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Posts from the ‘links’ Category

Jul 15

Food Links, 15.07.2015

The biggest pain au chocolat in the world, at Rennes station.

The biggest pain au chocolat in the world, at Rennes station.

  • ‘It is the processing of raw ingredients that enabled us to extract from them the nutrition we needed as swiftly as possible so we could get on with doing the more interesting things that make us human.’
  • Playtime before lunch.
  • The restaurant of second chances.
  • ‘Until the 1960s, Nigeria was a net exporter of food. Now it imports $3 billion a year more than it exports.’
  • What the recent Iran deal means for pistachios.
  • A brief history of America’s food stamp programme.
  • ‘by all means enjoy eating at going to trendy paleo steak restaurants … but don’t be fooled by the evolutionary scientific explanations which are now out of date. Your genes and your microbes are evolving faster than you realise and can cope with the new additions to our diet in the last few thousand years.’ (Thanks, Ester!)
  • Suhoor in Cairo.
  • What recipe books tell us about the American Civil War.
  • Don’t buy a spiralizer.
  • Farming cranberries organically is very difficult.
  • What not to do at a farmers’ market.
  • Paying for your food with poker.
  • The joy of scales.
  • Freekeh porridge.
  • How Iceland is coping with international demand for skyr.
  • Growing microbes for yoghurt.
  • Microbes and the making of cheese.
  • Thai puddings.
  • Make your own shao mai.
  • ‘I always eat / the apple core.’
  • GK Chesterton’s The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature.
  • The politics of Japan’s tea ceremony.
  • Better Cooking, Better Living (1952)
  • Maths and cooking.
  • Coffee substitutes.
  • Coffee in Ethiopia.
  • Coffee is neither good nor bad for you.
  • Coffee art.
  • Writing the history of Los Angeles through menus.
  • Drinking in ancient Iraq.
  • From Zola’s The Belly of Paris.
  • ‘Over the past 50 years, anise, fennel and cumin have seen 1,000, 700 and 375 percent increases in per capita availability, respectively. Meanwhile, cousin caraway has had a 50 percent decrease.’
  • Making ramen in the US.
  • An American sells ramen in Tokyo.
  • Eighteenth-century Americans drank a lot of alcohol.
  • How to store fresh ginger.
  • Cricket milkshake.
  • Guacamole controversy.
  • Remaking Asian-American pastries.
  • A guide to duck eggs.
  • A guide to Indian vegetables.
  • A guide to Icelandic cooking.
  • Meat.
  • Should you stick to the recipe?
  • Top Deck cupcakes.
  • Pizzarium.
  • The joy of Norwegian brown cheese.

May 1

5 Comments

Food Links, 29.04.2015

In Gaborone, Botswana.

In Gaborone, Botswana.

  • Endemic alcoholism in the Cape Winelands.
  • Newfoundland’s cod stocks are rebounding.
  • Should South African open up its poultry market to cheap American imports?
  • Stories from the food bank.
  • ‘Even with the country’s wealth of water, less than 10 per cent of people in Accra have reliable in-house taps, and less than half even have a shared tap on their property.’
  • MS Swaminathan on the Green Revolution in India.
  • A guide to egg labels in the US.
  • Cooking for mental health.
  • Climate change and wine.
  • What does ‘natural‘ mean?
  • What the collapse of Tesco says about contemporary capitalism.
  • France’s ‘gastrono-diplomacy‘ drive.
  • The rise and fall of the avocado.
  • ‘I drink organic milk on welfare grounds, yet I have farmer friends who … would never switch to organic for the same reason…’
  • On orthorexia.
  • Kraft’s new boxed macaroni and cheese will not be any healthier.
  • Beyond Meat.
  • McDonald’s vs Shake Shack.
  • Postdomesticity and butchery.
  • Spam in Korea.
  • Spam in Hawaii.
  • The truth about drinking.
  • Is cafeteria food the best?
  • On food and cool.
  • Kalk Bay’s fishermen.
  • Jackson Pollock, cook. (Thanks, mum!)
  • Jackson Pollock’s lemon pudding.
  • A culinary tour of Cuba.
  • Eating in China’s Paris.
  • Ina Garten’s dinner party tips.
  • Bullies don’t make good chefs.
  • How to make ramen.
  • A hundred issues of the Observer‘s Cook magazine.
  • Make your own kombucha.
  • What 2,000 calories looks like.
  • Orange wine.
  • What is the greenest tea?
  • The lamingtonut.
  • Researching ancient sheep DNA.
  • An alimentary lexicon.
  • A new way to whip cream.
  • Green or red tractors?
  • Patti Smith’s lettuce soup recipe.
  • Picnics in art.
  • Eating in Hue, Vietnam.
  • Baking without measuring.
  • Pineapple fibres.
  • ‘But how do we know what it tastes like? The problem with lethal doses of poison is, there aren’t a lot of tasters’ notes.’
  • Eat more reindeer.
  • Uber’s fast-food service in New York.
  • An introduction to romanesco broccoli.
  • A ranch run by nuns.
  • ‘We had to call the restaurants Indian, because nobody knew what Bangladesh was! We named ours Gandhi, because people knew Gandhi from the movies. Our next place was called Passage to India. That was another movie!’
  • The Japanese cheesecake craze.
  • The fig underground.

Apr 15

3 Comments

Food Links, 15.04.2015

Fresh produce from a community garden in Gugulethu, Cape Town.

Fresh produce from a community garden in Gugulethu, Cape Town.

  • In praise of the food bank manager.
  • Rising temperatures may deplete fish stocks in the North Sea.
  • Fighting racism through cooking kebabs.
  • We all need to eat less meat.
  • ‘The Kraft/Heinz deal makes it “even more difficult for us to envision a world where we [have] a competitive market for food”.’
  • An overview of South Africa’s food systems.
  • Remaking pre-colonial American cuisine.
  • The libertarian embrace of the local food movement.
  • Recipes in newspapers from World War One.
  • India’s complicated relationship with alcohol.
  • Flavour and nutrition.
  • There is a market for ugly produce.
  • Tracing the history of peanut allergies.
  • Sound and taste.
  • Food safety and fermentation.
  • Cricket flour.
  • ‘The USDA’s National Agricultural Library hosts the Pomological Watercolor Collection, which contains images of different varieties of fruits and nuts, commissioned between 1886 and 1942.’
  • The Four Seasons Restaurant and the invention of the power lunch.
  • The invention of curry.
  • Persuading shoppers to use trolleys.
  • A defense of the breakfast sandwich.
  • The man who brought KFC to Britain vows never to eat it again.
  • ‘The pizza could be as popular a snack as the hamburger if Americans only knew more about it’.
  • How to make hash browns.
  • How to make maple syrup.
  • How to use up sweet potatoes.
  • How to use up molasses.
  • How to use up milk.
  • How to clean your kitchen.
  • Coffee in space.
  • ‘Texans and Vikings: not as different as one might think.’
  • The eighteenth-century vogue for asses’ milk.
  • Why truffles smell so interesting.
  • Unusual drinking experiences.
  • New cooking skills.
  • Photographs of Streit’s matzo factory in New York.
  • ‘Braun claims that he’s been riding his horse to the Taco Bell in Allen since he moved to the area eleven years ago.’,
  • All about vinegar.
  • Revisiting Marco Pierre White’s White Heat.
  • The joy of vegetarian cooking.
  • Tracing the history of rice pudding in the New York Public Library’s menu collection.
  • A month of being vegan.
  • Powdered peanut butter.
  • Daag.
  • ‘I do love watching the oblivious rich in surroundings of acute bad taste masquerading as good.’
  • The Birth of Saké.
  • A brief history of tea sets.
  • Books made out of gingerbread.
  • Peanut butter and jam muffins.
  • How to shower in a Portland coffee shop.
  • Cooking with Jane Austen.
  • A Japanese doughnut museum.
  • Embrace burned toast.

Mar 11

2 Comments

Food Links, 11.03.2015

At the Fordsburg night market, Johannesburg.

At the Fordsburg night market, Johannesburg.

  • Childhood in the Cape winelands.
  • Food banks in the UK experience a spike in demand during school holidays.
  • ‘dictating what you can buy with food stamps is the kind of thing that only sounds good to people who don’t actually have to survive on a poverty income.’
  • Why bees are disappearing.
  • The average South African farmer is 62 years old.
  • ‘an increase in US food aid increases the incidence and duration of civil conflicts’.
  • Palm oil and the destruction of rain forests.
  • South Africa’s most sugary cold drink.
  • Prison labour and food production.
  • ‘The government invites you to be wary of those who do not eat baguettes.’
  • The rise of diabetes in south Asia.
  • ‘When Bulletproof coffee looks like the answer, the odds are you’re asking the wrong question.’
  • Developing food security in post-Katrina New Orleans.
  • Vitamania.
  • The secret marijuana farm underneath the maraschino cherry factory.
  • Arcade Fire’s Will Butler writes a song inspired by São Paulo’s water crisis.
  • Why are South African wines so underrated?
  • The nineteen ingredients in McDonald’s chips.
  • ‘Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your biscuits.’
  • The chopped salad.
  • Orange or orange juice?
  • Seventeenth-century recipes for beauty and health.
  • Fairy butter.
  • Where to eat in the Downtown Arts District in Los Angeles.
  • Diana Henry on chicken.
  • Beer was legalised in Iceland in 1989.
  • Why we find vanilla extract in the baking, not the liquor, aisle.
  • Carrot dashi.
  • Purple tea in Kenya.
  • The Farm Church in Wisconsin.
  • Molly Wizenberg on the seven-minute egg.
  • Cod feasting in Norway.
  • In defense of South African snacks.
  • A Korean-Spanish restaurant in Berlin.
  • America’s knifemakers.
  • ‘The Taco Bell Quesarito is the Devil’s cheddar-stuffed work.’
  • Thawing and brining at the same time.
  • Twenty-four hours at Katz’s Deli.
  • Ram Juen, the queen of jok.
  • The Cake Shop at the London Review Bookshop reviews The Vegetarian by Han Kang.
  • Holi food in London.
  • Baklava in Turkey.
  • Where to eat in Portland, Maine.
  • How to find good coffee in Paris.
  • Shirohige Cream Puff Factory in Tokyo.
  • Yuca.
  • The many uses of club soda. (Thanks, mum!)
  • Pistachio recipes.
  • Enlightenment philosophers drinking coffee.
  • The difference between brie and camembert.
  • ‘It is well known amongst snow chemists that fresh Arctic snow goes very well with 15-year-old single malt whisky.’
  • The Smiths and becoming vegetarian.
  • Lamington pincushions.
  • A guide to making doughnuts.
  • How to wear an apron like Alexa Chung.
  • A week on sex dust.

Feb 25

2 Comments

Food Links, 25.02.2015

Near the University of Edinburgh.

Near the University of Edinburgh.

  • ‘Manufacturers can also buy … eggs pre-formed into 300g cylinders or tubes, so that each egg slice is identical and there are no rounded ends.’
  • US chefs talk GMO labelling.
  • Diets are worsening.
  • Updating the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
  • ‘But is being fed poorly inhumane? Should criminals be deprived of any pleasure from food? Isn’t that counterproductive if the purpose of imprisonment is rehabilitation?’
  • São Paulo is running out of water.
  • Some states in the US are considering legalising the sale of raw milk.
  • Understanding the gluten-free trend.
  • How to spend $300,000 on dinner.
  • Cafe Neo in Lagos.
  • Schools in Rome diversify their menus.
  • Explaining the munchies.
  • Manhattan’s best designed coffee shops.
  • How to choose and look after knives.
  • Eat chocolate cake for breakfast, lose weight.
  • A recipe for Grewia occidentalis berries. (Thanks, mum!)
  • Sewerage brewerage.
  • ‘For the best breakfast, I vote the Socialist era.’
  • Why are Kinder Surprise eggs illegal in the US?
  • Catering for the fashion industry.
  • A short history of the samosa.
  • Penguins can only taste the saltiness and sourness of their food.
  • When England was the coffee capital of Europe.
  • What chefs hate to cook.
  • The Carson McCullers diet.
  • ‘Cooking … is a process that enables us to increase the calorie density of our food, so it’s almost as if you’re making calories out of nothing.’
  • A robot that feeds you tomatoes as you run.
  • Kanye West’s favourite restaurant.
  • Learning to make La Genovese in Naples.
  • If cities were made out of food.
  • Grape molasses cake.
  • The art of the crisp sandwich.
  • Burmese pudding.
  • The kitchen of the future.
  • Joan Didion’s recipe book.
  • Why not drink pig milk?
  • A world in a grain of salt.
  • Join a chilli club. And a guide to very, very hot chillies.
  • An optical illusion placemat.
  • Camembert shortbread.
  • An obituary for Michele Ferrero.
  • Stop motion latte art.
  • New York City’s salt mountains.
  • A cooking disaster.
  • The man who invented Sriracha.
  • Protein from sugar beet leaves.
  • Food-themed art.
  • Betty Crocker’s jelly salad.
  • A guide to the English breakfast.
  • Unfashionable sauces.

Feb 11

3 Comments

Food Links, 11.02.2015

Shoreditch, London.

Shoreditch, London.

  • Rooibos farmers and the state rooibos factory.
  • Organic tea in India?
  • What the produce aisle looks like to migrant farmworkers.
  • How to reduce your water footprint.
  • How to avoid peak chocolate.
  • Milk by Coke.
  • Is tea or coffee better for your health?
  • Remaking Newcastle Brown Ale for the US.
  • Hops are in high demand.
  • Orthorexia.
  • Kenji Ekuan, the inventor of the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle, has died.
  • Howard Epstein, the man who popularised sachets of soy sauce in the US.
  • Sweden’s first beer made only by women.
  • Immigration and coffee pots.
  • The politics of cups of tea.
  • How to make infused whipped cream.
  • Eating in Chengdu.
  • ‘Recipe for amatriciana, from the office of the mayor of Amatrice.’
  • The joy of blueberries.
  • The joy of Vegemite.
  • The joy of collard greens.
  • Soufflés should not be scary.
  • Georgia O’Keeffe and the pineapple fiasco.
  • Recipes in the Inquisition records.
  • How to make tea in wartime.
  • Speculoos cookie butter.
  • Fat should be the sixth taste.
  • The return of jelly.
  • What is fast casual?
  • Photoshopped food is boring.
  • Drinking vodka at the Faraday Bar in Antarctica.
  • Squirrels eating pizza.
  • Cups of tea in 22 different countries.
  • If zodiac signs were wine.
  • Japanese beer advertisements.
  • An introduction to balsamic vinegar.
  • President Taft’s cow.
  • The anti-crisis cow.
  • A History of Pizza Hut’s New Product Releases, 2002-2042.
  • Eliza Tibbets, the queen of the naval orange.
  • Embracing bush tucker.
  • ‘I suppose linguists can be annoying dinner companions.’
  • Grow your own salt.
  • Why we prefer independent cafes to Starbucks.
  • Food infographics.
  • Free-from diets are a form of conspicuous consumption.
  • Papusas in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
  • ‘only people with coeliac disease – an autoimmune condition that causes gut inflammation when gluten is ingested and affects 1 per cent of the population – needed to go gluten-free.’
  • Hot beer.
  • Yong Tau Foo.
  • Making maple taffy in the snow.
  • Culinary disasters.
  • Dumpling diplomacy.
  • ‘Is this a long-term Taylor Swift entrapment scheme?’
  • Episodes from Season 4 of Little House On the Prairie Reimagined to Reflect the Presence of a Starbucks in Walnut Grove.
  • Silly kitchen gadgets.
  • Perpetual pizza.
  • Big Corn and the film industry.

Jan 28

4 Comments

Food Links, 28.01.2015

  • How Peter Magubane hid his camera in a loaf of bread.
  • Race, class, and alcohol consumption.
  • Factory farming causes air pollution.
  • New York’s food sweatshops.
  • A municipal boundary dispute and hunger.
  • Whisky is the third biggest industry in Scotland, behind energy and financial services.
  • South African Airways’s wine tenders may have been rigged.
  • Using mosquito nets for fishing.
  • South Africa’s looming water crisis.
  • The uncertain future of Pacific sardines.
  • The 2015 Big Mac index.
  • The best pear.
  • New York City’s last matzo factory is closing.
  • The moonshine renaissance.
  • Cooking while visually impaired in post-1945 America.
  • Bermondsey’s phantom cheesecake deliverer.
  • Fast food to fast casuals.
  • Defending simple coffee.
  • A coffee guide.
  • A cultured meat primer.
  • Fish without the fish.
  • Hershey vs Cadbury.
  • The Double Down Dog.
  • The science of ramen noodles.
  • Meeting Paris’s food producers.
  • The North Carolina food sisterhood.
  • Americans try haggis.
  • The Vegetarian.
  • Coconut oil is not a superfood.
  • Eating breakfast from around the world in London.
  • Unless otherwise specified.
  • Umami and health.
  • Lacing noodles with opiates in China.
  • A guide to black pepper.
  • The invention of instant ramen.
  • Brewing beer using wild yeast.
  • Afro-vegan cuisine.
  • In praise of pigs in books.
  • Ginger syrup.
  • Raw cookie dough can be dangerous.
  • Red blood cell cupcakes.
  • Turner’s favourite tipple.
  • Eating the world in Portland, Oregan. (Thanks, mum!)
  • ‘the great Aussie pie lies at the foundation of the country’s economic health.’
  • Try not to name your daughter Nutella.
  • Jonathan Gold is no longer anonymous.
  • Carrot top pesto.
  • Clotted cream caramels.
  • Texas chili.
  • Make your own condiments.
  • Best nachos.
  • Vegan cheese.

Jan 21

Food Links, 21.01.2015

  • The appalling conditions under which farm workers grow America’s fresh produce.
  • ‘Sometimes, I think of that unruly field as my grandparents’ desperation garden.’
  • Butter that costs $49 per pound.
  • American children are eating too much pizza.
  • The implications of commercial bees for wild bee populations.
  • From free school meals to food pantries.
  • British shoppers are paying the same for cucumbers as they did in 1989.
  • Farming without herbicides.
  • French supermarkets take on budget rivals.
  • What the world eats.
  • McDonald’s sales are down.
  • Checking the flow of illicit honey into the US.
  • Turning sewerage into drinking water.
  • Bonnie Slotnick’s recipe book shop will not close.
  • Inside Egypt’s ahwas.
  • Icicle farming.
  • Red velvet Oreos.
  • Determining apples’ ripeness with lasers.
  • Corporate beer is badly watered down.
  • Time-restricted eating.
  • How farmers cope with the cold.
  • Future super foods?
  • Introducing Cuban cuisine. (Thanks, mum!)
  • ‘Even the gleaming teeth in the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall are historically accurate, according to author Hilary Mantel, who says that in an age when eating sugar was uncommon – even for the likes of Henry VIII – tooth decay was much less of a problem.’
  • Where to eat ramen in Tokyo.
  • Bacon biscuits.
  • Conflict Kitchen.
  • The 2015 Piglet.
  • Culinary tours of Cuba.
  • A map of every goat in the US.
  • Curry in English hands.
  • The rise and rise of Jägermeister.
  • The great cookbook breakdown.
  • Make your own flatbread.
  • Chefs love brains.
  • Jonathan Gold on ramen.
  • American Creme Eggs won’t change.
  • Eye of the gazelle.
  • ‘”Each month you can see how it’s changing by how many veggie burgers they sell,” he says. “Each month it’s more. With gentrification you start getting gourmet fried chicken…”‘
  • The salt hotel.
  • The best American cities in which to raise livestock.
  • Make your own buttermilk.
  • Roast a chicken without a recipe.
  • Absurd restaurant stories.
  • Korean women try US junk food.
  • Making cheese in China.
  • Wonder fries.
  • The 8,000 calorie diet.
  • Cocoa cubes.
  • What is a beard friendly pub?

Jan 15

Food Links, 14.01.2015

  • The UK food system is failing.
  • Cassava beer.
  • You can’t boost your immunity.
  • Food in Europe is too cheap.
  • Milk in Britain is too cheap.
  • ‘These self-reported data on diet and exercise have long been called flawed.’
  • Buy-to-leave is killing London, and some of the city’s restaurants.
  • Cocktails and rising house prices.
  • How sustainable is sustainable beef?
  • Almonds are not sustainable.
  • Kathleen Drew-Baker and the Japanese seaweed industry.
  • The return of the Carolina African runner.
  • The joy of potatoes.
  • South Africa’s first black truffle.
  • The popularity of ancient grains in the US.
  • London’s best bookshop cafes.
  • What pilgrims ate – and eat – on the Camino de Santiago.
  • Nigella Lawson on serving cake.
  • Medieval eating.
  • Wearable food.
  • Portraits in pancakes.
  • Whisks of the world.
  • Magical coffee.
  • Craveable food.
  • Film canisters as salt and pepper shakers.
  • A new soul food restaurant in NYC.
  • Cereal Killer Cafe.
  • Pig fat as moisturiser.
  • Pairing wine and junk food.
  • The rise and rise of Greek yoghurt in the US.
  • An eighteenth-century recipe for barley soup.
  • A dog cafe.
  • A Hello Kitty-themed organic farm.
  • A crisp sandwich cafe in Belfast.
  • A new kind of Icelandic beer.
  • Frying toast.
  • How we come to eat things we once hated.
  • A guide to the regional ramen of Japan. (Thanks, mum!)
  • David Chang thinks about ramen.
  • The history of New England’s ice trade.
  • ‘many Swiss pizza-lovers have been urging Swiss authorities to permit the free passage of pizza delivery across the border without having to endure the tedious customs process.’
  • In praise of ugly food.
  • The fried egg bandit.
  • Grey cake.
  • The Creme Egg has changed.

Jan 7

4 Comments

Food Links, 07.01.2015

  • The only way to improve health overall is to eradicate poverty.
  • Diet fizzy drinks may increase calorie intake.
  • Against fetishising home-cooked meals.
  • Flying pigs in China.
  • Britain’s bumper cherry crop.
  • Why is brisket so expensive in the US?
  • The EU’s Ecodesign directive and drinking coffee.
  • Italy’s small food producers are struggling.
  • ‘Any diet that suggests cutting out food groups or components of food – such as gluten or actual solids – for the purpose of losing weight is, unless prescribed by an actual doctor, absolute nonsense.’
  • A mushroom that eats plastic.
  • Houses out of rice.
  • Aldi arrives in the US.
  • ‘Now, we will eat knowledge.’
  • The soup kitchen’s piano players.
  • A history of nutrition guidelines through butter.
  • Farm food is not necessarily fresh food.
  • The end of brown sauce?
  • Beef tongue is big in Japan.
  • Giving up fine dining.
  • The French Laundry and Thomas Jefferson.
  • What to eat in Melbourne.
  • How to toast marshmallows over an active volcano.
  • How to use up leftover egg yolks.
  • How to brew coffee at home.
  • Rethinking familiar ingredients.
  • Popsicle cakes.
  • What to do with kohlrabi.
  • Indian spices in colonial America.
  • Damson and gin sorbet.
  • The joy of boiled eggs.
  • Georgians and hot chocolate.
  • What’s Cooking at Columbia.
  • The bulletproof coffee diet.
  • An egg marking attachment for hens. (Thanks, mum!)
  • A guide to grapefruit.
  • A history of New York subway vending machines.
  • The difference between stock and broth.
  • Britain’s best breakfasts.
  • ‘My pressing concern was not what it tasted like, but how to get it out of my mouth.’
  • Recreating ancient drinks.
  • Selections from the files of a shuttered community hospital or copy from a farm-to-table restaurant menu?
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