Food news antipasto

Country music legend Loretta Lynn passed away earlier this week at age 90. While millions appreciated her impressive singing and songwriting career – where she inserted sometimes controversial feminist viewpoints into a conservative, male-dominated industry – fewer people realize that she was also a talented home cook. She wrote a cookbook in 2004 called You’re Cookin’ It Country: My Favorite Recipes And Memories. The recipes are pure comfort food, and the stories are a treasure.

Attempting to create a “best cookbooks of all time” list is a daunting task, because someone is sure to complain about a wonderful book that has been excluded. Nevertheless, the Guardian’s Barbara Sweeney has bravely compiled a time-ranked list of the top 20 Australian cookbooks to date. Sweeney starts off with 1968’s The Margaret Fulton Cookbook and ends with 2022’s First Nation’s Food Companion. In between are books by Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer, Kylie Kwong, and other Australian culinary legends.

Speaking of legends, esteemed food writer and cookbook author Naomi Duguid recently released a new volume titled The Miracle of Salt: Recipes and Techniques to Ferment Food, Preserve Ingredients, and Transform Your Cooking. She is currently promoting the book, and kicks off the tour in New York City on October 12. She will be traveling from coast to coast, and there’s also a virtual event with Milk Street Kitchen. Please check our Calendar for updated events for other authors and book stores.

Usually if someone says a restaurant has gone to the dogs, they mean the food is no good. However, for one San Francisco restaurant the adage means something different, as it is literally created for our canine companions. Not only does it serve dogs, it does so in a very upscale manner, featuring a $75 tasting menu and French-inspired pastries. I love my animals a lot and spend plenty on prescription food and fancy treats, but I draw the line at shelling out more for their restaurant meal than I spend on my own.

Home cooks have embraced air fryers with such a passion that I’m sure InstantPots are feeling a tinge of jealousy. People love the appliance’s ability to cook foods quickly and without a lot of extra fat, but there is one person who is definitely not a fan: Jay Rayner. He writes about his disappointment with air fryers, saying that the appliance “doesn’t even come close to mimicking the glorious impact of placing foods in a pan of tumbling, boiling golden fat.”

If you live in New York City or are planning a trip to the metropolis, you will want to take a gander at the new Michelin Guide reviews for the city’s best restaurants. There are two new two-starred places, while the five three-star restaurants there have all retained their coveted status. The 2022 guide also includes 17 new single-star establishments.

A wonderful friend recently gifted me all of the Concord grapes she grew this year because she was too exhausted to deal with them after a multi-day tomato sauce canning session. I am always wowed by the flavor of Concord grapes and I was happy to take on the task of turning these into grape jam (and eating plenty in the process) because it is rare to find this variety in stores. The world of grapes includes so many other wonderful flavors, from the sorcery that is the cotton candy grape to the enchanting and uniquely shaped Moon Drop. If you are not familiar with these grape varieties, head over to The Kitchn for a breakdown of the 13 most popular table grapes.