Food news antipasto

Just when you think you have seen it all, along comes a book that makes you realize that there are new things under the sun. That describes the newly indexed book Slippurinn, the debut cookbook from Icelandic chef Gísli Matt. It required 44 new ingredients to be added to the ingredients database. This does fall short of the record set by Boragó which required 279 new ingredients back in 2017. (For more information on that book, refer to our post that recorded indexing records in the EYB Library.) Even though Slippurinn did not break a record, considering that we have been adding to this database for 13 years and it contains more than 60,000 listings, adding 44 new ingredients suggests that they are rare indeed. A few of the most interesting ones are guillemot eggs – the eggs of a North Atlantic seabird that have a pointy end to stop them rolling off the sloping cliff edges where they are laid, smoked sugar kelp (smoked seaweed), cod swim bladders, and birch sawdust. A bit more on the book: Chef Gísli Matt built Slippurinn with his family in a historic shipyard building of a small town whose landscape was changed forever by the lava flow from a 1973 erupted volcano. In this most incredible environment, where plants grow on mountains created out of lava, Matt created a menu that both respects the local and traditional and pushes boundaries of contemporary cuisine. It is one of most fascinating new books in the EYB Library. – take a look at our EYBD preview for this title.

The Cop26 taking place in Glasgow next month focuses on urgent climate change issues, and food is no exception: conference attendees – which include US President Joe Biden, activist Greta Thunberg, Sir David Attenborough, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson – will eat a menu “dominated by plant-based dishes, with 80 per cent of the ingredients both seasonal and sourced from Scotland,” according to the Evening Standard. About 95 per cent of the dishes will come from the across the UK, paying heed to the concepts of eating locally and sustainably.

Earlier this year, we reported that the Good Food Guide was ceasing publication after 70 years of providing UK restaurant reviews. This week we learned that the Guide was getting a new beginning, as Adam Hyman of CODE Hospitality became the new custodian of the publication. Says Hyman, “I’m delighted that Elizabeth Carter will continue as editor and we will continue to produce a 2022 Guide at a time when the industry needs championing most as it recovers after the pandemic.”

In a bit of sad news, the man who is widely credited as being the inventor of tiramisu has died aged 93. Italian restaurateur Ado Campeol of Treviso, in the Veneto region, passed away on Saturday. Even though discovering the origins of a dish can be murky, Campeol and his wife, Alba, are generally considered to be its inventors. Like most food inventions, it seems that tiramisu began as an accident that gained a foothold in the restaurant’s menu.

Australians are finally being able to venture back out to restaurants again. Things have definitely changed since the pandemic started nearly two years ago, so you help you decide where you might want to go as you visit dining rooms for the first time in a long time, head over to Gourmet Traveller. They have put together a list of the top 80 restaurants in Australia for 2022.

To end on a lighthearted note, Jane passed along a humorous tweet she saw the other day – I’m sure you will get a chuckle out of it too: