Category Archives: Food

Meat-rich diet of 14th-century monks caused digestive issues, research finds

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Change in papal law in 1336 to allow twice-weekly consumption caused problems at Muchelney Abbey

It may have seemed a good day for medieval monks when a papal decree allowed them to start eating meat including mutton, beef, pork and venison. It was not so good for their bowels.

Research by English Heritage sheds light on the day-to-day lives and digestive troubles of monks at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset – in particular the consequence of a change in papal law, in 1336, which permitted the twice-weekly consumption of meat from four-legged animals.

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‘A focus on quality’: Mexico’s wine industry bears fruit in revival of tradition

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Vineyards are blooming in the desert of Coahuila state, but vintners must make do with increasingly scarce water

From the patio of his winery high in the north Mexican desert, David Mendel surveys vineyards spread across a bowl-shaped valley under a scorching afternoon sun.

Related: Salud! Spain’s female winemakers use their intuition to rise to the top

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London’s cafe culture has left a sour taste for stressed residents

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Licensing outdoor seats saved countless jobs but brings noise and antisocial behaviour

Continental Europe has come to the UK – at least when the sun shines. In towns and cities all over the country, alfresco dining has exploded, with thousands of extra outdoor seats being licensed.

Many in the hospitality industry say the move has saved their business from bankruptcy after catastrophic losses during the pandemic. Now, although Covid restrictions have been lifted, the government is considering making outdoor dining a permanent feature rather than a short-term response to a crisis.

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‘Ten years ago this was science fiction’: the rise of weedkilling robots

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The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food system

In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.

This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.

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Global food supplies will suffer as temperatures rise – climate crisis report

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Politicians around world continue to respond to report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Food production around the world will suffer as global heating reaches 1.5C, with serious effects on the food supply in the next two decades, scientists have warned, following the biggest scientific report yet on the climate crisis.

Rising temperatures will mean there will be more times of year when temperatures exceed what crops can stand, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its sixth assessment report published on Monday.

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Why salmonella is a food poisoning killer that won’t go away in the US

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About 1.35m Americans a year fall ill from the bacteria. Why are there still so many infections?

In my kitchen, I treat raw chicken as if it’s crawling with bacteria that could make me and my family sick. I use separate cutting boards for meats and produce; I wash my hands and disinfect everything that comes close to the bird, then cook it to 74C (165F). A little paranoid, but with good reason.

Chickens, turkeys and other fowl commonly harbour salmonella bacteria that are harmless to the birds but not to humans.

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Elegantly wasted: has lockdown made booze dangerously aspirational?

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Drinking at home was once a guilty pleasure. Now everyone from bored homeworkers to professional influencers is swapping cocktail recipes and photos of colourful aperitifs. Is gin o’clock turning into unhappy hour?

The shadow of a palm frond falls on a young woman in a bikini, holding an emerald-coloured cocktail in one manicured hand. A negroni glows from the depths of a darkened bar; a tray of fruit-laden glasses sits beside a swimming pool. The #cocktail hashtag on Instagram is a passport to a magical land of aspirational drinking, where everything comes garnished with rose petals and nobody ever seems to get hangovers.

Its inhabitants are a mix of amateur enthusiasts reviewing their latest discoveries, and professional “ginfluencers” making a living from creating lusciously photographed cocktail recipes or sponsored posts promoting this rhubarb gin or that new tequila. Colourful drinks are popular, says Inka Kukkamäki, a full-time drinks influencer whose @onthesauceagain account has 21,000 Instagram followers. “Something a bit interesting and unusual, or just something simple like a negroni – any kind of negroni twist becomes popular. The Italian aperitivo culture has really spread into the UK in the last year.”

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Days of wine and olives: how the old farming ways are paying off in Spain

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The ‘no-plough’ regenerative methods adopted in small vineyards have spread to olive groves and leading wine producers – boosting biodiversity and profits

They call it the sea of olives, 70 million olive trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction in the province of Jaén in southern Spain. It’s a spectacular landscape and yet, olives aside, the land is virtually dead, with scarcely a flower, bird or butterfly to be seen.

All this could be about to change following the remarkable success of a project that is raising new life from the dust of Andalucía.

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Courgettes, tomatoes and amaretti: Yotam Ottolenghi’s taste of Italian summer – recipes

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Slow-cooked courgettes with a toasty breadcrumb topping, a summery tomato and feta salad with lemon dressing and, to finish, a classic pick-me-up of soft amaretti with coffee sauce

Italian summer, anyone? I know! Me, too! This might not be a summer when we get to drink espresso with a little amaretti biscuit on the side in situ, but I fully intend to pretend for a good few meals. Amaretti biscuits, Italian extra-virgin olive oil, hard ricotta from Puglia, the sweetest tomatoes and most basil-y of basil leaves you can get your hands on: invest in the power of food to transport. Cin-cin!

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‘It could feed the world’: amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization

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Indigenous women in North and Central America are coming together to share ancestral knowledge of amaranth, a plant booming in popularity as a health food

Just over 10 years ago, a small group of Indigenous Guatemalan farmers visited Beata Tsosie-Peña’s stucco home in northern New Mexico. In the arid heat, the visitors, mostly Maya Achì women from the forested Guatemalan town of Rabinal, showed Tsosie-Peña how to plant the offering they had brought with them: amaranth seeds.

Back then, Tsosie-Peña had just recently come interested in environmental justice amid frustration at the ecological challenges facing her native Santa Clara Pueblo – an Indigenous North American community just outside the New Mexico town of Española, which is downwind from the nuclear facilities that built the atomic bomb. Tsosie-Peña had begun studying permaculture and other Indigenous agricultural techniques. Today, she coordinates the environmental health and justice program at Tewa Women United, where she maintains a hillside public garden that’s home to the descendants of those first amaranth seeds she was given more than a decade ago.

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Plum perfection! 7 brilliant reader recipes – from spicy chicken to almond cake

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The juicy fruit is newly in season and delicious in both savoury and sweet dishes. Here are some tried and tested delights

This is a cake made using the traditions of Italy. Sharp plums or damsons are placed atop a simple almond and polenta cake. Flourless and dairy-free, it is not intentionally health conscious; it just ends up being delicious this way. It will stay fresh for three days if wrapped in foil.

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Kitchen nightmares: do we need more celebrity cooking shows?

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The release of Paris Hilton’s Netflix series where she semi-cooks semi-dishes is the latest in an increasing trend of stars spending more time in the kitchen

To state the obvious, nobody is going to watch Cooking With Paris to sharpen their culinary skills. The new Netflix series piggybacks on last year’s bizarre, almost Lynchian YouTube video where Paris Hilton cooked what can only be described an anti-lasagne, and stretches it out to a painful degree. In episode one, Hilton attempts to make marshmallows for Kim Kardashian and grunts with disgust when they make a mess of her lace gloves. In episode two, Hilton takes time out from making a funfetti flan to pose in the photo booth she installed in her living room. If you hang around long enough to find out what happens in episode three, you’re a braver soul than me.

Related: Cooking With Paris review – Hilton in the kitchen? Prepare to have your mind blown

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Alcohol linked to more cancers than thought, study finds

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Imperial College London researchers also find that drinking coffee protects against liver cancer

Consuming alcohol increases the risk of getting more cancers than previously thought, according to a major study, which also found that drinking coffee protects against liver cancer.

Alcohol consumption is linked to several cancers including those of the head and neck – mouth, pharynx and larynx – oesophageal and bowel, along with the more widely known connection with breast and liver cancer, according to an international team led by Imperial College London.

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Forget the emoji! 10 simple, seductive aubergine recipes – from donburi to chocolate cake

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There are many quick, easy and delicious ways to eat an aubergine. Here are some of the best options, including salads and shakshuka

The aubergine hasn’t always had the most pristine reputation. There was a time when eating one required a complicated dance of slicing and salting and draining to remove its unpleasant bitterness. Luckily, though, most mass-market aubergines available in the UK have now had the bitterness bred out of them, so aubergine dishes are no longer so frustratingly time-consuming.

Once society has managed to find an alternative sexting emoji, the aubergine’s rehabilitation will be complete. In the meantime, let’s look at the ways aubergine can be utilised in all manner of global dishes.

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Leaves of change: Paraguay’s small-scale farmers see a new future in yerba mate tea

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A resurgence in the traditional drink is offering rural communities independence and a sustainable alternative to industrial soy and cattle farming

Four men emerge from the intense heat and steam of the barbacuá into the cold winter’s night in the rural district of Edelira, southern Paraguay. They rest, leaning on pitchforks they have used to turn over the prized load of fragrant yerba mate leaves inside this traditional drying oven. The centuries-old design drives hot air from a fire on to the large wooden frame where the leaves sit.

“I control the leaf’s humidity through intuition,” says Lisandro Benítez, the group’s lead, or uru. “Too humid and it won’t have the right flavour, too hot and dry and it could catch fire.”

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How to make the perfect vegan coconut ice-cream – recipe | Felicity Cloake’s How to make the perfect…

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The secret to an authentic taste and mouth-feel is fat, so what’s the best substitute for dairy? Our resident perfectionist tries them all …

Plant-based ice-cream, like so much else in the vegan world, has come on leaps and bounds in both range and quality in recent years as the market for it has grown, but many commercial varieties still replace dairy and eggs with a long list of perfectly harmless, yet still less than enticing ingredients such as fully refined soybean oil. Without stabilisers, the homemade kind may not last quite as well in the freezer but, frankly, it doesn’t need to: it’s unlikely to be in there long.

This recipe makes a virtue of coconut’s flavour, as well as of its natural creaminess, though you could also use it as a base for other ingredients, folding in fruit puree or chocolate chips after churning, say, or adding the likes of cocoa powder or peppermint extract to the base itself. Richer than a sorbet, lighter and cleaner than standard ice-cream, it’s really not just for vegans.

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Blue ticked off: the controversy over the MSC fish ‘ecolabel’

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The MSC’s coveted blue tick is the world’s biggest, and some say best, fishery ecolabel. So why is it in the headlines – and does it really do what it says on the tin?

This month, two right whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence were found entangled in fishing gear. One, a female, was first spotted entangled off Cape Cod last year, but rescuers were not able to fully free her; the other, a male, is believed to have become entangled in the Gulf.

Hunted to near extinction before a partial whaling ban in 1935, North Atlantic right whales are once more critically endangered, with only 356 left. The main threat remains human contact: entanglement in fishing gear, and ship strikes. Fatal encounters, caused in part by the whales’ migratory shift into Canada’s snow crab grounds, have soared: more than a tenth of the population died or were seriously injured between 2017 and 2021, mostly in Canada and New England.

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Revealed: the secrets of Seville cathedral’s banquet set in stone

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Painstaking research deciphers carvings of religious bounty dating back almost five centuries

For almost 500 years, the arch that connects the largest Gothic cathedral in the world with its Renaissance sacristy has offered visitors a sumptuous, if little glimpsed – and even less studied – vision of religious bounty.

The 68 beautifully carved plates of food that adorn the archway in Seville’s cathedral offer rather more than bread and wine.

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The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’

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Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years – and the consequences may soon be catastrophic. Biologist Dave Goulson reveals the vital services they perform

I have been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This seemed like magic to me – and still does. I was hooked.

In pursuit of insects I have travelled the world, from the deserts of Patagonia to the icy peaks of Fjordland in New Zealand and the forested mountains of Bhutan. I have watched clouds of birdwing butterflies sipping minerals from the banks of a river in Borneo, and thousands of fireflies flashing in synchrony at night in the swamps of Thailand. At home in my garden in Sussex I have spent countless hours watching grasshoppers court a mate and see off rivals, earwigs tend their young, ants milk honeydew from aphids, and leaf-cutter bees snip leaves to line their nests.

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