The Dog's Breakfast

This apple crisp is the kind of dessert you expect your grandmother to serve you in heaven. It’s deeply familiar, but has been elevated to the realm of the divine, thanks to the clever folks in the test kitchen at Cook’s Illustrated.

Ask for apples that will hold their shape when baked. No one likes a mushy apple.

We have a love/hate relationship with Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a monthly food magazine that puts dishes new and old through a rigorous test-kitchen process, and applies the principles of food science to produce a ‘best’ recipe. The catch is that their concept of best seldom also translates as ‘simple’. » Read the rest of this entry «

2010 will be our second tomato vintage, and we’re happy to report that this year’s canning experience was a lot more fun than our first one. Last year our tomatoes were suddenly ripe mid-week, and without knowing what we were getting into, we started canning at 5 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. We got through 36 pints.

It was a particularly tomatoey summer this year, with dozens of new varieties appearing at the markets, begging to be tasted. We spent a weekend in Prince Edward County with friends in August, and visited an organic farm that grows and sells 240 varieties of heirlooms. The farm’s produce is laid out for sale in a little roadside shack that uses the honour system – you take what you like and leave your money in a little box. » Read the rest of this entry «

Our memories of food at home seem most often linked to our mothers, or our grandmothers. Learning that yeast needs warm water, why you need to cook the flour in a sauce, and how to smell when things are done – this is all distinctly maternal wisdom.

But my father was a gardener, and I can’t taste a late-August field tomato without thinking of him thickly slicing our backyard bounty for our summer suppers. For about a month every year, there was a plate of tomatoes and a plate of cucumbers on the table nearly every night. You could eat as much of both as you liked. » Read the rest of this entry «

We’re crazy about Thai food. Its artful balance of spicy, sour, sweet, salty, tangy, crunchy, and yummy has us permanently hunting for new Thai recipes and restaurants. We always have Thai chiles in the freezer and often use them in spontaneous ways: our neighbour Krish had us doing chile shooters one night last winter. You bite off half a chile, knock it back with a slug of vodka, and then bite into a wedge of lime. Instant endorphins.

Like the chile shooters, this salad is not for the faint of heart. The baby octopus often twist and contort themselves when they hit the hot grill, and if you’ve never smelled fish sauce before, you’re in for an interesting surprise. » Read the rest of this entry «

You’ve got to love a recipe that can be served two ways. Here the honeyed, warm sunshine flavour of cantaloupe is highlighted with ginger and orange flower water in an incredibly delicious soup that takes all of three minutes to make.

You can also easily turn this soup into popsicles, but you’ll need to double the flavour highlights, because the colder something is, the harder it is to fully taste. (Have you ever noticed how an over-chilled wine begins to reveal its true character as it warms up?) » Read the rest of this entry «

Blueberries are early this year, as were strawberries, raspberries, and just about everything else. The harvest is two weeks early, thanks to a early start to what has been, so far, an exceptionally splendid summer in Québec. The past two summers have been cold and rainy, so this year’s bounty of sunshine and popcorn clouds has been warmly welcome.

It’s really inspired our cooking. This year has been our first real marathon of seasonal summer suppers: fried squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and basil, gazpacho, cantaloupe soup, corn this and corn that – we can’t cook enough of what’s fresh. » Read the rest of this entry «

We usually think of beets as winter vegetables, and often roast them with other root vegetables as an accompaniment to roast chicken or beef. They evoke childhood memories for the both of us – David’s family served home-pickled beets with nearly every Sunday dinner and Rob’s favourite winter soup is borscht. But the market is full of young beets of several irresistible colours at the moment, so we decided to try a summer treatment.

Warm beet salad with goat cheese and herbs

The characteristic earthy flavour of beets comes from a high mineral content – which makes them very nourishing. The Medieval law of correspondences classifies these ancient roots as blood fortifiers because of their red colour, and they are indeed a terrific source of iron. » Read the rest of this entry «

We’ve spent several blissful summer holidays over the past five years with friends in Ogunquit, Maine. One of the highlights of the yearly trip are the rapturous hours we spend at the Stonewall Kitchen flagship store, lunching on lobster rolls and debating how much jam we’re willing to smuggle back across the border.

The Stonewall Kitchen flagship store in York, Maine.

This year we had the incredible opportunity of spending a little time with the Stonewall boys themselves. It’s impossible not be inspired by Jim and Jonathan, who got started by selling home-made jams and vinegars at their local farmer’s market, and who are now manufacturing 70,000 jars of jam a day.

Actual jar size may not be as shown. Photo courtesy of Stonewall Kitchen.

They treated us to a behind-the-scenes tour of their factory, cooking school and photo studio, and talked to us a little bit about cooking, the evolution of the specialty food business, and being inspired by family traditions. » Read the rest of this entry «

Fresh, sweet corn is one of the best flavours summer has to offer, but it’s often too hot to boil a huge pot of water indoors, and let’s be honest – it can be somewhat inelegant to serve it on the cob. (Floss, anyone?)

Roasted and chilled corn soup topped with sour cream, cilantro and bacon.

This delicious cold soup is a great way around these two inconveniences. We tasted this at an outdoor cocktail earlier this summer hosted by Bombay Sapphire gin, and have waited until we could get our hands on some local corn before sharing. It’s dead-easy to put together, and makes a great starter for barbecues and picnics. » Read the rest of this entry «

More than almost any other type of cooking, grilling is a form of theatre. It can be a tricky performance for the person holding the tongs – trying to get everything finished at the same time, to varying degrees of done-ness, moving things closer and further away from that one really hot spot, and everyone asking how much longer?

grilled chocolate cake, with vanilla gelato and cherries flambé

Sometimes it doesn’t all come together as planned. Steaks get overcooked, chicken gets undercooked, or most of the onions fall through the cracks. But don’t worry. You have a surprise ending that will eclipse the minor imperfections in your performance: grilled dessert. » Read the rest of this entry «