Food news antipasto

We start out this week’s recap of culinary happenings with sad news of two deaths in the cookbook community. Acclaimed British writer Colin Spencer has passed away at the age of 90. Grub Street Publishing (UK – not related to the US Grub Street website) posted a remembrance about him yesterday. Spencer wrote numerous cookbooks and food-related titles including British Food, but his work went well beyond this genre.

New Jersey-based cookbook author Carole Walter has also died. Fellow author Rick Rodgers shared the news on Facebook, saying that she was “one of the most inspiring baking teachers on the planet,” and that if you “bake any one of her coffee cakes, cakes, pies, tarts, or cookies…you will have perfection.”

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s Tenderheart is being featured this month in the EYB Cookbook Club, and judging from the amazing photos I’ve seen there, it’s a book you need in your library. Recently Epicurious interviewed McKinnon, and she provided a tip for cooking with tofu, one that may seem counterintuitive. She says you should boil tofu in salted water to create a terrific bouncy yet firm texture.

When farmers markets start filling up with seasonal fruit it’s tempting to buy a large quantity to preserve it. Freezing and making jams and jellies are the go-to ways to do this, but Taste Cooking wants us to look at another method: pickling, saying that “sweet and briny berries, cherries, and plums are the pickles you never knew you needed.”

Ice cream and sherbet rank as two of the all-time greatest confections. For a long time vegans or those who cannot eat dairy products have been shut out of these creamy frozen desserts, but that is rapidly changing, says the New York Times. While the first non-dairy frozen treats were often grainy, watery, and lacked flavor, the latest options are smooth, creamy, and delicious, says Christina Morales.

Over the past decade or thereabouts, so-called “natural wines” were the it trend in winemaking. Sommelier Samantha Payne wrote about these wines in a recent article in Australian Gourmet Traveller, but she was not touting this style of winemaking. Rather, she proclaims that natural wine is dead, and that many “natty” winemakers have moved on to a different practice where minimal intervention is allowed if required to make a delicious wine.