I will begin with a shocking fact: I have about 1,000 cookbooks.
When I moved into my narrow, tall townhouse in downtown Toronto about a decade ago, I organized them on shelves in my third-floor office — by ethnicity, subjects and reference books. Read more…
This appeared in the Toronto Star in 1993 when “The Mafia Cookbook” was published by Simon & Schuster. Former U.S. mobster Joe “Dogs” Iannuzzi wrote the book and phoned me from parts unknown when he was under the Witness Protection Program after he was an FBI informant. He died in Texas in 2015. Read more…
From North America to the United Kingdom, these are my favourite food memoirs
A few days ago, I was craving a Walnut Whip. I bought three of them.
Why did I have a longing for an iconic British candy first made by Duncan’s of Edinburgh in 1910? Why did a milk chocolate cone with a whipped vanilla filling and a walnut on top urgently beckon to me? The answer: I was recently researching this blog post by re-reading the compelling memoir “Toast” by Nigel Slater and watching the brilliant BBC film by the same name. Read more…
