Cook the Book: Salt Cod and Potato Casserole

  In a previous post, I reviewed one of the books that made me yearn for the world to stop for like, hum, a year (?) just so I could cook my days away: Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America by Maricel E. Presilla. The definitive, encyclopedic resource for latin food lovers, it [...]

Book review: Gran Cocina Latina (with recipes!)

    Disclosure: A shortened review of this book was submitted to Food52 as part of its “Community Picks” Contest. I didn’t win, but this reviewer did. Couldn’t have said it better myself. My hometown of Montreal is the furthest thing imaginable from a Latin American food mecca. Our summer is too short to grow [...]

Québec is cooking: Hearty soups with a twist!

  Should you take a trip down memory line and visit this blog’s archive, you will discover quite a few cream of vegetable soups, courtesy of my picky eaters. Soup has long been a necessary means to an end around these parts as I try to entice kiddo to eat his vegetables. Add a chunk [...]

My new cookbook is here!

  It is finally here. The second edition of my À la bonne franquette book has landed at last, updated and expanded to 120, count’em, 120 Québec chefs in all!     Regular readers of this blog may remember that, in 2010, I published the first À la bonne franquette with the help of 80 [...]

Healthy cooking: The Montreal Heart Institute Cookbook

It was the kind of challenge I relish: convince 10 of Quebec’s top chefs to play the healthy card by creating gourmet recipes for the Montreal Heart Institute and the nutritionists at its EPIC Centre. A unique cookbook that could also serve to raise funds for the Institute’s well-respected and much-needed Foundation.     The [...]

Gift Idea: My go-to maple syrup cookbook

Before the gargantuan Cabane PDC by Montréal chef Martin Picard, there was Anne Fortin’s Cooking with Québec maple syrup. A friend of mine, Anne is the grande dame of Jean-Talon Market where she owns the food bookstore Librairie gourmande, AKA Montreal chef-and-foodie central. While I have every intention of cooking from the Pied de cochon [...]

iPad: French cooking apps anyone?

    On the French side of this blog, a new post presents some of the very few French apps available to foodies. If you read French, you may want to switch over. If you think you’re missing something by not reading the language though, don’t worry. Although French gastronomy remains one of the world’s [...]

Québec is cooking: Scrumptious Turkish meze & salsa

  Own-up time: I had multiple posts planned to launch the new year. I wanted to talk to you about eggs, French toast, raisin bread and, best of all, my fave iPad apps (thanks to Monsieur for the Christmas present). Then, family issues got in the way. Forgive me for not expounding, I’m a little [...]

Québec is cooking: Octopus Salad

Our family has a thing for octopus. As in we love it, tenderly so. In a salad or a stirfry, roasted on the barbecue, name it, one look at those tentacles and we are primed for a group hug. From the Sichuan Octopus at Chinatown’s Chuan Xiang Qing (top photograph but maybe closed?) to the [...]

Québec is cooking: Su, the Turkish cuisine of Fisun Ercan (with recipes!)

Su, La cuisine turque de Fisun Ercan60 recettes de mezePublisher: Éditions TrécarréPublished Fall 2011 27,95 $ Newly published, you will find it on Amazon. In French only. __________________________________________________________   >>>Why meze?   For this 1st post of 2012, how about we look back at the Christmas Eve dinner that was served at our house? Since [...]

Québec is cooking: Thai Pumpkin Soup

People often ask what’s my favourite cuisine. Do I prefer Indian, Greek or Mexican food? Could I live without curry, feta cheese or avocado? Truth is, I could never choose. When in Mexico, I will suddently crave the saltiness of soy sauce or the chewiness of bagel, even though I love flank steak smothered in [...]

Québec is cooking: Market Chronicles by Susan Semenak (with recipe!)

Market Chronicles:Stories & Recipes from Montreal’s Marché Jean TalonÉditions CardinalPublished: Fall 2011$39.95 Newly published, you can find it everywhere and on Amazon.ca in French only (!). For an English version, ask a local bookstore or friend. __________________________ Why this book? • For once, I can present to my English readers a Québec cookbook in their [...]

Québec is cooking: Lemon-mustard roasted cauliflower

I still remember when my son would eat anything you put on his plate, a 2 year-old on a holy quest for the grail of new taste sensations.Then, he entered the picky years and everything pretty much screeched to a halt. Although he is slowly outgrowing his NO period, you should see the shocked look [...]

Québec is cooking: Beef and Vegetable Stew with Beer

If you read this blog regularly, then you know that I live with two picky eaters: my son and his dad. One is 5 years old, the other 42. Call it genetics or bad luck, they can both get pretty stubborn about what they will or won’t agree to even taste. As a foodie mom [...]

Québec is cooking: Old-fashioned cabbage rolls

  Les recettes secrètes de nos mères 200 mets réconfortants qui nous rappellent notre enfance Magazine Coup de Pouce/Les Éditions Transcontinental Published: Fall 2011 $29.95 In the French section of this blog, I review the newest cookbook by magazine Coup de Pouce devoted to family homecooking Québec-style. Beyond the iconic dishes of our past, such [...]

Canadian Cookbook Awards: À la bonne franquette wins the Silver!

Last Monday November 7, the 2011 Canadian Culinary Book Awards were held in Toronto. Laid low by my first-ever asthma attack (!), I learned that my book À la bonne franquette had won a silver medal in the Canadian Culinary Culture Award from my bed in a downtown Toronto hotel. The kind of news that [...]

Christmas gifts: All wine all the time

I usually write this blog in both English and French for my readers in and out of Québec. Since this post presents Christmas gift ideas that are Québécois in nature, the full-length list of recommendations can be found on the French side. For English readers, I have limited my list to bubblies that one could [...]

Québec is cooking: Chicken Tajine with Blue Hubbard squash, preserved lemon and olives

Just in time for that week-end cooking spree because you wisely (!) wish to capitalize on squash season, here’s the 3rd recipe excerpted from the new Québec cookbook Sous le charme des courges et des citrouilles (“Charmed by squash and pumpkin”) by Chatelaine food writer Louise Gagnon. I reviewed it here, in French only, in [...]

Québec is cooking: Butternut Mac’n Cheese

When asked, my cheese-phobic 5 year-old usually identifies Mac’n Cheese as his favourite dish. I know he loved the version served at his daycare, responsible among other things for introducing him to ketchup and grilled cheese made in the oven… So whenever I make Mac’n Cheese, he looks completely delighted, until he takes a bite. [...]

Québec is cooking: Butternut squash lasagna

Sous le charme des courges et des citrouilles Louise Gagnon Les Éditions de l’homme Published: Fall 2011 Cost: $34.95 Newly published, you can find it in library and on Amazon.ca. ______________ On the French side of this blog, I review this new Québec cookbook devoted to everything squash and pumpkin. I give it a thumbs-up. [...]

My library: The cookbooks I buy (Part 4)

Finally, the last installment! If by now you think I must be crazy to buy so many cookbooks, you’re not alone. Writing these posts has made me realize I might, just might, be overdoing it some. This is the part where I hope Monsieur is not following my blog too closely or we might have [...]

My library: The cookbooks I buy (Part 3)

  Here is the third post devoted to the cookbooks that marked my the last year. Yep, if you’re counting, I bought and/or received almost 50 books in total, i.e. nearly one book a week. I am not oblivious to the fact that, in many captions, I confessed to not having cooked any of the [...]

My library: The cookbooks I buy (Part 2)

In a recent post, I presented some of the cookbooks I bought in the last year, for those of you who keep asking me for buying advice. That is not to say I own every worthy publication out there, far from it even. But a girl’s gotta put a stop somewhere. Among the books old [...]

My library: The cookbooks I buy (Part 1)

I’m often asked to recommend a favourite cookbook and I struggle invariably with the answer. What I like, you may not. See, I usually look for cookbooks with a different point of view. I don’t buy a book because it may be full of tasty everyday recipes the way most people do. I buy it [...]

Québec is cooking: Apollo’s Chorizo cornbread

Corn on the cob boiled simply, smothered in butter and salt, has to be one of my favourite meals as a kid. Young, I spent all my summers in Vermont and can still remember when my father would load the trunk with heavy bags of fresh corn for the annual corn party. The corn would [...]

Québec is cooking: Apollo2 (with recipes)

  Apollo2 Improvisations culinaires signées Giovanni Les Éditions Transcontinental Published September 2011 $34.95 In the French side of my blog, I review this cookbook, which may or may not interest English readers. (By the way, I give it a thumbs-up.) Here you will find 2 of the recipes tested in judging the book. If you [...]

Québec is cooking: Vegetarian cookbook showdown

In the last year, multiple vegetarian cookbooks were published worldwide as more and more of us flirted with flexitarianism*. Quebec followed suit with at least 5 cookbooks that I can think of, 3 of which I bought. It’s not  surprising. Truth is, I was a vegetarian for 7 years before I met a hardened carnivore [...]

Quebec Cooking: Grilled skid with sausage stuffing

A few months ago, I sort of reviewed here a Quebec cookbook: Deux folles et un fouet by Jessica Barker and Rafaële Germain, that I quite liked. Why? Because the recipes are simple yet company-worthy, and quite tasty despite the fact they often require few ingredients.     I had given myself one guideline when [...]

Quebec is cooking: Cream & olive chicken

I must confess, Deux folles et un fouet (Two crazy women and a whisk), the cookbook from Rafaëlle Germain and Jessica Barker talked to me from the get-go. Unabashedly pink, pro-joy of life and addicted to fat and salt, it’s got a cool, friendly vibe. But let’s face it, everybody and her mother seems to [...]

Quebec is cooking: Chickpea Salad with Mint and Feta

The book is called Kuizto, a fund-raising initiative by Québec’s La Tablée des chefs which has for mission to feed needy families and teach food autonomy to future generations, most notably through cool chef workshops. I received the book from my own publisher, Éditions Transcontinental, who wanted me to provide some good publicity, given that [...]

Cookbook Contest: We have a winner!

Congratulations to Caroline Masson from Cuisine2.ca who won the À la bonne franquette cookbook. She owes one to her grand-mother who inspired her as a kid with her delicious spaghetti with sausage recipe… Sounds good to me.     Come back later this week since, with the contest over, I’m back to cooking cherished family [...]

Contest: Win a cookbook

Confession time: I am so bogged down with work that I have no time to cook, much less blog about it. So to keep my readers happy, how about I deliver on that Contest I promised you here a while back? Last October, my 4th book as a ghost writer of chef recipe collections came [...]

Québec is cooking: Eggplant caviar bruschetta

The Eggplant Saga inspired by Stefano Faita’s Entre cuisine et quincaillerie cookbook ends here with his Eggplant caviar bruschetta. In his book, the chef reveals that this recipe was first published in the March 2006 issue of dearly-departed Gourmet magazine devoted to the Montreal food scene. In his tips, Stefano Faita suggests that you serve [...]

Québec is cooking: Quickie ratatouille

Our family is ratatouille-obsessed from kid to dad. For my 4 year-old, Ratatouille is first and foremost a cute rat who, nothing there, cooks in a grand Paris restaurant. He has watched the movie so often that whenever he sees anything resembling the Eiffel Tower, say a church spire or power line tower, he squeals: [...]

Québec is cooking: Sundried tomato and roast garlic pesto

Recipe adapted from “Entre cuisine et quincaillerie” from Québec chef Stefano Faita Éditions Trécarré Published in 2007 $27.95 The book is sold out but, according to a Québec bookstore, it may be in reprint. _______________________ If I told you that, of all the Quebec cookbooks in my library, the one I’ve cooked from the most [...]

Québec is cooking: Crockpot Pulled Pork

The story reeks of déjà heard. You do a special grocery after work just to buy the required ingredients. Finicky as heck, you double check that the boneless shoulder roast weighs 3.5 lbs as dictated, no more, no less. Once home, it’s everybody out of the way cause YOU are cooking. You start by searing [...]

Québec is cooking: A 50-year-old meatloaf recipe!

It’s the Deluxe Edition printed in 1975. The only cookbook my mother owned, that and a Five Roses Flour spiral guide. It’s covered in plastic wrap like my old school books, most probably the victim of a back-to-school afternoon of textbook-covering frenzy that got out of hand. The title is an indicator of the times: [...]

Québec is cooking: Butternut mash with fried porcinis

After cooking Québec chef Jérôme Ferrer’s Celeriac-Butternut Millefeuille, from Les secrets des légumes, I was left with half a squash. The mother in me thought “If I leave that half-butternut in the fridge, I’ll lose it”, so I decided to cook a second squash recipe from the same book. (If you speak French, my review [...]

Quebec is cooking: The secrets of vegetables (recipe included!)

Québec is cooking: In my test kitchen

English blogs that test recipes for you are a dime a dozen. From Cookthebook.ca to Magazine Mondays Club and food blogs that “adapt” recipes from both books and magazines (think SmittenKitchen.com), many bloggers provide opinion, insight and recipes from recent publications. In Quebec, I have found no such equivalent. Yet we publish many cookbooks and [...]

My library: Nos 180 meilleures recettes à la mijoteuse (recipe follows!)

I’m not a Crockpot Diva. As a home-based freelancer I’m generally on hand to supervise whatever is simmering away on the stove. But I do have my faithful crockpot parked in the basement, which I take out for a spin once in a while. Or to save a near-death kielbasa like here. So when I [...]

My library: Around my French table

You’ve been cooking up a storm. Stained cookbook on the counter top, wooden spoon glued to hand, you followed every instruction to the letter, measured each ingredient as if your life depended on it, and dirtied every pot & pan in the house. You’re tired but proud. No longer hungry but eager to taste. You [...]