Sittin' in the Kitchen

Mark Kenny, food procurement manager at the University of Guelph, is on a mission to put delicious, nutritious food on thousands of students’ plates. He works with local suppliers and uses the talents of chefs on campus. In addition, he coordinates group purchasing for colleges and universities across the country, thereby extending his mission nationwide.

4 million copies later, Best of Bridge cookbooks are a slice of Canadiana. Eight bridge-playing women friends in Calgary cooked up this idea in 1975. Now, three young ladies are carrying on the tradition with Best of Bridge The Family Slow Cooker. Julie, Elizabeth and I chatted about Classy Chicken, Christmas Morning Wife Saver and Hamburger Soup.

Shawn Adler's father is Jewish; his mother is Ojibway. His new restaurant in Toronto's Kensington Market features Indian tacos: fried bannock crowned with a selection of toppings. He's an upbeat, energetic young man with fingers in many pies.

Brooklyn NY residents Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz are the co-authors of The Gefilte Manifesto. They also operate The Gefilteria: an online service that sells their own brand of gefilte fish. Their mission is to redeem, reclaim and redo this much-maligned Jewish holiday food. And they succeed!

My conversation with Julia Child's great-nephew Alex Prud'homme focuses on her rise to stardom as TV's first celebrity chef. His new book 'The French Chef in America' picks up where their previous book 'My Life in France' left off.

Anna Olson is a pastry chef and a star on Food Network Canada. She has a new cookbook: 'Bake with Anna Olson'. We discuss how to treat oven burns, ingredient temperatures, pan dimensions and baking tips and tricks.

Chef Martin Picard is famous for his nose-to-tail restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. Since 2009, he has divided his time between that Montreal eatery and his equally popular sugar shack 50 km away in the lush countryside. When I visited, he generously shared his thoughts on traditional Quebec cuisine, foie gras, maple syrup, cooking with leftovers and his 'last supper'.

Chef Claudio Aprile has been cooking for decades and his culinary journey has taken him from a Brampton doughnut shop to Michelin starred restaurants in the UK and Spain. He is a dignified presence as a judge on MasterChef Canada and a consummate gentleman.

He was a star chef with a young family but, one night in 2012, he disappeared without a trace for two weeks. Now he’s back with a hot new restaurant and a cautionary tale. Jonathan Gushue was the chef at Langdon Hall in Cambridge Ontario, named one of the 100 best restaurants in the world. Before that, he was one of the youngest chefs in North America to earn the coveted five-diamond rating at Truffles in Toronto. Today Gushue is co-owner of The Berlin, a new treasure in Kitchener. That’s where we met to discuss his struggle with addiction and his ongoing path of discovery.

I spoke with Amanda Cohen, owner of hugely popular NYC vegetable restaurant Dirt Candy, at the 10th annual Terroir Symposium in Toronto. She explained her love of vegetables and her no-tipping policy.