Food news antipasto

We will start out the new year with several cooking tips in case your New Year’s resolution was to learn more about or level up your cooking. First up is King Arthur Baking Company, which provides a beginner’s guide to baking with miso. Tatiana Bautista explains how using miso can add more complexity and richness to your baked goods and desserts, as in the Miso butterscotch bars from Food52 by King Arthur Baking Company (formerly known as King Arthur Flour).

Next we turn to Food and Wine, which demystifies the differences between various non-dairy milks. They dive into the minutiae on soy, almond, oat, rice, cashew, hazelnut, coconut, hemp, and pea milk. The last one was new to me, and I learned that pea milk is not green because it is made with yellow pea powder, and as a bonus it is full of protein.

Speaking of milk, Epicurious has the lowdown on how milk powder can improve your baking. Tiffany Hopkins explains why this pantry staple can be a secret weapon to making the best cookies, cakes, brownies, and more. Powdered milk “offers fat, protein, and flavor in a medium that doesn’t mess with the liquid portion of your baking,” says Hopkins, which means it can add creaminess and richness to almost anything.

If you live in a cold climate, you’ll appreciate the hearty winter soups from Yotam Ottolenghi in his recent article for The Guardian. Ottolenghi says that at this time of year “it’s brothy soups I want right now, where the liquid element feels almost medicinal, and just what we need to power up and prepare for the year ahead.”

Looking back to the year that just passed, Grub Street’s Rachel Sugar explores how a new crop of what she calls “provisions shops” made 2021 a little more bearable. Sugar explains that these little boutique stores, usually merchandised artfully and containing a carefully curated selection of products, “proved to be the perfect little escapist paradises. Nobody is bored in the provision shop, or sad, or tired.”