Dutch Babies are a crepe-like dish that can be filled with a variety of goodies
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Greek Salad and Whole Roasted Cauliflower are Tops in “The Last Schmaltz”
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…
I Ate Up These Delicious Food Memoirs and So Will You
“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…
Tasty Cookbook by Chef Massimo Bottura and Friends is Pure Gold
“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 (pictured above, recipe below) are delicious! 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…
Matty Matheson’s Easy, Fluffy Pancakes May Be World’s Best
Chef Matty Matheson is a rising star mostly thanks to his inimitable wit, outrageous antics and yes, cooking talent. His never-dull hit show “Dead Set on Life” on VICE TV along with his huge – and growing – popularity on social media are icing on the cake.
“You need almost no cooking skills to make the world’s greatest pancakes” – Munchies Staff 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…
Sweet! Two Delectable Chocolate Creations That Take the Cake
Click on this – my podcast chat with domestic goddess Nigella Lawson recorded in Toronto in late 2015 – and you’ll hear her say that we are “kitchen cousins”: https://www.marionkane.com/podcast/chat-nigella-kitchen-cousin
She’s referring to several important things we have in common: A willingness to freely improvise when cooking; an acceptance of failure in the kitchen as a necessary path to learning, and a penchant for eating her dish of Squid and Orzo Pasta cold for breakfast.
Nigella and I have another important bond: a love of chocolate cakes. In her book “Feast,” published in 2004, there is an entire chapter – beloved my me – called “Chocolate Hall of Fame.” This collection of nine recipes includes her famous Chocolate Guinness Cake – delicious but tends to sink in the middle – Chocolate Gingerbread, also good, and Chocolate Malteser Cake that I haven’t yet made. Read more…
My Breakfast Chez Julia Child
1999: Julia Child making her famous scrambled eggs at home in Cambridge, Mass.
(An excerpt from my book Dish, a collection of my favourite columns and recipes from the Toronto Star)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – I came bearing buns: rye sourdough buns I managed to procure in a mad dash moments earlier, after the croissants carefully ordered for this momentous occasion failed to arrive at my hotel at the appointed time.
Still recovering from that culinary escapade, I was both jittery and elated at the prospect of breakfast chez Julia Child as we drove along her quiet, leafy street a few blocks from bustling Harvard Square one beautiful, sunny morning last week. Read more…
New York Vegetable Restaurant “Dirt Candy” is a Sweet Success
Grilled zucchini with the Dirt Candy cookbook’s Yellow Tomato Coconut Curry Sauce
Amanda Cohen was born and raised in Canada. Some years ago, she went to study in New York and has made that city her home ever since. These days, she has good reason to stay; her famous Dirt Candy eatery – what she calls a “vegetable restaurant” – located on the Lower East Side, is a huge hit. Read more…