Competition - win £100 in Waitrose vouchers!

Calling all Cookery Masterminds!

To celebrate the launch of Allrecipes in the UK, Gastronomy Domine, Allrecipes and our friends at Waitrose are offering you the chance to win £100 worth of grocery vouchers by proving you know your basil from your bay leaves!

To prove yourself as the UK’s Cookery Mastermind you will need to do the following:

• Find the answers to the five questions listed below.
• Take the first letter of each answer to make a secret code.
• If your guess is correct you could stand a chance of winning a bumper week's grocery shopping.

1. What type of cheese is needed to make Nanmurat's legendary salad? Hint: Click here!

2. When will Carlota Chmielewski's Bread and Celery stuffing be sure to please everybody? Hint: Click here!

3. What flavour vinaigrette does Christy use to complement her Brown Rice Salad? Hint: Click here!

4. Fårikål is a dish found most commonly in which country? Hint: Click here!

5. Polly Welby's heavenly chocolate mousse does not include which poultry product? Hint: Click here!

Got your code? Enter by clicking here!

Good luck and happy cooking!

Easter chocolate competition

Easter is coming around the corner very quickly and everyone wants that extra special Easter Egg! Gastronomy Domine has teamed up with Hotel Chocolat to offer you a chance to win some of Hotel Chocolat’s extra special, Extra-Thick Easter Eggs. To enter, click here and simply answer six questions which will take you on an Easter egg hunt to find the secret code. Once you have answered each question, use the first letter of each answer to reveal the secret code. If you have found the right answer you stand a chance to win one of Hotel Chocolat’s stunning Extra Thick Easter Eggs!

Win a year's supply of Kinder Bueno!

The lovely people at Kinder Bueno emailed me yesterday to ask if Gastronomy Domine could host another competition. This is just perfect for Christmas - by answering one easy question, you can win a whole year's supply of chocolate.

This is the question:

The Kinder Bueno site (where you can also pick up some handy party tips) asks visitors to choose what the best thing about Christmas is. What options does the site give you?

A – The parties and family

B – The parties and prezzies

C – Family and prezzies

Simply email your answer to gastronomydomine@gmail.com with the title "Kinder Bueno Competition" by 31st December 2007. A winner will be selected at random from the correct answers. One lucky reader will receive a Kinder Bueno bar for each week of 2008!

Terms and conditions

The competition is open to UK residents only. The winner will be the first entry drawn at random after the closing date of 31st December and will win 52 Kinder Buenos.

Christmas chocolate competition!

Hotel Chocolat have come up trumps again and are offering one lucky Gastronomy Domine reader a Christmas chocolate selection box and a copy of the Hotel Chocolat 101 Best Loved Chocolate Recipes book. I get to sit back for this one - it's your turn to do the cooking.

Hotel Chocolat is looking for your very best Christmas-themed chocolate recipes. Think Christmas choc-chip cookies, chocolate yule log, or chocolate Christmas puddings. All you have to do is to submit your recipe (the more original the better), and you could win lots of lovely chocolate. The winner of the Gastronomy Domine competition will also be automatically entered into the Hotel Chocolat Grand Prize recipe competition, and could win even more seasonal chocolate goodies! And believe me, they are good - I've just been to a chocolate tasting with them and was blown away by some of the Christmas selections.

So, are you the best chocolate cook in the country? Only one way to find out - click here to submit your entry. The competition page will recognise that you've come from Gastronomy Domine, so get your weighing scales out and start cooking! The competition closes at 11.59pm on December 10 2007.

Caption competition winner

We have a winner! Would Marsha Klein please send me her real name and address using the mailto link at the top right of the page above the search box (I am assuming she is not really a kindly but alcoholic landlady living on Meteor Street in London) - I'll get the spice grinders in the post on Monday.

This was such good fun I think I'll be making the competition a monthly event. Watch out on September 1 for a new picture.

I iz in ur pyramids gardin' ur faroes.

Competition! With actual prizes!

I've got a cold. Only about 60% of my tastebuds are working, and I wish they weren't; my mouth tastes like the wrong end of a badger. This leaves me functionally without appetite...and writing about food's making me feel ever-so-slightly nauseous.

So today, instead of the usual order of things, we're going to have a caption competition. The person who submits the best caption in the comments wins two spice grinders - one filled with coffee beans, chocolate and rock sugar (it's Jamie Oliver branded, but don't let that put you off - excellent over ice cream or to finish chocolate desserts) and one South African grinder by Elements of Spice filled with sea salt, fennel seeds, Chinese ginger, lemon peel, coriander, celery, mint and cardamom. These things are brilliant added to some olive oil as a dry marinade for chicken pieces or as a sprinkle over popcorn.

I'm happy to mail these anywhere in the world, so this is open to all readers. Here's your picture: get captioning! The winner will be announced on August 10.