This category covers groceries, restaurants, bars, alcohol, entertaining and recipes.

Jamie Oliver Pizza Slicer

Why The Mezzaluna Is Best For Slicing Pizza

Seriously, this is the only utensil you’ll ever need to cut perfect pizza slices every time.

Jamie Oliver Pizza Slicer

 

BUY RIGHT | Google pizza slicer images and you’ll find an amusing looking assortment of scissors, wheels and other contraptions designed to cut effortlessly through homemade pie. The only trouble with most of these gizmos is that they don’t work all that well. I know because I have a drawer full of them and not one delivers a decent wedge without struggle and concentration, including Jamie Oliver’s pizza wheel pictured above. Read more

Breast Or Thigh: Which Chicken Part Is Best?

Chicken breasts have long been considered the healthiest part of the bird, but top chefs favour the flavour of dark meat. (RECIPES)

 

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | Why it took so long, I’ll never know, but North Americans are beginning to wean themselves from the breast—the chicken breast, that is. “The dark, tender meat of the chicken thigh is the most flavorful part of the bird,” writes Nate Appleman in his cookbook A16 Food + Wine, the International Association of Culinary Professionals cookbook of the year in 2008. To prove it, he includes THIS AWESOME RECIPE for Chicken Meatballs with Peperonata.

International superstar chef Daniel Boulud (who once set up shop in Vancouver) gave chicken thighs two thumbs up this past winter when he used them in THIS GREAT RECIPE for Chicken Lasagna, which appeared in Elle Décor.

Neither of these chefs would ever stint on ingredients or sacrifice quality because of cost. Both cook with chicken thighs not because they are always cheaper than breasts but because they taste better than breasts. Simple as that.

But here a small voice interjects, “But what about health? Aren’t chicken breasts a whole lot better for you?” Read more

Three Glasses Of Beer

Craft Beers Really Are Quite Simple To Make

Craft beers are surprisingly simple to make—economical, too. All you need is a little equipment and the advice of a homebrew guru.

Three Glasses Of Beer

 

DO IT YOURSELF | Vancouver has made a name for itself as Canada’s microbrew capitol. As the trend and palates for craft beer continue to grow, artistic DIYers are brewing up their own spins on flavourful favourites at home for little more than pennies a pint.

Not so long ago my husband and I tried some delicious homebrew. Intrigued, we questioned the couple who’d made it on the ins and outs of their hobby while our silent glances said, “We could totally do that!” And we did. Read more

TopChips Cooked

Make Fat-Free Pototo Chips In 3 Minutes

Potato chip lovers rejoice—TopChips makes fresh, yummy, fatfree crisps at home.

TopChips Cooked

 

EASY & DELISH | I’m a complete potato chip queen, though most people who know me don’t know it. I seldom buy this yummy could-there-be-anything-unhealthier-with-more-empty-calories snack because I have a tendency to overindulge. Now, thankfully, with my new TopChips chips maker I never have to think about the quantity of crisps I consume or whether or not they’re good for me because chips made using this inexpensive, inventive microwave tray are 100 percent fat free—really. Read more

Shirataki noodle soup - iStock

A Tasty Gluten-Free Sub For Wheat Pasta

Yes, there is a guilt-free, gluten-free substitute for high-cal, high-carb wheat-based pasta.

Shirataki noodle soup - iStock

 

EASY & DELISH | For anyone on a low-cal, low-carb or gluten-free diet, pasta can be a problem—at least the traditional wheat-based kind. But there is an alternative: shirataki noodles, used in Asian cuisine. Read more

Handpainted Easter Cookies iStock

How To Paint Cookies Without A Pastry Bag

For decorating cookies, there is an alternative to both tricky pastry bags and pricey tubes of store-bought frosting.

Handpainted Easter Cookies iStock

 

SHOPPING AROUND | Nothing says spring (and Easter) like hand-painted sugar cookies. My kids are begging me to make some, but since I didn’t inherit Cake Boss genes, I decided to YouTube for decorating advice where I ran across Iron Chef America’s Cat Cora channelling her inner Martha by cranking out these adorable designs on holiday cookies. Hopeless at using a pastry bag, I was about to settle for uneconomical grocery-store tubes of icing with clip-off tips when a girlfriend suggested a cool alternative: squeezable frosting bottles with interchangeable decorating tips. Read more

My Pizza by Jim Lahey

You Need A Pizza Stone

The secret to cooking perfect pizza really is a pizza stone. Here’s how Jim Lahey uses one.

Williams-Sonoma Emile Henry pizza stone

 

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | No matter how you do pizza at home—from scratch, from half-scratch with premade dough and store-bought sauce or from take-and-bake (doctored Dr. Oetker anyone?)—the taste and consistency of your pie will be infinitely improved if you bake it on an pizza stone.

I was seriously shocked at how much better my frozen pie tasted a few months back when I baked it on an inexpensive no-name ceramic pizza stone ($13 from HomeSense) rather than on my Cuisinart non-stick pizza pan. And I was shocked again this week at how much better the crust performed when I used the stone precisely as described in no-knead bread guru Jim Lahey’s new cookbook My Pizza: The Easy No-knead Way to Make Spectacular Pizza at Home. Read more

Banana Ice Cream - In A Pinch -Amid Hattie

You’ll Scream For This: 5-Minute Ice Cream

Caren McSherry whips up the yummiest ice cream ever in under 5 minutes—flat!

Banana Ice Cream - In A Pinch -Amid Hattie

 

EASY & DELISH | Talk about fingers in pies. Celebrity chef Caren McSherry is one of the hardest-working (and most upbeat) women in the food business in Vancouver. Not only is she hands-on at her cooking school, the longest-running private school of its type in the country, but she also runs the Gourmet Warehouse, her large specialty store on East Hastings Street that sells thousands of competitively priced gourmet food items and housewares to appreciative local foodies. Then there are her media gigs: weekly columnist for TV Guide magazine, twice monthly appearances on Global TV’s Saturday morning news and once a month on Bill Good’s radio talkfest. Oh, and there are the cookbooks. Read more

Toasted coconut marshmallows - Laura Flowers

Marshmallows Are Super Easy To Make

Gourmet marshmallows are sooo easy to make and sooo damn addictive.

Toasted coconut marshmallows - Laura Flowers

 

EASY & DELISH | Made-from-scratch marshmallows are having a moment. That’s the headline that jumped out at me last month in T, the New York Times style magazine. This may be what T’s editors think, but actually, among foodies, fresh-made marshmallows have been enjoying a moment since 2008, which is around the time Vancouver’s Butter Baked Goods began making and marketing its delectable gourmet marshmallows ($7.99 for 10) to an appreciative audience—and famous food bloggers like Deb Perelman of smittenkitchen.com could be found whipping up marshmallows and visually documenting the process on their websites. Read more

Make Artisan Bread In Under 10 Minutes

You, your partner, your six-year-old kid: anyone can make sensational artisan bread with under 10 minutes of labour.

 

EASY BAKE | I’m not an accomplished cook. I can produce a nice meal and make complicated dishes when I need to, though I prefer to leave the culinary wizardry to my friends born with chef’s knifes in their mouths. Quick and easy are my things (along with tasty and attractive), so I was shocked when a good friend suggested I make my own bread. I’d been going on about how my family was plowing through Terra Breadspain de campagne to the tune of $10 to $15 dollars a week when she popped the suggestion.

“You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “Making bread is an art that takes years to perfect. I thought you knew me.” Read more