"GwynethPaltrow" news and stories

A few of the best links on the Web this week:

• Back-of-the-box recipes used to be basic -- but not anymore.
• Gwyneth Paltrow discovers the delights of fried Southern food and shares her "Quest for the Best Fried Chicken."
• The food bus is the latest take on the food truck even offers patrons a place to sit and eat.
• Unemployed? There's no law against using food stamps for gourmet provisions.

Mario Batali. Photo: Bauer-Griffin.

Mario Batali's on the hook for some back rent. According to a suit filed Sept. 4, the celebrity chef and his business partner Joseph Bastianich, owe $75,000 for their now defunct seafood restaurant, the John Dory.

"It's going to be settled," Bastianich told the New York Daily News on Wednesday. "We've returned the space back to the landlord, and the rent is going to be paid today or tomorrow."

The pair were guarantors of the failed restaurant, the Daily News reports.

'Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes From My Two Villages'
By Mario Batali
Photographs by Mark Ferri
Clarkson Potter -- 1998
Buy it on Amazon

More than a decade ago -- long before Del Posto, Otto and road trips through Spain with Gwyneth Paltrow -- Mario Batali had two restaurants, Pó and Babbo, and was just beginning to grow his rock-'n'-roll, orange-Croc-wearing legend through the Food Network.

It's there that we find him with "Mario Batali Simple Italian Food," his first cookbook, which takes readers through the tastes of Borgo Capanne, where Batali worked in Trattoria La Volta on the border of the Italian regions Emilia-Romagna and Toscana, as well as his other "village," New York.

Batali divides the recipes of these villages by color: The orange-titled ones are those he invented in New York; the brown titles are those he learned in Italy.

See what we tested and whether it's worth buying after the jump.

Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow has road-tripped through Spain with Mario Batali and Mark Bittman on "Spain On the Road Again," and the chefs' culinary know-how seems to be rubbing off.

The star of "Shakespeare in Love" has made a move towards her own cooking show with a roasted chicken how-to video she posted to her Web site Goop. During the nearly 8-minute video, the actress debones a chicken while talking about learning to cook while a 19-year-old student at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

"I was trying to be an actress as well so I kept driving down to LA to audition for movies, and my dad was there working. We sort of started getting into cooking together; we got sick of the frozen meatballs that were left in the freezer for us," Paltrow says. "It just became our thing. So we started watching a lot of cooking channels, and over the years its become a major passion."

Paltrow's Quick Roast Chicken and Potatoes after the jump.

Gwyneth Paltrow is no stranger to the foodie world. She's traveled Spain with Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, and Claudia Bassols to taste all that the country has to offer. And now she's getting into home cookin'.

The Telegraph reports that Paltrow is going to publish her first cookbook next year, called My Father's Daughter, focusing on "the importance of togetherness at mealtime, emphasizing that cooking for your family is the ultimate expression of love."

I imagine that means there will be some remembrances of dad Bruce Paltrow, but what there won't be is a whole bunch of macrobiotic love. She's given up that food trend and is now reveling in all that is local, organic, and seasonal, with a healthy side of vices like coffee and wine. So basically, like most other cookbooks out there, I guess. We'll have to see what next year brings!