First catch your jellyfish - the age of theoretical cookbooks and other food and drink news

First catch your jellyfish - As restaurant cuisine becomes ever more elaborate, so cookbooks have become increasingly theoretical - at least for us amateurs

A global glutton shares the 15 best things he ate in ’15

Chicken soup indeed good for colds - Stephen Rennard, a pulmonary expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaba, has found evidence that the soup, long enjoying the reputation as salvation for the sniffly, contains anti-inflammatory properties that may help prevent a cold's miserable side effects. In the lab, Rennard found that some ingredient in the chicken soup, dubbed the Jewish penicillin, blocks or slows the amount of white blood cells gathering in the virus-infected area in an inflammatory response to a cold, possibly relieving the development of cold symptoms. But he could not pin down the specific biologically active material.

Minimum alcohol pricing plan 'may breach EU law' - A European court has said the Scottish government's case for a minimum unit price for alcohol is contrary to EU law if other tax options exist. The European Court of Justice ruling instead recommends the introduction of alternative tax measures. The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have both welcomed the ruling. The legislation to bring in a minimum price of 50p per unit was passed by the Scottish Parliament in May 2012.

Oberlin’s Food Isn’t “Cultural Appropriation.” That Doesn’t Mean the Students Are Wrong. - The case of ciabatta-based bánh mì at Oberlin is a telling example. Making bánh mì with ciabatta instead of baguette is blasphemous, because it was the French, not the Italians, who colonized Vietnam from the 1870s to the 1950s. The Vietnamese appropriated the French baguette, but made it with rice flour in addition to wheat flour; then they added Vietnamese ingredients (cilantro, pickled carrots) to the French-influenced sandwich along with pâté. Thus, a bánh mì with the wrong bread and a mayo-based coleslaw instead of fresh herbs and pickled vegetables is no bánh mì at all, as Vietnamese students understand better than anyone. It is, rather, an inaccurate rendering, a bad translation of a dish that was itself a cultural appropriation of the most appropriate sort. Colonized groups are forced to do what they can with the cultural raw materials foisted upon them by colonizers, and the Vietnamese did this to create what is probably the world’s most perfect sandwich.