'Mixing cultures appeals to me – I love Asian fusion'

This week I've been eating... Short pasta with prawns and aioli

Mallorca is keen to change its image as a boozy holiday destination.

This week I've been eating... posh picnics

Out of America: As summers get hotter we will see more blazes like the one that killed 19 firefighters last week

Ivy-clad exteriors, private paths and mountain-facing rooms

My earliest food memory Racing large brown crabs across the kitchen floor with my dad. We'd buy them from our local fishmonger, MacCallums of Troon, in Glasgow. And the winning crab would get cooked first – and made into a Singapore chilli crab dish. Afterwards, my dad and I would take the inner claws from them, clean them and use them as devil horns come Halloween.

Serves 4

Contenders for the Diageo World Class Bartender contest had an added challenge this year: to shake up a drink that still tasted good in mid-air. Samuel Muston joined them on board.

Postcard from... Lisbon

Born in Wokingham, Fordham started out as a chemist, studying the subject with biology at Plymouth University, a discipline that helped him when he joined Beefeater Gin as distillery manager in 2008. He went on to receive a diploma in distilling and the picked up the Worshipful Company of Distillers scholarship award for excellence in 2011. Since March this year he has been master distiller at Bombay Sapphire. He will also be leading the Bombay Sapphire Ultimate G&T Studio Workshops at The Hoxton Hotel (Tuesday 18 and Tuesday 25 June 7pm – 8.30pm)

The hat/make up

Out of ideas for a dinner party? Why not serve up a dish made out of the heads of two children stewed in their own blood encased in a pie-crust of their ground down bones? Such is the notoriously grisly fare of Shakespeare's revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus and, in a cheeky nod to the play's nasty nosh, two chefs at the RSC's Rooftop Restaurant in Stratford-upon-Avon have devised a Titus Andronicus-themed pie with a steak and KIDney (boom boom) filling as a culinary accompaniment to the RSC's new production.

Battersea Arts Centre has a fine track record for picking out fresh talents, nurturing them and then letting them bloom in the nooks and crannies of its magnificent building. Jerry Springer the Opera started life at a scratch night here. And in 2007, a young company called Punchdrunk famously filled the place with their Masque of the Red Death.