From apples to smoked salmon to yogurt, I share my latest fabulous food finds
“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook — try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun.” — Famous quote from Julia Child.
“Cooking is a lot like riding a horse — never let the food know you’re afraid of it!” Famous quote from me, Marion Kane. Read more…
Francis Lam, a brilliant food writer and the host of the radio show The Splendid Table, interviewed the famous chef Jacques Pepin a few years ago.
Francis asked Jacques: “I noticed in your new book, the very first recipe is for a simple roast chicken: no brining, no spicing, just a hot pan and a hot oven. So, let me ask you, why is a simple roast chicken such an iconic dish for French chefs?”
Jacques answered: “For different reasons. It’s like a hard-cooked egg – something that there is no recovery from if you don’t do it right. It’s so simple, like a bread, when you have a real bread made with flour and water and yeast, and that’s it. It has to be done right. Otherwise, there is no recovery.” Read more…
Food Finds, Part 2. Do you Notice I Have a Sweet Tooth? My Reply: Everything in Moderation.
“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.” Anthony Bourdain Read more…
You must possess cooking skills. You have to have experience in the kitchen. You should pay attention to detail. You must have intuition. It’s essential to be calm in the face of failure.
Lesleigh Landry possesses all of the above. Read more…
(Left to right) Rosemary at work several decades ago in Toronto: In the kitchen at Bumpkin’s Take-Out and behind the bar at the Empire Diner.
(Left to right) Bumpkin’s Take-Out menu. Rosemary at the Varanasi flower market in northern India in 2016 with her goddaughter and stepdaughter. Rosemary in the kitchen.
I can picture her working at Courage My Love in the late ’70s.
With a vintage small black hat perched on her upswept dark hair. And her ivory skin contrasting with red lipstick. Read more…
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…
Zachary Grant sits on the steps of the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto
“loving justice in the heart of our city” – Quote from the Church of the Holy Trinity’s website
(Note: Zachary Grant has asked me to use the gender-neutral pronouns “they/them” and I have agreed.)
Zachary Grant gets the irony.
They are the community director of downtown Toronto’s the Church of the Holy Trinity just a few steps away from the massive, glitzy shopping mecca: the Eaton Centre. Read more…
John Catucci is my morning meditation.
During the pandemic, he gave me hope. He’s a comedian and he is funny – in a low-key way. He is endearing. The two TV shows he hosts — You Gotta Eat Here and Big Food Bucket List — are entertaining and educational. They are life-affirming. They are two of my favourite TV food shows. 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…
Left to right: Me (Marion Kane), Jenny Barato, Sophia Loren at Trattoria Giancarlo.
This appeared in the Toronto Star as a feature article with the title “Cooking with Amore” on February 10th, 1999. Sophia Loren was in Toronto promoting her new cookbook “Recipes and Memories.” Trattoria Giancarlo closed in 2020 after 30 years – a landmark in downtown Toronto’s Little Italy. In that year, a brilliant film “The Life Ahead” was released starring Sophia Loren as a Holocaust survivor. Read more…
