My Fall campaign to get the rest of my home-grown beets on the menu has met with moderate success; beets now regularly colour gravies, sweeten braises and, grated, make their way into a number of dishes I won’t name here because L will stop eating them. There are still plenty in the garden so last […]
I have a good friend who’s Welsh and I love to tease him about his national “flower.” How can you take a country seriously when its national symbol is a member of the onion family? Leeks seldom get centre stage the way they do in this flavourful little dish, which has given me a new […]
The first time I cooked lobster, I couldn’t eat it. At the time I thought it was the act of killing them that put me off. But now I think the fact that I foolishly held a lobster race on the kitchen floor to entertain my then two-year-old while the water heated was likely the […]
(Based loosely on a partly true story) “What are you doing?” I asked even though it was perfectly clear what she was doing. She was cleaning out the freezer because we were expecting half a pig from our CSA farm any day. I was supposed to have done that by now. L’s head was deep […]
This is officially my all-time favourite dessert. Combining pecans, caramel and dreamy rich cheesecake has got to be close to illegal it’s so good. I am having trouble writing with my mouth full so, I’ll cut straight to the recipe, which comes from chow.com. Note: I omitted the salt, which I am sure would have […]
Crostini is Italian for “little crust,” in our house it’s translated as “why are we eating bread when we could be eating crostini?” In theory, I make crostini with left-over baguettes that would otherwise be thrown out and serve them to guests with expensive wine and cheeses. But the truth is, crostini in our house […]
This week’s New Yorker (the food issue) features a piece by Calvin Trillin poking fun at “Quebec’s Funniest Food,” which is, of course, poutine. I am not a big fan of defining a people by the food they eat, let alone mocking them, but poutine seems to make Americans laugh the way we all really […]
The trick to great French fries is to fry them twice; first for five minutes at a lower temperature and then again at high heat.
A friend of mine who used to work in a hotel had a very odd job: naming the soup. I am sure he did other things as well, but each day he had to taste and name whatever the chef had put into the stock pot (my friend had some real reservations about some of […]
Whenever I think of not eating “right,” my mind immediately heads south. Maybe it’s all the barbecue or the bacon or the fact that southerners use gravy on just about everything, including breakfast. Or, maybe it’s because the food is just so good, I know instinctively that it can’t be good for me. But, whatever […]
Meats, Roots and Leaves 