Previous Features

What food trends are you seeing today?

The biggest trend worldwide is using local, seasonal and regional ingredients. Whether I'm eating in Sonoma or St. John's Newfoundland, I see chefs, and home cooks, searching out the freshest food, from the closest farms in their areas, paying a premium for food that's ripe and produced by someone they know. I think people are learning to appreciate the flavors of freshly-picked fruits and vegetables and are keen to eat organic, free-range and wild meats and fish, both for health and taste-and to support a more environmental and sustainable way of living. Farm markets have never been busier, and even bigger supermarkets are beginning to carry artisan and locally-produced products. This taps into our desire for home-cooked meals that are healthy and fast, too. When the basic ingredients are fresh and delicious, the preparation can be very simple.

Please tell us about your cookbook, Best Pressure Cooking Recipes.

The Best Pressure Cooking Recipes was published by Robert Rose Inc. in 2001, and re-issued with additional recipes as 125 Best Pressure Cooker Recipes in 2005. My publisher asked me to write this book based on some of my other book projects, which include the kind of hearty, prairie cooking I grew up enjoying, from pot roasts and beef and chicken stews, to baked beans and bread puddings. As a food writer and newspaper food editor, I have explored the cuisines and top restaurants of the world - but I'm always drawn to simple, peasant food, the kind of tender short ribs, lamb curries, Moroccan tajines and French bean dishes that require hours of slow cooking to create layers of rich flavors. So when I discovered the pressure cooker, I found a way to make my favorite slow food, fast, without compromising flavor. The book was the result of testing and revising some of my best recipes to work in the latest generation of this popular appliance. I also learned that the pressure cooker makes excellent risotto, lets me cook a wide range of dry heirloom beans quickly from scratch, and is the speediest way to make our favorite eggplant caponata.

In addition to being a cookbook author, you've also written for several national publications. Who gave the most interesting interview and why?

I have been a reporter for more than 20 years - and I've interviewed a lot of different people in my time, from politicians to panda researchers, farmers and celebrity chefs. I continue to write food, wine, travel and feature stories for newspapers and magazines every week so it's hard to say who - or what topic - has been most interesting. Right now I'm fascinated by the controversial topic of farmed salmon - a food story that's become an environmental issue in parts of Canada - and the new meal assembly services, a hot new business that encourages people to come in and "cook" their own take-out meals. But I'll never forget dining with Spanish super-chef Ferran Adria at el Bulli, exploring the ancient Roman cellars under the streets of Beaune, or cooking with Greek grandmothers high in the Mani hills.

You write about travel as well as cooking. How have your travels affected your passion for food?

I am a journalist and a story teller first - I came to the world of food, wine and travel writing through my education in journalism and experience at major newspapers, where I eventually fell into food and feature writing. For me, food is all about people, culture, history and landscape - when that all comes together in a narrative, it's magic, and always makes a compelling story. Food is the best way to get into a place - what people eat says a lot about where and how they live - and people are always willing to talk about their local food. While there are lots of ethnic restaurants here, I always find something unique and wonderful to eat - or a new take on an old dish - wherever I travel. When I get home, I'm always trying to recreate the experience for my family and friends, which inevitably leads to developing and writng new recipes that end up in my food stories and books.

What was your first experience with pressure cooking?

It was actually a Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker at the upscale Williams-Sonoma store in San Francisco that first turned my head. Always on the lookout for a new cool tool - to use and write about - the small, sleek, stainless steel pots with their modern, safe valves seemed so revolutionary compared with the hissing behemoth my mother used for canning and other big jobs. I'm not sure what I made first, after buying my first new age cooker - I remember being a little afraid that it might explode when it started heating up on the stove. But after testing and retesting hundreds of recipes, with no problems at all, I was hooked. It's now one of the essential tools in my kitchen.

What do you like best about pressure cooking?

I'm usually so busy that I often don't have time to think about dinner until five o'clock rolls around. But when I do stop for dinner, I want to have a great meal. Food is important to me - I'm a diner, not a refueler - but I don't usually know what I feel like eating (or cooking) until that break in my day. The pressure cooker lets me stop at the supermarket and pick up whatever I'm craving (whether it's braised beef or pork ribs or prawns) and have it on the plate in less than an hour. And, with a pressure cooker, the technique of browning and caramelizing meats and vegetables, to release their natural sugars and add layers of flavor, is intact. Other convenient cooking - whether it's utilizing a slow cooker or microwave - skips that step so you're always compromising flavor and quality. That's not the case when you pressure cook. We also love it when we're out at the cabin - after a day of skiing or hiking, you can come home and almost instantly create a hearty, home-cooked meal.

What is your favorite pressure cooker recipe?

I love making the risotto with prawns and shiitake mushrooms that's pictured on the cover of the first edition - because purists never believe how good the pressure cooker works for making risotto until they try it. My Spicy Beef and Beer Stew - made with dark beer - is rich and wonderful with a crusty loaf of artisan bread, and the pressure cooker makes perfect Barbecue Beef on a Bun for a crowd, Creamy Pork and Porcini Mushroom Goulash and homemade chicken stock that reminds me of my grandmother's cooking. Caponata is another of my favorite things - we make a bunch in the fall when the peppers, tomatoes and eggplant are plentiful at the local farm markets. It freezes beautifully and makes great topping for crostini appetizers, a pan sauce for chicken or fish, and is delicious tossed with short pasta like rotini and Parmesan cheese.

What are your most commonly used kitchen tools?

As I said, the pressure cooker is one tool that I use all the time. But my most important tool is a good chef's knife - I am quite smitten with my one-piece Furi knife, sort of a hybrid chef's knife and cleaver - and I couldn't live without a good serrated bread knife and a tough little paring knife. I also love my Wolf gas stove - a big, new tool that I'm still learning to use.

Are you working on any new projects? Please tell us about them.

My latest book, The Girl Can't Cook: 275 Recipes a Girl Can't Be Without (Whitecap) is designed as a source of smart, tested, doable recipes for anytime you really need to cook. It's divided into three sections: Sustenance: simple food to feed yourself every day; Decadence: recipes to complete menus for dinner parties from the Indian feast to a backyard barbecue; and Observance: menus and recipes for events like cooking a holiday turkey, hosting a baby shower or baking a birthday cake. It's already in third edition so I'm now putting the finishing touches on The Guy Can't Cook(a similar collection of recipes for life's many cooking occasions) which will be out next spring. And, of course, I'm traveling and writing for newspapers like the Globe and Mail and various magazines- heading off to the fjords of Norway to find out, of course, what they eat way up there!