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Toronto Life - The Dish

The latest restaurant buzz, including what’s opening, what’s closing, and where to eat, drink and be seen

DIY Gourmet

Thuet’s upcoming cookbook now has a title and release date

More details of Marc Thuet’s cookbook are out as he and Biana Zorich prepare to head out west to work on the second season of Conviction Kitchen next month. The Post reports that the surprisingly expletive-free title is French Food My Way and that the book will be released in November. This may be cutting it close in terms of promotion, since the chef is scheduled to shoot a third season of his reality show in the States starting in September. The book includes 100 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus desserts and special meals for get-togethers.

• Celebrity chef Marc Thuet has new cookbook coming: French Food My Way [National Post]


March 18, 2010 | 9:16 am | Karon Liu

DIY Gourmet

A heartbreaking work of staggering cheapness

Don't have a cow, man (Image: FotoosVanRobin)

With all the fuss over students struggling to buy food using OSAP funds, it’s easy to miss other victims of Toronto’s high cost of living: expat European investment bankers. One individual has bravely blown the lid off of their plight. On the U.K.-based financial services Web site hereisthecity.com, next to an article called “My Bonus Isn’t Big Enough,” we found (with the help of the Post) Polar Roller’s scathing missive: “The Canadian Rip-Off.” In it, he discusses his horror at having to spend more than $10 for lunch here and takes umbrage at his maid’s paycheque, which, by his reckoning, is a full 20 per cent more than he pays his cleaner back home.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 16, 2010 | 8:41 am | Greg Hudson

DIY Gourmet

The OSAP diet forces students to give up Starbucks tea

As part of a protest against the province’s student aid program, five Ontario undergraduate students are entering the annals of martyrdom by budgeting just $7.50 a day for food—apparently this is what the Ontario Student Assistance Plan (OSAP) allows them. The students will be stringently frugal for three weeks in the name of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance’s Food for Thought campaign, intended to highlight the fact that OSAP doesn’t provide enough income for students. “OSAP assumes students should live below the poverty line, and that’s not good,” one student told the Star.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 11, 2010 | 10:00 am | Jon Sufrin

DIY Gourmet

Digital gastronomy: the latest blog-fuelled food theory “prints” meals out of flavoured goop

The food printer: ASCII seems like a distant memory (Photo courtesy of MIT)

Hungry nerds are rejoicing over the invention of two graduate students at MIT: a three-dimensional food printer. This strange next step in food technology, dubbed Cornucopia, resembles a mutant toaster oven that, in theory, mixes up liquid flavours in canisters, heats or cools the mixture, then “extrudes” the ordered dish at the press of a button. Its inventors extol such virtues as “ultimate control” over a dish’s origin, yet something tells us 100-mile dieters won’t trust goop from a canister.

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February 9, 2010 | 2:09 pm | Laura Trethewey

DIY Gourmet

An American’s guide to Canadian food: baffled Yanks panic over what nibbles to serve at their Olympic parties

Poutine: breakfast of champions (Photo by JoePhoto)

With little more than a week until the 2010 winter games, Americans are apparently stressing out over what to serve at their Canuck-themed Olympic parties. “I remember doing a viewing party for the Beijing Olympics, and we got a bunch of Chinese takeout,” a clueless party planner told the Sacramento Bee. He asked his Canadian friends, the local paper and even the Canadian consulate for help with his menu (since they clearly have nothing better to do).

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February 4, 2010 | 10:14 am | Karon Liu

DIY Gourmet

A Torontonian’s fight to keep chickens in her backyard inspires hen-friendly laws (just not in Toronto)

Backyard chicken

Since we first reported the story of Toronto Chicken, a local renegade who illegally keeps backyard hens, her struggle has galvanized pro-pullet movements across the country. Her notoriety has made it as far as Washington, D.C., where The Atlantic ran a Web piece about how fowl keepers in Vancouver and Waterloo have used petitions, public education programs and blogging power to persuade city councils to legislate hen-friendly laws. These are people fuelled most by what Toronto Chicken calls the “broader issues,” like rising food prices, E. coli scares, the local food movement and “nutritionism”—Michael Pollan’s term describing humans’ growing obsession with all that’s nutritious (or not) in their food.

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February 3, 2010 | 3:13 pm | Robert Furtado

DIY Gourmet

Cooking classes: the gift that gives back to the gifter

(Photo by xiaofeng17)

(Photo by xiaofeng17)

Unsurprisingly, cooking class registration increases in the weeks after Christmas, as wannabe chefs redeem gifts of culinary education. Those shopping around for just the right present will find options for any taste and talent level, with seminars on everything from making chocolate to tasting cheese or learning how to fry an Indian dosa. For romance, try a couples class; for kitchen newbies, there are beginner chef series. Below, our list of nine Toronto teaching kitchens and the gift-worthy classes they offer this December.

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December 15, 2009 | 2:15 pm | Matthew Hague

DIY Gourmet

Just Ducky: chef Jason Inniss shows us how to make Amuse-Bouche’s honey-glazed roasted duck

duck_amuse-bouche__If pigs could fly, they’d be ducks, according to Jason Inniss, chef and co-owner of the endearing west-end restaurant Amuse-Bouche. As with pork, every bit of the bird is usable, and Inniss cooks them beak-to-pope’s-nose, from confit to rendered fat to roast breast to stock. He’s a stickler for conscientious thriftiness. He serves his honey-glazed, roasted duck breast with Swiss chard cannelloni, and even the discarded chard stems have a purpose; he sautées them with house-made spaetzle as a side.

• Get the recipe »

December 9, 2009 | 3:46 pm | Toronto Life Staff

DIY Gourmet

Nice rack: how to make Didier Leroy’s unapologetically decadent lamb Wellington

(Photo by Edward Pond)

(Photo by Edward Pond)

Classic French cuisine is enjoying yet another buttery comeback. And no one makes it quite like Didier Leroy, the chef and owner of Didier, this city’s most unapologetically Gallic restaurant. His lamb Wellington is decadence wrapped in more decadence. While he makes his own puff pastry (a process that takes two days), he suggests buying a quality butter-based version. A word to the wise: take the Frenchman’s advice.

• Continue reading for Didier Leroy’s full recipe for lamb Wellington »

November 9, 2009 | 12:36 pm | Toronto Life Staff

DIY Gourmet

How to make Ceili Cottage’s unspeakably decadent sticky toffee pudding

Pour some sugar on me (Photo by Naomi Finlay)

Pour some sugar on me (Photo by Naomi Finlay)

With its deliberately pocked and pitted decor, the Ceili Cottage looks like it dates back to the days of the Loyalists. But Patrick McMurray’s new gastropub is clearly tapping in to Torontonians’ hankering for all things cheap and soothing. Our favourite dish is chef Kyle Deming’s unspeakably decadent sticky toffee pudding ($6). The place has been hopping since day one. For sweet tooths unable to snag a table, here’s how to make it at home.

• See the recipe>>

October 7, 2009 | 9:39 am | Toronto Life Staff

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