Dutch Babies are a crepe-like dish that can be filled with a variety of goodies
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Cookbook Author Rob Firing is Leading a Steak Revolution
Rob Firing’s barbecued ribeye steak with service berries and garlic scapes
Rob Firing has changed my life. Read more…
The Miami Herald’s Food Editor Led me to the Amazing El Palacio de los Jugos
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…
Chef Lynn Returns to Scottish Roots with Mince ‘n’ Tatties
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…
I Discovered Brilliant Anthony Bourdain Many Years Ago
In Memoriam: Anthony Bourdain – an inspiration to me and the huge number of devotees who followed his ground-breaking, intrepid and wondrous work – committed suicide while filming an episode of Parts Unknown in France on June 8, 2018. He was one of a kind. RIP dear friend. Read more…
NYC Chef Michael Lomonaco Survived 9/11 and is Still Cooking
“I dedicate my work every day to the colleagues I lost on 9/11” – chef Michael Lomonaco.
Michael Lomonaco loves food and people. But it was an act of hate that pushed him into the spotlight: the tragic events of September 11th, 2001.
Michael was executive chef of Windows on the World: a restaurant once on top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Following the attacks, he helped raise $23 million for the families of foodservice workers killed that day. Those included 79 of his staff working the morning shift and a hot dog vendor on the ground outside. I interviewed him in May 2002. Read more…
Revisiting a Mother’s Day Tribute to my Mum as she Approaches her 91st Birthday
This appeared as my column “Dish” in the Toronto Star in 2002. My mum Ruth Schachter (nee Nisse) died peacefully in her sleep at home in NW London UK 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…
My Recipes for Luscious Couscous, Perfect Pot Roast and Amazing Applesauce
Some years ago, I spent a few hours in a restaurant kitchen with a young chef called Omar Houmani who was a recent immigrant to Canada from Algeria. The purpose of that evening’s venture: To learn from him how to make couscous.
Standing at the stove in front of an improvised couscoussier – a cheap large saucepan bought in Chinatown in which he had pierced holes and placed tightly on top of a large stockpot – Omar explained how he was going to prepare the couscous. By boiling water in the stockpot, he would steam our couscous in the improvised steamer on top. Read more…
Cooking up a Storm with the Help of my Kitchen Sisters
For some reason – probably as an antidote to stress, this being the onset of that silly season – I’ve been cooking a lot of late, in particular trying new recipes from books by my Toronto foodie friends.
If you’ve read the previous blog – my tragic tale of the missing cookbooks – you’ll understand why the tomes in question are dear to my heart.
Especially treasured are those 100 or so that I keep close at hand on shelves I had built for this purpose in the important room where it all happens: my compact, cozy kitchen. Read more…
Secret to Ultimate Meatballs Revealed
Dear readers, more proof that when I say something, I keep my word.
A few blogs ago, I reported back from Manhattan where I put in a couple of appearances at the annual Food Network Wine & Food Festival, the highlight of which was a fabulous wing-ding at a chi-chi renovated warehouse in Chelsea to raise money for hunger relief called Meatball Madness. Here, amid a bevy of stations dispensing wine, about 40 of the Big Apple’s top chefs cooked and served up their version of the meat dish du jour – from lamb meatballs to a veggie version to a delectable one stuffed with raisins and pine nuts.
The latter came from Michael Lomonaco who famously escaped the 911 disaster when he was executive chef of Windows on the World and whom I interviewed about that tragedy a few months later while attending the James Beard Awards in NYC. Now at Porter House New York, his amazing meatball creation was simply delish. Read more…
