How to turn surplus egg whites into marshmallows – recipe | Waste not

Marshmallows are a magical sweet, with vivid, popping colours and an unbelievably soft, squishy texture. Even after 25 years as a chef, I still love making them and, like most things, they taste better homemade.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for earl grey and lemon panna cotta with almond tuiles | The sweet spot

Panna cotta is one of those desserts that looks more technical than it really is. But, in fact, it’s probably one of the easiest desserts you can make, and there are so many ways to infuse it with different flavours. Recently, I’ve been ditching individual moulds and serving it in large, sharing-style dishes, which means you can make it with a softer, silkier consistency, because it doesn’t need to hold its shape. Instead, you can just scoop and serve.Prep 5 min Cook 45 min Chill 2 hr+ Serves 6-82½ gelatine sheets 200ml milk 500ml double cream 100g caster sugar 3 earl grey tea bagsFor the tuiles35g unsalted butter 35g icing sugar 40g egg whites 45g plain flour 70g flaked almondsFor the lemon syrup1 large lemon 3 tbsp caster sugarPut the gelatine in a bowl of cold water and leave it to sit for five minutes, until softened

Put down that chardonnay: try an aligoté instead

I find myself using the phrase “relative value” more and more these days. You know, when you buy something you think is a good deal, because you’re comparing it with something that’s infinitely more expensive, so it just feels as if you’re saving money. Buying Baylis & Harding hand soap because Aesop is £33. Renting a small room in London for more than £1,000 a month because at least you’re not paying £2,000 for a place to yourself. A few months ago, people tried to coin this school of thought as “girl math”’, but we are all equally guilty of this specific kind of economic reasoning

‘A surfyte of cheese doth bringe payne’: Leeds University transcribes early book on cheese

They are 450-year-old words of wisdom but they will ring true with anyone rooting around the fridge for late night comfort: “A surfyte of cheese doth bringe payne.”The warning for people to curd their enthusiasm is contained in the earliest-known book on cheese in English, a publication that academics say is both fascinating and nauseating.The University of Leeds acquired it at auction in 2023 and it has now been transcribed and made available for everyone to read on its website.It includes a recommendation to use rancid cheese and bacon fat as a cure for gout: “Havinge his joynts full of knobbes or knottes, hit came in my minde to macerate that olde cheese with the decoction of fatte bacon, and to beate the same well in a mortar, and so to laye hit to his knotted joyntes, which done that man was greatly eased of the gowte.”No one at Leeds is urging people today to attempt rubbing such a foul mixture into their own knobbed and knotted joints but Alex Bamji, associate professor of early modern history at the university, said she was struck by the book’s contemporary resonance

Tatar Bunar, London EC2: ‘No faff, no lectures. Just dinner, and lots of it’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Tatar Bunar, a new Ukrainian restaurant in Shoreditch, east London, is styled as quaintly and charmingly rustic: wooden-fronted, with sage curtains, glass-panelled doors and stacks of higgledy-piggledy plates artfully arranged on shelves. Then there’s the food: sprats, potato latkes, varenyky, borscht and an abundance of wild mushrooms, and all of it influenced by chef Alex Cooper’s home town of Tatarbunary in southern Ukraine.It’s no mean feat to take on a corner of Curtain Road just yards from the shrieking neon ballpit that is the Ballie Ballerson cocktail bar and a Simmonds “fun pub”, and somehow create Tatar Bunar’s nigh-rural ambience, or the odd sense that it’s been here since for ever. But then, Tatar Bunar is Ukrainian, so in recent years Cooper and his co-owner, Anna Andriienko, have faced down far bigger problems than tricky interior design.Their new restaurant, the owners say, is an attempt to open up Ukrainian cuisine to a British audience

The sweet story of how a chance meeting led to Australia’s ‘old baby cake’ going viral on Chinese social media

When Paul Adam sees a long queue forming in front of his patisserie in the northern suburbs of Sydney, “That’s when I know I’m going to start working hard,” he says. In the weeks since one of his cakes went viral across several Chinese social media platforms, that has been nearly every day.The gluten-free hazelnut, meringue and chocolate mousse cake, with lorikeets stencilled in icing sugar on top, is, by Adam’s estimation, “only a cake” but it seems to mean much more to the customers queuing for it, some of whom have travelled from interstate, or overseas.The day Guardian Australia visited Du Plessy Pralin & ​Otello in West Pymble, Hong Kong resident Faye Chui told us trying the cake was one of the main reasons she chose to visit Sydney, alongside the Royal Easter Show.The cake’s popularity has surprised Max Li, the vlogger who made it famous