Food news antipasto

We just learned of the passing of Skye Gyngell, the first Australian woman to be awarded a Michelin star. Gyngell helmed several popular London-area restaurants and cafes. She was also a cookbook author, writing four cookbooks from 2008 to 2016. Many chefs and food writers posted remembrances about Gyngell, with Jamie Oliver thanking her for “all you did to inspire young cooks”.

Fuchsia Dunlop has been explaining Sichuan cuisine to Western cooks for decades. As Leslie T Chang explains in The Guardian, it turns out that Dunlop has had an influence on Chinese cooks too. Dunlop’s cookbooks and her memoir have sold well in China, where Dunlop has celebrity status among Chinese food lovers and chefs.

Do you like popcorn? If so, you should head over to The Bittman Project, where they are exploring new ways to cook with popcorn. They started to think of treating it like any other grain, and note that it works great to add a crunch to foods. Bonus – if you use popcorn in a soup, it doesn’t get soggy like croutons.

Coincidentally, Tasting Table just published an article on an ‘old-fashioned’ popcorn snack: popcorn balls. I put old-fashioned in quotes because I don’t think these ever really went out of fashion. My grandmother gave out homemade popcorn balls at Halloween, a tradition that was cut short by a story about razor blades that never really happened.

Although inflation rates in general may be going in the right direction, they remain stubbornly high in the grocery category. The Independent’s Hannah Twigg looks at the multiple factors that are ratcheting up the cost of your weekly shopping trip. A confluence of events such as war, climate disasters, and avian influenza have made supplies short which leads to higher prices.

Don’t forget to check out Jenny’s roundup of cookbooks focused on holidays, entertaining, and baking. This includes cocktail titles and classic books like Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities by Nigella Lawson alongside recent releases such as The Christmas Companion: Recipes, Crafts and Inspiration for a Magical Festive Season by Skye McAlpine.