By Linda Dangoor
Waterpoint Press, £16.99

Style: Simple home-style food with an Iraqi slant.

Premise:
Dangoor follows in the footsteps of Claudia Roden in documenting and preserving the recipes of her childhood, "out of a desire to teach my nephews and their generation how to cook the Iraqi dishes they loved so much".

The girl at the reception desk at the new Buca di Beppo restaurant in Elstree's Village Hotel has never heard of Robert Earl. Fortunately, one of the PRs fluttering about overhears and rushes over.

Robert Earl himself might well have been unimpressed. He is, as you will most likely already be aware, a hospitality entrepreneur of gargantuan proportions. Not physically.

What is it about Israelis and sushi? The Middle East and Japan are many miles apart, and you would think the Israeli appetite for hearty, spicy fare with plenty of dairy would be at odds with a cuisine composed of dainty portions of fish, rice and seaweed.

School:
Angela Malik School of Food and Wine, East Acton, London W3. www.angelamalik.co.uk

Class:
Indian curries

The pitch:
Former City accountant and born-again chef Angela Malik promises we will learn how to "make magic in our mouths" - balancing the sensations of salty, sweet, hot, sour and umami (the fifth basic, savoury, taste).

On offer:

Russell and Juliette Joffe, founders of restaurant chain Giraffe, were childhood "eat-hearts". They met at Hendon County school (alma mater of Peter Mandelson, Gerald Ratner, and Robert Earl of Planet Hollywood) at the tender age of 13. Throughout their teens the foodie pair threw dinner parties - he in the kitchen, she front of house.

Thierry Marx is arguably France's most famous avant-garde chef. As executive director of Sur Mesure and Camelia at the recently opened Mandarin Oriental, Paris, he heads two of the capital's top gastronomic restaurants. He says "My job definition is a quote from a Japanese Master: Cooking, is for looking at, meditating on and eating".

Jews and mushrooms have not always had a happy association. During medieval times mushrooms had extremely unpleasant connotations. Antisemitism was rife, so when a fungus that looked like a thick rubbery fleshy ear was discovered, it was immediately labelled as a Jew's Ear or Judas's Ear fungus. Its official Latin name was auricularia auricular Judea.

'Beer in Israel, really?" I think the organisers forgave my stunned response when they rang to ask if I would like to be a judge at Tel Aviv's first Beer International Recognition Awards.

Pop cakes are the latest baking craze to come from the United States. A cross between a cake and a lollipop, they appeal to children and adults alike. They are easy to make with the right ingredients and this step-by-step guide.

Ingredients

● A sponge cake: home-made preferably (see cake recipe on this page) but shop-bought works

There is nothing that shouts spring like the first British asparagus. We leap on it in April, steaming, simmering or slathering it with vinaigrette and hollandaise, and mourning the fact it will all be over by June.

But now M&S have found a way to create a second British crop to make fresh asparagus an autumn treat as well.