Pears and ginger go swimmingly together.

Ginger and chocolate is divine.

Pear and ginger AND chocolate all packed into a buttery, flaky scone? I’d tell you how good it is but my mouf is full. Continue Reading »

Hey, guess what? I’m representing Canada in an international Mushroom Masters competition! Exciting, eh?

I like mushrooms because:

-they add umami to a dish, which is the savoury fifth taste, usually characteristic of meat (the other tastes are sweet, salty, bitter and sour).

-they are the only item in the produce aisle with vitamin D.

-they can be an effective substitute for meats thanks to their hearty texture.

-they are a source of selenium and ergothionene, antioxidants that play a role in immunity.

-they are incredibly versatile. I love them with Asian flavours in soups or stir-fries, smothered in rich tomato sauce on pizza or pasta, loaded with garlic and white wine and stuffed into ravioli or piled onto a steak, as a filling for quiches or tarts… the options are endless. -

When challenged with the task of creating a breakfast recipe, I dove straight to softly poached eggs and rich hollandaise sauce. I think the roasted meaty portobello mushroom is a perfect stand-in for the english muffin in eggs benny.

I was right – it was incredible. Continue Reading »

Homemade granola; not just for hippies.

Homemade granola is one of those things that is a world apart from anything you can buy in the store. Lightly sweetened chewy oats clustered with toasted nuts and plump dried fruit is what I’m talking about. Compare that to the over-sweet, pale clumps with a taste slightly reminiscent of the box they were packed in, and you’ll never go back.

Layer it with a good (read: not nonfat) plain yogurt and fresh fruit, and you’ve got a breakfast that will have you dancing out of bed and into the kitchen when your alarm goes off. Okay, maybe that’s a lofty promise. But I do promise it will be way more exciting than cheerios.

It’s a great weekend project. Not that it can’t be done on a weeknight. See, the best part about homemade granola (besides eating it) is, it really only takes about 5 minutes of hands-on time. Toss the oats and nuts together with a syrup made of melted butter, sugar and honey. Spread on a baking sheet. Put in a low-heat oven and give it a shake every 15 minutes or so. That’s it.

In theory, homemade granola will keep for a couple weeks. In theory. I have never experienced it lasting that long.

Because it gets eaten. Er… I don’t think I had to clarify that. Continue Reading »

Liege waffles were probably the thing that seduced me most about Belgium. The smell, primarily. That glorious aroma of hot, yeasty waffles caramelizing on heavy iron grills at every corner. I remember my first one ever. I followed my nose like a pig on a truffle. I was served a piping hot Liege waffle in a little waxed paper square and I was a changed woman.

These are not waffles like we are accustomed to in North America – which are basically pancakes cooked in a waffle iron. No, Liege waffles are magical.

They are dense and quite bread-y; thick and chewy and studded with pearl sugar. Pearl sugar which gets pressed into the deep waffle pockets by a blazing hot, heavy iron waffle press – caramelizing it into pure magic. Continue Reading »

I went to San Francisco this weekend! I ate. I shopped. I walked. I ate. I walked. I ate. I shopped some more… My wallet came back lighter, my nose came back frecklier, and my calves came back stronger (sweet lord, no one gave me adequate warning about those hills). It was lovely.

It started beautifully on the plane ride, when I was seated next to a buxom elderly lady with a thick Eastern European accent. She spent the first five minutes of our flight jabbing impatiently at the in-flight entertainment system with her thick, crooked fingers; nose to screen, eyes squinted, muttering in what I guessed was Polish. I cheerfully helped her navigate back out of the French pop music radio channel. Then she politely informed me that’s what she had wanted. Oops.

She told me she had lived in Belgium and that’s where she had learned French. I told her I had lived in Belgium and had learned French, too! Instant friendship. The rest of the flight, we gabbed back and forth in our imperfect second languages, rolling our R’s luxuriously and sounding quite glamourous, as we exchanged stories about our lives. She was 85 years old. Had been imprisoned at 19, was a refugee at 21, and later became a professor of sociology teaching in French, her third language. Wowza.

Continue Reading »