Food news antipasto

Even though I love to cook and bake, sometimes nothing will satisfy a craving like junk food: cheese puffs with an orange coating that resembles no real cheese but is so good I’ll lick it off my fingers , a too-sweet cake with a best-by date that is months into the future, or cookies with an ingredient list of things I can’t pronounce. Why do I like to eat these objectively bad products? A story from Forbes says that I should lay some of the blame at the feet of Big Tobacco.

Speaking of junk food, let’s talk about super sweet dairy products, namely butterscotch, caramel, dulce de leche, and cajeta. While they have plenty of similarities, there are marked differences between the four products. Pastry chef Stella Parks lends her expertise to this Eater article that explains how these creamy confections differ from one another and the best applications for each.

If you are a coffee aficionado, you are familiar with the two major types of coffee beans, arabica and robusta. Arabica beans have long been viewed as the superior product and almost every coffee shop serves primarily, if not exclusively, coffee and espresso made from these beans. However, coffee expert James Freeman is among those saying that we should reevaluate our opinion of robusta beans. Not only is it easier and cost effective to grow, it stores much better than arabica, and when handled and processed correctly, robusta beans can produce a delicious brew that may be even better suited to the kinds of coffee drinks most of us enjoy.

Now that the days in the Northern Hemisphere are growing shorter at a rapid pace, it’s time to think about the flavors of autumn including the one that has come to define the season: pumpkin. We aren’t just talking about PSLs, there are many savory and sweet applications for pumpkin. To celebrate the season, Williams-Sonoma compiled 30 different pumpkin recipes for everything from pies and quick breads to soups, stews, pastas, and curries.

Every cook has a favorite spice, one they turn to time and again when they need that little something extra for a dish. It turns out that my favorite is also the favorite Claire Cheney, founder of Curio Spice, a spice shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The spice that both of us find so compelling is coriander, and Cheney offers a wealth of information about these tiny brown orbs of deliciousness. Some of the insights she provides were new to me, even though I’ve been a coriander cheerleader for years.

The best stories about food and drink are not just about cooking, eating, or drinking, they dive into the human relationships that surround it. Writer Fawn Weaver was digging into such a story, trying to learn more about Nathan “Nearest” Green, a former slave who taught none other than Jack Daniels how to make bourbon whiskey. Her sleuthing unearthed over 10,000 documents about Nearest, but the search made her want to do more than write or even make a movie about the man, so she set a new goal: create a new whiskey that honored him.