Recently, I’ve been having a wicked craving for Cuban food.  Problem is there’s barely any Cuban food in Toronto.  I always here about a place called Julie’s Cuban but it gets mixed reviews and I never remember it when I’m picking restaurants.  When I lived in New York there were a ton of Cuban restaurants [...]

Once you start getting into cooking you start to hear about the importance of a good set of knives.  Truth be told I’ve never invested in  good set of knives despite the fact that I’ve been cooking seriously for years.  It didn’t make sense to get a good set while I was in university with [...]

My quest for the perfect pizza continues.  I was not happy to let my previous endeavour be my authoritative post on the Mario Batalie Otto pizza dough recipe.  I had to give it another shot especially since I”m pretty sure the problem was my yeast.
This time my dough rose properly and actually looked like pizza [...]

A few months ago I was so pumped to finally buy Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1. Something happened shortly after and I didn’t really make any other recipes.  I mean, I always MEANT to open up the book when doing my menu planning but other dishes got in the [...]

One of the by-products of my butter making experiment was buttermilk.  Buttermilk is great.  I use it pancakes all the time.  Problem is I can usually only find it in 1L formats.  Half the time I say screw it and just make “buttermilk” by adding either lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk.  It works [...]

Every once in a while I start feeling extra crafty when it comes to cooking.  I get these impulses to make really basic things that are readily available in the supermarket.  Once it was jam, another time it was bread – and there have likely been many other things over the years.
A few years ago [...]

Okay, for this week’s Barefoot Bloggers I’m cheating a bit.  When  I saw that this week’s pick was for Ina’s Baked Shrimp Scampi I was a bit disappointed. I make this ALL THE TIME. Seriously at least once or twice a month.  The recipe is great the way it is so I never make any [...]

Nota Bene
180 Queen Street West
Toronto, Ontario
416.977.6400
(Photo from Nota Bene)
Nota Bene has been on my list of restaurants to visit since it opened about two years ago.  The place gets great reviews and received numerous “Best New Restaurant” accolades along the way.  Despite being a quick subway ride away the visit never happened.  A few of [...]

Hello all!  After  week’s vacation in Jamaica I’m back to the cold and the blogosphere.  Sadly no Jamaica related posts… it really wasn’t a take pictures of your food kind of vacation, although I did do some good eating.  I ate a ton of fresh-caught, never frozen fish, locally grown yams, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, sugar [...]

The other day my work bestie was raving about this soup and gave me the recipe.  I admit it looked pretty delicious and I NEVER covet other people’s lunches.  It sounded right up my alley with all the thai flavour and meatballs (I LOVE meatballs) so convincing me to make it was hardly a task.  [...]