Food news antipasto

Cristina Tosi’s Milk Bar is branching out to the Windy City as a new Milk Bar outpost is coming to Chicago’s Fulton Market. No opening date has been announced, and Tosi said she is excited about the first Midwest location for Milk Bar, telling NBC Chicago “I am a Midwesterner by birth and Chicago has long been one of my favorite cities to visit…We promise to show up with passion, enthusiasm, and care, serving delicious cookies, cake, pie and ice cream early in the morning until late at night.” 

Bacon lovers argue about the best way to cook their favorite cured meat, and even the experts differ on their approach. The husband and wife team Allan and Sharon Benton, founders of the chefs’ favorite Benton Country Hams in Tennessee, each have their own preferred method. Allan says that the oven is best while Sharon has an unusual method, layering bacon in a crosshatch pattern in a cast-iron skillet and cooking it low and slow. She explains her painstaking process: after making the crosshatch pattern and putting the pan on medium-low heat, she says that “as the fat renders, use a fork to fold the bottom pieces over the top pieces so the top pieces become the bottom pieces. You can’t walk away from the stove, and you can’t speed up the process.”

While there is no shortage of people making cooking videos on TikTok, Eater’s Amy McCarthy says that her favorites are the TikTok grandmothers showing people how to make their family’s favorite foods. Shouting out to the nonnas, maw-maws, mee-maws, abuelas, omis, and yayas, McCarthy states that learning recipes from these experienced cooks is wonderful, but the part she likes best is “the genuine exchanges of tenderness between these women and their children, or grandchildren.” Their love for family shines through in these videos, which probably helps explain why so many of them go viral.

Scaling a recipe up or down is more than just multiplying or reducing the ingredients (although if not using metric measures the math is hard enough), you have to take into account the type of recipes, the size of the pan you are using, and so on. Plus there’s the fact that ingredients like salt, spices, and lemon juice don’t scale in a linear fashion. If the intricacies of scaling seem daunting, turn to recipe developers Helen Goh and Felicity Cloake, who provide great tips on the ins and outs of scaling a recipe.

Chilean-born baker and founder of Sydney’s popular bakery Bakealicious, Gabriela Oporto, has been baking since the age of four, but only started doing it professionally in 2017, starting out of her apartment. Since those humble beginnings, she has created quite a buzz, and her success is evident because pop starts like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift have requested her cakes during their Australian tours. Oporto was featured on Adam Liaw’s The Cook Up, and she explained how she approaches cake making, drawing on her Chilean heritage to concoct her delicious bakes.

You may know about Dry January, when people abstain from alcohol for the first month of the year, but have you heard of Sober October? This additional alcohol-reset has become increasingly popular as people decide to reduce or eliminate their alcohol consumption for a variety of reasons. Many recent studies have indicated that even low levels of alcohol consumption can have adverse health consequences, and with the rise of so many zero-proof beverages from companies like Seedlip and Everleaf, it’s become easier than ever to go booze-free while still enjoying a finely crafted drink. According to beverage industry expert Annie Borgerding, “More and more people are leaning toward a ‘mindful drinking’ lifestyle” and the trend of “sober-curious” individuals shows no sign of slowing.