Food news antipasto

As we eagerly await the announcement of the winners of the 2023 James Beard Media Awards, yet another controversy is brewing around the James Beard Foundation. This time it comes from a couple of judges resigning and a former winner smashing his award with a brick. As Eater explains, “In the wake of disqualifying a Birmingham [Alabama] chef, two judges resign and one chef condemns the JBFA’s “woke reasoning”.”

King Charles III was crowned in an elaborate ceremony at Westminster Abbey on May 6. He chose to have a quiche as his official coronation dish, but it’s unlikely that will become as popular as Coronation chicken, a dish created for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’ mother and the longest reigning British monarch to date. The NYT’s Melissa Clark explains more about the dish, and offers a modern take on this longstanding classic.

Have you ever wondered why the bubbles in champagne travel in perfectly vertical lines? Unlike many other effervescent drinks whose bubbles meander around the glass hither and yon, the bubbles in bubbly (and a few types of beer) line up with each other, forming a chain that stays together all the way up. The mystery of why this happens has been solved, thanks to science.

When a recipe calls for neutral oil, it doesn’t mean oil that comes from Switzerland. But what exactly makes an oil “neutral?” The Sydney Morning Herald has the answer (registration required – here’s a link to the same article in The Washington Post). Becky Krystal explains how different neutral oils perform in various cooking and baking applications.

May 10 marked the 10-year anniversary of Dominique Ansel’s Cronut, the mashup of doughnut and croissant that the world didn’t know it needed. One Cronut superfan, Joey Lim, has eaten all 121 different flavors of cronut that have been introduced since the first one came out in 2013. His favorite? “The flavors that stand out are the combinations I didn’t think would work, like matcha and pineapple. Another was clementine with ricotta,” says Lim.