plum tart

I have her Fat and Bones books as well. Thanks for letting us know about the new one. It should be just as interesting as the first two.

We SO miss the Copenhagen Room. We kept a large jar where we put our change so we could afford a meal there. So many memories of birthdays and anniversaries and just special days. And when the chef opened Tastefully Done on Elm Street we went there until even it closed. We went to Tastefully Done many times until it closed. I do miss it. I have to make my own open face sandwiches now. According to my uncle, the chef had another restaurant after he closed Tastefully Done. I don't remember the name but it served French food. Apparently the food was good but the location was poor. So sad.

I own As Always Julia and look forward to reading it shortly. At the moment I am reading Eat Memory edited by Amanda Hesser. It is a collection of food essays (originally published in the New York Times, I believe) by contemporary authors like Anne Patchett. I am enjoying it very much - some pieces are savagely funny and others, are very moving. All the essays are very well written, an additional treat. The book isn't new; I've owned it for a while but it was buried. I recommend it highly.

The late Richard Sax, author of Classic Home Desserts quite often sourced heirloom recipes for the desserts he included in his cookbook. He includes a recipe for Lemon Pudding Cake provided by Ginger Walsh of Nashville but he also provides a recipe for the same dated 1882-1893 from Mrs.Henry W. Darling of Schenectady, New York. Called a Sponge Pudding I would like to reproduce this charming recipe here so that egulleteers can have a sense of how the dish was made way over 100 years ago. Put in a kettle of water on the stove, or in a rice cooker, 1 pint of milk, add 2 ounces of flour made smooth with cold milk, 2ounces sugar (and) 2ounces butter. Let it cook 5 minutes stirring the while. Take from the stove and let cool. (Add) the yolks of 6 eggs and stir in when partly cold. Lastly add the whites beaten nice, flavor to taste, set in pan of water and bake one hour. Serve with hard or wine sauce. I think it is wonderful that this recipe has survived and flourished and that chefs and cooks continue to transform in as tarts and so forth as described by djee.

Restaurants like La Crepe Bretonne in Montreal where you could get all manner of authentic savory and sweet crepes from noon until late in the evening. Greek restaurants where you could go into the kitchen and point to what you wanted to eat that night. There were a number of these restaurants in Montreal and Toronto but they disappeared for fancier, not necessarily better joints. The Copenhagen Room in Toronto where there was an endless choice of perfect Danish open face sandwiches as well as delicious authentic Danish pastries. I used to go quite often on my own and when my Danish mother came to town we would have a blowout - huge platters of open face sandwiches, acquavit encased in ice, and Tuborg. The Courtyard Cafe at the Windsor Arms in Toronto which served wonderful terrines, and galantines for lunch and wonderful fruit ices for dessert. I was particularly addicted to vacherin glace -homemade vanilla ice cream, raspberry ice with almond and whipped cream on a meringue. I had that dessert once a week for my entire pregnancy. Vintage French wines, burgundies in particular (eg. Clos des Mouches, Clos de Tarte, Chateau Margaux, Ygrec) for between $12 and $35 a bottle. This was obviously before wine became a big deal. I could go on and on.

My father was a hunter when I grew up in the interior of BC and I agree, there is nothing like the taste of fresh game. I was particularly fond of partridge. Pheasant was good too but I still dream about eating wild partridge cooked by my mother in a wine sauce in front of the fireplace. Nothing since then can match that particular meal. When I lived in Montreal, we were able to get a fresh live hare from a market on Rue St. Laurent. It had feasted on juniper berries and all sort of other wild things. I prepared following a haesenpheffer recipe (spelling may not be right) and it was delicious too. Farmed game just doesn't have the flavour that wild game has.

I just made meatloaf and at least twice a year make salisbury steak with mashed potatoes. My diner style grilled cheese is made with processed cheese slices (and served with a slice of dill pickle )as is what I call my greasy spoon omelet which is served with home fries, toast and store bought jam (as opposed to my homemade jam.)

My fave are squab cooked according to the Zuni Cafe Cookbook recipe. I have tried other recipes - Italian, Asian etc but they all overcook them. The Zuni Cafe method is delish!!!

Historically, the "pudding cake" recipes and nomenclature to which I am referring were made by home cooks in the US and Canada long before the invention of the cake mix or jello puddings. They have been around for a long time. I know my mother's recipe dates back to 1912. I have found the recipe and the name in many old cookbooks. I think these would predate those that you are referring to in the photograph.

Today I made cherry cobbler - a comforting dessert for a winter's day. I froze the sour cherries last summer so pitting them was a chilly process. I kept freezing my fingers. I made the cobbler dough from Chez Panisse Desserts. The cobbler is crisp on top and then soft and buttery beneath the crust. Then there are the cherries and lots of juice. Yumm I guess I'm thinking of summer stuck in this cold Ontario winter.

Claudio Aprile (Colborne Lane) is a wonderful chef. I have worshipped his food for years. He opened a second restaurant this spring called Origin which is more a tapas place which is getting a lot of press. He uses molecular gastronomy techniques there as well. So you have two opportunities with Aprile. I wouldn't overlook Lucien however. Scot Woods is an excellent chef who prepares excellent cuisine with well sourced organic produce, fish, poultry and meat. He also employs molecular gastronomy with a lot of his dishes. Lucien has been rated one of the top restaurants in Canada.

It's something I haven't made myself, but bread dumplings came to mind for me too (or bread gnocchi)! Do you have a specific recipe for these you're willing to share? Bread dumplings were a favourite of mine growing up, but they always came from a packet. Other things I like: Queen of Puddings - the nice thing about it is that it changes character depending on the flavour of jam you're using. Bread sauce - classic accompaniment to roast chicken, although I've not made it myself, it really is delicious. French Toast/Pain Perdu - I think it needs stale bread to be its best, and the best thing is you can do it with almost any kind of stale bread - there's even a german version using rye bread. Leftover Pannetone makes a nice holiday version, but my favourite was using italian bread for a savoury french toast sauteed in olive oil and served with roasted tomatoes & wilted spinach. I've always wanted to make Queen of Puddings. Now I have an excuse. I had Pain Perdue with seared foie gras with poached pears and a maple syrup reduction, on Sunday last - it was delicious. I will dig up the bread dumpling recipe. It is from Time Life Foods of the World Austria if I recall. They are especially delicious with roast goose and duck!

I have read "The Lost Chinese Chef" (in fact I own it) and I enjoyed it very much although not as much as Fuschia Dunlop's memoir. There are a number of Chinese mystery writers who include Chinese meals and snacks in their mysteries. These aren't food mysteries but the food is always interesting and makes me hungry. If you are interested I can list them (I am at the office and the books are at home) Donna Leon does the same thing in her Brunetti mysteries set in Venice. Brunetti's wife cooks delectable meals and Brunetti wanders through venice snacking on tremazzini and pastries. Donna Leon finally had to publish a cookbook called Brunetti's cookbook because her readers were demanding recipes. It is a gorgeous cookbook full of all the meals that Paola and other characters prepared. She has included the relevant food descriptions from each mystery so you can revisit the meal. Her food descriptions are wonderful pasta, risotto, branzino, orato etc etc- I read them repeatedly and salivate. I do intend to cook some of the dishes myself in honour of Brunetti. Apparently when Donna Leon started writing the mysteries she included meals because they are such an important part of Italian life. However, now her readers expect her descriptions of Paola cooking and the family eating in each new novel.

I love South Wind Through the Kitchen. It is sitting on the shelf above my desk and has been read many times, In fact it represents my favourite kind of food writing - beautiful writing, beautiful real food, prepared, enjoyed and reflected upon with pleasure. And these are stories where the enormous egos of contemporary food writing are absent. Lovely. Thank you for reminding me.

Warm goat's milk - straight from the goat. I read about how delicious it was in Heidi as a child and thought it would be wonderful to try. Well I gagged and couldn't drink it. So much for food descriptions in literature. I still can't face but now I avoid the opportunity. Goat cheese is fine. Also, powdered milk, condensed milk, any Kraft ersatz powdered cheese and regretfully UNI. I have tried to be a sophisticated eater but no, my stomach churns at the mere sight of UNI! Also that hair moss that is served for Chinese New Year. It looks like a man's hairpiece on the serving dish and has the texture of a brillo pad. I have also not taken to fresh broad beans in the way Alice Waters would approve. I have grown them myself, and peeled them and eaten them raw and cooked and while they are fine, they don't inspire the ecstasies that I have read in menus and cookbooks. I will eat pretty much everything else.