A Date with Chocolate
Do chocolate and love go hand in hand? Perhaps a rhetorical question. Safe to say, though, that there are few foods that garner the response that chocolate does. And speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that chocolate (specifically a very sinful chocolate cookie) brought me true love.
Ten years ago, I worked alongside a master bread baker named Dawn. Dawn had a great affinity for not only bread, but baking sweet things too. She never ceased to amaze me, daily, with her passion, creativity and dedication. We worked exceptionally well together, feeding off each other's ideas and inspirations. This could mean only one thing – a kitchen that produced great food! We collaborated and shared recipes whenever we could, and one particularly decadent chocolate cookie recipe that Dawn passed along was instrumental in securing a first date with the man who is now my husband. Yes, chocolate and love do go hand in hand!
Jane’s Killer Chocolate Cookies recipe came from Dawn’s friend Jane. I can't tell you much about Jane – to be quite honest I actually don’t remember who Jane is. What I can tell you is that these cookies, made with bittersweet chocolate, white chocolate chunks and very little flour, are outrageously rich and guaranteed to win you oohs and ahhs. Or perhaps even a date!
Andrea Stewart
It’s not surprising that three of Andrea Stewart’s favourite foods are bread, butter and champagne, since her approach to all things culinary has always been pure and simple. This experienced, creative and enterprising chef and editor approaches cooking and eating with a solid appreciation for fresh, local and seasonal ingredients. Andrea’s journey with food began while living in France, working as an au pair for Grace Jones. While feeding the young offspring of the famous singer, she was tempted on a daily basis by the busy, colourful French food markets. Later on, she spent a summer at Ecole de Gastronomie Francaise Ritz-Escoffier and fell in love all over again with everything France had to offer. Upon returning to Canada, she was accepted at the acclaimed Stratford Chefs School and after completing her first year she headed to New York to further sharpen her skills, working alongside some of the finest (including Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto) and catering Martha Stewart’s executive meetings. Andrea returned to Toronto in 1996, and further immersed herself in her career, working at some of the city’s top food fixtures, including Mildred Pierce and Ace Bakery. She eventually took a side-step out of the kitchen and into the halls of magazine publishing, landing a position as Food Editor of Wish Magazine in 2004. While inspiring busy Canadian wonder-women to cook from scratch, she published her first cookbook, Wish, Market to Table. From street food to fine dining to unfamiliar grocery stores, food still motivates Andrea at every turn. She recently sold everything but a prized collection of cookbooks and moved to the U.K., where her culinary library spans the two floors of her London flat. She won’t rest until she has cooked from every one of them!