Food news antipasto

Looking for ways to get your kitchen better organized? Head over to The Kitchn, which recently posted about their favorite IKEA solutions to keep your cooking area tidy while also looking stylish. The products include utensil organizers, pegboards, and clip-on baskets. One of my favorite IKEA organizing products is their Hultarp series. I have three rails in my kitchen and pantry, and they hold everything from bags of chips to aprons to utensils. (The Hultarp link is not an affiliate link – I just like the product.)

Another kitchen tool post caught my eye this week; it involves one of my favorites, the tapered French rolling pin. Epicurious staff tested fourteen different types of rolling pins, and they landed on that one as the best all-purpose version. Not only did it outperform the other types, the French pin is inexpensive and will last forever if it’s properly cared for.

The United States does not have the same kind of rules about the designation of food origins as other countries, a point that was driven home in a recent appeals court ruling concerning Gruyere cheese. The Virginia court found that cheese from anywhere can be labeled as Gruyere, not only the kind that is produced in Switzerland or France. The ruling said that “cheese consumers in the United States understand ‘Gruyere’ to refer to a type of cheese, which renders the term generic”.

Heston Blumenthal’s 12-year partnership with Waitrose Foods is coming to an end, the company announced last week. The chef’s notable creations usually sold out quickly, with some items then auctioned on eBay for much more than the selling price. This Easter marks the launch of the final product, “a Chocolate Dabbit which resembles a rabbit at one angle and a duck when viewed from a different perspective.” The rumor mill says that Blumenthal’s unpredictability prompted the change, but officially Waitrose says it is taking its product development “in a new direction.”

Parsley is one of the most common and inexpensive herbs you can find in the supermarket, and it often gets relegated to being little more than garnish. That’s a shame, because it can contribute so much more, says Aaron Hutcherson writing for Good Food (Aus). He writes about the many ways parsley can add a herbaceous zing to your foods.

Readers in the UK probably know about Fanny Cradock, but those outside of the region may not know about the woman who was arguably the first celebrity TV chef. Her story is a fascinating rags-to-riches tale full of campy, outlandish behavior. The article explains how Fanny and her fourth husband “used their love language of food to create an unlikely live stage show, turning theatres into pop-up restaurants for the night.”