Juliet, Stroud, Gloucestershire: ‘One of those places where you can lose track of time’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

An all-day modern European bistro with a back story that will prick the ears of all right-thinking dinersNot one soul in Stroud, Gloucestershire, will not thank me for my visit to Juliet. Despite being a magnet for the Cotswolds arts scene, the town has long slid under the radar of most folk fleeing London in search of fresh air. Deal, Aldeburgh, Hastings? Absolutely. But Stroud? Not so much.But now there is Juliet, complete with a back story that will prick the ears of all right-thinking foodie types, because this is an all-day modern European bistro dreamed up by the sculptor Daniel Chadwick

Veganuary need not be divisive – it’s simply a chance to reassess our relationship with food

This article is an extract from the Guardian’s Feast newsletter, featuring exclusive writing from Nigel Slater, Rachel Roddy, Felicity Cloake and more – sign up here to get the full newsletter straight to your inbox every ThursdayI learned something new about Laxmidas Sodha, my grandfather, while spending time with my parents over Christmas. He didn’t have an easy life, but he didn’t make life easy for himself, either. After surviving poverty, the death of his wife during childbirth and being kicked out of Uganda by Idi Amin, he chose not to go to the wedding of his beloved son (my dad) on principle, because my mum’s family ate meat.It’s strange to have this in the back of my mind coming into Veganuary, a time when we choose to divide ourselves by how we eat. This division, plants v meat, puts people on opposite sides of the table, and can make it feel as if there’s some battle to be won

How to make the perfect chilli con queso – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

I well remember the first time I encountered the Tex-Mex phenomenon known as queso, which is not to be confused with Mexican queso, which just means “cheese”, as opposed to queso fundido, or melted cheese of an altogether different sort. It arrived in a bowl made out of fried tortillas that was filled with orange cheese that was melted, yet not quite liquid: “Kinda like a cheese soup,” the helpful waitress said on seeing my puzzlement.Apparently I’m not alone. Austin native Melanie Haupt reports finding “people from northern California to West Virginia … pleasantly flummoxed by the magical concoction now considered ‘classic’ queso among those who went straight from baby food to Tex-Mex”. Fellow Texan Rhoda Boone tells Bon Appetit magazine that in the Lone Star state, “We try to have as many occasions as possible to eat queso … sometimes it’s just, like, Sunday lunch”

Australian protein bar taste test: the winner is ‘giving fitness, but not entirely unpleasant’

From slabs with ‘dreaded’ soy nuggets to those that resemble a Milky Way, Jess Ho trials 10 chocolate protein bars and sorts through the sweet, the sticky and the downright sicklyI have a confession to make: I’ve eaten a lot of protein bars in my time. Back when I was working in hospitality, I kept a stash in my backpack in case of emergency. The emergency was if the staff meal looked inedible, or I didn’t have enough time to take a break and just needed something in my stomach. They were a means to an end. I didn’t focus very hard on registering their edibility

Party starters: how to jazz up your Christmas leftovers | Kitchen aide

“Pastry and cheese are the best food groups,” says Sarah Rossi, author of What’s for Christmas Dinner? Happily, those two worlds collide in her brie and cranberry bites, AKA an easy, scalable canape that minimises time in the kitchen. Cut a sheet of puff pastry into squares, then push them into the greased holes of a muffin tin. “Dollop each one with leftover cranberry sauce and top with leftover brie. Brush with beaten egg, then bake at 220C (200C fan)/425F/gas 7 for about 20 minutes, until golden.”Lettuce is another great carrier of leftovers, and especially Conor Gadd’s turkey and ham fried rice

From workhouse flummery to jelly whip | Letters

Recent letters about desserts made with jelly and evaporated milk (27 December) reveal an interesting backstory, going back at least to the 17th century. In those days, it was made by boiling oatmeal down into a jelly, which was served to workhouse inmates and prisoners and was called flummery. Its blandness resulted in the word being used in its current sense as an empty and unsatisfying compliment.But it was reinvented and reintroduced after the second world war as a cheap dessert made from jelly and condensed milk, specifically Carnation milk. The vehicle for its reintroduction was an advertising campaign by Carnation, which promoted its “jelly whip” recipe in newspapers and on its packaging