Country Greek from “The Last Schmaltz” is a Salad Comprised of
the Usual Ingredients Plus the Welcome Addition of Chickpeas
What is a nice Jewish boy from North York doing with a mini-empire of quirky restaurants in a gritty neighbourhood of downtown Toronto? Doing pretty well is the short answer. Read more…
It was May, 2004, during a glitzy dinner celebrating that year’s James Beard Awards at a mid-Manhattan hotel.
Gabriella Gershenson, at that time a fledgling food writer living in New York, was seated next to me. I discovered that I and this soft-spoken young woman with thick, wavy black hair and a winning smile were kindred souls. Read more…
Rob Firing’s barbecued ribeye steak with service berries and garlic scapes
Rob Firing has changed my life. Read more…
“The table could sometimes breed violence and it could be the backdrop to the proscribed and the forbidden and the perverse … But feeding people made them happy; it made me happy, and grounded me.” From “Treyf” by Elissa Altman
From left to right in the photo above, here are my favourite food memoirs. All of them are beautifully written (in varying degrees) and all evoke the way food played a part in the author’s life. Some contain a bonus: recipes. Read more…
My mother Ruth Schachter (née Nisse) in the garden of her flat in Primrose Hill, London UK, in 2014
I wrote this in 2002 when I was food editor for the Toronto Star. My dear mother, 95, died peacefully in her sleep a month ago on April 21, 2018
Today is Mother’s Day and this is a tribute to the person who first inspired my love of food and cooking – my mum. Read more…
Carlos Frias at El Palacio de los Jugos with an array of Cuban dishes
I think it was in the early 2000s that I started making an annual pilgrimage to Miami. Read more…
“Bread is Gold” is the result of the “refettorio” launched at Milan’s Expo in 2015. Top-notch recipes from famous international chefs creatively use discarded food. The caramelized bananas with balsamic drizzle from the book are delicious! Read more…
This recipe is from the excellent cookbook ‘AT HOME with LYNN CRAWFORD’.
When I was interviewing well-known Canadian chef Lynn Crawford for a podcast, we chatted about our long friendship, her TV career, our joint project that raised $40,000 for a new kitchen at a Toronto homeless shelter for women called Sistering – and what we like to cook at home. Read more…
This article by me appeared in the Toronto Star after I interviewed Linda McCartney in Toronto in October, 1991 about her vegetarian cookbook “Home Cooking”. Sadly, she died too young from breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 56.
In real life, Linda McCartney is nothing like the stilted photo that graces her cookbook.
And, say I, thank goodness for that. Read more…
Keith Richards liked this article by me so much, he signed a copy. It appeared in the Toronto Star in the summer of 1994 while the Rolling Stones were living in Toronto rehearsing for their Voodoo Lounge tour. (Update: I’ve recently perfected the ultimate version of Shepherd’s Pie that appears on the Recipes page of this site.)
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