Food news antipasto

We learned this week that celebrated Australian-Lebanese chef Greg Malouf has died at the age of 64. Born in Melbourne, the award-winning chef helmed various restaurants in Australia before moving to Dubai in 2013 to open two restaurants, Cle Dubai and Zahira. Known as the “godfather of Middle Eastern cuisine” in Australia, Malouf created contemporary takes on Middle Eastern food starting with Melbourne’s O’Connells Hotel in 1991. Malouf wrote several popular cookbooks with his writing partner and ex-wife Lucy Malouf.

Food and Wine just announced that it has a new way for people to keep track of its 45 years’ worth of recipes, with the recently relaunched MyRecipes site, a “new recipe box where you can store your weeknight meals, dinner party greatest hits, and more” according to the article posted this Wednesday. Other Dotdash Meredith sites will follow suit, including Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart, Serious Eats, Real Simple, and AllRecipes. EatingWell is already linked to MyRecipes along with Food & Wine, and you can join MyRecipes for free (at least for now). I created an account to see how it works, and while I might be biased, adding the recipe to your EYB Bookshelf is far superior. While you can create a “collection” of “favorite” recipes on MyRecipes, there is no way to search by ingredient, ethnicity, nutrition, or any of the myriad combinations of criteria available on EYB. Remember, if you find an online recipe that doesn’t already exist in the EYB Library, you can add it via the Bookmarklet.

Steve Sando knows a thing or two about beans, as evidenced by the waiting list for the Rancho Gordo Bean Club and by his most recent cookbook, The Bean Book. The AP interviewed Sando following the release of the book, describing him as “something of a bean evangelist” and highlighting the work he has done in reviving interest in heirloom varieties. Sando offers bean cooking advice in the article, and a recipe for Chili sin carne from The Bean Book is also provided. There are four additional recipes from the book available in our EYBD Preview.

Almost every child goes through a picky eating phase, and parents often become frustrated and concerned when their toddler refuses to eat a wider variety of items, wondering if they have done something wrong. According to a recent study, parents shouldn’t be too hard on themselves, because most fussy eating can be attributed to genetics, not bad parenting. The child’s environment also plays a role, with friends and family eating habits factoring into eating preferences.

The seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster announced that it is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with new owners and a new CEO. The company, which struggled following a disastrous all-you-can-eat shrimp offering that racked up millions of dollars in losses for the chain along with other issues which can be found in this article. The company is closing failing locations and selling off most of its assets in the restructuring. The new CEO, Damola Adamolekun, is the former chief executive of P.F. Chang’s.