The Locavore

I’m recovering this morning from a spectacular feast shared with friends last night. On the menu: duck, cabbage cooked with fish sauce (a delicious way to  enjoy any bitter-tasting brassica–just don’t forget to add sugar and water), turban squash, potatoes from my dad’s garden, chestnut soup and a lovely dessert concocted by my husband that [...]

I made a batch of mint jelly today, just like my grandmother used to do. There was nothing tastier than her mint jelly with lamb, peas and some mashed potatoes she’d serve in her British royalty tea-cup lined dining room. My first attempt went well; the colour is a lovely, glowing chartreuse and the taste [...]

Last night my friend Zoe was visiting from NYC–the same night the local, sustainably grown peaches arrived that my sister and I planned to can. Instead of yacking around the kitchen table sipping mint tea, the three of us got to work. As soon as the kids were in bed, we put the pots of [...]

I met up with food writer Margaret Webb at the Riverdale Farmers’ Market last night and was thinking out loud about what I would make for dinner: “Oh I know. We’ll have the turkey and duck eggs,” I said.
“Just an ordinary Tuesday night dinner at your house?” she mused.
Not at all ordinary, that’s for sure. [...]

I’ve been running up and down the stairs a lot this afternoon–I’m making dulce de leche for the first time and am trying to watch the pot and the computer screen at the same time.
This is not only pure, dulce de leche (milk, sugar, baking soda, recipe to follow) without the corn syrup that is [...]

The news just came in that the Ontario Municipal Board turned down SmartCentres’ application for a 700,000 square food complex in the industrial lands between Eastern and Lakeshore Blvd.
This is fantastic news.
Instead of acres of retail (it was likely to be Walmart) and a desert of parking, why not clean up the soil and start [...]

When the lease ran out at Monforte Dairy’s cheese-making facility in Stratford, Ontario, cheese-mistress Ruth Klahsen came up with a revolutionary idea. Rather than trying to finance a new dairy by raising money the old fashioned way, she would launch what is likely the first-ever cheese CSA in Canada. She is asking her eating-public to buy shares in cheese [...]

Just got a comment from a reader in the UK, I believe, who suggests that the little red currant stems could be strained off after cooking, rather than the time consuming process of picking them off the raw berries by hand.
Has anyone ever boiled red currants with their stems? Does it change the flavour? I’d love [...]

After posting about how we should embrace the red currant, I went downstairs and made some red currant mousse. It turned out to be quite pink and quite good–a very unusual taste of tartness and tang, sweet and perfumy.
Here’s what I did:
I cooked the red currants with some sugar for about 15 minutes. When they [...]

I’ve just looked at my favourite recipe website, www.epicurious.com, and found 99 red currant recipes (but the fruit plays such a minor role in 90 per cent of them that their name isn’t even in the title). The vast majority of these recipes (most, if not all) involve red currant glaze, jelly or jam. Except for one [...]