The other night I was in a particularly crave-y mood. I wanted meat and potatoes meets spice. I happened to remember these Wholly Wholesome pie crusts I picked up from Whole Foods and the samosa pie was born. When I was preparing it it felt totally wrong, like a terrible bastardization of traditional cuisine. It was going to be a dirty little secret. No one needed to know. Then we…
Last week Bogdan and I went to Town Tavern in Royal Oak because Four Square told us the lobster mac and cheese was “to die for.” It was not.…
I recently saw a very interesting Vox video on food waste aptly called Food waste is the world’s dumbest problem. Food waste is a really big problem. According…
Pasta is one of those fundamental “from scratch” things that can seriously impress your dinner guests and also totally change the game on what you thought you knew. Once you’ve had fresh homemade pasta, it’s really hard to even call that stuff you buy in boxes pasta anymore. I learned to make pasta the way I learned to make bread, which is to say with a few bumps in the…
I wrote this post when we were planning for a family trip to Spain about a month ago. We wanted to add an extra side trip onto our…
We just got back from a 10 day trip to Toronto. It’s been almost 5 years since I left for law school. I miss Toronto intensely. I miss…
I followed the NY Times Butter Chicken recipe by Tom Sifton, which can be found here. I tried not to deviate from the recipe too much. Making it was a pleasure from start to finish. The strong and subtle aromas wafting out of the kitchen were reward in themselves. The taste was what I expected but much more. Homemade butter chicken can have noticeably more complex flavours than take out if you cook with…
I spent a lot of my formative years in Toronto, where I gained an appreciation for diversity that’s had an enduring impact on me. Toronto is a mecca…
Back in May we ordered four thai bird chili seedlings on Amazon. A few weeks later we received a USPS box stuffed with styrofoam squiggles and four tiny plants…
We were at the farmers market asking around everywhere for chorizo. A few weeks earlier we attended a dinner to celebrate the engagement of two of our friends. They showed us a really neat Portuguese cooking method that involves setting alcohol on fire in a ceramic pig. How cool is that? As you can imagine I had to have one. I got the pig but the chorizo was no where to be…
Around this time last year I made a few different kinds of cookies that Bogdan took to work. Honestly, these chill-chocolate cookies were included as sort of a last…
I have a confession to make. This is my third time trying to make this tart. The first time it sort of fell apart. The second time it…
Mmmmm this was so SO good. It was Friday evening. We got in late after another rousing round of house hunting. We were really tired and just wanted something comforting and quick. This really delivered. Mushrooms are amazingly versatile and so delicious in so many ways. They impart a really satisfying and robust umami to this pasta that plays so well with the creamy and sharp cheese. Combine that with the herbaceous…
It was such a pleasure making this tart. Bogdan and I met up with some friends at Eastern Market on Saturday and there were beautiful heirloom tomatoes everywhere.…
soft. chewy. crunchy. sweet. salty. spicy. chocolatey. warm. mouthwatering. totally perfect. These cookies are ah-mazing. Think of a cross between a ginger snap and a white chocolate macadamia…
Red vermouth martinis used to be my thing. I think I got a lot of satisfaction out of asking for something a little more obscure. I still do. Over the past few years gin and tonics have made a resurgence as the new hipster drink du jour. I think red vermouth is about to go in that direction too. If it does remember you saw it here first. I hadn’t…
Earlier this week I wrote about cooking with Fall flavours beyond pumpkin spice. There’s literally a world of flavours out there that we don’t associate with Fall nearly…
Wow. That name is a mouthful. I wasn’t sure what to call this. I’ve seen recipes for all kinds of brûléed things: oatmeal on the view from great…
It’s the first day of fall. I woke up earlier than usual this morning. The sun was just coming up as I sat down to write this post. I think a small part of me feels like it’s Christmas morning. It’s hard to say but fall might be my favourite season. There are so many things to love about it. The refreshing nip in the air in the mornings, leaves changing…
Ok, I have to be honest: this isn’t really a recipe. I feel sort of bad even posting it because it’s really simple and normally wouldn’t be worth posting…
Usually whenever I want cornbread I just toss a few things in a blender and it’s done in about five minutes. This particular iteration of my many five minute cornbreads…
I don’t know how else to describe it other than to say that this is simply a beautiful cake. Start to finish it was an experience. Eating it was (surprisingly) not the best part. The best part was the feeling that I was making something unfamiliar. I found it in what I’m realizing is a quite obscure cookbook called Food of the World by Murdoch Publishing. As it turns out, it is…
Pâté. A small word with many accents and assumptions. I think just the word makes most people think of something fussy. Pâté is not a fancy word in…
I’m just going to warn you before we go any further that if you make this you won’t be able to eat regular omelettes anymore. The first time…
A few months ago when we were doing whole30 I started reading up on a lot of different health foods. As it turns out gelatin has a really devoted following both for its health benefits and for the variety of things it can do from a culinary standpoint. I ordered some Great Lakes Unflavored Beef Gelatin, which has a reputation for being the best (mostly because it’s grassfed). I was so…