Category Archives: Food

Concern grows for global coffee supply amid Vietnam lockdown

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Traders are struggling to get beans to ports for export after Covid curbs were imposed on Ho Chi Minh City

Concerns are growing over global coffee supplies amid tough coronavirus travel restrictions imposed in Vietnam to tackle the spread of the aggressive Delta variant of Covid-19.

Supply chains are been disrupted after Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest exporter of coffee, tightened lockdown measures in the port of Ho Chi Minh City, as well as bringing in restrictions in some coffee-growing areas of the Central Highlands.

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Berlin’s university canteens go almost meat-free as students prioritise climate

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The 34 outlets catering to students at four universities will offer only a single meat option four days a week

Students at universities in Berlin will from this winter swap currywurst and schnitzel for seeds and pulses, as campus canteens in the German capital make heavy cuts to their meat and fish options.

The 34 canteens and cafes catering to Berlin’s sizeable student population at four different universities will offer from October a menu that is 68% vegan, 28% vegetarian, and 2% fish-based, with a single meat option offered four days a week.

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‘Everything is changing’: the struggle for food as Malawi’s Lake Chilwa shrinks

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The livelihoods of 1.5 million people are at risk as the lake’s occasional dry spells occur ever more frequently

• All photographs by Dennis Lupenga/WaterAid

There was a time when the vast Lake Chilwa almost disappeared. In 2012 it had been extremely hot in southern Malawi, with little rain to fill the rivers that ran into the lake.

“Many fishermen were forced to scramble for land near the lake banks, while others had to migrate to the city,” says Alfred Samuel. “We could barely feed our children because the lake could not provide enough fish, or water for rice growing.”

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Food, beer, toys, medical kit. Why is Britain running out of everything?

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Poor pay and conditions for HGV drivers and the loss of many thousands of EU workers are plunging the UKs supply chain into crisis

Gaps on supermarket shelves. Fast food outlets pulling milkshakes and bottled drinks from their menus. Restaurants running out of chicken and closing. Empty vending machines. Online grocery orders full of substitutions. Fruit and vegetables rotting in the fields.

These are just some of the most visible signs of Britain’s deepening supply chain crisis, which has seen stocks in shops and warehouses slump to their lowest levels since the Confederation of British Industry began surveying in 1983.

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A garden at Ground Zero: what I learned growing an oasis in the shadow of 9/11

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Soon after 9/11, I moved into an old building by Ground Zero. First step? Plant an unlikely patch of green

If you listen, I mean really listen, you will hear your garden speaking to you. Mine, which sits on a 10th-floor Manhattan terrace, a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center stood, first spoke to me on a crisp September morning 20 years ago. I had jury duty that day and decided to walk the two miles south from my home in Greenwich Village down to the courthouse in the financial district.

But when I turned south on to 6th Avenue, I looked up to see see an orange hole flaming at the centre of the tower ahead of me. A woman nearby fell to the pavement, screaming something about a plane. It didn’t seem like a good day to go downtown; yet something compelled me to continue south. When I arrived at a gas station on Canal Street, a boom sounded and a puff of smoke issued from just behind the tower. “What was that?” I asked a taxi driver, filling his tank nearby. “Well, see those two buildings are connected with pipes,” he said with the unquestionable authority endemic to New York cabbies. “When you get a fire in one it spreads and you get a fire in the other.” Makes sense, I thought, and pushed southwards.

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Parmesan and Pop-Tarts: 17 foods you’ve probably never frozen – but really should

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From spinach to sandwiches, here’s how to reclaim your freezer from loose peas and crystal-encrusted lollies, to instantly improve your life in the kitchen

If there is one skill I wish I was better at, it’s freezer optimisation. Right now, my freezer is a mess of ice cubes and lollies and roughly a ton of loose peas, leaving me without enough room to freeze things that are actually useful. Getting your freezer organised is a great idea, so allow me to list all the things you can freeze, but probably don’t. Honestly, this list is as much for me as it is for you.

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‘Bro, I cooked it in a bloody airfryer’: is the unofficial appliance of lockdown just a tiny oven?

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Used to cook everything from racks of lamb to gummy worms, airfryers are a social media sensation – but food professionals are split on their utility

When the Sydney chef Dan Hong posted a video to his 104,000 Instagram followers of a lamb rack emerging from his home airfryer, its fat aureate and twinkling, the caption had a caveat: “Edit,” it read, “please don’t take this too seriously guys. It’s a lamb rack cooked in the air fryer ‍♂️ ‍♂️ ‍♂️”

“Some people were commenting ‘it’s undercooked’ or this or that you should’ve rendered the fat a bit more and it’s like, bro, I cooked it in a bloody airfryer,” Hong says.

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A few good massaman: Tom ‘two curries’ Cruise shows us how it’s done

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Tom Cruise doesn’t just have a single chicken tikka masala when he goes to Birmingham – he has another one straight after. Has any man ever been more on-brand?

When Tom Cruise commits to something, he commits. When a Mission: Impossible stunt called for him to climb up the outside of the world’s tallest building, he actually climbed up the outside of the world’s tallest building. When Collateral required him to become an invisible assassin, he temporarily became a Fed-Ex driver to teach himself anonymity. When he fell in love with Katie Holmes, he did it with such couch-leaping intensity that it derailed his career for half a decade.

So when Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, he really went to Birmingham to have a curry. When Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, he did it with the same vigour that he uses to ride motorbikes or jump out of planes or scream at crew-members for not following Covid compliance protocols. Which is to say that when Tom Cruise went to Birmingham to have a curry, Tom Cruise went to Birmingham and had two curries, one after the other.

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No icy lager, no sundowners: could you handle a sober holiday?

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For many of us, a getaway means sun, sea, sand and… alcohol. But what if you drink so much at home that a break is a chance to go booze-free?

A couple of years ago, before a two-week holiday to the Algarve, I decided I wouldn’t drink. I thought it would be difficult. There would be no more vinho verde to wash down a charcoal-grilled bream. It would be adeus to the icy Sagres lager that goes so perfectly with those fat, yellow Portuguese chips. Aside from the gustatory pleasures, I worried about being the sober one. Drinking is part of the routine of the British holiday. If I didn’t participate, it might endanger everyone else’s fun, too.

Besides, it was part of my “personal brand”. It wasn’t that I was an alcoholic, but I did think that being gregarious, and generally up for a good time and a pint in the sun, was part of the reason people wanted to go on holiday with me. At 32, I worried that I risked projecting Big Midlife Crisis Energy years before my time.

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‘We need to stop talking about jollof rice’: Lagos chef aims to ‘conjure pride’ in Nigerian food

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Michael Elégbèdé doesn’t just break from western ideas of fine dining, but aims to revive a deeper appreciation of Nigerian food among Nigerians, too

After wine and canapes on a patio overlooking high-rises and greenery in an affluent part of Lagos, 15 guests assemble inside. They sit facing one another across a long dining table, brightly lit by a steel row of low-hanging lights. Nigerian cultural masks and artworks adorn the walls of the restaurant, which evokes a Nigerian home.

The dishes emerge: traditional egusi soup, but with the efo (spinach) crisp amaranth leaves. Grains of gari, or cassava root, typically pounded to make a kind of dough called eba, is instead lightly dusted over it. Unusually, there are croutons. “An egusi crouton,” a guest nods approvingly.

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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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