the speakers.

COOKING ‘from scratch’ is the hottest food term in the restaurant world at present, Add seasonal, local, and artisan, and you are right on the button.

KITTY TRAVERS loves ice cream. When she was little, her mum found her rummaging in a bin at the circus licking ice cream wrappers, oblivious of the clowns and trapeze.

A TABLE at Noma restaurant in Copenhagen is one of the hottest, most sought after meal slots in the whole world.