Kayahara.ca

Yesterday was chili sauce-making day for me. I like to have it on hand as much as possible, which means making a batch every year or two. (One “batch” gives me a little over 8 one-pint jars, which will keep for up to two years, if properly canned, though the colour starts to deteriorate after [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I have no more intention of making this blog about TV than I do of making it about restaurant reviews: frankly, I try to limit my TV consumption, and when I do watch, it’s rarely food programming anymore. But I’ve been a longstanding fan of the Top Chef series, so I was intrigued to see [...]

The weather outside is starting to hint at spring, and that can mean only this: it’s maple syrup season! In their book Culinary Artistry, Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page have a list of flavours associated with various cultures. The entry for Canada consists of only one word: maple. (Even Canadian bacon didn’t make the cut, [...]

One of the things that makes cassoulet seem so monumental is the variety of meats included in it. But there’s no reason you have to make them all the same day as you cook the beans. Then again, you can… and in this case, I nearly did. The “set it and forget it” sous-vide duck [...]

Whether you believe it to be a Canadian invention or not, the Caesar is undeniably one of Canada’s favourite cocktails. But where most cocktails work by balancing sweet, sour, bitter and strong flavours, the Caesar is one of a small number of cocktails that also brings elements of salty and umami into play. A balance [...]

If fine dining in the 1970s and 1980s was defined by nouvelle cuisine, and the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s were the province of “technoemotional” cuisine (or whatever you want to call it), my prediction is that the next decade will be characterized by what could be called the “Danish model.” I [...]