I’ve always been confounded by food-loving vegetarians. How can you say you appreciate food when meat is such a central part of so many wonderful meals. I’m too often tempted to say ‘forget about the ethics of being omnivores and just try it!’ Whenever I have a well-cooked dal dish, however, I am forced to […] Read more…
The past couple weeks have been challenging but incredibly fulfilling. I have discovered the wonders of a professional kitchen and the many, many differences between cooking for family or friends and cooking for a paying customer. I have to say I’m not quite used to the hectic rythm of kitchen life. I wake up every […] Read more…
My most recent cook-book purchase (on the advice of fellow food-blogger Holybasil) is Andrea Nguyen’s superb ‘Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.’ It’s one of those rare cookbooks that you can read almost like a novel. She details the ordeals of her family leaving Saigon in 1975 and establishing a new life on the West Coast, and […] Read more…
For some reason, cooking Indian food has always proved an enigma to me. Even the cheapest, sketchiest takeout joints seem to serve up dishes that just sparkle with flavour and richness that I’ve found really tough to replicate in the kitchen. I used to secretly attribute the discrepancy to the fact that these cheap takeout […] Read more…
I recently came across a Jamie Oliver recipe called ‘Pumpkin Soup’ and got excited: I’d never used pumpkins for anything but roasted seeds, pies, and jack-o-lanterns and was curious about what a soup would taste like. Of course, to my mild disappointment, the British pumpkin is, apparently, nothing else but what we call squash over […] Read more…
I have been flipping through a new cooking book we borrowed from Oliver’s mother called World Vegetarian Classics. The book gives great insight on vegetarian cuisine around the world, and shows how each and every culture has embraced vegetarian cooking and made it an essential part of its culinary traditions. I am enjoying reading about […] Read more…