Richman’s bakery, located on Bathurst Street in Toronto, was an iconic Jewish bakery known for their delicious cheese buns, rugelach and Boston cream pie. However, it was their incomparable cinnamon buns that drew my car into their parking lot, as if pulled by a giant magnet, whenever I drove past the store. Pillowy soft sweet yeast dough layered with a generous amount of sugar and cinnamon and topped with a…
My Mom made the best tuna sandwiches. What was her secret? It wasn’t the perfectly fresh slices of crusty rye bread, no caraway seeds please, pulled from the middle of the loaf. It wasn’t even the carefully diced little cubes of celery that speckled the tuna salad. It was the mayonnaise. Mom used only full-fat Hellman’s mayonnaise, and a very generous amount of it, (if we’re going to be completely…
Visits to one of my childhood friends always concluded with a snack chosen carefully from the white bakery box tied up with string, sitting temptingly on the kitchen counter. My hand hovered over the selection of fruit tartlets on offer, switching back and forth undecidedly between the mini pastries filled with tangy lemon curd, mounds of glossy, deep purple blueberries or lustrous ruby-red cherries. Inevitably I always picked the cherry…
I scanned the leaden grey skies for a ray of sunshine, fruitlessly. Welcome to Toronto in December. The dull ceiling of clouds glowering above my head reflected my mood; it was time to go shopping for a treat. I was looking forward to the arrival of a new crop of blood oranges at my local fruit store. Strictly a winter fruit, my stash had been depleted months ago. I left…
In line at the buffet table at our local kosher Chinese restaurant (OBM, sigh), my eyes fixated on the pan of glazed sweet potatoes. Blanketed in a glossy, dark, sweet, and umami-flavored teriyaki sauce, they beckoned invitingly. For many years I tried to duplicate this dish at home without success. With the publication of this recipe for three-cup vegetables by Ali Slagle in the New York Times, I was intrigued.…
This past Sunday morning, if you happened to see me face down on the ice at our neighborhood outdoor skating rink, rest assured, I was not in the middle of a sun salutation yoga pose. I was not even examining the whorls in the ice for evidence of fossils. The only fossil at the rink that day was lying on the ice. Last week I bought a pair of ice…
When a recipe for slow-roasted salmon first came to my attention, I eyed it with suspicion and shifted it to the bottom of my “future consideration” pile. It was only after I saw this recipe for maple baked salmon by Genevieve Ko, published in the New York Times that I gave the idea of cooking salmon “lower and slower” more serious thought. When it comes to fish, I generally proceed…
I watched as my grandsons’ faces lit up when I brought a platter of hush puppy deli roll pinwheels to the table. Distinguished by the nutritional triumvirate of salt, fat and potatoes, dear to the heart of every teenage boy, this dish disappeared in seconds. It’s been a while since our grandsons have graced our table but it doesn’t mean that this recipe is sitting around gathering dust. Surprise, it…
I reached tentatively into the corners of my bag of candy-coated chocolates. It was empty, all too soon. These button-shaped confections get me every time, with the satisfying crunch of their thin outer sugary shell, followed by the sweet sensation of chocolate melting on my tongue. But it’s the rainbow colors of these treats that make them impossible to ignore. That’s how I found myself with a big box of…
My father was the latke chef in our family. Inhaling those crispy potato pancakes, with their meltingly soft interiors, was one of the highlights of any Chanukah gathering. For my father, grating the potatoes by hand was the only way to make them. A food processor couldn’t replicate the perfect texture he obtained with his little metal box grater. His skinned knuckles were a badge of honor, a sign of…