Food news antipasto

Everyone loves lists, and around here we think that lists of cookbooks are the best. Jenny always keeps us up to date with new releases in our monthly cookbook reviews, and she goes above and beyond by creating lists of next year’s releases of note and more. Since we just can’t get enough of cookbook lists, we like to see what other people are saying about them. If you head to The Telegraph, you can see the top 20 fall cookbooks as chosen by Diana Henry. There is a paywall, but if you register you can view at least one article per month at no charge.

The James Beard Foundation cancelled this year’s gala announcing the winners of its cookbook awards, and decided not to name any winners of its restaurant and chef awards. The JBF did have a virtual ceremony on 25 September, and used the event to honor the nominees plus previous award winners in select categories. If you didn’t catch the ceremony when it happened, Eater has you covered with a recap of what you missed at the virtual JBF event.

While many of us whiled away hours in quarantine perfecting our sourdough loaves, Yassmin Manauchehri took a different culinary escape route. Instead of baking bread, she spent hours in her tiny California bungalow re-creating the Persian meals her mom used to make for her. She set about perfecting tahdig and other iconic dishes, and found a way to reconnect with her Persian roots.

The gorgeous colors on the trees in my yard and the crispness of the morning air are all shouting “autumn!” So do the stories coming across my news feed, like this one from Epicurious. It provides almost 50 ways to use butternut squash, my favorite winter squash (maybe because it is the only one I am able to successfully grow).

Photo of Roasted butternut squash & red onion with tahini & za’atar from Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi