Food news antipasto

If you recently purchased ground cumin and you live in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, you may want to check your pantry. Michigan-based Lipari Foods is recalling six ounce tubs of ground cumin because of potential Salmonella contamination.  

In a recent tweet, Jose Andres dangled a carrot in front of cookbook lovers: “Big news! My José Andrés Media team and I are hard at work on 3 new cookbooks! From the flavors we celebrate at Zaytinya, to essential recipes of Spain, to everyday dishes I make at home for family & friends..more news soon!” We can’t wait to see the results.

For those who are bored with regular terrestrial restaurants, a company called Zephalto is offering a dining experience in the sky. For a mere $132,000, you can hop aboard their specialty balloon and float up 15.5 miles into the atmosphere and then enjoy a luxury French meal complete with rare wines. “We choose [15.5 miles] high because it’s the altitude where you are in the darkness of space, with 98% of the atmosphere below you, so you can enjoy the curvature of the Earth in the blue line,” Vincent Farret d’Astiès, the founder of Zephalto, told Bloomberg. “You’re in the darkness of space, but without the zero gravity experience.”

Last week we wrote about the new coronation quiche recipe for celebrating King Charles III’s upcoming ceremony. While the story is that Charles chose quiche at least in part for its relatively low cost, food writer Jack Monroe has taken it even farther. She’s developed an alternative quiche recipe that is only 41p UK (51 cents US) per serving.

I was well over 30 years old before I experienced the delicate floral citrus flavors of the Meyer lemon, but once I had a taste I was hooked. The thin skinned fruit is more mellow than its cousin the Eureka lemon, the most common kind you will find in grocery stores. I knew that the Meyer lemon was brought over from China by explorer Frank Meyer, but I had forgotten about how it almost ruined the California citrus industry. A recent article from Gastro Obscura reminded me about this fascinating story.