Wanda Beaver in front of her bakery-cum-café Wanda’s Pie in the Sky at the corner of Augusta Ave. and Oxford St. in Kensington Market
It’s a beautiful fall day 10 days before Thanksgiving.
The sun is streaming through the open windows at Wanda’s Pie in the Sky in downtown Toronto’s Kensington Market. I’m chatting with Wanda Beaver, the co-owner of the bakery with her husband David, sitting on a tall stool at a small, tall table. Read more…
This appeared as a longer feature article in the Toronto Star food section on January 26, 2000, after I discovered Jamie Oliver’s fledgling show “The Naked Chef” on TVO. I spoke to Jamie in the flesh a few months later when he was consulting at a London restaurant. Twenty years later, he’s had his ups and downs, and I am still a fan.
Jamie Oliver must have supernatural powers. He can make a person leap out of her comfy chair, run downstairs, fling open the freezer and act on an overpowering urge to roast a leg of lamb. I should know. It happened to me. Under slightly different circumstances, it also happened to Jody Read, acquisitions programmer for TVO. Read more…
My ultimate Key Lime Pie, Florida’s signature dessert (scroll down for recipe)
Miami, Fla: I call Miami “New York on the beach.” Read more…
This appeared in my column “Dish” in Toronto Star in 2004.
I baked my first Tarte Tatin late last fall. Read more…
It 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…
When a reader of this blog e-mailed me with a question about my recipe for Jewish Chicken Soup – the best medicine I know for whatever ails body or soul – we had an exchange about the source of that recipe: my esteemed colleague and longtime restaurant critic for the Globe & Mail, Joanne Kates.
I have long been grateful to her for that soup, especially her tip about adding the mandatory parsnip. It gives delicate sweetness that elevates that winter mainstay from good to simply sublime.
That young male reader of my blog, after discussing the merits of adding chicken feet to the actual chicken (feet give thickness and a luscious, glutinous texture along with extra flavour), told me he was about to make a delicious dessert from The Joanne Kates Cookbook (my source for the soup and a vintage tome published in 1984) called Ginger Pear Pie. Read more…
When I get obsessed with a recipe, it pervades my waking and sleeping hours.
Of late, it’s been peach galette, how much ground almonds to use in the layer below the peaches, what oven temperature, how long to bake – the list goes on. Then comes the testing and re-testing until Ross and I are eating the dessert daily and the freezer is full of various renditions, all clearly labelled. Read more…
In spite of the mild sun-stroke I incurred during the sweltering afternoon heat at a recent country pie festival, it was all worth it. It happened in a lush field at the lovely McCully’s Hill Farm located a short drive from my part-time home of Stratford, Ont.
Here, I witnessed my first pie-eating contest up close and personal, something I would not have thought would be any fun until I experienced it. In general, I’m against eating competitions which I find gross and unappetizing, especially when people are ramming hot dogs or spaghetti with meatballs down their gullets. However, eating one pie – and that was the challenge in this case – does not seem over-the-top. To boot, pies have a reputation as an in-your-face food (remember Jean Chretien) and are among my favourite foods both to make and eat.
There were several eating styles among the six contestants: the two-handed approach, the full pie-in-the-face modus operandi, the one-handed scoop and even a drink-the-filling style adopted by one fellow whose blueberry pie was quite runny. Read more…
I’ve long been expert at sniffing out a good recipe. After all, I’ve done it professionally for more than 25 years and as an intriguing hobby for most of my adult life.
So when I recently met Judy Trogadis, a friend of my good pal Visnja Brcic, it wasn’t long before we were talking spanakopita, that delectable, deservedly famous Greek pie made with phyllo, spinach and feta that’s often served as a snack at parties. Read more…
