Food news antipasto

This week we learned that cookbook author Jean Anderson has died at the age of 93. The winner of five best cookbook awards (Tastemaker, James Beard, IACP) and a member of the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, Jean Anderson has written for Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Cottage Living, Gourmet, and other magazines. She published over twenty cookbooks, among them The Food of Portugal and the best-selling The Doubleday Cookbook: Complete Contemporary Cooking (with Elaine Hanna).

The popular Spanish dish tortillas de patatas has come under scrutiny in recent weeks due to a salmonella outbreak in Madrid linked to the omelette. To date, over 100 people have become ill after eating at Casa Dani, “a longstanding gastronomic institution” in the capital city. Officials are urging people not to eat undercooked omelettes.

I haven’t seen as many food trend predictions this year as I have in previous years. Maybe that’s because it is so difficult to predict what’s going to go viral on TikTok or it may even be due to supply chain volatility making assumptions too tenuous. However, a few brave souls are venturing to guess what are going to be the next big culinary trends. BBC’s Good Food weighs in with their predictions on the top 10 UK food trends to watch in 2023.

When you hear the words “Arctic circle”, chances are good that food is not the first thing that comes to mind. However, a group of leading chefs and food entrepreneurs want to change that, and they are focused on reclaiming and celebrating indigenous Inuit culture by developing a new kind of cuisine using traditional ingredients such as whale, seal, and muskox.

Are you hosting a party to watch the Grammy Awards? If so, you might want to consider adding a few snacks based on your favorite artist. Rooting for Lizzo? Try Lesser Evil vegan organic popcorn, which gets a cheesy flavor boost from nutritional yeast. If you’re a fan of Doja Cat, whip yourself up a Cutwater pineapple margarita.

Russ Parsons, a former Los Angeles-based food writer who retired to Ireland, recently penned an ode to the simple cooking that he learned from C.B. Stubblefield, who created Stubb’s barbecue sauce. Parsons fondly recalls his encounters with the Texas native who once had a cult following for the barbecue he served in his Lubbock restaurant, where he served food that was never fancy but was impeccably executed.

A late addition to this week’s news: a Member alerted us that the Barnes and Noble at the Coconut Point Mall in Estero, Florida is closing and discounting cookbooks by 40%. If you are in the vicinity, now’s the time to stock up!