Web watch
It's an ingredients special on Web Watch this month, as we scour the Internet to find Web sites dedicated to specific foods.
We'll start off with my own personal favourite, www.cheese.com. With the best slogan I've seen on any Web site ("It's all about cheese!"), it's the definitive guide to the curdled milk delicacy and all its tasty incarnations.
The main part of the site is the database of more than 650 different cheeses. This is searchable by name, country, texture and type of milk (including buffalo, reindeer, camel and yak).
There's also a section on interesting cheese facts, and advice on the best ways to store and serve it. There's a recipe database, but it's hardly for professional chefs, for example, "Ham and Cheese Toasted Sandwich. Ingredients: ham, cheese, bread."
The strange thing is that there's no indication of who's actually put Cheese.com together. Usually, associations or suppliers produce these kinds of sites, but Cheese.com seems to have been built by an anonymous group of enthusiasts determined to spread cheese across the globe, like a mix of Scientology and Dairylea.
Now on to the BTA. No, not the British Tourist Association, but the British Trout Association. It launched its Web site, www.britishtrout.co.uk, at the end of May to coincide with National Trout Week.
A well laid-out, professional-looking site, it has information on the association as well as, unsurprisingly, trout in general (did you know that caterers go through 153,200 tonnes a year?). In addition, there's an impressive set of recipes and general tips on preparing and cooking the fish, plus information on careers and training.
For another entertaining, rather than useful, site, try www.tx7.com/fries. Yes, somebody really has got nothing better to do than set up a Web site dedicated to French fries. There's actually a lot of proper information about their history and how mass-produced fries are made. The makers also test various frozen and microwave chips. Fair enough. It hasn't been updated since 1996, but so what?
My favourite section is the list of "22 things to do with French fries other than eat them". For example, number 10: "French fries, when wrapped with a steel jacket, make inexpensive test projectiles for rail guns."
Next Web watch: 19 July
