CookShelfEven before the pandemic, I was keenly aware of how baking can help buoy your mental health and can also relieve stress, and how the act of baking for others can likewise be good for you. Since lockdowns began over a…
Last week I wrote about Sam Sifton's The New York Times Cooking: No-Recipe Recipes, which has a lofty goal of freeing people from the drudgery of relying on recipes to get dinner on the table. While I understand…
In 2019, Yotam Ottolenghi pared down his notoriously long ingredient lists to write Ottolenghi Simple, and it seems like the chef is further embracing this relaxed, 'less-is-more' philosophy. In his latest NY Times…
We have sad news to report this week: Sydney chef and restaurateur Amy Chanta has died at age 63 following a two-year battle with cancer. Chanta built an empire of Thai restaurants that shaped the city's love and…
March 14 (3.14 if you use the month-first convention as we do in the US) is the perfect day for bakers to celebrate both pi (the mathematical constant) and pie (the tasty food with endless variation) because of the…
We have previously reported on the Bon Appetit controversies that involved allegations of inequitable treatment of BIPOC staff members in the BA Test Kitchen, and charges of cultural appropriation. As Grub Street…
Antipasto Holidays & Celebrations
Mother's Day is this Sunday in the UK (it's May 9 in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand). A great way to honor the person who likely did most of the cooking for you during your childhood is to make a special treat for…
Did you know Andy Warhol had written a cookbook? Apparently some of our members did, because the book, Wild Raspberries, appears on a handful of bookshelves in the EYB Library. Not very many copies of this cookbook…
The idea of a 'no-recipe' recipe is not exactly new. At various points over the years I have seen dozens of articles with the premise of 'how to cook X without a recipe', but an entire cookbook that is dedicated to the…
Last year the 2020 Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (MFWF) had to quickly pivot to an online format due to the coronavirus outbreak. Despite a recent scare with a snap five-day lockdown, the 2021 MFWF will happen in…
Cookbook award season has launched with the March 3 announcement of the André Simon Food and Drink book awards for 2020. Simon was the charismatic leader of the English wine trade for almost all of the first half of the…
During 2020, cookbook sales - which were already a bright spot for publishing houses - continued their upward trend, with sales up 17 percent from the previous year. This should not surprise anyone; people have been…
