Marion Kane: Food Sleuth®

Cookbooks

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”:  http://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…

Co-Authors Reclaim, Redo and Redeem Gefilte Fish!

“Bland, intractably beige, and (most unforgivably of all) suspended in jelly, the bottled version seemed to have been fashioned, golem-like, from a combination of packing material and crushed hope.” From an article about gefilte fish by Rebecca Flint Marx in The New Yorker (October, 2016)

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The above is eloquent testimony to the bad reputation of gefilte fish – a downhome, humble staple at the Jewish holiday table. Read more…

Alex Prud’homme on Great-Aunt Julia Child’s Rise to Stardom

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Julia Child’s great-nephew Alex Prud’homme with his new book

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Julia Child often said: “I was born hungry!” She had an appetite for life and sharing a love of good food was her consuming passion. She was North America’s first TV celebrity chef and her great-nephew Alex Prud’homme had a front-row seat. Read more…

New York Vegetable Restaurant “Dirt Candy” is a Sweet Success

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Grilled zucchini with the Dirt Candy cookbook’s Yellow Tomato Coconut Curry Sauce

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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…

Roger Smith Cookbook Conference was Bound to Please and a Winner in my Books

I’ll begin this blog post by serving up a link to an excellent piece of writing by a young fellow from the U.K. who was sitting next to me during one of the lively panels at the excellent two-day Roger Smith Cookbook Conference I attended recently in New York.

While I scribbled away using the old-school journo’s tools of the trade – a pen and paper – he, Nick Robinson, was calmly taking notes on some kind of tablet, checking in with Twitter and probably his e-mail at the same time.

We had a brief chat, exchanged cards and, upon my return, began following each other on Twitter and connected on LinkedIn. Read more…

Cauliflower Steaks, Mac’n’Cheese: Cookbook and Magazine Serve up Winners

It’s that blah mid-winter time of year and, for me, a bumpy patch on the meandering path of discovery.

The obvious antidote: cooking up a storm in my compact Kensington Market kitchen.

Much of this culinary cure for whatever ails my troubled soul is inspired by recipes from cookbooks and food magazines, both of which are on-and-off addictions.

So dear readers, as is my wont, I am about to share the fruit of my labours. In this case, it’s two recipes. Read more…

The Tale of my Missing Cookbooks and How I Made Lemonade from Lemons

listen-to-the-podcastIt all began about a year ago when I gave two people I had no reason to distrust full access to my large, fully-furnished house while I was away.

All went well for several months during which time I would visit the place occasionally to pick up mail and move items to my new place – mostly clothes, work-related stuff and some important papers.

The pride and joy of my former abode was its cookbook library: a room I had specifically designed to hold the 1,200 or so cookbooks I had accumulated during my almost 40 years as a member of Canada’s food media. Many of those – 18, to be exact – were spent as food editor/columnist for this country’s largest newspaper the Toronto Star where I received review copies of cookbooks on a regular basis. Read more…

Ant, Andrew and I Make Waves on Radio Food Show

Yesterday, Andrew Coppolino, host of The Food Show that airs on Sundays from noon to 1 pm on Kitchener radio station 570 News, warned listeners that things were about to get wild, wacky and weird when he introduced me and Antony John.

(Listen or download here. Warning: there is about 20 seconds of dead air at the beginning of the recording.)

The latter is a buddy of mine and one of the reasons I moved to Stratford five years ago (others are his lovely wife Tina and the fact that my neighbours in Kensington Market were terrorizing me for reasons too dark to mention). I recently returned to live in Toronto because: Stratford has too many ducks, not enough people of colour etc. etc. (see previous blogs). But I digress. Read more…

Marion Kane, Food Sleuth®

Marion Kane has been a leader in the world of food journalism for a few decades. She is an intrepid populist whose work combines social commentary with a consuming passion for all things culinary. For 18 years, she was food editor/columnist for Canada's largest newspaper: the Toronto Star. She lives in Toronto's colourful Kensington Market and is currently a free-wheeling freelance food sleuth®, podcaster, writer and cook.

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