The latest book releases for curious minds

TAST Y TALES

FACTS AND FABLES ABOUT OUR FAVOURITE FOODS

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR ANNA LENA FEUNEKES PUBLISHER UCLAN PUBLISHING PRICE £8.99 (APPROX. $11.10)

RELEASE OUT NOW

Coffee is usually associated with South America, and coffee beans are certainly grown and exported in abundance from Brazil. But they actually originated all the way across the sea in Ethiopia, which goes some way to explaining why the beverage is so popular in parts of Africa and the Middle East. Legend has it, according to Tasty

Tales anyway, that a goatherd watched his goats eat some bright red berries and become strangely invigorated. It’s an amusing origin story for one of the world’s most popular caffeinated hot drinks, and regardless of whether there’s any truth in the legend, the fact that coffee is native to a country thousands of miles away from where we assumed it came from had us rushing to verify this fact.

There’s a lot more of this kind of curious fact-dropping in Tasty Tales, and it’s not just common misconceptions being busted. Author Anna Lena Feunekes had a surprise story to tell us about the humble potato – while Britain embraced the spud when it was introduced to us from the Americas 500 years ago, in France they shunned it at first. They thought it was poisonous and had no idea that it was perfectly fine to eat it cooked rather than raw – and that potatoes could be so delicious.