Here's a taste of some of the food-related news and features appearing in newspapers around the world this week:

• If you're planning an Inauguration Party, you'll find plenty of tips on preparing Obama-themed snacks and cocktails.


• And speaking of Obama, it seems that the President-elect was, briefly, a Chicago restaurant critic. This was news to me, too. Check out these video excerpts of Obama as TV food critic.


• The Canadian Press also features the recipe for the peach cobbler Obama raved about during his appearance on the show. Read more...

It's been observed that the word "chef" gets thrown around with great abandon these days. And after all, the culinary illuminati can get pretty snooty when it comes to names and titles. If you've ever heard someone insisting that only wines from the Champagne region of France can be called "champagne," you know what I'm talking about.

Not that I think language should be a free-for-all. But when at least half the contestants on any given season of Top Chef describe themselves as "executive chefs," it's clear that even people in the culinary industry don't always understand the various job titles in a professional kitchen.

To help you sort it all out, here's a simple guide to some of the most common culinary job titles, like "head chef," "sous chef" and "executive chef," along with an explanation of what each one means.

Because fish is a delicate protein and tends to be fairly lean, it can dry out when you bake it. That's why a relatively fatty fish like salmon is such a popular choice for the oven. But even a lean whitefish like cod can be prepared in the oven — you just need to know when to take it out.

Cod is low in fat and features a mild-flavored, meaty flesh that flakes nicely. And it's these flakes that signal when it's done. Don't wait until the flesh "flakes easily" as some recipes suggest. By then it's already overcooked. The trick is to take it out as soon as the flesh is white and just starting to flake. Enjoy this easy recipe for baked cod with beurre blanc sauce.

A lot of classical culinary traditions, when you trace them back, were born from a very practical obsession with maximizing flavor while minimizing waste. Our culinary forefathers (and they were men, almost exclusively) apparently hated to throw anything away. And since they didn't have refrigerators, they were forced to innovate.

Making stock is a perfect example of this. Simmering bones not only extracts flavor, it also breaks down the collagens in the cartilage and other connective tissues, adding body to the stock. Once this is done, however, one might feel inclined to chuck those bones in the bin. After all, what good are they?

Plenty, it turns out. Read more...