Food news antipasto

It’s not a bowl and it’s not a plate, but it can be the ideal piece of dinnerware to serve everything from pasta to salad. I am referring to the latest home trend: the blate. Shallower than a bowl but with a larger lip than a regular dinner plate, the blate is cropping up at retailers and specialty shops alike, but not always with this new moniker. Crate & Barrel calls them low bowls, for instance. You are more likely to find the term blate at smaller stores and Etsy shops.

Where I live the weather is finally starting to get warm. That means it is time to switch from steaming hot soup to refreshing chilled varieties. Gazpacho usually tops the list of favorite cold soups, but that is just the beginning. Epicurious shows us many different options with a slideshow of 36 chilled soups featuring everything from beets to watermelon. My favorite chilled soup is the Cantaloupe gazpacho with crispy prosciutto from Serious Eats, pictured above.

In a recent post on food waste I mentioned a banana bread recipe that I discovered recently which uses the entire banana, peel and all. While some readers expressed astonishment or skepticism, apparently using banana peels in cooking is not a rare concept, as Charlotte Druckman explains. Nadiya Hussain spoke about it during an episode of Good Morning Britain, instructing us to cook banana peels “with some garlic and onions and barbecue sauce, stick it in a burger, and you’ve got, like, pulled pork, pulled chicken.” Nigella Lawson also recently featured a dish made with banana peels and cauliflower.

A chocolatier who has been described as the “real life Willy Wonka” has recently created a collection of 50 chocolates, one for each of the US states. The collection is the brain child of Phillip Ashley Rix, a self-taught chocolatier with a chemistry degree who is known for his innovative flavors. “I’ve always wondered what America would taste like if it were a box of chocolates,” he says. “So, I decided to create my vision for it.” The flavors are representative of the states without being too far-fetched: Sea Salt Kettle Chips and Pretzels Pennsylvania, Peaches & Cream for Georgia, and Old Bay for Maryland.