Photograph by Tara Jensen
With an outdoor, wood-fired oven and natural ingredients, Tara Jensen makes magic. She brings artistry to her deep-dish fruit pies, bubby pizzas, and crusty breads that inspires amateurs and professionals alike to visit her rural mountain bakery time and time again. Tara’s creations not only feed the body but also nurture the soul, providing the spark between fire-based baking and people’s connection with the wider world. (more…)
Following her bestselling Made in India, Meera Sodha reveals a whole new side of Indian food that is fresh, delicious, and quick to make at home. These vegetable-based recipes are feel-good food and full of flavour.
Indian cuisine is one of the most vibrant vegetable cuisines in the entire world, and in Fresh India Meera leads home cooks on a culinary journey through its many flavourful dishes that will delight vegetarians and those simply looking to add to their recipe repertoire alike.
I’ve come to realize that many of us have been bequeathed a cherished family recipe. Be it simple or elaborate to prepare, it’s a dish so fiendishly delicious that it is the unmistakable star of the family meal, whether celebrating triumphs, comforting woes, or keeping family traditions alive. Withholding such heirloom recipes from the world seems almost cruel. Hence, I am championing the family recipe. I will entice the people in my universe to share favourite, nostalgia-infused family recipes, and I will give one of them centre stage in this very space on a monthly basis. In the end, we are all family, and these recipes represent the legacies of our shared passions. This month’s post is written by my good friend Eva. Enjoy!
The grand finale of every family birthday dinner was THE CAKE. My mother, Etelka, always served her signature Chocolate Chiffon Cake. Festooned with tiny, lit candles, it was ceremoniously placed before the celebrated one as the room broke into a full-throated, charmingly off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” (We are not a family of gifted singers.) A hasty, silent wish, a quick whoosh to blow out the candles, and then bliss ensued as the cake was sliced, handed around and savoured.
The cake’s appearance underwent a few metamorphoses over the decades. Sometimes it was rectangular, at other times round, depending on the baking pans my mother had on hand. The cake’s magic lies in its ratios rather than its aesthetics. It has just enough cocoa and sugar to give chocolate lovers their fix without overpowering its rich texture, a combination of moist, delicate cake and silky icing.
Photograph by Carl Tremblay – America’s Test Kitchen
A two layer cake with one batter? Lemon pudding cakes are a desert that should be beset with any number of issues. Yet during baking, the egg whites miraculously rise to the top in soufflé fashion, while the lemon pudding skillfully sinks to the bottom—just like magic! But how is this achieved? Carefully and with expert guidance from the fine folks at America’s Test Kitchen.