Marion Kane: Food Sleuth®

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Chicken

One Pots and Two Zimmermans – Surviving and Thriving in Toronto’s Kensington Market

February 23, 2021

Pots, Zimmerman

(Left to right) Potsothy (Pots) Sallapa, Adam Zimmerman, Danny Zimmerman at
4 Life Natural Foods

Whither Kensington?

These are podcasts recorded a few years ago about the changing nature of Kensington Market.

Everyone knows him as Pots. His full name is Potsothy Sallapa. This popular, kind, soft-spoken man has found his roots — literally and figuratively.

His dream is to build a rooftop greenhouse above his store 4 Life Natural Foods on Augusta Ave. in Toronto’s downtown Kensington Market. These are the literal roots. Read more…

Filed Under: Chicken, Chicken, Fall Recipe, Fall vegetables, Kensington Market, ratatouille recipe, Recipe, Toronto, Vegetables Tagged With: 4 Life Natural Foods, Chicken Schnitzel, Danny Zimmerman, kensington market, mushroom sauce, Pots, Potsothy Sallapa, Ratatouille, recipe, Roasted Vegetables, Sri Lanka, Toronto, Zimmerman’s Discount Store, Zoltan Zimmerman

Recipe for Success – or Failure

July 8, 2020

Failed carrot cake - instead, pudding!

Failed carrot cake - instead, pudding!

The Stuffed Carrot Cake I baked was obviously a failure but it was extremely tasty as a pudding

First, a little first-person backstory.

I quit my job as food editor and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, after 18 years in 2007. It was arguably the best job for a food journalist in Canada. Four years later, I re-invented myself as a freelance Food Sleuth. Meanwhile, I did a couple of community cookbooks with residents of Toronto public housing and for an advocacy non-profit group called FoodShare. Read more…

Filed Under: 9/11, Baking, Bonnie Stern, Chef Michael Lomonaco, Chicken, Chicken, Dessert, Fall vegetables, Mairlyn Smith, New York City, Podcasts, Recipe, Toronto Tagged With: carrot cake, Chicken, Ian Brown, Jennifer Segal, Jerusalem, Mairlyn Smith, michael lomonaco, mustard sauce, nigella lawson, pudding, recipe, recipe mistakes, Sittin' in the Kitchen, Yotam Ottolenghi

20 years on, I’m Still a Fan of Charming Chef Jamie Oliver

May 25, 2020

The Naked Chef - Jamie Oliver

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 – the Toronto Star article appears below this one. 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…

Filed Under: Chefs, Chicken, Fall Recipe, Food Industry, Foodies, London, Pie, Pie, Recipe, Restaurant, Vegan Tagged With: British TV, carbonara, chicken curry, Jamie Oliver, Jools, Keep Cooking and Carry On, lamb, London, organic farming, quarantine, recipe, roast leg of lamb, sausage meatballs, The Naked Chef, toronto star, vegan shepherd's pie

John Ota Serves up Delicious Matzo Balls in Chicken Soup

March 11, 2020

This delicious chicken soup with matzo balls from the Tenement Kitchen in New York City appears in John Ota’s book: The Kitchen
listen to the podcast

Ingredients: A hunger for knowledge; boundless energy and enthusiasm; a love of architecture and design; a passion for cooking and for good food. Read more…

Filed Under: Breakfast, Chefs, Chicken, Chicken, Cookbooks, Healing power of food, Jewish Chicken Soup, Julia Child, Matzoh Balls, Recipe, scrambled eggs, Soup Tagged With: chicken soup, John Ota, Julia Child's Scrambled Eggs, matzo balls, recipe, The Kitchen

Celebrate The Cookbook Store’s 30th Year with a Vintage Classic: Chicken Marbella

April 9, 2013

Alison Fryer, manager of The Cookbook Store (left) and Even Better Chicken Marbella (right)
Alison Fryer, manager of The Cookbook Store (left) and Chicken Marbella (right)

I have it in front of me: The original Silver Palate Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins first published by Workman in 1979. Read more…

Filed Under: Chicken, Cookbooks, Recipe Tagged With: baby boom generation, chicken marbella, cookbook store, julee rosso, mid 1970s, silver palate cookbook

Jewish Penicillin: Chicken Soup Soothes both Body and Soul

January 14, 2013

chicken soup

chicken soup

This was written in 2013. My mother died, age 96, at her flat in NW London (UK) in April, 2018. I still make her food. RIP dear Mum and Dad.

My Jewishness is fraught with complexities and contradictions.

Raised without any religion in the North London suburb of Finchley in post-war Britain, it was white-bread, white-collar and Anglo-Saxon all the way. I’ve noted on recent visits, it’s not the case today. Finchley is a neighbourhood where kebab shops, curry houses and the Tally Ho! pub rub shoulders in a multicultural mix.

My late father Mel Schachter grew up poor and tough on the mean streets of Montreal’s Jewish ghetto to become “my son, the doctor” – a profession he once said he chose because “it was the best racket going.” Read more…

Filed Under: Bonnie Stern, Chicken, Jewish, Jewish Chicken Soup, Joanne Kates, Matzoh Balls, Recipe Tagged With: Jewish Chicken Soup, Jewishness, Matzoh Balls

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

March 3, 2012

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…

Filed Under: Chicken, Cookbooks, New York City, Roger Smith Cookbook Conference, Shove-it-in-the-Oven Chicken Tagged With: cookbook, New York City, roger smith hotel

Sleuthing Chicken (Mc)Nuggets and Dr. Robert Baker in New York State

August 21, 2011

Here is a link to my audio podcast “Nugget Man” on SoundCloud.

Dr. Robert C. Baker: The Edison of Poultry

Recently, Ross and I mulled over ideas of where to take a much-needed one-week vacation.

In May, we’d been to London (U.K.) to visit my mum – a fantastic two weeks spent wandering, sleuthing and noshing our way around the wondrous city where I spent formative years. (See previous blogs for more.) Read more…

Filed Under: Barbecue Chicken Recipe, Chicken, Chicken, Dr. Robert Baker, Ithaca, Recipe, Sleuthing Tagged With: Chicken, Chicken Recipe, Cornell Chicken, Cornell University, Dr. Robert Baker, Food Science, Ithaca, Poultry Science, Robert Baker

Community Cooking with “A Pinch of This”

April 25, 2010


This article appeared in the Toronto Star on September 19, 2009. The project yielded a cookbook called “A Pinch of This.” Buy it here.

Geanie Sarjue lifts the lid on a big saucepan in which water is bubbling away on the sturdy commercial stove. Amid puffs of steam, the faces of five mackerel stare up at us. Read more…

Filed Under: Chicken, Recipe Tagged With: Jerk Chicken Recipe, spadina, toronto community foundation

Screen Cuisine

January 13, 2009

This article appeared in the Toronto Star on December 28,2008.

Home for the holidays? ‘Tis the perfect time for relaxing between festivities to savour some screen cuisine.

Happily, there’s no shortage of tasty offerings on several channels. Read more…

Filed Under: Chefs, Chicken, Chicken, Recipe Tagged With: 100 Mile Diet, BBC, British, Deborah Reid, food network, Food TV, gordon ramsay, Hell's Kitchen, holidays, Kitchen Nightmare, recipe, roast chicken, Stratford, toronto star

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Marion Kane, Food Sleuth®

Marion Kane, Food Sleuth®

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Recent Blog Posts

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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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