Best of the web: Seasonal cooking, seafood, Asian food, London restaurants, cake and more

There’s a bumper crop of great foodie links this week, so I’ve taken the extra step of arranging the content thematically.

Seasonal

• * It’s game season in this part of the world and Antonia at Food, Glorious Food! has made juniper roast partridge with parsnip mash. Yum!

• * Julia at A Slice of Cherry Pie has hosted In the Bag, a monthly blogging event about seasonal eating, and the theme for October was pumpkins! As well as some great pumpkin recipes, many food bloggers also went to town on the pumpkin carving. (I’ve also been having fun with pumpkins recently).

• * Cafe Lynnylu has a recipe for grilled chicken and sausage kebabs. Maybe it’s not strictly seasonal but I do think sausages are a great autumnal food – they go well with summer barbeques in Australia of course but in Britain they’re more comfort food for the colder weather. I have some lovely pork sausages from The Ginger Pig in my freezer, left over from a party, and some nice looking organic chicken breasts from my organic box scheme Abel & Cole, so I might make this dish this week.

Seafood

• * ABC – Australia’s public broadcaster not the US channel – has an intriguing series called The Cook and the Chef. This week they’re exploring seaweed and scallops on the east coast of Tasmania – one of the most beautiful and least polluted stretches of coastline in the world.

• * Once you’ve got those scallops in hand, try this recipe from the Sydney Morning Herald.

• * Steve from Our Man in Cameroon reviews the grilled fish at Sister Rose in Bamenda, Cameroon – and ponders, where does the fish come from?

• * Mark Bittman, a self-described “fish snob” who describes farmed fish as “swimming tofu”, writes about the future of fish at the New York Times.

Asian food

• * Times Online has a special focus on Asian cuisine – a pretty broad category, it must be said!

• * Australian Men’s Health magazine has a recipe for warm Thai beef salad – delicious and healthy!

• * Krista from Londonelicious is on a crawl of Korean restaurants in London. So far she’s tried KJ Restaurant, You Me Restaurant and Hamgipak, all in New Malden.

London restaurants

• * The River Cafe is practically an institution in London. It’s a fantastic Italian restaurant by the river in Hammersmith, famous in its own right but also as Jamie Oliver’s training ground. It closed over summer because of a fire but it’s reopened and AA Gill has reviewed it.

• * DJ and TV presenter Lauren Laverne is interviewed in this week’s Observer and revealed that her favourite London restaurant is vegetarian establishment Mildred’s in Soho. I respect the fact that she’s vegetarian but I find her views on it a bit odd – she believes that killing an animal for a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes is better than killing an animal for meat.

• * Tim Hayward on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog on why the closure of one of his favourite restaurants – the Giaconda Dining Room in London – is a good thing.

• * Browners from Around Britain with a Paunch on Mexican restaurant Wahaca – and hobnobbing with the likes of Thomasina Miers and Tom Parker Bowles. For people out of town, please note this post is not exclusively about the restaurant – it’s also about growing and cooking with chilli peppers.

Dessert

• * I love the look of these German apple pancakes made by Lindsay at Love and Olive Oil.

• * Myamii at For the Love of Food claims these chocolate chip cookies are “perfect”. Try the recipe and see if you agree.

• * Susan at Food Blogga offers pear and cardamom coffee cake with pecan streusel.

• * Food blog Ezra Pound Cake was featured on the main page of NaBloPoMo and I must say I’m really impressed with the blog. Rebecca has given us the lowdown on drinking chocolate (as distinct from hot chocolate made from cocoa) as well as a delish-sounding recipe for cranberry, pistachio and coconut rice pudding and even a recipe for how to make marshmallows!.

Meanwhile…

• * Guardian.co.uk has a competition to win a family cooking weekend on the River Dart in Devonshire.

• * Browners at Around Britain with a Paunch shares his six favourite blogs, mostly foodie themed.

• * Matt at Abstract Gourmet in Perth, Western Australia has news of the 2009 WA Barista Competition, coming up this weekend in Mt Hawthorn.