Faster Than Waiting for the Banana Boat to Dock Technique is everything in baking. An abundance of cheap bananas had me making my stock standard banana bread a few different ways this week in an attempt to get the lightest version possible. Not an easy task sometimes thanks to a few factors in the classic recipe. Bananas lift about as well as a lumpy … Read More →
Fresh & Tart, No Cow Needed My neighbourhood Megamarket tries hard to appeal to fringe food types like myself. They have a ‘natural foods’ section despite the skeptical local attitudes towards quinoa and nutritional yeast. But this lack of local enthusiasm means their well-meaning dairy and fresh section often goes unsold. Their policy is to slap ‘50% off’ stickers on everything … Read More →
Simple. Healthy. Fiesta. I’ve whinged on about the lack of Mexican food this far north plenty before. It simply doesn’t exist in the restaurant ecosystem of eastern Canada. One burrito shack and a tamale stall at the farmer’s market for a whole province, both of which have to dull down the cuisine for the tender Maritime palate, simply … Read More →
Why Italians Have Vegetable Gardens Lasagna is the advanced and tastier version of mac & cheese. It’s also a great place to hide heaps of veg if you’re cooking for the meat and potatoes crowd. Layers of sauces, filling, and cheeses keep them distracted from the fact that you don’t really need ground beast in the mix. Now with the … Read More →
Crusty & Quick It’s a holiday and all the shops are closed. You’ve just made a stew and need some hefty bread to match. You can’t wait around for yeast to do their thing in a well-risen oat bread. You don’t own a giant upright mixer. You have a bowl, your hands, and an oven. What do you … Read More →
Looks horrible. Tastes way better than the 60s. Guaranteed to irritate food hipsters. I read decades-old cookbooks and food magazines when I can find them. Sure many of the recipes are dated and politically incorrect but that’s the beauty and charm of digging into the culinary past. All of them can, at minimum, show me a time capsule of eating history or at most yield a recipe ready … Read More →
Downmarket Carbonara I’m a fan of food classics which means you’re just as likely to get traditional Italian Carbonara as you are family-style baked mac & cheese on my table. They’re not better or worse than one another but obviously each has their own connotations of venue. Try to get away with a southern American casserole in … Read More →
Orange is the New White I’m sometimes asked about fried potatoes and have to straddle the linguistic gap over the Atlantic. Whether you call them ‘chips’ or ‘fries’ is up to you. I call them delicious. Even more so if you branch out and use sweet potatoes in addition to their white cousins. Let’s start with potato choice which is … Read More →
Faster than your morning shower Most mornings I want something with my tea but stale packaged biscuits (“cookies” to the Americans) just aren’t my mood. Full on cookery efforts for something elaborate aren’t always the best idea in my bleary-eyed early hours so I came up with a small batch take on scones to fill the void between buckwheat pancakes … Read More →
Gratin any veg you have handy If you aren’t making gratins from scratch at home, sell your kitchen now because you obviously don’t know what ovens are used for in a civilized world. Eat takeaway food from polystyrene boxes the rest of your days and ponder your culinary sins over a pot noodle. On yet another of my forays into the … Read More →
Green Perfection I actually heard the phrase “What do you do with those things?” from the teenage girl minding the till of my Megamarket on a recent supply run between blizzards. I was handing her a bag of avocados at the time and have to admit I was once again shocked at the sheltered food life the … Read More →
Paris or your own oven. You choose. (Video below) I’m not sure when or why kneading became such an insurmountable evil that people felt the need to eliminate it from their baking repertoire along with most of the decent texture in their daily bread. No-knead this and no-knead that are all the rage among food trend groupies these days and while I … Read More →
Pumpkin Taste First, Everything Else Follows. For whatever reason, I seem to end up with spare pumpkin all the time. I’m a fan of roasting great burly hunks of the orange beasts for stews and curries but I also spin my own puree in the fall when fresh examples are stacked at the local roadside farms for mere pennies. Hint – … Read More →
Never Settle for Boring Chicken I’m a big curry fan. The concept of simple spices blended and stewed together for a long time to create something greater than the parts has found its way into the culinary traditions of most cultures on the globe. From the famous versions of India to the tropically inspired creations of Southeast Asia to the … Read More →
Sandwiches Will Love You Making mustard is as easy as falling off a sandwich. Mustard seeds, water, salt, and vinegar combined with a good blender and bit of time to mature in the fridge and it’s job done. The finesse is in the details. Let me explain several versions and show you how to make them all in mere … Read More →
Not your Italian grandmother's spaghetti Asian noodles come in all manners of size and composition. Whether rice or wheat, flat or round, egg or not, the permutations are endless. The blight that is pre-fried ramen* in over-salted polystyrene cups couldn’t be farther from the art of handmade noodles. *For the record, authentic fresh, real ramen is pretty darn good noodling. … Read More →
One spoonful changes everything When a cook in Asia wants to add a zing to dishes, they often reach for a familiar jar in the pantry that is little more than blended garlic and chile. Both benefit from time spent percolating together. Two flavour birds with one stone as it were. The west has discovered this secret and now … Read More →
Intense & Poofy. Serve with Strong Booze at any convenient holiday. I can’t make a recipe any simpler than this. If someone has unwisely invited you to a New Year’s celebration and you’re not up to making a batch of Chinese dumplings or black-eyed peas for good luck, make a tray of these Stilton puffs in just a few seconds. As long as you can buy … Read More →
If Aztecs and Egyptians Cooperated I can’t say with even the remotest degree of historical accuracy that ancient cultures made hot spiced drinks in winter but it’s a fairly certain bet they mixed up something with punch for whacky ceremonies as well as sitting around fires on chilly nights. Drinking chocolate with a kick is something you really should be … Read More →
Happy Cats + Happy Cooks = Happy Christmas In the dead of winter I try to appease my inner gardener in lots of ways. I watch Gardener’s World reruns until I sound like Monty Don, I attempt to build beehives, and I pour over seed catalogues filled with their visions of future perfection in the dirt. I suspect a huge percentage of seeds … Read More →
Perfect Crust Top & Bottom I make a skillet of ordinary cornbread nearly every week because it’s dead simple and sits well alongside so many things in even its most plain form. Outside the holiday feasting season where cornbread dressing reigns supreme at my house, peppery soups and stews, my favourite bean pot, or simply a giant salad all partner … Read More →
Peasant Food Simplicity With giant turkey stuffing season upon us, I thought I should remind everyone how easy it is to make cornbread. Or more specifically, cornbread dressing. Why? Because people will insist on stuffing all manner of bread products into their holiday birds thus drying them out beyond all recognition or worse still, dangerously undercooking the whole … Read More →
Eat Your Beans (and Spicy Rice) Rice and beans together goes by many names. “Hoppin’ John” across many parts of the US or simply “Red Beans & Rice” in New Orleans proper. Orez Shu’it in Jerusalem. And if you’ve ever been to Central America, you know about gallo pinto. There it’s on every menu and eaten all hours of the day … Read More →
One decent pan would be better than all of this I found myself haunting the cookware section of MassiveMart the other day as I’ve been known to do from time to time when a pair of young women caught my eye having a discussion while waving various pans at each other. That’s the sort of thing my highly trained senses will notice. They were trying … Read More →
