Food news antipasto

Two stories about Trader Joe’s hit my radar this week. The first, from Food & Wine, is a recap of the annual survey that the grocer undertakes about its customers favorite products. Landing at number one on that list is Chili and Lime Flavored Rolled Tortilla Chips, priced at $2.99 USD. The other news concerns a complaint brought against Trader Joe’s by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which argues that the company has engaged in unfair labor practices including illegally firing a union supporter. The company has responded by making the sweeping argument that the NLRB itself is unconstitutional. Trader Joe’s United has unionized four TJ’s locations and has been organizing in many more, which likely prompted the company’s problematic actions.

The US Embassy in London had to step in after American professor Michelle Francl published tea-making advice that included adding a pinch of salt and dunking and squeezing the tea bag [insert horrified emoji]. “Today’s media reports of an American professor’s recipe for the perfect cup of tea has landed our special bond with the United Kingdom in hot water,” the Embassy said an official statement shared on Twitter. Francl, who is writing a book about tea, says she drew upon dozens of research papers and ancient texts before arriving at her preferred teamaking method.

If you’ve ever cut carrots far in advance of serving them on a crudité platter and found that they had started to curl, now you can learn the science behind that phenomenon. Researchers from the University of Bath discovered that when carrots are cut and exposed to air, the outer layer of the carrot tends to dry out faster than the center, resulting in the outer layer shrinking which causes the curl. The lead researcher, mechanical engineering student Nguyen Vo-Bui, used “mathematical models from structural engineering to analyse more than a hundred Lancashire Nantes carrot halves.” The article offers advice on how to prevent carrots from curling.

If you’re a fan of Outbake Steakhouse’s Bloomin’ Onion but don’t make the copycat recipes at home because frying a large onion is messy and unwieldy, you should read Casey Elsass’s article at Epicurious. Elsass reconfigures this monstrous appetizer into something more manageable in a home kitchen. One secret is to use cipolline onions, and other tweaks include paring down the ingredient list for both the batter and the dipping sauce.

Do you have a culinary question for which you’d love to know the answer but it would require too much testing to solve? If so, you should ask Kenji Lopez-Alt. He recently posted on Instagram, asking “Have a culinary question that you want to test, but don’t have the time or access to resources for? I’ll test that for you.” He says he is especially interested in the types of questions that require a lot of data.

Great British Menu returned earlier this week for its 19th season. Presenters this year are TV chef and broadcaster Andi Oliver, chef Tom Kerridge, development chef and chief executive of Mowgli Street Food restaurants Nisha Katona and comedian Ed Gamble. While those of us in the US can’t view the current season, there are two seasons (11 and 12) available to stream on Peacock.