Food news antipasto

Potato salad is not just a picnic staple, it is part of the Black cultural dynamic. The 2006 movie Who Brought the Potato Salad? explores the dish’s relation to Black family dynamics, and recently Dr. Jon Paul Higgins expounded on this topic. Over at The Kitchn, he writes about why potato salad plays an important role in many Black social gatherings.

If you are a gardener in the Northern Hemisphere, you might find yourself with an excess of tomatoes this time of year. That is not a bad situation to be in, but if you have more than you can use you’ll want to preserve them for later. Forget the rigors and hassles that come with canning tomatoes, says Mark Bittman. He suggests a ridiculously easy way to preserve tomatoes that dispenses with peeling, water baths, and mess.

Brown butter or beurre noisette – however you describe it, the easy DIY project elevates every dish it touches, from butternut squash to cookies. But did you know you can apply the same principles to cream? Serious Eats explains how to make toasted cream (pictured above), along with various ways you can use the end product.

People have strong feelings about foods associated with their culture, and the French are no exception. That is why a recent recipe from a prominent French chef sparked an outcry from viewers. In an episode of Tous en Cuisine, Chef Cyril Lignac (best known as a judge on France’s version of Bake Off) presented a version of salad niçoise that included potatoes, beans and Parmesan. The addition of these non-traditional ingredients enraged many viewers, with some calling the recipe ‘culinary terrorism’.

Sometimes I see an article and I just don’t know how to introduce our readers to it without giving things away. That happened with this article on a Chicago-area breadbaker. H/T to The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner for tweeting a link to this story.