Food news antipasto

In 2021, Kay Featherstone and Kate Allinson’s Pinch of Nom Comfort Food was a runaway bestseller, and remains in the #1 position on Amazon UK’s sales chart for nonfiction books. In general, cookbook sales are still going strong worldwide, but the distribution of sales is uneven, at best. According to The Sunday Times (possible paywall), while some books like the Pinch of Nom series and tomes by heavyweights such as Jamie Oliver will sell millions of volumes, of the over 5,000 cookery titles released last year in the UK, only 556 sold more than 100 copies and a mere 48 sold more than 5,000. According to Jamie Oliver, “You can’t look at me and think that’s normal because it’s so far from normal.”

Speaking of Jamie Oliver, his new reality show aims to give the winner a book deal with a prestigious publisher. The Great Cookbook Challenge airs on 31 January on Channel 4, and features a roster of well-known judges including critic and MasterChef judge Jimi Famurewa, cookbook author Georgina Hayden, and Louise Moore, a managing director at Penguin.

Fans of both the Great British Bake Off and musical theater are in for a treat. A musical inspired by GBBO is in the works and is scheduled to debut on July 22, 2022 in Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre. Billed as a comedy the show “will feature a group of eight aspiring bakers…competing on the classic show while also following their ‘trials and lives.'” We aren’t provided with many details such as the cast or the amount of singing and dancing that may be involved.

The weather where I live is hovering in the single digits above zero Fahrenheit, so when I see posts about the lovely warm weather in Australia I admit to being a bit jealous. When it’s cold, I tend to eat warming things like hearty soups and stews and then when the mercury rises my thoughts run to ice cream and other cold foods. But when the temperature is getting too hot for comfort, we should be thinking more along the lines of spicy food rather than chilled dishes, says Emma Breheny of Good Food (Aus). She explains the paradox of how eating fiery hot foods can actually make you feel cooler.

I’ve written before about how I cherish the family recipes that my grandmother and mother have passed on to me via a handwritten cookbook I received on my wedding day. This memento cookbook brings back many wonderful memories, but Minnesota’s Rachel Ingber take this concept to new heights. She created a cookbook featuring her grandmother-in-law’s recipes, but didn’t stop at merely transcribing old handwritten recipes into a digital format. Ingber made a cookbook filled with photographs and stories that is a true family heirloom – and now she wants to help you do the same.