Kayahara.ca

In keeping with my annual tradition of starting off the year on a Japanese-cuisine kick, I made my first nabe of the year last week – a fitting dinner given how cold and snowy it’s been. I turned to Japanese Hot Pots, which is the indispensable reference on the subject, and used the recipe for [...]

Recently, I was drinking a cup of chamomile tea sweetened with honey, and I let part of it get cold, which made me wonder: What would it be like if I changed the temperature even more drastically, say, by making it into a sorbet? I hauled out Migoya’s Frozen Desserts again for help formulating a [...]

My meat grinder has been getting a real workout lately. In addition to chorizo and the sausages I made for Canada Day, I’ve taken to grinding my own beef for burgers… and once again, I’m reminded why entire industries spring up around certain “junk” foods; if we all had to grind our own meat every [...]

Canada Day is the perfect excuse for a barbecue, and every year (barring unforeseen circumstances), we invite lots of friends over, grill up some tasty food, and serve some great Canadian beer and wine – the latter being especially pointed this year with the passage of Bill C-311. My grilling meat of choice for this [...]

Making tofu is both labour- and resource-intensive. (I can’t imagine it would ever have been developed anywhere that water was scarce.) But that doesn’t mean it’s wasteful: after the ground beans have been steeped to make the soy milk for tofu, they still have lots of nutritional value, especially fibre! This leftover soy mash is [...]

I’ve written before about some of the ingredients that have cachet among chefs and food-lovers who really know their stuff: quince, celeriac, short ribs. That list has never aspired to be comprehensive, but I would be remiss if I didn’t amend it to include preserved lemons (aka lemon confit). Naturally, because this ingredient is such [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

When working on a homemade cocktail ingredient, I always find it helpful to try someone else’s version first, to establish a basis of comparison, so I know what I’m aiming for. Take Swedish punch. Despite having read about it many times, I never had the chance to try it until this summer, when I found [...]

At times, I have a certain compulsion around food: when I read about an ingredient enough, I eventually have to try it, no matter the cost. (OK, within reason.) In this case, it was myoga, a Japanese ingredient related to ginger. Nearly every Japanese cookbook I have mentions it, but I had never seen it [...]