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After making the beet fluid gel for my take on red velvet cake, I found myself with quite a bit of beet juice left over. Fortunately, I had a recipe handy to help me use it up: beet pâte de fruit. Or should that be “pâte de légume”? It may sound strange, but beet pâte [...]

Another one from the “I’ve been meaning to try” files, this time prompted in part by a recipe in the latest issue of Lucky Peach. Microwave sponge cakes, pioneered by Albert Adrià, had a brief surge of popularity a few years ago, before retreating back to the relative obscurity of “just another pastry technique.” There [...]

This fall has been another excellent season for cookbooks. The ones I’ve been most excited about include Paula Wolfert’s The Food of Morocco, Jennifer McLagan’s Odd Bits, and Ed Behr’s The Art of Eating Cookbook. Those have all been on my wish list since long before they were released. There are a handful of others [...]

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the “fifth quarter” in meat cooking. Historically, the organs, heads, hooves and other unusual parts of food animals were the province of the poor, but nowadays these cuts are more likely to serve as a marker of one’s rarefied taste – an icon of “true foodieness.” Well [...]

It’s funny sometimes, the things that give me the impetus to move projects off of my “to do” list and drive me into the kitchen. In this case, it was Halloween. After trick-or-treating was over, our basket of treats held a few leftover Aero bars, which I had always thought my husband disliked. When I [...]

Half a pound of green coffee doesn’t last that long, especially when you consider that it loses weight in the roasting process! Fortunately, I don’t rely exclusively on coffee I’ve roasted myself, so after I used up the beans from my first home-roasting run, I went back to store-bought for a few days. Last weekend, [...]

Are there any dishes more Canadian than split pea soup? Certainly Canada isn’t the only place it can be found, but pea soup is definitely part of the fabric of Canadian, and especially Québécois, cuisine. I mean, the brand I grew up with was called Habitant! It’s a great dish for a region with a [...]

Despite my abiding love for apples, especially at this time of year, I rarely seem to use apple brandy in cocktails. Applejack is a beloved ingredient among American mixologists, but it’s unavailable here in Ontario. What apple brandy there is – predominantly Calvados – is pretty pricy for a base spirit, so I think hard [...]