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I got a lot out of participating in last week’s Eleven Madison Park tribute dinner in Ottawa, but all of it was in intangible form. Really, there was only one tangible thing I wanted to take away, and I didn’t even manage that: a jar of Eleven Madison Park granola. The story goes that every [...]

It’s always nice when a happy confluence makes it convenient to participate in several great activities in a short period. Such was the case on my recent trip to Ottawa. My husband wanted to go in order to do some research and celebrate his birthday, I wanted to go for dinner at Atelier (especially in [...]

I’ve been deliberately holding off on this one so I could get the above photo last night, but I’d like to add my voice to the chorus offering congratulations to Marc Lepine and the staff of Atelier for their gold-medal finish in the Canadian Culinary Championships last weekend! You can (and should) read the official [...]

No, not the salt of acetic acid; think more along the lines of what you used to use on overhead projectors (if you’re old enough to remember such things). If you’ve ever bought a mousse cake with a clear plastic “collar” around it, you’ve seen culinary acetate. I’ve been meaning to get around to it [...]

Gelling may well be one of my favourite transformational techniques. Controlling texture is always an important part of food, and gelling agents offer you the useful ability to turn liquids into solids. Essentially, gelling happens when you dissolve an ingredient into the liquid that you want to gel, and it combines in a network of [...]

One of my favourite components from last weekend’s dinner party was the piquillo paper from the octopus dish in VOLT ink. The first time I saw this technique of taking a puree, dehydrating it as a sheet, then punching holes in it to add some visual texture was during my very first stage at Marc [...]

One of the techniques that cropped up a lot in the menu for my recent dinner party was reduction: the carrot flan called for reduced blood orange and carrot juices; the plum glaze and foie gras sauce on the duck dish both involved reduction; and the sauce bordelaise on the beef dish was based on [...]

Every now and then, I like to push myself a bit and cook food on a slightly grander scale than my everyday meals. It gives me a chance to test – and expand – my skills, and an opportunity to cook some of the more interesting and challenging dishes from all the cookbooks I collect. [...]