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 curb 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

Gail’s to drop soya milk surcharge after campaign by Peta

The bakery chain Gail’s is to drop its soya milk surcharge after a campaign by a leading animal rights charity argued the fee “unfairly discriminated” against customers.Gail’s will offer free soya from 21 May, but will continue to charge between 40p and 60p if costumers want oat in their coffee or tea.With at least one in three Britons now drinking plant-based milks, the animal rights charity Peta welcomed the move to help customers make more ethical choices, but also called on Gail’s to drop its additional charge for oat milk.The charity’s vice-president of vegan corporate projects, Dawn Carr, said: “Charging more for plant milk leaves a bad taste in customers’ mouths, particularly when it is a choice they make for their health, to be kind to cows, or for the planet.“Peta celebrates Gail’s taking the first step in offering soya without the surcharge, but to spare cows from harm and reduce methane emissions, the oat-milk upcharge also has to be ground down

Cheap, reliable egg alternatives: what to use for whipping, baking and high-protein snacking

Australians gobbled down nearly 270 eggs per capita in the last financial year. But with more than 10% of the country’s laying flock culled in the last 12 months, an industry-wide move away from battery farming and rising consumer demand, prices are surging and supplies are tight – with some reports suggesting the shortfall could continue to 2028.Supermarkets Coles and Woolworths still have purchase limits on eggs, so for the egg-reliant times might feel tough – but vegans and those with allergies have long since developed a host of no-fuss alternatives. Here, they share their advice.Since the experiments of a French musician and an American software engineer gave the world aquafaba a decade ago, the unlikely substitute for the humble goog has become ubiquitous in vegan cuisine