The Dog's Breakfast

Somehow, this year is flying by, and many things have been put on the back burner while the full-on craziness of life has taken centre stage. Now with summer having taken its final curtain call, a more predictable pace of life is returning, and we’re starting to catch up on the lists of things that have been neglected over the past several months.

Case in point: David has had the Smitten Kitchen’s butternut squash and caramelized onion galette recipe bookmarked for quite some time. Also, a while back, we picked up a copy of William Sonoma’s “Cooking From the Farmer’s Market”, which contained a similar recipe. Since squash season is now upon us, and the farmer’s market is overflowing with squash of all kinds, we decided to cross this one off the to-do list, and make a hybrid creation of squash, caramelized onion, and chorizo in a simple pastry crust. » Read the rest of this entry «

Over the past two months, we’ve gone through a major kitchen edit. It started off as an inventory of Mason jars to prepare for canning, and ended in a thrilling purge. We threw out bags of ancient herbs, and consolidated Rob’s gazillion salts on a single, organized shelf. Two of the things we discovered in the process were A: we’re out of Dean and Deluca’s Herbes de Provence, and B: our oven has a drying function. So we decided to make our own.

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We are always looking for new ways to use chiles. A few years ago, we were both the kind of person who says – I like the flavour of spicy food, but not the heat. (Pff.) This view was somewhat reinforced by a vacation in Thailand, where we had green curries and green papaya salads whose spiciness seemed beyond human comprehension.

I think it was a Bobby Flay cookbook that got us started using chiles, and understanding how heat and flavour are really just different aspects of one and the same thing. Our tolerance for heat now is quite high, without being in the daredevil range. We’ve taken hour-long detours on road trips to visit specialty chile stores, and the pantry is stocked with a dozen or so different kinds. » Read the rest of this entry «

The end of summer arrived in our house like a dinner guest who shows up 20 minutes early, just as you’re getting dressed. Hi! Come on in! We had vague plans to do tomatoes, since we’ve spent the past two winters enjoying a home-canned supply, but were starting to doubt we’d have the time.

Then a couple of weeks ago, a friend of a friend called to say she had a surplus of crabapples, and would we like any? We were expecting a little basket of them, and got a 5-gallon pail. » Read the rest of this entry «

You can see the seasons in cloud formations. Summer’s distinctly popcorn-shaped clouds have given way to autumnal, wispy tendrils of white that look like smudges on a chalkboard, or the blur of a photograph of something moving quickly, but frozen in time. Like the clouds in the sky, fall also brings its share of foods that are not freshly available at any other time of year.

I finally managed to make the cherry pie I’ve been wanting to do all summer. I was waiting for the ripest, most locally grown cherries I could find. Ontario cherries have been elusive this year. Perhaps they haven’t yet reached their peak. But last week, on a trip to the Jean Talon market here in Montreal, I at least managed to find cherries grown in Canada, even if they did come all the way from BC. » Read the rest of this entry «

We’re back, with heartfelt thanks to readers and fellow bloggers who have written to say – WTF?. After two years of blogging, the process of posting started getting unwieldy. The blog was nagging us to spend more time in the kitchen, more money on accessories, more time on photo retouching, etc. We needed to take a break, and restore weekends to a more natural purpose.

So we’re taking another stab at it, hoping that we’ll succeed in making the blog a more spontaneous and casual expression of what we want our food and our time in the kitchen to be: vital, simple, inspired. With the toughest of these three being simple. It’s harder than we thought. But in late summer, after being reminded by feasts with friends and family why we started blogging in the first place, it seems selfish not to try sharing. Here are some highlights from an especially delicious summer.

The squirrels on our balcony have enjoyed chewing through the stems of our rainbow chard all summer long. We’ve tried toothpicks, mothballs, blood meal, and sicking our dog Max on them, all in vain. They are hellbent on systematic destruction. One evening last summer we potted some miniature roses and the next morning, each of the blossoms had been carefully bitten off. It’s a problem amongst all of our neighbours. We joke about poisoning the squirrels and then someone will say “Et ensuite nous allons commencer à tirer sur les oiseaux? Voyons.” (And next we start shooting the birds? Come on.) » Read the rest of this entry «

My obsession with flan can be traced back to a trip we took to Rio de Janeiro several years ago. We were ordering a morning juice at one of the city’s ubiquitous juice stands when I looked down into the window under the counter and saw a delicious flan sitting there, calling out to me. I had never tasted flan, but knew that I loved it.

Flan is popular all over Latin America, but it actually originated in Europe. European farmers would mix any extra eggs they had on hand with cream to make the custardy confection we call flan today. Mexico is especially well-known for its flan, with dozens of varieties that vary from one region to another. » Read the rest of this entry «

We have more or less refused to come back from our vacation in Mexico, and are obsessed with recreating the flavours we discovered there. This lobster double feature is something that appealed to us for many reasons: the cold/hot thing, the sweet/savoury thing, and naturally the whole weird idea of lobster ice cream. (See our bourbon and cigar ice cream, inspired by last year’s escape to Cuba.)

We’ve never done a bisque before, and were interested to discover how the technique makes use of the whole beast, antenna-to-tail. Nothing is wasted. The lobster’s very essence is extracted. Luxuriance and simplicity. Two of our favourite things. » Read the rest of this entry «

We’ve just experienced the thrill of having the Mexico of our imaginations (based mostly on cartoons) finally replaced by the real, living, fire-breathing thing. Our week under the sun of Puerto Vallarta felt much like visiting the palace of a dazzling Aztec demon who devours raw human hearts, has boiling tequila for blood, and just won’t stop dancing. Santa Maria ! » Read the rest of this entry «

This is killer. And this is your chance to use that really fantastic salt you got as a gift this year, but haven’t known what to do with. You know, the orange volcanic one, or the one you have to shave, or the one that looks like sparkling sequins. Because this is all about the salt.

We spotted this David Lebovitz recipe on his blog several years ago. We hated him for living in Paris and having the nerve to complain about winter there (try winter in Montréal), but then we made this candy. Butter, sugar, nuts, chocolate, vanilla, baking soda, salt, and 20 minutes later, heaven. » Read the rest of this entry «