Is the demise of restaurant guide books imminent?

November 28, 2016 by
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In the days of Yelp and instant reviews, printed dining guides are in danger of becoming irrelevant. As John Lethlean points out in The Australian, the combination of not including recent restaurants, poor writing, and other errors means the guides are not providing much value. Lethlean pens a scathing review of the 2017 Gault & Millau Australia Restaurant Guide, which… read more

How many kitchen gadgets is too many?

November 27, 2016 by
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  Recently I have gone through kitchen cabinets with ruthless determination to downsize. Not being able to close some of the doors due to the surfeit of gadgets and appliances led me to do a KonMari-style clean out. Some items had been hand-me-downs, some were purchased on a whim, and others had become less useful as I changed the way… read more

Roasting vegetables wasn’t always popular

November 25, 2016 by
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  With all of the photos of slightly charred, deeply roasted vegetables on Instagram today, it is difficult to imagine that this method of preparing vegetables was seldom used just a generation ago. Slate.com takes a look at this phenomenon and tries to trace the ascendancy of roasted vegetables into today's ubiquitous occurrence.   If you look at older cookbooks,… read more

Post-game analysis

November 24, 2016 by
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The dust is now settling (along with the mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pie) on Thanksgiving 2016 in the US. As we sit in our turkey-induced stupor, we should resist the urge to take a nap and instead do a 'post-game analysis' on what dishes we loved, what was merely average, and what we will never, ever make again. If we… read more

The stress of cooking for multiple diets

November 22, 2016 by
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  If you are like me, you obsess over holiday meal planning, attempting to design a delicious menu that will please everyone. That is stressful enough on its own, but throw in a  family member with special dietary needs or restrictions and you raise the anxiety level to new heights. NPR's The Salt takes a look at how stressful special… read more

Eating her way through history

November 20, 2016 by
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If you've ever leafed through historic cookbooks, you probably imagined what some of the more obscure recipes and ingredients tasted like. Sarah Lohman doesn't only imagine it, she creates the historical dishes. As a self-described "historic gastronomist", Lohman uses vintage cookbooks and other historical writings as a way to bring history to life.  Lohman just finished a week of eating the… read more

Tips for cell phone food photography

November 19, 2016 by
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Many of you have taken advantage of the new feature that allows you to add your own photos to recipes in the EYB Library. It's easy to upload a photo from your cell phone directly into the Library since the website now functions the same on mobile platforms as it does from one's computer. Shooting food photos with a phone… read more

The cookbook as comic book trend

November 18, 2016 by
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  The earliest cookery books were simple instruction manuals. A few line drawings might accompany the text, but lavish design was just not part of the equation. This was partly to do with cost; few books had color pages. As the price of both photography and color printing came down, more and more books included photographs, to the point where… read more

Tips for using your steamer

November 17, 2016 by
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  If you have a bamboo or other steamer lurking in the back of your kitchen cabinets, you may want to pull it out and give it a good cleaning. That's because Heidi Swanson, of indexed blog 101 Cookbooks, is going to give you new ideas for using your underutilized steamer.   Swanson is a big fan of steam cooking,… read more

Food trends of the last decade

November 15, 2016 by
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  Every year prognosticators try to guess what the next year's food trend will be. We recently saw that vegetable yogurt and watermelon juice are two of the foods to watch in 2017. How well those predictions actually play out is another story. Looking back at the last decade, Nation's Restaurant News reports on which foods actually increased in the… read more

That 70s food

November 13, 2016 by
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  As food trends change through the ages, people often look back to previous eras and revive the popular food and drink from that time. The craft cocktail movement is one example, hearkening back to the golden age of cocktails in the early 20th century, and even reviving 19th century favorites. Anna Pallai is taking a look at a different… read more

How many times should you flip a burger?

November 12, 2016 by
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  Joe Isidori knows a thing or two about burgers. He's the owenr of Black Tap, a NYC restaurant specializing in bold, gourmet-flavored burgers and sky-high milkshakes adorned with donuts, sparklers, and oversized cookies. Black tap has generated a massive cult following on social media and the streets of New York, with people waiting in line for hours just to score… read more

2017 food trends according to Waitrose

November 8, 2016 by
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As we get close to the end of the year, predictions about what will be the "next big thing" are being formulated. The Waitrose grocery chain has just weighed in on what to expect in 2017 by providing the results of its annual survey of food trends. Waitrose surveys shoppers who use all supermarkets in the UK. The report of… read more

Kitchens of the future

November 6, 2016 by
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  Sous-vide cooking. Internet-connected refrigerators. Remote thermometers that send text messages about your food. All of these innovations promise new ways to work in the kitchen. Some are more revolutionary than others, but how much do they really change how we cook? Digital Trends takes a look at kitchen evolution and discovers that the more kitchens change, the more they… read more

Sprinkles ride a wave of nostalgia

November 5, 2016 by
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Who could have predicted that a boxed cake mix gimmick would endure for decades? That's exactly what happened to rainbow sprinkles, or 'Funfetti' as it was called by Pillsbury in the late 1980s. While sprinkles had been around for some time before Pillsbury unleased Funfetti cake onto the world, putting the sprinkles on the inside of the cake instead of… read more

Twelve ingredients to amp up your vegetables

November 3, 2016 by
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Most of us want to add more vegetables to our diet, but it's easy to fall into a rut and end up bored by the same old recipes. Peter Meehan sets out to change that paradigm in his latest cookbook, Lucky Peach Presents Power Vegetables! You can read an excerpt from the book on the Lucky Peach website, in which Meehan lists a… read more

A better cheese storage solution?

October 31, 2016 by
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  Properly storing cheese in a home refrigerator can be a confounding task. Placing it in plastic and sticking it in the deli drawer leads to mold. Keeping cheese unwrapped is no better, as it desiccates and hardens. You can purchase specialty wraps, but they are cumbersome and expensive. Jessica Sennett, formerly of Cowgirl Creamery and Bedford Cheese Shop, thinks… read more

Oprah set to release new cookbook

October 28, 2016 by
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The latest celebrity to jump on the cookbook bandwagon is none other than Oprah Winfrey. Her book, titled Food, Health and Happiness: 'On Point' Recipes for Great Meals and a Better Life, debuts in January, 2017. She's distributing the book under her new (as yet unnamed) publishing imprint. Given Oprah's proven ability to promote books through her book club, the… read more

The evolution of a recipe

October 26, 2016 by
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  For an office function last week, I made my "famous" caramelized onion dip, which I got ages ago from a magazine that has been lost to history. A friend asked me for the recipe, so I went to fetch it off my computer. As I got ready to print a copy, I realized that I no longer used that… read more

Something sweet about this election

October 24, 2016 by
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After months - years, really - of advertisements, debates, stump speeches, and vitriol, citizens in the U.S. are feeling election fatigue (and the rest of the world is probably also ready for it to be over). But now there is a reason to think positively about the voting process: election cake. Bon Appetit Magazine looks at the history of election… read more

The amazing achievements of our indexers

October 23, 2016 by
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As I'm sure you will all agree, EYB is an amazing resource. One important reason it is remains so valuable to our Members is the stellar work of our expert indexers, located in Australia, New Zealand, England, Canada, and the United States. Their speed is impressive: one of our indexers (jumali on EYB) recently accomplished a marathon indexing of Mark… read more

The food book that never was

October 22, 2016 by
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  EYB Members love to read not just cookbooks but also literary works with food or cooking as the primary subject matter. Books by M.F.K. Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, and Ruth Reichl stand alongside standard recipe-filled volumes on our bookshelves. NPR's The Salt tells us about a food book that we would have loved to read - had it ever been… read more

Appliance cookbooks

October 20, 2016 by
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  Every new appliance, large and small, comes with an instruction manual and recipe booklet. In times gone by, even trade groups got in on the act, with gas and electric associations publishing small volumes to promote their particular fuel supply. The trend continues today, with recipe booklets packaged along with ranges, toaster ovens, blenders and ice cream makers. You… read more

Baking soda’s surprising uses

October 18, 2016 by
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We all know about baking soda's leavening prowess for muffins, cakes, and quick breads, and its ability to help cookies and other baked goods brown evenly. There are more uses for the common pantry ingredient, says indexed blog Serious Eats, which describes five additional ways to use baking soda in your cooking. The first tip is to improve shrimp by using a quick… read more

The rise of Israeli cuisine

October 15, 2016 by
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  Over the last several years, Israeli cuisine has made a huge splash all over the world. In the UK, Yotam Ottolenghi has reached icon status and currently his cookbook Plenty is on more EYB Bookshelves than any other book in the Library. In the US, Michael Solomonov's restaurant Zahav is making waves and his cookbook of the same name is also… read more
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