Food news antipasto

First up this week is a fun little quiz to test your knowledge of pantry staples. It starts off pretty easy by asking what are the ingredients in pesto, but it gets more difficult after that. There were some foods I hadn’t encountered, although because it’s multiple choice most answers become clear even if you don’t have a jar of the product in your larder.

When you have bookshelf after bookshelf overflowing with cookbooks, it can almost seem like cheating when you use a video recipe instead of turning to your library. However, it needn’t be an either/or dichotomy; videos and cookbooks can go hand-in-hand, says Bobby Ghosh Bloomberg of The Portland Press Herald. He reports on the increasing symbiosis between the two genres, with concurrence from cookbook authors like Anissa Helou and Anya von Bremzen. [Note for anyone not aware of this feature, EYB has almost 14,000 recipe videos and 450+ book videos in the Library (click the TV icon to view). Please do let us know if any no longer work as publishers do sometimes delete older videos.]

Chef Michel Roux Jr. has announced that he will close his Michelin-starred restaurant La Gavroche in January of next year. The storied restaurant was opened in 1967 by French restaurateur brothers Albert and Michel Roux Sr. Michel said that he was closing the La Gavroche to have a better work/life balance.

If you can say anything good about fast food, it’s that it is egalitarian. It’s food for Everyman, with the same items available for anyone who eats there regardless of their socioeconomic status. But what if fast food became posh? It’s happening, says Josh Barrie of The Telegraph. He writes about how some fast food chains have teamed up with chefs and high-end stores to create luxe editions of their signature foods, like Morley’s chicken dipped in caviar and KFC’s omakase popup.

Although Betty Crocker was a fictional persona, real people created the recipes that filled the pages of the iconic Betty Crocker Cookbook and other publications by General Mills. Kay Emel-Powell was one such person, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted a tribute to Kay following her passing at the age of 76. Her work in the Betty Crocker Kitchens included writing and testing hundreds of recipes that appeared in such publications as “Harvest Time Pies” and “Creative Holiday Recipes.”

Speaking of iconic publications, SBS Food has an article that dives into one of the most influential cookbooks in Australia, The Commonsense Cookery Book. First published in 1914, it was “the culinary bible of its time,” says Poh Ling Yeow on episode two of the new SBS series, Adam and Poh’s Great Australian Bites. The book was used as both a school textbook and by the general public for home cooking.