plum tart

I managed a Canadian bookstore located in the Halifax's Historic Properties. The bookstore was called A Pair of Trindles and it still might be there, located right next to the Bluenose. We were very keen to collect and sell regional and church cookbooks from all over Nova Scotia and we spent our Sundays, the only day the store was closed, driving around and collecting them. They were very popular, especially with tourists. We also ate the local specialties - fried Digby scallops, Annapolis Valley apples, and a tourtiere from the area where the Acadians had originally lived. There are several Nova Scotia dishes I fondly recall from our sojourn there. Some dishes were from restaurants and pubs, others were prepared by home cooks. I recall one restaurant serving sausage and sauerkraut with beer. The restaurant was also in the Historic Properties and was intended to emulate an historical period and historical fare. I don't recall the period but the restaurant featured long tables where different groups could sit together and chow down sausage and sauerkraut and meat pies. We ate lunch there on a regular basis, and I always had the sausage and sauerkraut. There were a couple of pubs that served great fried clams with coleslaw and of course beer. We ate at one or the other at least once or twice a week. I used to lunch often at a more upscale restaurant which served a delicious lobster stew - very simple, lobster, cream, butter, salt and pepper. We were friends with a local publisher of historic materials. His wife like to serve authentic Nova Scotia fare. I remember a delicious oatmeal bread served straight from the oven with a fine fresh fish chowder. I also recall dining poached Atlantic salmon with egg sauce and fiddleheads in the spring.

I never have that problem because, as embarrassing as this sounds, I think and dream of food almost 24/7 if I can get away with it, and I am always craving something. I used to be embarrassed by this obsession but now I just enjoy it. The trouble is, that I have a full time job and I commute a long way home so I only have the weekends to cook and by then I am in a cooking frenzy. Really, you have to prepare for these times - stock up on all sorts of exotic ingredients so you can cook whatever you want; visit your favourite butcher; browse through some cookbooks. I keep a "longing to eat" list and roll it through my head until I find the one I want. The list changes with the seasons, so I am busy with my fall list. Whatever you do, don't look in the fridge - that is your past, not your future.

I have always preferred the thinner quiche - the height of the tart pans whatever that is - one and a half inches. They are moist and there is a lovely balance between crust and filling. They look as beautiful as they taste. I find the thicker quiches too dry and too full of stuff! I like a minimalist quiche.

Around 2000 for me - I have been collecting cookbooks for over 40 years with no signs of stopping. I also collect food writing - about 500 of these. I don't know if these count or not. Some have recipes but that isn't the reason I collect them.

When I was young and flush and lived downtown in Montreal, whenever I had a cold I would head to one of the many Indian curry restaurants nearby and eat the hottest curry I could find - usually a vindaloo. The heat of the curry would restore my sense of smell and clear my head. I would then, relish the marvellous complexity of spices, and vinegar, and pepper and feel much improved. At other times when I was in bed with a cold, my Lebanese boyfriend would cook me his version of a hot and sour soup full of ginger and red pepper, chicken giblets, rich chicken stock, bean thread noodles and lots of ginger. It too was a marvellous restorative. And later on, my husband to be made me a lamb stew - the plain Irish kind, and although it wasn't hot and because I was in love, it soothed my cold, slept and awoke refreshed. Now that I have grown up and must nurse myself, I make my mother's split pea and ham soup. I squeeze a little lemon juice on it. It is fine for a cold too but really, a vindaloo is best!

The aroma of marmalade boiling on a cold January day.

My Great Aunt Flossie's cast iron frying pan which I still use. It probably dates back to 1900. I have old antique Danish sterling silver cutlery that is older, but I regard that as belonging to the dining room. Flossie grew up in the southern US, lived the high life in Cuba before Castro spoiled all the fun and then moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba. I acquired the frying pan after her death in Vancouver. She lived to be 100. I pretend that she carried her frying pan wherever she wen, cooking up a storm. She was a fine cook. The frying pan no doubt fried chicken and baked cornbread; cooked a spicy dish of Mores e Cristos and perhaps a Cuban pork dish, and fried up some Canadian bacon and maybe some trout from a Manitoba lake. I have fried bacon in it, made pancakes, crepes and buckwheat gallets in it; refried beans, fried chicken, and cornbread. It is a well seasoned well used pan!

I agree. Claudia Roden's "A Book of Middle Eastern Food" should be on the list. Mine is worn and well used. I recently asked a Lebanese friend for recipes for dishes he cooked for me forty years ago. In those days he didn't use recipes - these were family dishes. This time, when he gave me the recipes they were from Claudia Roden's book!

I have used the Time Life Foods of the World cookbooks for over 40 years and I still return to them. Most of the little recipe books became tattered with pages falling off them so I ordered a whole new set from Amazon. These books taught me so much about cooking around the world and influenced me deeply. My mother was Danish and she used the Danish recipes in the Foods of Scandinavia and I do too. In fact whenever I want to cook a new dish from somewhere far away, I always refer to these books first. Other cookbooks I cannot live without are: Elizabeth David - all cookbooks Irene Kuo's book on Chinese cooking Marcella Hazan's first two books on Italian food The Chez Panisse Book of Pasta, Pizza and Calzone Miriam Cunningham's Breakfast Book James Beard's Bread Book Paula Wolfert - all her cookbooks Diana Kennedy - all her books on Mexican food Julia Sahni's books on Indian cooking Madhur Jaffrey - all cookbooks. Chez Panisse Book of Desserts. None of these books gather dust in my house and in my house there are some very dusty places.

Thank you for correcting the title of Fuschia Dunlop's book Revolutionary Cuisine. I absolutely agree with you on the regionality of Chinese food and how marvellous it would be to have more cookbooks that covered these regions and the foods that are prepared there. I agree as well that those from each region are very chauvinistic about their food and downright condemn the food of other regions. I remember Simon, the student from Fujian who cooked such wonderful fish and seafood dishes, would not tolerate meat dishes as part of his meals, and Zhoa hui wei, who was from Nanning would always claim her food was the best.

For many years I have had Chinese students from various regions of China sharing my home. They all cooked all of their meals at home and we sometimes entertained. Their friends would come and cook as well! We would have food from every region of China. It was a feast and I learned a lot from them. They were all good cooks, one was exceptional. He was from Fujian and cooked only the freshed of seafood dishes. Of course none of them used cookbooks and found it amusing that I had so many Chinese cookbooks and that I cooked from them. However they tasted my dishes and some they approved of as worthy contributions to their banquets. They found Eileen Yin Fei Lo's steamed fish with ginger and grren onion to be excellent and authentic as well as her mapo dofu which they said was unusual but still delicious. I also made a sizzling beef dish from Ken Hom's cookbook on Hong Kong and Kylie Kwong's fried rice which they approved and deigned to eat. I have owned Irene Kuo's cookbook for years and it is worn and stained but that is the book I used to teach myself Chinese cooking as did my husband. I learned to make red cooked duck, pork buns and mandarin pancakes, to velevet chicken and shrimp, dry cook green beans, cook pork two ways etc etc. I cooked excellent recipes for Chinese tripe and steamed beef coated in ground rice, and rice cakes as well as noodle dishes from Barbara Tropp's cookbooks. These were recipes for food that I ate in an obscure Chinese restaurant in Montreal during my youth and was nostalgic for. They came from the Chinese menu and were not available on the English menu. Barbara Tropp's recipes approximated my food memories of these dishes very well. I have bought Grace Young's cookbooks and love how she writes about Chinese food and how to cook it. She articulates beautifully for me, the process of cooking the way Chinese people do, the way I observed my Chinese students cooking. I haven't cooked from her books yet but I plan to. Her recipes seem very Cantonese to me and my taste buds don't always lean in that direction. And I love Fuschia Dunlop's books and have cooked from them. The most recent Chinese student who lived in my home was a senior government official from Naning. She was writing a book on Asian trade agreements but in between she cooked and entertained a lot. She was scornful of my Chinese cookbooks except for one and that was Fuschia Dunlop's Cooking for Chairman Mao (I may be remembering the title incorrectly.) She highly approved of the recipe for Chairman Mao's favourite dish Braised Pork Belly which she cooked often. Since I frequently found Fuschia Dunlop's cookbook on the dining room table I can only assume that she was consulting it although she never would have admitted to doing that.

I am so proud of you for confessing that you do not own, have not read, have not cooked from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Now I can come out of the closet and admit that I don't, and haven't any of the above. It just doesn't turn on my tastebuds and "flavour" and umami are what I am after. I have terrible knife skills, and my omelet skills aren't that great either but my food tastes good and it looks good too. I have a friend who in the 60's worked her way through Julia Child. She always sharpens her knife before she cooks, she can toss an omelet in the air and it lands on the pan in a neat perfect little roll. I must say, I am impressed. Her food looks gorgeous but as for taste??? Well.. She thinks I am a graduate of Julia Child too and that I moved on to other things, like italian and Mexican, and Chinese and Thai but the truth is, and I can't bear to tell her, is that I never went there in the first place. The recipes are too long and THERE ARE NO COLORED PICTURES and she just didn't make me feel about the taste of things the way Elizabeth David, or James Beard made me feel. I love her, I can watch her tv shows forever but she used "dried basil" in one recipe for God's sake;. In the 70's when we were all growing our own basil. So thank you for allowing me to reveal my dirty little secret!

Yup, agree on all three. Duck is best when it is falling off the bone.

I love their Swedish meatballs too with the gloppy gravy although I tweak it a little. I always have a bag in my freezer and a jar of Ikea's lingonberry preserves. Then I boil a potato and add some Danish red cabbage that I always have on hand even though it isn't Christmas. Yummmm....

I have been drinking puer tea regularly for several years. I love its earthy, smokey barnyard flavour. I buy it from Murchie's in Vancouver and Chinese friends who know I like it, bring it to me from mainland China. They usually bring it in a brick, and I cut off chunks. Murchie's puer came in pellet shapes. I don't know anything about its health benefits but I do know Chinese students who live in my house drink it every day and they don't consume anything that doesn't benefit their health and well being.

I am a slightly different species of the Ladies Who Lunch. I am a Lady who Lunches". Sometimes I lunch with my friends and colleagues but not everyday. Everyday I lunch in a restaurant on my own. I could pretend to blame the God-awful food in our cafeteria but even if it improved I doubt if I could change my habit for I love restaurants and I love eating in them, often, every day in fact. I enjoy eating alone as much as I enjoy eating with friends. I have been carrying on this way for at least 10 years and fully intend to carry on this way to the end, whatever that might be. I won't be able to afford this habit when I retire. Near where I work in Toronto, there are several small inexpensive restaurants of many different ethnic descriptions - thai, vietnamese, malaysiam, italian, Indian,Japanese etc. I go to a different one each day of the week. The staff all know me; they greet me warmly. I sit at the same table if I can get it. They all know my favourites although they do understand that they have to wait for me to decide. Sometimes the newer staff have to be reminded such as the time the waitress in the Japanese restaurant raced to my table and loudly whispered "Sapporo" and I have to remind her that I will order my Sapporo when I order my food and that I want it WITH my meal. The owner of the thai restaurant calls me "The Regular" which I have been for six years. Before that she insulted me one day by saying that I was too fat for the Asian style chairs and that I should be sitting in a banquette which would be more accommodating to my girth. I gave that restaurant a wide berth for many years but after a while I returned and all was forgotten. She greeted me warmly and calls me The Regular. They also give me a special little mango salad for free with my lunch - a reward for my regularity I like to think. I have my rituals. I peruse the menu despite having already decided on the bus ride there what I will order, and then I order. I read my novel until the meal arrives and then I dine and observe the other customers. There are countless"ladies who lunch", in twos and fours and more.They aren't all that regular, they haven't seen each other in ages and they always order pad thai.] There are the six young mothers who bring their babies, and carriages and high chairs into the Japanese restaurant every now and thenand take over the entire restaurant except for the odd table. They feed the babies first with whatever they have brought. The babies eat and gurgle and spit and cry and the mothers have the sort of conversations that young mothers everywhere have - sleeping patterns, toilet habits, precociousness in the areas of language, or teething or crawling. Once the babies have eaten they are placed in their carriages and the young mothers have sushi. By this time of course the restaurant is in shambles - food and baby toys on the floor, the table in ruins and the staff faces cracked from smiling while the other customers depart. I do hope the ladies tip well. I have never stayed long enough to find out. Sometimes my bosses arrive with VP's from other organizations. I pretend not to see them and they pretend not to see me as well. Once I was sitting in a rather private seat in a restaurant. I was behind a small wall and no one could see me. I recognized the voices of several bosses who were doing the ladies who lunch thing. They were seated far away, near the window but there was a lot of shop talk which I heard. I felt trapped. I finished my lunch much before they finished theirs but I didn't want to reveal myself and cause embarrassment. So I explained to the waitress why I was staying and I waited until they had finished their lunches and left.The waitress enjoyed our conspiracy and told me when I was free to leave. My lunch hours are always a good distraction from the trials of the office and I return to work restored and amused.

I own all of Paula's cookbooks and have cooked from them for years. I held back on this one but with the kind of reviews she is getting on egullet, I checked it out yesterday and ordered it from Amazon. I can't wait to start cooking some of the recipes! Thanks for the great pictures.

I've owned Classic Home Desserts for over 20 years. Between it and the Chez Panisse Desserts, I have never felt the need for any more dessert cookbooks. I bake several of the coffee cakes often and several of the Christmas cookies are keepers and have become part of my annual Christmas cookie collection. Also his tiramisu is authentic and delicious. I have trouble keeping the book in my house. I have a friend who borrows it for months at a time and when I go to use it, it is nowhere to be found. I should buy Katherine her own copy. And, I agree. His writing is lovely and personal. I felt so very sad when he died knowing there would be no more books from him.

thank you for the tip. I found the piri piri chile and several others plus kokum and some other spices I have been looking for.

Does anyone know a source for African devil or African bird's eye chiles used to make piri piri sauce. The World of Spice has a very nice blend which uses Mexican chiles and I like it but I would love to find the real thing.

Like several other respondents I would have to take a small library of cookbooks and even though I own over a thousand and buy new ones every day I would take the old battered classics, the ones that have good food writing as well as good recipes -any cookbook or all the cookbooks by Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Alice Waters and Paula Woolfert (especially her Moroccan and Mediterranean books) Marcella Hazan for Italian, Julia Sahni for Indian, Diana Kennedy for Mexican food, and Irene Kuo for Chinese. These books date back to when I was learning. The recipes are in my bones. I have a slight feeling of betrayal when I cook from someone else's cookbook which I do all the time. I've never been very good with general cookbooks. I relate strongly to the author/cook and how they write about a dish. David Thompson would be my choice for Thai food.And, Miriam Cunningham's Breakfast Book for my favourite meal of the day and Patricia Wells Bistro cookbook and Chez Panisse for desserts. And as for a new well used book I would have to say Sara Jenkins "Olives and Oranges". Then there are the books that make me hungry when I read them but from which I only cook infrequently, mostly British in fact but they write wonderfully about food - Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater and Tamasin Day Lewis. Hardly what you would call "travelling light"!

Your description and pictures of your cauliflower soup have convinced me to buy ad hoc. It looks gorgeous and delicious.

I think the new and the nostalgic can co-exist, they certainly do for me. I am constantly buying new cookbooks and trying new ingredients and then once a dish becomes mine and part of my repertoire I will become nostalgic about it and try to replicate my food memories of it, when I cook it a year later or two years later.. . I make a plum tart every August when the prune plums are ripe. The day I bake it has to be a particular kind of day - an end of summer day and then the nostalgia sets in and as I pit the plums, I remember the other plum tarts I have eaten or baked and the people who are part of those food memories. Sometimes I accuse myself of manipulating memory and time, but in the end, the plum tart is always beautiful and delicious and my family and friends always enjoy eating it.