Food news antipasto

When Christmas rolls around, even people who normally don’t cook much pull out all the stops and make a large feast for family and friends. For most, the idea of going out to dinner for this holiday is unthinkable. Yet there is something to be said for letting others do the cooking, says restaurant critic Jay Rayner. “I have cooked a major Christmas lunch for each of the last 30 years and, being fortunate enough to afford it, I want a year off,” he writes in a piece that discusses some pros and cons of eating one’s holiday meal in a restaurant.

On the flip side of this, celebrated chef Marcus Wareing will be spending his first Christmas at home in 40 years. He said he didn’t mind working on the holiday, recalling “how much fun it was at Christmas because everyone was in a good mood. The customers were all dressing up, the kitchen was vibrant. It was hard work but you just got your head down.” He always closed his restaurants after lunch service so his staff could spend dinner with their loved ones.

Keeping with the Christmas dinner theme, Eater’s Kat Thompson wonders if it’s worth it to make dinner rolls from scratch for a big holiday dinner instead of just buying premade rolls from the supermarket. She asks “who would want to give up prime real estate on their Thanksgiving or Christmas plate to a cold piece of bread when there’s bubbly macaroni and cheese, creamy mashed potatoes, and herbed stuffing to load up on instead?” But (spoiler alert) after finding a recipe for divine homemade Parker House rolls, she believes that yes, it is worth your time.

It’s the time of year for “best of 2024” retrospectives, and starting us off is Food and Wine, which has assembled it’s top 25 recipes of the year. The themes for the year were pies, pastas, and stews. Portuguese custard tarts, Italian wedding lasagna soup, paper bag apple pie, and potato and bacon quiche all make the list but there’s a surprise at number one. Food & Wine’s top recipe for 2024 is Red Lentil Akoho Sy Voanio (Malagasy Coconut Lentils).

We’ve posted about several food recalls on the EYB blog, and judging by the number of social media posts and news headlines about recalls you might think that they are on the rise. That is not the case, says James Hood of Consumer Affairs. The number of food recalls in the US is around the same as it has been in recent years. What’s changed is how we find out about them. Grocery stores, social media, websites, and news stations all report on these alerts so we hear about them with more frequency. Additionally, large recalls hit right before Thanksgiving, an important food holiday, so that got more attention than it might have at other times of the year.

In other food safety news, the USDA has ordered testing of milk for the H5N1 virus (commonly known as bird flu) at dairy farms across the US. The virus appears to have been spreading through dairy herds, and dozens of people have been diagnosed with bird flu, possibly from drinking raw milk or products made with the milk. Pasteurization kills the virus so if you are drinking regular milk from the grocery store you don’t need to worry about the virus being present in those products.