Kayahara.ca

I’m about to leave on vacation – a two-week road trip across the US to the West coast – so naturally I had to clean out my fridge a little bit before my departure. Buried in the back, I found some quail eggs that had been kicking around for too long. Rather than just throwing [...]

(OK, so maybe it wasn’t a whole peck.) Lately I’ve been wondering about vinegar pickles. I have plenty of experience making fermented pickles, but very little making pickles with vinegar. Fermented pickles are straightforward – immerse any vegetables in a 5% brine; leave at cool room temperature for a couple of weeks – but the [...]

Most of the coffee I drink, I brew in a French press. But I do also have a relatively low-end espresso machine, which I use several days a week when I need a caffeinated afternoon pick-me-up. Of course, this means I don’t go through espresso as quickly as I do “regular” coffee. In some ways, [...]

While macarons may still be my favourite use for extra egg whites, financiers have recently become a close second. For one thing, they’re a lot less finicky than macarons – and while finickiness is much of the macaron’s appeal, sometimes you just don’t want to go to the trouble. Both are based on egg whites [...]

My friend Stuart McCook, a historian who studies coffee cultivation and blogs about it at Coffee Cultures, has been called an “apologist for Robusta coffee.” Robusta is a species of coffee plant (Coffea canephora) distinct from the more widely cultivated Arabica species (Coffea arabica). Robusta is estimated to make up anywhere from 20% to 30% [...]

Amaretti cookies are essentially Italy’s answer to macarons. Their name is derived from the diminutive form of “amaro” (bitter), because they’re traditionally flavoured with bitter almonds (and currently with almond extract). Unlike macarons, which are usually sandwiched, amaretti are mostly served solo. They’re also baked to a crunchier texture, and can be crumbled and used [...]

A while back, my homemade vinegar died an ignominious death. I’m not sure why, though I suspect excess free sulphur in one of the wines I used. All I know is that, at a certain point, it stopped growing a cellulose mother, smelled like a mix of vinegar and wine instead of pure vinegar, and [...]

When I recently made curry paste for a Thai jungle curry, I did it in a combination of food processor and small mortar and pestle, in batches. Since then, I’ve acquired a new, large mortar and pestle, so I promptly returned to the library to check out Hot Sour Salty Sweet again in order to [...]

Since randomly throwing together my first coffee blend, I’ve been reading more about blending, especially on the fantastic Sweet Maria’s site. In particular, I learned that there’s a distinction to be made between blends of coffees from various origins, and blends of coffees roasted to different levels (which may be from one or more origins). [...]

Lately, in an attempt to get a better handle on Thai cuisine, I’ve been cooking some of the recipes in Hot Sour Salty Sweet, the latest (and last – the book is due back at the library tomorrow) of which is “jungle curry.” The way I understand it, jungle curry is differentiated from other Thai [...]