Back in 2010, Tomiko and I spent all of April visiting our high school friend in Tokyo. Her mom had just left a day before we arrived, and she had prepared oden, a Japanese stew, for our first dinner. Oden is a stew that consists of a dashi-based broth and contains a variety of ingredients, such […]
potato
Duck Fat Potatoes
Ducks are waterfowl and capable of flying, which in turn means they have a lot of fat on their bodies. Duck fat itself has a somewhat mealy texture and a delicious, umami, savoury flavour. It has a high smoke point, which means it doesn’t burn easily, so it’s great for frying foods like potatoes, asparagus, […]
Thyme Flavoured Salt
Michael Stadtländer is a German chef who set up an eccentric farm-restaurant in rural Ontario. On Stadtländer’s sprawling property, Eigensinn Farm, his team grows the organic produce and raises the free-range pigs, sheep, rabbit, goat, and poultry for his restaurant at the farmhouse. He also has beehives for honey, a stand of sugar maples for maple syrup, and he combs […]
Summertime is…Visiting a Pick-Your-Own Farm!
When we were kids and still living in Canada, our mom would take us to pick-your-own farms. I loved gorging on fresh berries still warm from the sun. Then during summers in Germany, we would pick cherries from our uncle’s tree, wild boysenberries in the hedgerows, and wild yellow plums in the fields. On a […]