Store-bought hummus never does it for me. It used to be a dip I would reach for when I see them on special at the store but I would end up wasting more money, cumulatively-speaking. Almost always, these containers of hummus would inevitably remain half-eaten in my fridge, eventually growing mould or going rancid from neglect. Over time I would avoid buying them altogether, except when my husband requests I get some.

In the world of West Asian dips, I am partial to mutabal—a smoky eggplant and tahini dip—or labneh doused generously with really good-quality extra virgin olive oil and shatta—West Asia’s chile paste, made by lacto-fermenting red or green chiles. I only ever seem to devour hummus in restaurant settings, though to be clear: not all restaurants make good hummus1.

I have tried many hummus recipes over the years. For a time, I relied on Ottolenghi’s recipe, long-lauded critically as the best way to make restaurant-style hummus at home. They sure made you work for it, however; you had to skin the cooked chickpeas before blitzing them into submission. And sure, it was delicious. Still, I did not make it for myself as often as I wanted in spite of its economical benefits2. Separating the skins out of those cooked chickpeas really tore at my patience and sanity! And try as I might, I could never get it as silky smooth as when I would order them from my favourite West Asian restaurants. My own attempts at home using Ottolenghi’s recipe, while certainly worlds better than any supermarket hummus, still left me wanting.

Enter the Middle Eats YouTube channel. They have been an invaluable resource for me when I started really going after creating some of my favourite West Asian dishes at home. I have loudly proclaimed the cuisine of West Asia as my absolute favourite cuisine to eat. Their food hits everything in my list of ideals: West Asian cuisine has texture, spice, dimension, and most importantly, balance—the percussive crunch against silk, grounding earth accented with periods of levity, fiery heat punctuated with cooling relief. Utterly poetic.

~

Middle Eats recreates London’s Em Sherif Deli’s signature hummus in this video. I braced myself for the part where they would eventually skin the chickpeas… only they do not. Oh happy day! Shortly after watching the video, I tried their base recipe for myself, keeping it as plain as possible, just chickpeas, oil, tahini, lemon, salt, and some key techniques to achieving the smoothest restaurant-style hummus at home. It worked! I was sold! And nary a chickpea skin to remove!

I have adopted their recipe and made a few tweaks based primarily on my “baseline” hummus: Tamam’s. My version is doused generously with green shatta3, extra-virgin olive oil from Palestine4, and a very light smattering of Aleppo pepper flakes5.

You will need a food processor for this one; there is no going around it! You might run into problems making this in a blender, unless you have the fancy models, but even with those, just be prepared to run into some blending problems. A food processor makes things a lot easier.

Using dried chickpeas is a non-negotiable, at least, for me. Not only are they cheaper than tinned or jarred chickpeas, the flavour you get with cooking chickpeas from scratch is unmatched. And because I love garlic (garlic basically flows in my blood as a Filipina) I use garlic in my baseline hummus… but only a touch! While I often measure garlic with my heart, here, I show restraint with this beloved allium. I want only the faintest whisper of its flavour, enough to make you notice but not enough to make it linger. You might have even imagined its presence. You start to doubt it was there in the first place. The ghost of garlic, if I may.

Hummus is an amazing chemo-supportive foodstuff. Chickpeas are a good source of protein, dietary fibre, vitamin C, iron, and folate, the latter playing a key role in cell development and the production of healthy red blood cells. Sesame seeds, like chickpeas, are also a good source of protein and dietary fibre, and contains selenium, a powerful anti-inflammatory and immune-booster, something to consider during your nadir days—the days when you are most immune-compromised. Just make sure that when you are preparing this for your loved one that you wash the chickpeas and lemons well and thoroughly. Use unwaxed, organic lemons if you can find them.

Severe weight loss can occur during active chemo or radioactive therapies, and hummus is a relatively neutral-tasting and filling dip that happens to be high in the kinds of fats you will need for your body to regenerate those damaged cells. While food aversions are fairly common during treatments, hummus is very easy to ingest. Even a spoonful when your appetite is low can help.

Everyone reacts to treatments differently. Personally, I found easy-to-ingest foods like soup and dips like hummus great for when I simply did not have the energy to chew. Hummus, in particular, felt very nourishing to me.

I always have to dot recipes under Your Body Has Memory with this reminder: it is extremely important to eat something—ideally something that supports your body—when going through aggressive treatments. Sip on coconut water—a natural electrolyte—if or whenever nausea sets. And when that nausea subsides, eat a little something, even if you do not feel like eating. Your body needs all the nutrients from your food to help it rebuild. This is what my oncological nurse drilled into my head, and so I will keep passing this reminder onto you.

Cancer or no cancer… please remember to eat, and eat well.
Until next time in my kitchen! xo

Yours in health,
Issha

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One day, my dad brought home some Jamaican patties and jerk chicken for us to try. It was too spicy for my sister, but for me, it was heaven. I was hooked, my young mind suitably blown. Having grown up in the Philippines, I was exposed to mostly Italian (by way of my mom), Japanese (by way of my dad), and American food (by way of their imperialist influence on the Philippine food landscape). The food of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora as a new immigrant marked my first proper introduction to the various global diasporas that exist in Toronto, long touted as one of the most diversely-populated cities in Canada.

When I officially made the move to Vancouver in 2010, it would be another couple of years or so before I would start to pursue learning how to make jerk. My quest started out as a craving, a missing of my home city—a city that is home to many hundreds of thousands of Afro-Caribbean people. Toronto even has a Little Jamaica (though I could swear Toronto has a Little “Everywhere”, something Vancouver woefully lacks). The massive Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Toronto contributes so much to the local culture that the Jamaican patty is ubiquitous in the city. Major subway stations in Toronto have news stalls that would sell warm beef or chicken patties in three heat-level options—mild, medium, or hot—alongside the usual fare of coffee, chips, candy, gum, and soda (s/o to my old go-to: Bathurst Station!). And I would be remiss if I neglected to mention Caribana—now renamed the Toronto Caribbean Carnival—held every summer as a celebration of Caribbean culture and tradition. My friends and I would go almost every summer, mostly to enjoy the music (steelpan!!!) and to marvel at the intricate artistry of the many costumes worn by the parades of organized bands. This festival would attract many tourists every year, and rightly so! It is truly such a joyful and vibrant celebration of the culture.

I watched Jamie Oliver make a “jerk” ham hock in one of his early-ish Christmas specials on Food Network Canada and I—not really knowing where I should begin—started my jerk journey from there. The beginnings of what I know as jerk certainly was present in Jamie Oliver’s recipe, but when the end result of my following his techniques and recipe came nowhere close to what I was used to eating back home in Toronto, I dug deep, reading many blogs and watching countless Youtube videos from Black creators to arrive at my current jerk marinade recipe today. I have been tinkering with my jerk chicken recipe since 2013, a little over a decade now. Like many of my recipes, this jerk chicken is part of my volumes-long love letter to Toronto—the city that, in many ways, birthed and raised me.

Jerk is steeped in both necessity and resistance. This is something that I learned when reading the UK-based, Jamaican-Maltese food writer and chef Melissa Thompson’s beautifully-written and well-researched cookbook on Jamaican cuisine, Motherland.

The island’s first inhabitants arrived around 500 to 650 CE, their origins stemming from South America. The Taíno—the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean—were said to have emerged from the same South American migratory patterns before making the islands their home. It was the Taíno who first greeted the Spanish colonizers—led by Columbus—at the end of the 15th century.

First contact with the Spanish fleet was friendly at first, but as the years passed and with every subsequent return to and from the islands—through Columbus’ leadership and post-Columbus—the Spanish colonizers would inflict horrors and cruelty upon the Taíno that led to the decimation of their population, from a few hundred thousand to around 20,000. Halfway through the 16th century, hardly any Taíno remained.

Having committed genocide over the island’s Indigenous peoples, the workforce needed by the colonizers dwindled, so the Spaniards who chose to remain on the islands sought their sights on other Caribbean islands, South America, and eventually, Africa, to forcibly take people away from their homelands to enslave them.

During their reign of terror, the colonizers also brought with them various livestock from Spain, such as horses, cows, and pigs. Inevitably, some of this livestock would escape into the island’s wilderness, particularly the pigs, allowing them to multiply and grow wild over time, their presence eventually contributing to the food landscape in the islands.

Cooking over fire in Jamaica went back as far as the Taíno. The main protein in their diet was fish. The Taíno devised wooden frames with which to secure the fish over the fire, adjusting for height—low, to cook the fish quickly, or high, to slow-cook and smoke the fish. The Taíno dug pits, built their fire inside these pits, and laid on grates made out of local wood, much in the manner of the barbecues we know today. In fact, the Arawakan language that the Taíno spoke gave us the word barbecue, from the Arawak word barbacoa.

When England took hold of Jamaica in the mid-17th century, many of the enslaved that the Spaniards took from Africa, South America, and neighbouring Caribbean islands escaped deep into the mountains, where they encountered other slaves who managed to escape long before the English arrived. The escaped were known as the “Maroons”. The Maroons developed close ties with the last of the remaining Taíno, inter-marrying and developing remote communities in these isolated areas within the mountains. Here, they cultivated wild herbs and plants to use as both food and medicine, and also hunted wild boar and deer for sustenance. The Maroons developed methods for preserving the game they hunted for longevity, in preparation for the scarce hunting and foraging times. The jerk spices we know today evolved from this method of preservation using the island’s earliest indigenous and cultivated plants.

Like the Spaniards, England intended to build Jamaica into a slave society and sought to recapture the escaped Maroons. It was the Taíno who taught the Maroons how to cook meat in covered pits. This method ensured that the smoke would disperse as low to the ground as possible, creating very little to no telltale signs of smoke, so as not to give their location away. The Taíno also showed the Maroons how to cure their meat with salt and allowing the meat to dry out under the heat of the sun. The Maroons called this method jirking the meat. They would then place the jirked meat under the fire pits to cook.

The Maroons and their Taíno teachers used bird peppers and pimento (allspice berries) to flavour the meat and aid in the preservation process. They would also wrap the spiced meat in pepper elder leaves or plantain leaves before placing them into the fire pits to cook. Thus, the jerk that we know and love is born here, out of necessity, resistance, and survival.

You can see a demonstration of these early cooking techniques in a short video with Melissa Thompson, Jamaican jerk champion Chef Manzie, and Jamaican food blogger Matthew Robinson in Jamaica here. I am always in awe not only of how these preservation and cooking techniques have evolved and survived over so many centuries, but also how they overlap with a variety of cultures around the world, including my own.

“You can be poor in Jamaica but you will never go hungry.” -Melissa Thompson, quoting a local Jamaican chef, and referring to the bounty of naturally-grown food all over the island of Jamaica

Wood smoke is a very important aspect of jerk, and in Jamaica, pimento wood is used to impart extra flavour onto the heavily-marinated meat of choice. I have never owned a barbecue grill in my time, not since moving out of my parents’ home, anyway. Furthermore, I do not have a balcony in my current residence, sadly. The jerk chicken I have devised here over a decade’s time is for one’s home oven. Nothing can beat that grill-smoke flavour, and my oven method, admittedly, lacks that. I suppose you can add a touch of liquid smoke into the marinade, and I have certainly seen some YouTube videos that go this route when making oven-roasted jerk chicken. For my own time-tinkered and tested recipe, I will focus on the “purest” form of the marinade here, because you can take this recipe and bring it to your barbecue to get that grill-smoke flavour, that is, if you are lucky enough to have access to a grill.

If you want to take this recipe to your grill and have access to pimento wood chips, I highly recommend you purchase a bag. Soak the chips for 24 hours, and then add these wet wood chips directly onto your hot coals and place on the lid. If you have a gas grill, place some wet chips inside a disposable foil tray and cover the top with aluminum foil. Using a fork or a knife, pierce some holes through the foil top, then place the tray on top of your grill, preferably over an unlit portion or towards the back corner of your grill. Heat up your grill and place on its lid. When the smoke starts to appear, lay on your meat and start cooking. This will emulate the effect of those ancient jerk pits and the modern jerk drums Jamaicans use to cook their jerked meats.

Let’s get this out of the way: this isn’t a quickie recipe that you make on the day of. Jerk is very much a labour of love. My preferred technique takes roughly two to three days. Yes, there are quickie jerk recipes out there, and in the early days of developing my own jerk marinade, I certainly made jerk chicken on the Day Of Cooking, and it was fine, certainly delicious, but a little on the one-note side. My preferred method starts with what is referred to as the “washing” of the chicken, in the form of a flavoured brine that very slightly mirrors the marinade. Additionally, my jerk marinade then gets made into both a basting sauce and a barbecue sauce for dipping.

I have also included Jamaican rice and peas (my version, anyway) and a refreshing yuzu, mango, and corn salsa to accompany your jerk feast. There are three recipes in this post, so feel free to make just one, or all if you are feeling ambitious! I have never been to Jamaica—I hope I get to visit one day—but the making of this takes me back home to Toronto. This is as proper as it can be, given that I have only an oven to work with. I have gotten the seal of approval from my Black, Jamaican, and fellow Torontonian friends with this one, enough for me to think I did this beloved dish justice.

Jerk marinade is composed of three main ingredients: pimento (allspice berries), scotch bonnets, and thyme. There was a time when I could not find scotch bonnets anywhere in Vancouver, until I happened upon some farmers who grow this varietal and continue to sell them every year at our local farmers’ markets! Truth is, whenever I come across scotch bonnets, I stock up on them. They are my favourite hot pepper. You can freeze them—a hot tip from my Black and Jamaican friends—or dehydrate them under the sun or a dehydrator, if you own one. I do both! Keep in mind that if you dehydrate your peppers, their heat level tends to decrease over some period of time, so use your peppers in a timely manner and often, if you can, and store them inside an opaque or translucent container with a tight-fitting lid, away from light, like you would your spices and loose leaf tea. I recently used my dehydrated scotch bonnets from a year ago in my jerk chicken very recently and I am happy to report they still have their heat!

If you cannot get scotch bonnets, you can easily substitute them for habañero peppers. Scotch bonnets have a sweeter, tropical fruit overtone; their flavour and aroma reminds me of ripe pineapples. I find that habañeros, in comparison, are a lot more citrus forward, like an orange, almost, with a floral undertone, and perhaps even a flavour that is slightly reminiscent of smoke.

Both scotch bonnets and habañeros have the same heat level, ranging from about 100,000 to 350,000 SHUs (Scoville Heat Units) on the Scoville scale. I have certainly used habañeros to make jerk chicken when I cannot find scotch bonnets; in fact, you can see this in my photo below.

I will break down my jerk chicken recipe in three parts: its brine, its marinade, and its basting sauce/dipping sauce. You will need to set aside at least two days for prep before you cook and serve this jerk chicken to your lovely people.

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My friends and I went out for lunch one day, and they suggested we go out for falafel wraps. I have never had one before, but I have always been an adventurous eater, even as a child, so I was game. My friend ordered for me, and I watched, mesmerized, as the chef fried up these meatball-like morsels, then proceeded to assemble my wrap with deft hands. A large flatbread was carefully torn open, akin to the gentle prying of two delicate pages that have been stuck together over some years. The man before me then layers on a generous dollop of hummus, tahini sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, some onions, and these shockingly fuchsia-pink pickled turnips—a colour that reminded me of the same fuchsia pink of itlog na maalat—the salted duck eggs that my mom and lola used to eat with rice and tomatoes. Then came those falafels, topped with a final dousing of tahini sauce, and a question. “Do you like it spicy?”, he asks. “Yes, please!” Out came a squirt bottle filled with red shatta, before the entire lot gets wrapped up like a burrito covered in foil, and handed to me in a paper bag.

The wrap set me back $3.99 plus tax. Less than $5. It was warm and smelled like spices. My mouth began to water.

My first bite of this falafel wrap laid the foundation for my eternal love affair with the cuisine of West Asia (the “Middle East”, or the “Levant”). This wrap was so incredibly filling, filled with an array of textures and flavours I have never experienced before. The falafels were so crispy and meaty…

My friend exclaims, to me, mouth partially full, “Can you believe this isn’t meat?! This is vegetarian! Falafels are made out of chickpeas!”

CHICKPEAS?! My 15-year old brain was BLOWN.

I tend to hyper fixate on things that excite me—and I mean, REALLY excite me—and that first falafel really made an impression on my teenage self. I certainly could not afford to spend $5 every week for a falafel wrap, but when I could spare some change from my small allowance, I would make the short walk to that falafel place and get a wrap to-go on the rare occasion I went off-campus for lunch! The making of a falafel felt like a skill I could never attain, so when I came across a boxed falafel mix for $2 during our weekly No Frills grocery run, I asked my mom if we could get it, and she said yes. Y’all. That boxed mix was disgusting. The end result was not the moreish falafel I fell in love with. It tasted like cumin-flavoured paste that has been shaped into balls and fried. YUCK. I threw the whole lot away. I convinced myself that falafels should only be eaten from a falafel place and should never be attempted at home, especially through a boxed mix! My dream of having falafels whenever the mood struck me—and for only $2!!!—vanished.

It would not be until about 2013 when I would attempt to make falafels—or, more accurately, something LIKE falafels—from scratch. I was inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe from the series Jamie At Home—hands down my favourite series of his. And while I tend to scoff at most things Jamie Oliver, Jamie At Home featured Jamie’s vast, Edenic vegetable garden. Everything from the planting of seeds, the harvesting of vegetables and herbs, and the preparation of all his home-grown produce was a revelation to me. The produce that grew out of his garden are a far cry from the lot you see in conventional grocery stores. These vegetables looked—dare I say this?—more natural, somehow. I credit this show for instilling in me my love for food photography and rustic plating, the latter of which I feel Jamie Oliver is a master.

I used Jamie’s Broad Bean Fritters recipe as a rough guide, using fresh broad beans I had purchased at the farmers’ market earlier that day. In this particular episode, Jamie acknowledges that these fritters are “sort of a falafel-y type thing”, and of course, when I made them, they did resemble a falafel so much more than the awful boxed mix concoction of my teens. I was elated! Over the years since, I would make a version of this broad bean fritter and refer to it as a quickie-falafel-of-sorts, often favouring fresh or canned broad beans instead of chickpeas because I felt it differentiated mine from most quickie homemade falafels out there. It would not be until a visit back home to Toronto in 2022 when I would learn that Egyptians—the originators of the falafel we love today—use broad beans in their falafels! Ta’ameya. This knowledge was, at the very least, very validating! My preference for broad beans over chickpeas did not seem so far-fetched after all. Admittedly, I am more than a little embarrassed that it took me well over two decades to learn what Egyptian falafels are.

My youngest sister-in-law happens to be friends with a lot of Egyptians in Toronto, so they suggested to me that I visit Tut’s Egyptian Street Food so I could taste some ta’ameya, albeit through the lens of the diaspora in the Westernized world. So I did, and I was not disappointed. Ta’ameya are a lot more airy than their chickpea counterparts, moist, herbaceous, and perfectly spiced on the inside, with a shatteringly crispy exterior. That said, in spite of my unfortunate boxed mix encounter, it is very rare I meet a falafel I do not like, and even the somewhat dense, overly cumin-y pucks I have encountered over the decades I have learned to tolerate, perhaps out of hunger in the moment. Ta’ameya quickly shot up to the top of what my ideal falafel should taste like, and I found myself, once more, hyper fixated over the idea of recreating this at home.

Drawing on my first ta’ameya experience, I watched a lot of YouTube videos from Egyptian creators, restaurant features showcasing the Egyptian diaspora in North America, and travel-logs featuring Egyptian street food to arrive at the ta’ameya you see here. Until I visit Egypt to taste the real-deal-in-situ-thing myself, I imagine this will have to do. I hope I do the Egyptian diaspora proud with these.

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I don’t exactly remember when I first came across Kasama Chocolates, but it was definitely at a farmers’ market in 2018 or 2019, very likely at Trout Lake. Their name stopped me at my tracks; ‘Kasama’ is the Tagalog word for ‘together’ or ‘companion’, depending on the context with which the word is used. Up until that moment, I had not encountered any Filipino makers at the local farmers’ markets here in Vancouver, much less chocolatiers who work with cacao beans from the Philippines. Furthermore, I was not aware that the Philippines grew cacao beans for export! In my very limited experience with bean-to-bar chocolates, peripherally, cacao beans from South America often took centre stage: Ecuador, Peru, Brazil. And while it came as no surprise to me that the Philippines had the right kind of climate for cacao production, I have never come across a bar that highlighted cacao beans from the Philippines, until I encountered Kasama’s stall at that farmers’ market.

When I got engaged in 2018 and started somewhat last-minute wedding planning in 2019, I knew I wanted to serve Kasama Chocolates as part of our dessert table, so I bought two flavours—one made with earl grey tea sourced from a local loose leaf tea shop, and one made with freeze-dried durian from the Philippines. The durian chocolate was an acquired taste for a lot of our guests, but those who loved it, really loved the chocolate! I am not the biggest fan of durian myself, but I found Kasama’s durian chocolate extremely well-balanced, even caramel-like, with only the slightest durian funk.

I finally met Vincent Garcia, one of the owners of Kasama Chocolates, during the pandemic’s first year, sometime in 2020. Our friendship started off as an Instagram DM where I expressed how much the guests at my wedding really enjoyed their chocolate. When we met in person, we quickly found out that we are both either acquainted with or are friends with many of the same people here in the Vancouver food industry, and our relationship pretty much evolved and grew from there. His business partners, Stefan Klopp, Oliver Koth-Kappus, and Dom Voser—undoubtedly through Vince’s influence—have been extremely supportive of me and my work outside my professional food and product photography practice. When Vince reached out to me for this year’s Philippine Heritage Month collaboration bar just this past February, I did not have to think about it too much. I was already in.

My Kasama collaboration bar is inspired by an ice cream flavour I made for my very first pop-up in 2022, during Vancouver’s first annual Filipino Restaurant Month. I decided to make ice cream using classic Filipino flavours, but with a contemporary twist. I still consider this pop-up to be Amalgam’s first “unofficial” public launch; it would be another few months before I would build and launch this Substack. I was a complete unknown in the local culinary pop-up space, so the first two weeks of sales from my ice cream pop-up were very slow. I got some exposure through my existing Instagram followers and through friends who shared my Instagram posts. I capped each week at 20 pints; I was surprised if I sold ten. But I was determined to finish the month, so I soldiered on.

I made four different flavours—a different one per week during Filipino Restaurant Month—and sold pre-orders through my Square web address. The fourth and final ice cream flavour from that renegade, completely-word-of-mouth FRM pop-up was my Kalamansi Creamsicle with Orange Blossom Caramel. All 20 pints sold out in about an hour. A few people even private messaged me to make extra pints because they had missed the pre-order window, so I opened up some DM sales. I made two dozen pints of the flavour. One person, after picking up their pint, messaged me to say they wanted to just sneak in a taste just to try, but it tasted “so good” that they “ate half the pint on the Skytrain” back to their home. High praise.

When Vince told me our collaboration bar would use their Kalamansi White Chocolate Bar as a base, there was no question in my mind—I would turn my Kalamansi Creamsicle flavour into a bar. We toyed with the idea of doing a cookie crumble, so I made two tests: spiced toffee bits flavoured with orange blossom water and asin tibuok (a rare Philippine heritage sea salt), and a sablé cookie crumble flavoured with orange blossom toffee bits. The spiced toffee bits won the taste test. While the sablé was delicious paired with the kalamansi chocolate bar, it felt a little too complex and way overdone. Focusing on just the toffee bits felt a lot cleaner, a lot more balanced, and certainly a lot more elegant.

Watch how asin tibuok is made here.

The final result is not exactly like the ice cream I made, but that ice cream flavour definitely informed the way I wanted Kasama’s chocolate and my toffee bits to work in harmony with each other. We did multiple tests, making sure the toffee was flavoured just enough for the flavour of the candy to come through, but also not overwhelm the kalamansi bar too much that the citrus gets lost to the spices and orange blossom.

Buy the chocolate bar here.

Read about Kasama’s origins here.

Watch how Kasama’s early production and process looked like here.

All of that said, this collaboration bar humbled me, y’all! Making a single batch of toffee was one thing, scaling it up for 300 units was another. While I can confidently put candy-making in my culinary resume, I am afraid this bar will be the end of my candy-and-confection-making journey. When this bar sells out, that’s it folks! I told Vince I will not be remaking this flavour again, hahaha! If I am lucky enough to have another collaboration bar with my dear friends, I think I will be sticking with… well… not candy. Know thyself!

Still, who knows? I might do this flavour again… but… try not to hold your breath. ;-)

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These ones are very well-tested, because I make this combo almost every year. I have been perfecting this cured salmon for many, many years now, spanning well over a decade. This was inspired by my old friend and former employer, Shabnam Weber, now the president of the Tea Association of Canada. I make variations of this cured salmon depending on the season, but the jasmine tea on the salmon cure is a perennial favourite in my household. I first had this divine combination at one of our staff parties back when Shabnam ran The Tea Emporium in Toronto. I was their employee back then, and I so looked forward to those staff parties with her and her former husband at their kitchen’s helm because the food at those parties were so damn good! Obviously, every course was infused with tea! Shabnam served us some jasmine-cured salmon during one of those parties and I instantly fell in love. Truly, that little bite of cured salmon became a core culinary memory that eventually led to me making my own version, if only to try and reconstruct the feeling I got when I had my first bite of that magical appetizer.

The addition of spruce tips to my salmon cure came around the time I first discovered spruce tips, back at another tea shop wherein I was employed—a couple of years after I settled into my life here in Vancouver. It was around 2012 or 2013 when a forager friend of the tea shop’s owner came in with a variety of edible evergreen tips for us to try: spruce, pine, cedar, and fir. This was one of my first introductions to foraging edibles in the wild. Having grown up in big cities all of my life, foraging the wild for edible food never really entered my periphery or consciousness until this particular moment. We brewed a variety of these evergreen tips like we brewed green tea, then proceeded to drink in this heavenly tisane. This bonafide big city gal’s mind was well and truly blown away. It was like drinking in the forest.

These evergreen tips dry very well. I was gifted some after the tasting with this forager, and I made sure to dry them well for storage over the coming months. Evergreen tips like spruce tips are typically harvested over the early spring—around mid-April in this part of the world. They are harvested when the evergreen tips start to emerge out of their brown, papery casings. This is the ideal stage for harvest; the tips will be tender, and they will emit a bright, resinous fragrance, like that of an evergreen forest. Their flavour—equally resinous in taste, with bright, citrus notes—is truly unmatched. If you ever encounter some young spruce tips, chew on one to taste. I promise you, they are delicious.

Why am I writing about spruce tips when December clearly isn’t the season for them? Honestly, the scent of evergreens is the smell of December for me. Dried spruce tips are also readily available for purchase here in Canada or in parts of the USA. Just make sure you purchase them from reputable sources. This shop is one of my favourite sources for locally and responsibly-foraged edibles here in Canada. If you cannot find any spruce tips where you live, feel free to omit this and stick with just the jasmine tea for the cure, but please use organic tea when possible.

All the components that make up this holiday-and-entertaining-friendly appetizer also make great standalone dishes. The cured salmon is definitely the star; feel free to make only the salmon and serve that with whatever you choose! You certainly do not have to make the savoury ricotta pancakes nor the herb and maple crème fraîche. You can save the recipe for these ricotta pancakes for some other occasion—maybe for a brunch! You can also make the sauce for a different dish—say, roasted potatoes, roasted squash, or roasted fennel! Drizzle this herb and maple crème fraîche over those roasted veggies and you will have made a winning side!

Another hot tip: you can make the ricotta pancakes well in advance! Cook the pancakes, cool them, then transfer them into an air-tight freezer bag or container, making sure you line each pancake layer with parchment paper. Defrost them in your fridge the night before you plan on serving them. Set your oven to 350°F. Take some parchment paper sheets, crumple them, run them under your faucet until wet, and then squeeze the water out of the parchment paper. Layer your baking sheet with a damp parchment paper sheet, then the pancakes, then another layer of damp parchment paper. Cover the entire baking sheet with aluminum foil and heat up the pancakes for around 10 to 12 minutes. Take off the foil and the top parchment paper layer and let the pancakes toast, uncovered, for another 5 minutes. No one will ever know that you did not spend an entire morning on the day of your brunch or holiday party making the batter and flipping all of those pancakes.

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Online Ceramic Prop Shop
atbp. by Studio et Alia

I have—somewhat quietly—opened up an online prop shop with handmade ceramics from various artists from all over the world. With my work as a food photographer, I have amassed a massive collection of handmade ceramics from artists all over the world. I have saved many photographs and have gone down so many online rabbit holes to find the artists behind the tableware in those photographic vignettes I love. People like Tina Kami, a Hamburg-based ceramic artist whose work I have followed since 2015, or the inimitable Kasper Würtz, of old-school NOMA fame, have graced my collection.

I cull my collection down from time to time to make room for new styles, but mostly because I find I no longer reach for these items to photograph or use. It is my intention to send these pieces out to good homes, especially for those who appreciate items that are made by hand. I discount these pieces heavily; I have paid all the duties, the overseas shipping, and the hefty currency exchange mark-up so you don’t have to.

This is the first of many updates; I am doing another cull around early next year to make room for the absolute essentials in my day-to-day usage. This is also one of the first times I have offered oft-coveted Janaki Larsen pieces at significantly lower price points than what she sells her ceramics for. The next cull might feature some more of her work, so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, you can head over to atbp. by Studio et Alia for my latest inventory. atbp. is an abbreviation of the Tagalog phrase “at iba pa”, which roughly translates to “and others, yet”. I thought this term to be very fitting for my online store.

5% of my earnings from my online ceramics sale will go towards Tamam: Fine Palestinian Cuisine’s Gaza relief efforts. You can follow their updates on their IG for more recent news on where their fundraising efforts are going. Recently, through some complex networks in Jordan and Egypt, Tamam was able to supply clean drinking water to the displaced people in Palestine. In spite of fundraising efforts reaching well over $100,000 CAD, Tamam’s networks have to go through many back doors to get aid to the right people because Israel keeps blocking all necessary aid from getting to Palestinians. This cause is very important to me—something I post about in all of my socials often—and this is why I am donating part of my earnings towards continued aid and relief for Palestine.

With the holidays coming up, maybe you would want to gift someone some unique, hard-to-find ceramic pieces from these artists, and you can rest knowing that your money is going towards a worthy cause.

An Amalgam Pop-up!
1861 Franklin Street
Vancouver, BC
November 16 and 17, 2024
11 am to 6 pm (or until sell-out)

Well, it’s happening. I have not popped up with any of my culinary offerings since my big ice cream pop-up in 2022. I don’t know if my small, one-day cookie pop-up last year counts, because that seriously felt too hurried and experimental, but it was a rousing success, because I sold out of cookies within two hours.

I am back as a participant in this year’s Witch Walk as part of the annual Eastside Culture Crawl, and I will be offering my baked goods for sale! There will be more than cookies this time, too! I will be selling cake loaves and tarts on top of a Filipino-forward cookie menu. My culinary offerings in this pop-up will be an expression of my own culinary language, just like my recipes here in Amalgam.

Please come visit me at 1861 Franklin Street, on Saturday, November 16, and Sunday, November 17, from 11 am to 6 pm (or until sell-out). Word to the wise: I might sell-out early, so the earlier you arrive, the better. I am bringing very, very small batches of each item in my menu, plus a surprise menu item I will announce on Friday, the 15th! Follow me on Instagram for that piece of news. This is a renegade bake sale, and I can only make so much in my little kitchen, but I am bringing a wide variety of baked goods! The Witch Walk is gonna be such an amazing time, believe me! You can head out to visit the rest of the Witch Walk locations or really, any of the Eastside Culture Crawl studios while you are at it! They are all within a reasonable walking distance of each other. This is a must-do activity, every year, in Vancouver!

You can find out more about The Witch Walk and its various locations, all within walking distance, here, in their Instagram. For a list of artists participating in this year’s Eastside Culture Crawl, including my Witch Walk collective members, visit their site here.

This year, we at the Witch Walk will be donating a portion of our earnings to Tamam’s Gaza relief efforts and the Aboriginal Mother Centre Society. I will be selling copies of our self-published magazine project for $5 flat (original price is $30 +tax), and 100% of those sales will go to both Tamam and AMCS. Vancouverites, please tell your friends, and come out to support your local artists and the causes we champion. We are doing our best to lighten this very heavy world with our art and to provide help where we can.

My recipe work will resume in December, just in time for the holidays. Again, I cannot thank you all enough for sticking around, through my devastating cancer diagnosis and journey, and through everything, really. I appreciate and am grateful to every single one of you.

Until next time in my kitchen!
Maybe I’ll see some of you in my pop-up!
xo, Issha

A disclaimer: Please note that I am not a registered dietician, certified nutritionist, oncologist, or medical expert of any sort, and that I am only sharing with you my experiences during my cancer journey and all the recipes that I have developed, cooked, and eaten during my treatments. The recipes under YBHM should not be taken as official medical advice and you should consult your GP and your oncology team about foods that may counter the kind of chemo meds you are receiving. Every cancer diagnosis is different. YBHM serves as a source of culinary inspiration for those fighting cancer, and for their caretakers, too. Food and cooking is a big part of my life, and the recipes I have developed here are fun, creative, and nourishing, and I hope you think so, too.

We are all in this together.

The inspiration for this chowder arrived a little over a year after my last round of aggressive chemo, and during a bout of COVID that ravaged my body still undergoing maintenance infusions to keep whatever cancer I have left stable and at bay. Violent coughs racked my body for over two months, coming in at a crescendo around the month and a half mark. This cough completely destroyed all my vocal cords; to this day, my voice is still not up to its full capacity, and it still hurts to talk at times. I was running on very little sleep and energy during the times my cough had crescendoed, and out went every resolve I had to prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals for me and my husband. I relied heavily on delivery services and prepared items for nutrition, so it was a very expensive two months, food-wise. It was a miserable summer for me. I hated not being able to go outside, I hated not being able to sleep for more than two hours at a time, and most of all, I hated not being able to cook.

After one of my routine appointments at BC Cancer, we made a pit stop to Whole Foods to get some ready-made items that I can quickly heat up over the stove. I had developed a fondness for a specific brand of ready-made dal and wanted to stock up on that particular brand, when a packet of vegan corn chowder from a different brand also caught my eye. It looked good, but it was expensive—$9.99 for 387 ml of soup. Ouch. Still, I treated myself to it—remember, folks, I was miserable, and I wanted something sunny, summery, and comforting— so into my shopping basket that corn chowder went. Just one packet, just for a taste.

I had been saving that corn chowder for a day when I felt like I would truly need something sunny to cheer me up, and sure enough, after a particularly frustrating appointment at my GP’s, I opened up the corn chowder packet, heated it up, then garnished my store-bought soup with some scallions and cilantro for some added flavour and a much-needed green pop.

The base of this vegan corn chowder was made out of coconut milk, so I expected to be hit with a big dose of coconut, like many coconut milk-based vegan things, of course, but I was surprised to find that the sweet corn came through quite nicely against the coconut backdrop. In short, this store-bought corn chowder was delicious. Truly, I felt a little sad after I had licked my bowl clean!

I needed to make my own.

I became well enough to shop at my usual farmers’ markets after my coughing started to subside around the two month mark, so I purchased enough sweet corn—which are still very much in season here in BC—to make my own version of the vegan corn chowder I bought at Whole Foods.

I had walnut milk in my pantry and used that as a base for the first iteration of my vegan corn chowder, and while it certainly was delicious, I wasn’t too keen on the chowder’s colour! Walnut milk has the colour of a really pale malted milk chocolate drink, and I was after a yellow colour—to echo the corn, of course! Intellectually, even if I had used, say, whole milk to make this corn chowder, the yellow would not be as pronounced as the corn kernels; it would be more of a pale butter yellow colour. That pale butter yellow I can work with, but not the light brown! Walnut milk is out.

I was hesitant to use coconut milk when first making this corn chowder because I thought I could do away with the coconut flavour altogether, and instead, use an unsweetened nut milk to add some protein into the soup. Walnuts are good for brain, gut, and heart health, and are a known anti-cancer food, plus, the milk itself is neutral enough that the sweet corn could truly shine and not have so much of a coconut undertone.

When I develop a recipe, I also develop for aesthetics. After trying out walnut milk, I knew immediately that I would use coconut milk for my next round after all, and that I would have to find some other way to incorporate protein into the soup.

There were also some textural things I needed to fix after my first round of vegan chowder, so I gave this recipe some space, then made it again a couple of weeks later, but with some tweaks.

Well, I nailed it on this round, and I could not be more happy with what I ended up!

Let’s go through some of the chemo-supportive elements present in my vegan elote chowder:

• Organic coconut milk: Coconut milk contains lauric acid and phenols: antioxidants that help the body fight and remove free radicals that can cause the body oxidative stress—the kind that can cause heart disease or cancer. Coconut milk contains antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties, making it ideal for immune system support. It can also trigger cell death in breast or endometrial cancer cells, inhibiting cancer cell growth.
  
  When shopping for coconut milk, try and get organic as much as possible, and make sure the ingredients contain only one thing: coconut milk.
  

• Shiitake mushroom powder: Shiitake mushrooms boost the immune system, reduce inflammation, increase cell death in cancer cells, inhibit tumour growth, is a well-known chemo-supportive food, contain high amounts of antioxidants, reduces cholesterol levels… I mean, really, the list is endless.
  
  Here’s a personal story: a few months before I was diagnosed, my body kept craving shiitake mushrooms. It was unbelievable… the amount I was consuming on a weekly basis! I was making so many shiitake mushroom-based dishes, that at one point, my husband, during one of our dinners, remarked, incredulously, “Really? Shiitake mushrooms? Again?” I just laughed it off, and continued to cook them week after week. Then I got my diagnosis in November of 2022, and my entire world fell apart.
  
  My friend, a cancer survivor, told me she found out that certain cancers can trick the body into eating what the cancer craves. She had spoken to some patients who found their cravings for sugar—a well-known cancer-loving food—insatiable. I noted my craving for shiitakes and said something along the likes of, “Oh my gosh, I have been eating shiitakes non-stop lately; was this my cancer tricking me???” This same friend gasped, then said, “Your body must be highly intuitive, because your craving for shiitakes was your body’s way of telling you that you really needed their kind of medicine.”
  
  Was that just some hippy-dippy shit? I don’t know, but I really did go through a huge shiitake craving that would not disappear for months and months at a time. I also made it a point to eat many shiitake mushroom dishes during my treatment. To this day, I hold shiitake mushrooms to a very high regard—almost to a spiritual level. I sound overly hyperbolic and a little hippy-dippy myself, but I truly believe these mushrooms, alongside the hard work of my oncology team, helped me keep my life.
  
  A note on shiitake mushroom powder: this may be difficult for you to find at the grocery store! I found mine through my favourite mushroom purveyor at my local farmers’ market. They grow the shiitake mushrooms themselves, then dry the mushrooms before grinding them into a powder. If you cannot find any, get some organic dried shiitakes from the store, then use your food processor to grind it into a fine powder. Alternatively, you can also use organic mushroom bouillon cubes—just read the ingredients to make sure the cubes do not contain any unfamiliar chemicals, ingredients, or food colourings. Mushroom stock and even mushroom liquid concentrate is readily available these days in specialty grocery stores!
  
  Are these items beyond your budget? That’s ok! Use a good-quality vegetable stock; these are fairly inexpensive, and a 1L container will do! This vegan chowder is loaded with so many good ingredients anyway, so it’ll be ok to skip out on the mushrooms!
  
  If you aren’t vegan, a good-quality chicken stock or beef stock will also be amazing on this. The broth made from chicken or beef bones have health benefits too!
  

• Organic sweet corn: Corn contains lots of dietary fibre, both soluble and insoluble, which feed and support the growth of healthy gut bacteria. I have said some form of this before in my YBHM posts—chemo is a scorched earth treatment to aggressive cancers like mine, and they kill everything, including healthy cells. During a lengthy debrief before my chemo treatments, the nurses on my oncology team kept stressing how important it was to eat foods that would aid in the rebuilding of my body’s cells, especially if the chemo results in my loss of appetite. “Force in a bite or two of food, if only to remind yourself that your body needs the nourishment to rebuild what chemo destroys.” I took this advice very seriously. I am very proud to say that during my more aggressive treatments, I experienced very little irregularity in the bathroom because of my whole grain intake, and though I certainly experienced some appetite loss, I forced myself to eat, even if it’s just a little bit.
  
  Corn also contains vitamins A, C, and B, magnesium, potassium, lutein and zeaxanthin—the latter two essential in supporting eye health.
  

• Silken tofu: Tofu is a known protein powerhouse, and is much-beloved by many plant-based eaters for its remarkable blank canvas-like ability to take on all sorts of flavours and textures, making it an ideal substitute for animal protein. It has been known to improve heart health, lower cancer risks, and contains calcium and magnesium—essential for strengthening bones.

I used Monsoon Coast’s Adobo Seco in my vegan chowder. Theirs is my go-to taco seasoning blend. It contains a variety of Mexican chiles, accented by souring spice agents like sumac and amchoor—a green mango powder present in many South Asian dishes. This blend is well-used in my household; it is very unique and extremely delicious.

If you cannot get access to this Adobo Seco because of where you live, try using one chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. You can find these in any supermarket these days, or in Mexican grocery stores. Finely mince this chipotle pepper and add it to your corn and veggie sauté.

You can also use Spanish smoked paprika or ancho chile powder or both—about a teaspoon. Adjust the chile levels to your tastes.

Vegan Elote Chowder
(makes around 3 litres of chowder)

Special Equipment

• a blender or an immersion blender

Ingredients

• 500 ml organic coconut milk

• 400 g organic silken tofu

• 1 L water (more, if needed)

• 1 tbsp shiitake mushroom powder (or 2 mushroom bouillon cubes)

• 2 bay leaves

• 3/4 lb Yukon gold or Sieglinde potatoes (approximately 3 to 5 small to medium-sized potatoes), peeled and cut into large chunks

• 5 ears of sweet corn, husks and silks removed

• 3 poblano peppers, de-seeded and finely diced

• 2 red peppers, de-seeded and finely diced

• 2 to 3 jalapeño peppers, de-seeded and finely diced

• 1 large onion, finely diced

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

• 2 tsp Monsoon Coast Adobo Seco

• 1/4 tsp turmeric

• 1 tbsp fresh marjoram, chopped

• 1 tbsp fresh lemon thyme, chopped

• 2 limes

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• sea salt to taste

• fresh cilantro and scallions for garnish

Method

1. Run a knife through the ears of the sweet corn to remove the kernels. Set one heaping cup of fresh kernels aside and leave the rest for the bulk of the chowder. Do not discard the hulled ears.

2. In a stockpot, pour in the coconut milk, a litre of water, bay leaves, shiitake mushroom powder, the hulled ears of corn, and the peeled and cut potatoes. Simmer on medium with the lid on the stockpot until the potatoes have softened, or enough so that the potatoes can easily be mashed with a fork.

3. Turn off the heat. Fish out the hulled ears of corn and the bay leaves and discard these. Fish out the softened potatoes and mash them with a fork or a masher. Set these mashed potatoes aside. Pour the heaping cup of fresh corn kernels and silken tofu into this coconut milk and mushroom stock base, and turn the heat on medium-low with the lid on to let the corn and tofu simmer into the stock and for the corn kernels to soften slightly.

4. Turn off the heat, and carefully transfer the coconut milk, mushroom, corn, and silken tofu mix into a blender, or blend carefully using your immersion blender, until the stock has visibly thickened, the silken tofu has been completely incorporated, and there are very little solid corn kernels left. Transfer the mashed potatoes into this mix and stir thoroughly to combine. Set aside.

5. In another stock pot, heat up the olive oil over medium heat, and sauté the remaining corn kernels, diced poblano peppers, diced red peppers, diced onion, and minced garlic until fragrant and the onion is slightly translucent. Add in the Adobo Seco or taco seasoning, turmeric, marjoram, and thyme and continue to sauté until the herbs and spices start to impart their oils and aromas.

6. Carefully add in the thickened coconut, mushroom, corn, silken tofu, and potato stock and stir thoroughly to combine. If the chowder looks a little too thick, add just enough water to get the chowder to the consistency you want. Turn the heat down to medium low, then add the juice and zest of two limes. Season the chowder with sea salt to taste.

7. Serve piping hot and garnish with chopped fresh cilantro and scallions.

This chowder will last in your fridge for about a week, stored in an airtight container. It actually gets better two or three days in, like a stew. When reheating the chowder, it is best to heat it over a stove, for better flavour and texture.

This corn chowder freezes wonderfully! Just store it in an airtight container or a vacuum-sealed bag and freeze. You can reheat straight from the freezer—on the stovetop over medium heat with the lid on the pot, or thawed in the fridge overnight, then reheated on the stovetop from its thawed state.

Wishing you all good health and good eats.

Until next time in my kitchen!
xo, Issha

I did not know how to write about this particular cookie without properly crediting this cookie’s origins. Truth is, it is no secret that Superbaba—a popular, fast-casual Middle Eastern1 eatery located on Main Street here in Vancouver, BC—is a big favourite of mine. Everything they make is nutritious, nourishing, fairly-priced, and delicious. Leah Christ, one of Superbaba’s owners, also happens to be a friend of mine. We met while working at a coffee shop in Chinatown back in 2016, where she was the head baker, and I was a barista. Leah is an extremely talented and passionate baker, and—in my eyes—a very dedicated student of traditional Levantine baking and sweets. I will never forget the time she gifted me some Turkish delight she had made from scratch, going as far as to source mastic gum from overseas. She once told me that she would head deep into online recipe rabbit holes armed with Google translator in an attempt to decode recipes written in Arabic that have no exact quantities—only ingredients (Leah is also currently learning Arabic). Back when the pandemic was in full force, she would publish IG Stories on her at-home baking forays, and in one of her videos, she showed off these impossibly thin phyllo sheets she made from scratch on her not-at-all-restaurant-sized kitchen counter! Hardly anyone makes their own phyllo dough anymore, much less make them in a home kitchen, but Leah really is on another level.

Leah’s life and business partner, Dallah El Chami, is Lebanese, and is, I suspect, a massive influence on her too. I met Dallah years before I met Leah, back when he was putting on and organizing pop-ups under his catering moniker The Dallah Menu. The Dallah Menu introduced people to Lebanese cuisine through a diasporic lens; the food Dallah made had modern twists, but ultimately, his dishes were still very much deeply-rooted in tradition and are heavily-influenced by his mother’s home cooking and the food he grew up eating in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. I regret not attending some of these early pop-ups—life had me going in a completely different trajectory back then—but I lived through some of my friends’ experiences in his pop-ups through Instagram posts of his food. Though Dallah and I are likely acquainted with the same people we know in the industry, I never really got to know him the way I got to know Leah, but my admiration for him—and of him and Leah as a team—runs deep.

When Dallah announced that he would be opening a fast casual restaurant called Superbaba in Victoria, BC, I was excited, but also initially disappointed that such a place wasn’t yet opening in Vancouver. Word spread, however, and the word said that their food is good, so when my husband, our mutual friend, and I happened to be in Victoria visiting in 2019, we made it a point to eat there, and promptly fell in love at first bite. I, being a bit of a cookie fiend, ordered both Superbaba’s signature cookies—their turmeric cookie and their halva, cornflake, and chocolate chip cookie. I fell in love with both, but I thought their halva, cornflake, and chocolate chip cookie was a refreshing stroke of genius amidst the ubiquity of the chocolate chip cookie. Halva—a type of confectionary similar to fudge—can be made out of sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, or even plain flour. The nuttiness and sweetness of the halva lends itself well to a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Their addition of cornflakes also gives the cookie a nice textural and flavour boost! I quietly filed this flavour combo away in my mind, and there it lay dormant until about a couple of years ago.

When Superbaba finally opened their Vancouver location in Mt. Pleasant in the middle of the pandemic, my husband and I rejoiced. I kid you not—we ordered take-out from them two, maybe three times every week for a few months straight during the early days. Jeff and I couldn’t get enough. There were times when we would head to the restaurant maybe an hour before they closed, only to get turned away because they had run out of components to make their bowls and wraps. The Vancouver love for Superbaba was intense during their first few operating months, exacerbated by a global pandemic that allowed only take-out, not dine-in. Still, we relished eating their food whenever we could, which was often.

Their oven broke—I am not sure when—and remained broken for some time. So while they were able to churn out their pitas, for a while there, I was without my favourite chocolate chip cookie. In the spring of 2022, I attempted to recreate their cookie out of a deep-seated craving for them. My H-Triple-C-P Cookie was born.

Before I go any further, I wanted to send out a very hearty congratulations to Dallah, Leah, and the rest of the team for the highly-anticipated opening of Mishmish in Fraserhood! When I first got wind of this bakery from Leah herself, I was stoked, mostly over the possibility of not having a cap on my weekly orders of their signature fluffy pitas, of which my husband is also very entirely addicted. He can eat four of their fluffy pitas in one day, maybe more. So you see, a dozen of their pitas will disappear in a matter of a couple of days. Oftentimes I would reach out to Leah directly for orders up to four dozen at a time if I am entertaining. It was a little embarrassing to be ordering so much in one go, and mostly for my husband. My sheepishness and embarrassment are all self-inflicted, of course; their staff only ever regarded me with understanding and amusement over my comically large pita orders!

Recently, Jeff and I were very lucky to have been invited to Mishmish’s Friends and Family opening, where we purchased one of each of their desserts. Their osmalieh is my new favourite sweet treat from them! It might make an appearance in one of my future Reverse posts, if I even dare take that on!

This cookie recipe won’t likely exist without my being directly inspired by Superbaba and Mishmish’s halva cookie. I highly encourage a visit to Superbaba or the newly-opened Mishmish to try their cookies out for yourself! My rendition isn’t exactly like theirs—not even a little bit—but perhaps their cookie could light a fire in you to take on those flavours and experiment in your kitchen!

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Lilac syrup is the most common way you can preserve the taste of lilacs in a bottle. Seasoned lilac gourmands, like food blogger Linda Lomelino, add blueberries to her syrup to give it a violet colour, but I suspect the colour in her photographs are a tad bit exaggerated with some post-processing magic. It takes more than the four blueberries in her recipe to give your lilac tisane the colour in her photographs, and, from experience, if you add more than ten blueberries, the blueberry flavours will start to compete with the lilac flavour. I want as much of the lilacs’ flavour profile preserved in the syrup. That said, I do use the blueberry method to tint the syrup only slightly. Lilac tisanes give off more of a light-amber hue, similar to that of a lightly-brewed Darjeeling, but with a slightly cloudy liquor. The addition of a few blueberries will make it more of a dusty blue-violet colour, depending also on the shade of lavender or violet on your lilacs.

For every litre of syrup I make, I also add in about a quarter cup of lemon juice to brighten up the rounded floral flavour of the lilacs—but not too much—so as not to overpower the lilac flavour I want to preserve. You can also use citric acid; it’ll give your syrup some acidity without adding any other flavour profile to the lilacs—this is ideal. One whole teaspoon of citric acid is equal to about a quarter cup of lemon juice. You will find that the addition of acid will turn the blue violet-ish-tinted liquid to a pink-ish violet.

Make sure your lilacs are unsprayed and are from a reputable source; mine are from an organic farmer who sells lilac bunches at their stall every year. If you are harvesting lilacs from your own garden, make sure you do not treat your plants with any chemicals. The same goes when harvesting lilacs from other people’s yards; make sure you get their permission first, of course!

To clean your lilacs, dunk the lilac heads in cold water several times, then shake off the excess water. The next part takes a bit of work; I talked about being in lilac processing purgatory when I published my Lilac and Pineapple Shrub last week. You have to painstakingly take the florets off from its green stem, but you will also have to try and retain each of the blooms’ pistils and stamens too; these are where the lilac’s nectar lies. I usually use my index finger and thumb to pinch off the blossom from their green parts. One full stem can yield about a cup or so of florets. You will need four cups of blooms to make 1L of lilac syrup.

Simple Lilac Syrup
(makes ~1 litre)

Special Equipment

• a fine sieve

• cheesecloth

• thermometer

• clean and sterilized jars

• funnel

Ingredients

• 4 cups lilac blossoms

• 1 litre water

• 4 cups organic cane sugar

• 1/4 cup lemon juice or 1 tbsp citric acid

• 5 to 10 blueberries (optional)
  

Method

1. Heat your water to around 175°F—the temperature for making green tea. Dissolve the sugar in the water. The sugar will lower the temperature of the water, so continue to heat until it reaches 175°F again. If using, add in your blueberries; I use frozen wild blueberries in mine. Add in the lemon juice or citric acid. If you are using citric acid, make sure it dissolves completely into the warm, sugary liquid.

2. Pour the warm sugar syrup, including the blueberries, over the lilacs. Stir until fully incorporated, and then let it cool completely on your counter before transferring the mixture into your fridge to let the lilacs infuse into the sugary syrup for 24 hours.

3. Strain the mixture over a bowl using a fine sieve outfitted with a piece of cheesecloth. Make sure to squeeze every ounce of flavour out of the lilacs.

4. Sterilize your jars and lids, then ladle the syrup into those jars using a funnel. The syrup will keep inside your fridge for three to five months. You can also process the syrup as you would for preserves and jellies; this shelf-stable syrup will last about a year in your pantry.

Making floral jellies is tricky; it took me a few years to figure it out, testing out different kinds of pectin. My last batch with pure apple pectin powder did not gel, and I was incredibly frustrated! I really hate wasting food, so I used my slightly thickened, un-set lilac jelly from last year as a lilac-infused “honey” of sorts, so all was alright in the end, I suppose. Still, I really, really wanted to succeed in making a proper lilac jelly, so I was quite bummed the apple pectin did not work. I might have overcooked it, or I did not use enough acid or sugar. There aren’t many sources out there about working with powdered apple pectin, at least, none that I can find that would be useful in my flower jelly-making forays!

This year, I decided to use Pomona’s Universal Pectin for my lilac jelly for two reasons: it was the most widely-available pectin that I could find in specialty grocery stores here in Vancouver (Whole Foods and Gourmet Warehouse carry this brand), and it is a pectin that will allow you to make jellies with low amounts of sweetener.

Because floral tisanes do not contain natural pectin like, say, apples, citrus, and berries, making floral jellies can be a bit daunting. Floral tisanes need the right amount of acid for it to react with the pectin, ensuring a proper set. There is also a risk of overcooking the pectin, which will destroy the pectin’s ability to gel when cooled.

I failed many times to get this lilac jelly just right, so you won’t have to. Read through the recipe below a few times and ready your stations before you attempt to make this jelly. Proper mise-en-place is key here, so make sure your jars and lids are freshly sterilized, your canning pot is on the stove boiling away, your sugar is measured, your lilac tisane is at the ready, and your calcium water and pectin are within reach.

Pomona’s Universal Pectin comes with two packets—calcium powder and pectin. Mix the calcium powder packet into one-half cup of filtered water inside a small, sterilized jar, and shake. You can store this jar of calcium water in your fridge, and it will keep indefinitely as long as you do not contaminate it with dirty spoons or dirty fingers. You can decant the pectin powder into another clean jar and store it in a cool, darkened area in your pantry; this will also keep indefinitely.

If this is your first time processing jellies for shelf stability, peep my equipment list in this Yuzu Marmalade post; scroll down at the bottom for the equipment list.

Lilac Jelly
(makes roughly 4 x 8 oz. jars)

Equipment

• fine sieve

• cheesecloth

• stockpot

• 8 oz. jars and lids

• rubber spatula

• whisk

• thermometer

• canning supplies as outlined here; focus on the pieces of equipment with active links

Ingredients

• 4 to 5 cups of lilac blooms

• 4 1/4 cups water

• 2 cups organic cane sugar

• 2 tbsp lemon juice or 1/4 tsp citric acid, for a soft-set jelly OR …

• … 1/4 cup lemon juice or 1 tbsp citric acid, for a firm-set jelly

• 4 tsp calcium water

• 4 tsp pectin powder

Method

1. Heat 4 1/4 cups of water to 175°F. Pour this warm water over the lilac blooms and stir until the blooms are fully wilted. Let the tisane cool on your counter before transferring it into the fridge to infuse for 24 hours. Strain the liquid into another pot using a fine sieve outfitted with a cheesecloth, making sure to squeeze every ounce of flavour out of the lilacs. Discard the spent lilac blooms. You should have 4 cups of lilac tisane here. If you are just shy of 4 cups, add just enough water to make sure you have exactly 4 cups of liquid.

2. Sterilize your jars and lids, then set these aside on a clean tea towel on your counter.

3. Place the tisane into a stockpot, then add in the amount of lemon juice or citric acid depending on the set you want to achieve: 2 tbsp lemon juice / 1/4 tsp citric acid for a soft-set jelly OR 1/4 cup lemon juice / 1 tbsp lemon juice for a firm-set jelly.

4. Give your calcium water a good shake, then add in 4 tsp into the lilac tisane and lemon juice/citric acid mixture. Bring this to a boil.

5. While waiting for your tisane to boil, measure out 1 3/4 cups of organic cane sugar. Measure in 4 tsp pectin and mix the pectin thoroughly into the sugar.

6. Once the tisane comes into a gentle rolling boil, pour in the sugar and pectin mixture and whisk immediately to dissolve the pectin and sugar as much as possible. This will cause the mixture to stop its rolling boil, so work quickly to dissolve the clumps of pectin that may have formed, switching between a spatula and a whisk, if needed. Dissolve the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar into the thickening mixture and continue to whisk until it comes up to a gentle, rolling boil again.

7. Once the lilac jelly has come up to a gentle boil, turn off the heat immediately, and then transfer your pot onto your counter. Ladle the hot jelly into sterilized jars using a wide-mouth funnel, leaving about a 1/4-inch of space from the jar’s opening. Wipe the mouth of the jars, then screw on the lids, finger-tight, before gently immersing the jelly jars into boiling water for processing. Set your timer for 10 minutes.

8. After 10 minutes, take the jars out of the water, then let the jelly jars cool completely, anywhere between 12 to 24 hours on your counter. You will know that your jars are properly sealed when you hear the distinct popping sound of the jar lid, and that the tops of the lid no longer have a hump. To test this, place a finger on the middle of your jar lid. If the lid springs back up, the jars are still unsealed, and you may have to keep the jelly jars in your fridge instead of on your shelf. I probably would not risk processing it again because I would not want the pectin to overcook, which will reduce the pectin’s ability to set when cooled.

If you have opted for a soft-set jelly, your jelly might look more like a thickened syrup when the jars have cooled completely. Fret not; this jelly will set completely inside your fridge.

If you have opted for a firmer set, its viscosity will not be as liquid as this jelly’s soft-set counterpart when your jars have cooled completely on your counter. This firm set jelly will definitely stiffen up significantly when you place the jar inside your fridge.

I serve this jelly over a piece of sourdough toast or a baguette slathered with butter; it is DIVINE. You can also use this jelly to make panna cotta or even ice cream; just melt the jelly into the custard base.

When processed properly, your lilac jelly should be shelf-table for about a year in your pantry.

I suppose you can influence your jelly’s colour with blueberries if you want, but I honestly did not bother. Maybe next year, I will try it, but for now, I am beyond happy to have a taste of spring well into the summer, autumn, and maybe even the winter too, depending on how fast I get through my supply!

I am officially all lilac-ed out, but I do hope you try any of these two recipes when you can get your hands on some lilac blooms!

Until next time in my kitchen!
xo, Issha

The purveyors of these Vancouver-crafted bitters were an ex-Vancouver-based couple well-known in the local culinary industry during that time. They started selling their signature bitters in specialty food stores like the tea shop wherein I was employed. We befriended one another; I traded my budding food photography services for some clout in the local food industry, free bitters, and gourmet meals. They helped to cement my reputation in Vancouver back when most budding food photographers worked with only natural light. For them, I stood out because I knew how to style a shot and work with artificial light. And though we have long since drifted apart, I have to credit their influence during that highly formative time in my life. The lessons I learned during my time with them have shaped my own culinary journey.

One day, over a Facebook status update, they asked their networks if any of them had access to a lilac bush from which they can harvest flowers, presumably for a food and cocktail event they were organizing. They said they would trade some of their bitters for some lilac blooms as an incentive. This Facebook status update piqued my interest; I scanned through comments and saw that they were going to use these lilac blooms for a culinary experiment. And so there, on that casual Facebook status update, is where I first discovered lilacs were edible.

I was so intrigued, that I found myself doing a deep dive over the internet immediately after that Facebook note. The common lilac—Syringa vulgaris—belongs to the Oleaceae family, of which the olive is also a member. This blew my mind, of course. During one of my weekly trips to the farmers’ market, circa summer of 2013, I saw a bouquet of lilacs selling for five dollars in one of the stalls, so I bought a bouquet, picked off a bloom, chewed on it, and was immediately overcome with its perfume in my mouth. This was followed by a slight astringency and pepperiness that reminds me of drinking a high-quality olive oil, and has a gentle, verdant finish, like nettles, or even spinach. Its natural perfume, however, opened up my imagination, but it would be years until I would begin to experiment with lilac blooms in my own cooking.

There is some debate as to what types of lilac are edible. One blog I came across during my deep dives says to only harvest from the Syringa vulgaris plant, but another blog says that Persian lilacs (Syringa persica), alongside the common lilac, are also safe to consume. For safety, I would stick with the Syringa vulgaris variety. I don’t willy-nilly forage these, admittedly. I buy mine from a reputable, organic farmer at the farmers’ market here in Vancouver. Whenever I see lilacs at their stall, I know I have only two, maybe three weekends to buy them from when they first start to appear, so I tend to overbuy bunches in my attempt to squirrel away a taste of spring for those dreary winter days.

If you haven’t worked with lilacs before, let me tell you… they are A LOT of work. Recently, I bought roughly 20 stems with very full blooms, and I am on my third day of processing these flowers. I still have about half of these stems left in my fridge. I am growing so very weary of processing them that I have about half a mind to just enjoy the blooms for what they are, but the gourmand in me wants to milk these blooms for their flavour, knowing full-well how fleeting they are. It remains to be seen if I survive 2024’s descent into lilac bloom processing purgatory. At least this particular stage of purgatory smells good, something Dante failed to mention in his Divine Comedy… BA-DUM-TSSS!!!

When processing lilacs, it is important you take only the bloom and not any of its green stem, but it is also important to preserve as much of the blooms’ stamens and pistils as possible, because this is where its nectar lies. So… considering that there are lots of tiny, little blooms in a stem, you can imagine how incredibly labour-intensive it is to process these blooms. My limit is about two hours per day, sometimes three, but really… proceed with your sanity fully-primed. I should limit myself to buying only one bunch a year, but somehow my greed gets the better of me and I buy three, thinking, “Surely, this is the year I can process these in one day!” I even approach the stall with the kind of delirious confidence that can only stem from someone afflicted with my particular, food-obsessed derangement. And, of course, like every year since 2019, I end up the fool with a fridge filled with lilac blooms and a husband who has to navigate the fridge for our leftovers inside chaotically-arranged containers Tetris’d amongst full heads of lilacs. Sometimes, I wish I had a commercial-grade kitchen, with huge walk-in fridges and freezers for all the kinds of cooking I do, but for that to happen, I would essentially have to be Beyoncé, so I make do with what I have, and creatively cram every available space in my fridge with lilacs when the season starts.

When I first started working with lilacs—around the summer of 2019—I had wanted to make a simple lilac syrup at first, so that’s what I did. So when I made a soda with said lilac syrup, I was surprised at how much it reminded me of a ripe pineapple! Its fragrance, for one, is reminiscent of a pineapple, at least, for me. And so I thought, “Hey, why not make a syrup out of pineapple and lilacs?”

The decision to make my lilac concoction a drinking shrub came naturally after deciding I would much rather have a shrub than just a simple, infused syrup. I wanted to highlight the brightness of a ripe pineapple, and a shrub does that perfectly! Et voila, our household’s perennial spring drink was born!

For those not familiar with drinking shrubs, think of them like flavoured sugar syrups acidulated with vinegar. In fact, they are also referred to as drinking vinegars, and are typically infused with fresh fruit, herbs of one’s choosing, and sugar. Sodas flavoured with shrubs offer a more complex flavour profile and a lower sugar alternative to sodas flavoured with infused simple syrup. Its etymology stems from the Arabic word sharab, a word that pertains to beverages, drinkables, and syrups used to flavour drinks.

I have scoured the internet for this flavour combination—that of lilacs and pineapple—mostly out of curiosity to see if anyone else has come up with this. I am pretty sure I am this flavour combo’s inventor! In a world where everything has been done many times over and in many different ways, how is this even possible? Admittedly, I guarded this shrub’s flavour for about half a decade now, in hopes I would have a cookbook by the time this recipe makes it out there… but life is too short not to put this out there to share. Just know that you saw it here first, ok? ;-)

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We are all in this together.

I reached my one year chemo mark back in January, and I have since been reflecting on my journey. I now have a fair number of somber anniversaries that I observe, much like one observes the death of beloveds, or the ending of a significant relationship. These anniversaries are indelibly etched in my head and in my psyche: November 22, ‘22: the day I received news that I have cancer; January 10, ‘23: staging day—Stage IV cervical cancer; January 26, ‘23: my one and only shot of immunotherapy; January 27, ‘23: the first day I received chemo; February 4, ‘23: the day I first got admitted to the hospital for my first-ever neutropenic fever and severe reaction to my immunotherapy dose; I was in the hospital for six nights. These one-year marks have quietly passed, but my mind and my heart have not quieted during these anniversaries. Like the many of us who are surviving cancer, I am forever changed.

I have been slow to update this space, especially my series on chemo-supportive recipes, largely because I have been working on cultivating a movement practice to get my body back in a somewhat working order. My body is not the same after chemo. I live with higher than normal blood pressure from the maintenance infusions I receive every three weeks to prevent tumours from returning. Pre-cancer diagnosis, I had impeccable blood pressure. My body is also much larger, the heaviest I have been since high school—and though I am still trying to navigate the awkwardness I feel in a larger body I have not seen in well over two decades, I have come to view this weight gain as a good thing. It did not start out that way, of course. Ninety percent of my clothes no longer fit, and I hate the idea of buying a whole wardrobe for my new body. I miss wearing clothes that are not my sweatpants and a stretchy shirt. I always feel so frumpy these days; I used to be so stylish! But then I get a hold of myself: GURL, YOU ARE ALIVE!!! For any cancer survivors reading this… I am still learning to lean into the whole multiple-things-can-be-true-at-once thing: I can be both grateful I am alive and also mourn for how things used to be before I found out I had cancer.

I expressed my alarm to my oncologist during my first post-maintenance treatment check-up when I noted I had gained ten pounds over a period of six weeks in spite of my regular movement practice and my extremely balanced diet. She then tells me, “We’ll test your thyroid if you are concerned about your quick weight gain, but Issha, contrary to popular belief, weight gain is normal, post-chemo. We pumped you with so much steroids during your chemo treatments, and it takes a long time for your body get rid of all those drugs.” My oncologist pauses for a beat, and then adds, “In fact, only the really sick people, the ones who are not responding to the treatments, lose lots of weight…” and let me tell you, dear readers, this—this part—is what snapped me out of my weight gain obsession. I cut off my oncologist and exclaimed, empathically, “NEVERMIND, I’LL TAKE THE WEIGHT GAIN!”

She did end up testing my thyroid anyway, and just like she suspected, nothing. My thyroid is normal.

Still, I am living with a lot of limitations. My body feels brittle, like my insides are made of old rubber bands about to snap. I limp a lot. I am having lots of difficulty walking my long walks. I cannot run down the stairs the way I used to; instead, I find myself walking down stairs, one step at a time. When I sit for a period of time, say, for half an hour on my couch, then I stand to go get myself a cup of tea, I find myself limping on my way to the kitchen. Conversely, I cannot stand for long periods of time. I find that after long cooking marathons standing up, when I finally get the chance to sit, I am met with a lot of pain. These were simply not part of my everyday pains, pre-chemo. I am currently working with personal trainers and a kinesiologist to help me develop new routines to effectively manage these pains, and they are helping, but I also feel like I have a long, long way to go. I may have to live with the very real possibility that I may never get my pre-cancer body back to full spec.

~

When medical personnel and cancer survivors described to me all of the possible side effects from chemo—nausea, food aversions, loss of appetite—part of me did not really believe them. Food is such a big part of my day-to-day that the very idea of me losing appetite or being food-averse did not feel like they would be a part of my cancer journey. Chemo drugs have come a very long way; I was able to control the nausea with pills, and as for food aversions, I had only one: hazelnuts. I made The Living Kitchen’s hazelnut crackers as part of my meal prep before my first day of chemo. My first day did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, and I had packed those hazelnut crackers in my lunchbox during that time. The smell of those hazelnuts made me want to throw my lunchbox away, but I knew I had to eat something. My thoughts kept going back to what the nurses have told me when they handed me my massive cancer info packet: “You have to eat, no matter what. Your cells need nutrients to regenerate. Your body will want to go back to its norm. Your body has memory, so don’t forget to eat.”

Passing over the hazelnuts, I reached for my apple slices and cucumbers. I would find, overtime, and through subsequent chemo sessions, that the only food I can swallow during my chemo days are apples, a green smoothie, and a warm Japanese sencha.

Still to this day, I keep hazelnut consumption at a minimum.

The loss of appetite did eventually come, and it was at its strongest after my second round. When I wrote cancer updates to my Close Friends list on IG, my loss of appetite became a huge topic. I still forced myself to eat, of course, because I had to. My oncology nurses live in my head, rent-free: “Your body has memory! Eat! Eat!!!” I would manage two bites of something and then crawl back into bed. One day, tired of feeling sorry for myself, I mustered enough energy to make myself a super gingery brown rice arroz caldo (I promise to share my recipe one day), but after cooking said dish, I was so overcome with exhaustion, my appetite for the one dish I can conceive of eating during this appetite loss flew away. I could only muster eating a 4 oz. bowl of the huge batch of porridge I made before slumping back down into the couch, weak and unable to do anything else. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because I love eating so much, and this loss of appetite—four days in now—felt like I was losing another huge part of myself to my cancer.

I found myself scrolling through my friends’ IG Stories one afternoon, where I lingered over one of my friend’s IG Story of some marinated eggs she had made for her family. They looked so beautiful, floating in a dark amber liquid filled with scallions, sesame seeds, and chilis. Her description—and I am paraphrasing here—told me these eggs are called mayak eggs, where mayak, in Korean, means ‘illicit’, pertaining to drugs and their addictive qualities. So really, according to how this dish is named, these mayak eggs—mayak gyeran—are so good, they’re addictive. I commented on my friend’s mayak IG story: “They look so beautiful and delicious!”. She replied back, “Perhaps these will bring back your appetite.” I paused to consider this… I mean, they did look good, after all, so I set out to make some.

I did a quick Google search of some mayak gyeran recipes and found that I can easily make them chemo-supportive, so I went ahead and made some based off of the commonalities I found within every recipe I pored over and every YouTube video I watched. Mayak gyeran is similar to the Japanese marinated ramen egg, or ajitama, but where they differ is that mayak gyeran contains both liquid aromatics and fresh ingredients in the marinade, whereas ajitama tends to contain only liquid aromatics. I love both takes on the marinated egg, but for me, mayak eggs are now my personal favourite way to marinate eggs, beating out the Chinese tea egg and the Japanese ramen egg in my book.

Neutropenic diets for people undergoing chemo do not allow for eggs to be consumed outside of a well-done scramble, a well-cooked omelette, a well-done poached egg, or a hard-boiled egg; soft yolks are not allowed. For those not familiar with neutropenic diets, healthy bodies have the ability to process bacteria present in things like soft-boiled eggs, raw fish, and raw cheeses, but for immunocompromised people whose white blood cells can dip dangerously low, the bacteria in those foods can cause fevers and bacterial infections that can lead to massive organ failure, even death. So when making mayak eggs for someone observing a neutropenic diet, it is best use hard-boiled eggs.

The marinade must also be tweaked for the neutropenic diet. Mayak eggs can usually be made using room temperature ingredients and clean, potable water, but when making these for a cancer patient, it is recommended you cook the marinade and use clean, filtered water. The kind of sugar makes a difference as well, at least, in terms of chemo-supportiveness; where regular recipes use white sugar, chemo-supportive diets completely omit, or severely limit the use of refined sugars. Unrefined sugars like coconut sugar and maple syrup were my primary staples when I needed just a touch of sweetness to my recipes. Sadly, honey cannot be used when observing a neutropenic diet; in my case, honey had an adverse effect to drugs with which I was injected, and of course, consuming raw honey is akin to consuming a soft-boiled egg. As always, please consult your oncologist about the kinds of foods you should be avoiding when undergoing treatment. Every cancer patient is different. The drugs with which we are injected are all custom-tailored to our diagnoses.

These mayak eggs were such a hit with me; I would serve them alongside avocado slices and dulse flakes on top of buttered, seeded bread, on the days I felt my appetite returning. Recently, I revisited these mayak eggs for this breakfast bowl I cannot seem to stop eating. Not only is this breakfast bowl delicious, this dish is also both chemosupportive and adheres to neutropenic diets.

Because the marinade also uses fresh produce, make sure you give them a thorough clean before combining these into the marinade, especially if you plan to make these for a neutropenic friend or family member.

Chemosupportive Mayak Gyeran
(makes 1 dozen marinated eggs)

Ingredients

• 12 large eggs

• 1/2 cup soy sauce1

• 1/2 cup filtered water

• 1/4 cup coconut sugar

• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

• 3 scallion stalks, chopped

• 1-3 Thai red chilies, sliced (or 1 tbsp red chili flakes)

• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Method

1. Hard-boil your eggs, then peel them. I use Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method for perfectly boiled, perfectly-ish peelable eggs; it works every single time. I always have my water on a gentle simmer, never a rolling boil. I carefully place my eggs inside the hot water, then I set my timer for 10 minutes, which is my preferred hard-boil setting. I always shock my boiled eggs in cold, running water for about 2 minutes and leave them in said water to cool down before I peel them.

2. Inside a saucepan, combine the soy sauce, filtered water, coconut sugar, and rice wine vinegar. Heat until the sugar is well-dissolved.

3. Place the minced garlic, scallion stalks, chilies or chilies flakes, and toasted sesame seeds into the liquid aromatics and stir to combine. Let the marinade cool completely before immersing in the hard-boiled eggs. Leave the eggs to marinate for at least 24 hours. The longer the eggs stay in the marinade, the more flavourful it will become. The eggs should last about 3 or 4 days inside the marinade. After 3 or 4 days, fish out the eggs from the marinade and place them inside another clean container; whatever is leftover should last another 3 days.

How To Serve: My Mayak Gyeran Breakfast Rice Bowl

You’ll need…

• steamed rice: try sushi rice, brown rice, or I do a half-half combo of black rice and sushi rice, half-half sushi rice and brown rice, or half-half brown rice and black rice

• toasted sesame oil

• kimchi (if allowed)

• fresh scallions

• toasted sesame seeds

• toasted nori strips or dulse flakes

• other optional add-ons: avocado slices; steamed edamame, kale, spinach, or green beans; roasted squash; sliced radishes… really, any vegetable you want… the possibilities are endless.

Place a layer of steamed rice inside your bowl. Spoon some of the mayak marinade over your warm rice. Take out an egg or two, slice them in half, then place the eggs over the now-seasoned rice. Drizzle the eggs with a little bit of toasted sesame oil. Garnish with kimchi, fresh scallions, toasted sesame seeds, nori strips or dulse flakes, and any other steamed or roasted veggie add-ons you want. Eat and enjoy!

Meal prep notes:

Once you have some mayak eggs in your fridge, the rest of the elements that go into this breakfast bowl are all good make-aheads.

Steamed Rice: I love steaming lots of rice for leftovers because it is easy to microwave or steam a small portion of rice for these quick meals, plus, leftover rice makes the ideal fried rice. Just make sure to let your freshly-steamed rice cool completely before storing the rice in an airtight container inside your fridge.

Kimchi: I found I was not averse to heat or spice when I was going through chemo, but friends of mine who have gone through chemo said they could not stand any strong flavours in their food. Play it by feel with your loved one. Still, ferments like kimchi are amazing for rebuilding and reintroducing beneficial gut biomes back into your body. Chemo is very much a scorched earth treatment to fighting cancer, so it is extremely important to load your body with all the nutrients your body needs to build back those destroyed systems in your body. Do consult your oncologist about ingesting live ferments, however. Memorial Sloane Kettering recommends that all live ferments be avoided, and that only pasteurized products be ingested. So while I ate some kimchi during my treatment, I did not ingest them straight from the jar; I cooked the kimchi by frying some on a pan before topping my rice with it.

If your loved one is avoiding spice or strongly-flavoured food, you can introduce white kimchi into this rice bowl; white kimchi is very similar to sauerkraut.

Of course, it goes without saying that if your oncologist advises against kimchi or sauerkraut while going through treatment, do not eat kimchi or sauerkraut. Stick to steamed veggies on this rice bowl instead.

Live ferments are great for those post-chemo meals, once your oncologist gives you the green light, of course!

Veggies: Steam loads of vegetables of your choice, cool completely, and store inside an airtight container in your fridge. Same goes for roasted vegetables; roast and season some squash or cauliflower, cool completely, then store like you would steamed veggies in your fridge.

I wish you all good health, and thank you for sticking around.
Until next time in my kitchen,
xo, Issha

Yuzu koshō was one of the first items I purchased with my staff discount. Because fresh yuzu is very difficult to find in this part of the world, I was drawn to anything yuzu-flavoured. One of my Japanese co-workers introduced me to yuzu koshō’s many uses—namely in various marinades, sauces, and seasoning applications: in hot pots, stir fries, and even with sashimi in lieu of wasabi. She also tells me that one of her favourite ways to use yuzu koshō is in a creamy pasta, almost like a spicy, yuzu-scented alfredo. My imagination went wild. She never gave me an exact recipe; she really only described her pasta dish in rough detail, so I filled in the blanks with my imagination.

When I made this dish’s first iteration using dried udon noodles as the “pasta”, I was immediately hooked. The dish needed only a couple of tweaks before I settled on this version. It is extremely simple to make, needs only a few ingredients, and is a recipe that is extremely open to all sorts of modifications and tweaks. It is also a very impressive dish to serve in those last minute dinner parties.

Before I get too ahead of myself, what then, is yuzu koshō? For the uninitiated, koshō is the Japanese word for pepper, so yuzu koshō, then, literally translates to “yuzu pepper”. Yuzu koshō is made by finely grinding fresh yuzu peels, fresh chilies (typically bird’s eye chilies), salt, and some yuzu juice to form an extremely aromatic and spicy paste. Its high salt and acid content helps ferment and preserve the paste, making it last for virtually months and months inside your fridge once you unseal a bottle of yuzu koshō. A little goes a long way; it will effectively season, say, a large batch of stew without having to add any more salt. It can also pack your dish with a spicy punch from the heat of those bird’s eye chilies. The magic of yuzu koshō, however, is in its ability to make a dish come alive. It is all at once bright, zesty, spicy, briny, and fragrant.

Yuzu koshō comes in two colours—green and red—depending on the colour of the chilies used. Green yuzu koshō is easier to find than its red counterpart, but I have had luck finding red yuzu koshō more and more these days. They are typically sold in small 60 g. (~2 oz.) jars or tubes. It is also very easy to find yuzu koshō, especially if you live in big, metropolitan cities; your local Japanese grocery stores, Asian grocery stores, and specialty food stores will likely carry both green and red types! There is always, of course, online shopping. My favourite brand is Fundokin. Once, I asked a friend to purchase for me ten jars of Fundokin yuzu koshō in Japan; they are obviously a lot cheaper over there than they are here in North America. I paid about $45 for all ten, better than the $100 it would cost me here. I always have yuzu koshō on hand in my fridge, and after trying both types, I admit, I am quite partial to the green kind.

Lunar new year is coming up, and while some Filipinos don’t celebrate in the ways some of our East and Southeast Asian neighbours do, we honour the lunar new year in small ways. My family always sets up an altar for our ancestors, fill our fruit bowls full of circular fruits (like oranges and grapes), and we prepare noodles for long life. My squid ink spaghetti with yuzu kosho cream is a simple, elegant, and contemporary way to ring in the year of the Wood Dragon.

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My first yerba mate experience is one I will never forget. I made myself a strong cup one morning for breakfast. As I stepped into the shower about an hour later, I could not help but notice how much I was shaking. I was immediately overcome with the desire to, oh, I don’t know, jump up and down, or run a 12k. I felt like I was given a powerful energy drink. Yerba mate is just that, really. It is a powerful, energy-boosting herbal tisane made out of the stems and leaves from the Ilex paraguariensis plant. Green yerba mate tastes bitter, earthy, and tobacco-like, while its roasted counterpart tastes malty, nutty, and even slightly chocolate-y. For some, green mate is an acquired taste. My husband cannot live without it. I prefer roasted mate myself, sweetened with a little bit of honey and topped with some oat milk. The only time I will ever consider drinking green yerba mate is when I eat alfajores. More on this later.

Mate is traditionally served in a gourd called a calabasa, made from the fruit of the bottle gourd plant—the calabash. You then sip the brewed mate through a metal straw outfitted with a built-in strainer called a bombilla. You can, of course, steep the mate like a tea using a brewing basket or a disposable tea bag, but the magic of yerba mate lies in its multiple steeps. When you order a yerba mate to stay at El Almacen, for instance, they present you with a ceramic mug, a small container of yerba mate leaves, a bombilla, and a 1L thermos filled with hot water. You fill up your cup with a couple of tablespoons of yerba mate and hot water and drink. Then, once you are through your cup, you pour hot water over the now-wet yerba mate leaves, drink, and repeat, until your yerba mate starts to lose its potency and flavour. I remember spending hours at El Almacen with a novel or my laptop editing photos, with my one order of yerba mate, some empanadas, and my favourite treat, alfajores.

Alfajores are sandwich cookies similar to shortbread, the difference being that the dough is cut with a good amount of cornstarch for that melt-in-your-mouth texture. They can feel a little dry when you eat these cookies without tea, or, in my case, brewed yerba mate, but I do not discriminate against those who love this cookie on its own; I do too! But believe me when I say… brewed yerba mate with alfajores is pure alchemy—a match made in heaven.

Strong is my love for this cookie, that there was once a time when I would frequent El Almacen almost weekly and purchase about 6 to 8 cookies for myself and my sister, to enjoy for our afternoon tea dates at home. When I moved to Vancouver in 2010, I missed El Almacen something fierce, so every time I flew back home to Toronto for a visit, I would always order a dozen to take back with me a day or two before flying back to Vancouver.

During the start of the pandemic, the cravings for El Almacen’s alfajores hit so hard, I decided I would attempt to make this cookie. But I had one hurdle ahead of me: I did not want to use condensed milk out of a can. I wanted to make condensed milk from scratch.

*

It was around 2015 when I foolishly thought condensed milk was just equal parts whole milk and sugar brought to a boil until thick. I was so, so wrong. Not only did my condensed milk not turn out like I thought it would, I ended up with a product that was overly saccharine. It was a disaster.

Truth is, making condensed milk from scratch takes time. Recipes found all over the web range from about half an hour of stove-sitting to around forty-five minutes, but this really all depends on the kind of stove you have. For roughly two cups of condensed milk, I would average about an hour of solid stove time on my home stove. The technique that worked best and consistently for me is outlined in this Mary’s Nest video. The trick is to dissolve the sugar completely before turning the heat down anywhere between medium low to low. The goal is to get your sweetened liquid to a gentle simmer. Never let it get to a rolling boil; this will lead to a much-grittier condensed milk. That said, I was able to rescue a gritty condensed milk by putting the mixture through a high-speed blender shortly after passing it through a fine sieve first. It totally did the job and gave me the consistency I was looking for.

So, is it really worth making your own condensed milk? I guess it really all depends. If I really am in a bind, then sure, I will use a can of the store-bought stuff. I try to look for Eagle Brand; their ingredients contain only milk and sugar. Still, most brands contain a combination of liquid invert sugars that are not required by the food-powers-that-be to name, as well as a bunch of added vitamins that have been lost during the milk-making process. I really want to control as much of the ingredients that go into my cooking, and really, I just wanted to distill the condensed milk-making process into what it is—milk and sugar. I hardly ever buy cow’s milk these days, but when I do, I buy milk from my favourite cheese-makers at the farmers market and use organic cane sugar. Sure, I dislike the lengthy stove time, especially when making a double batch, but I am rewarded with such a beautiful product in the end. I prepare for my annual Christmas cookie boxes sometimes three weeks in advance, and it is during those early stages of cookie-prep where I find the time to make condensed milk. I have learned a lot about condensed milk-making since I first published this recipe; my methods have definitely changed since.

Oh, and another benefit to making your own condensed milk? You get to flavour this condensed milk however way you want. Mine is flavoured with hojicha.

Hojicha is a roasted green tea from Japan comprised out of the stems and leaves of anywhere from the second harvest to the last tea harvest of the season. They tend to look like browned pine needles or crushed, brown autumn leaves, and have a toasted, almost nutty flavour reminiscent of roasted banana leaves. My use of hojicha complements the deep, milky caramel notes of a homemade dulce de leche. Earl grey would also work wonderfully in a from-scratch dulce de leche. In essence, the world of flavoured condensed milks, and therefore dulce de leche, is almost entirely limitless.

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I cannot recall exactly when I fell in love with its flavour—it is floral, like jasmine or mock orange blossoms, and tastes somewhere between a grapefruit and satsuma mandarins. Really, my description of it probably does not do the yuzu justice; it is a flavour very much its own. I was gifted a jar of salted yuzu marmalade from Japan when one of my friends vacationed in Tokyo back in 2016, so I suppose that jar was my first revelatory experience into this magical citrus, but it was a bottle of fresh yuzu juice that really spurred me into my current yuzu frenzy. I had wanted to perfume everything with its juice: dressings, marinades, sparkling drinks, custards… but at a whopping $15.95 CAD for 150 mL of the stuff, I had to quell my desire to use it so liberally.

When I finally did come across fresh yuzu at our local grocery store—around late October well into mid-November—I thought, this is it! Yuzu will now be well within our reach like fresh kalamansi, at least, here in Vancouver! Most of the citrus we buy in this part of Canada comes from California, and the yuzu I discovered certainly arrived here from the Golden state. Of course, the fresh yuzu sold out fast. But when the yuzu returned again the following year, alongside many beautiful citrus like Buddha’s Hand lemons, I was confident this grocery store will continue to carry these same exotic citrus varietals year after year. But when I returned last year, from mid-October to about mid-December, even venturing out to the store twice a week most times, I discovered they simply stopped carrying it for reasons unknown to me. I was gutted. I had grown accustomed to finding fresh yuzu, in spite of my encountering the fruit for only a couple of years. When I spotted fresh yuzu at my local Japanese grocery store at $7.99 a piece, I almost fainted at the price!!! There were less than 10 in the basket. Still, I bought one, and meditated over my solitary, single piece of citrus before extracting its juice and slicing up its peel. I used the [barely] one tablespoon of juice I extracted in a dressing, and froze what very little peel I got out of one piece of yuzu, for use later in the year. The peel eventually went into this tart.

Over the years, I have discovered some growers in North America that have successfully cultivated and grown this elusive citrus, among many other difficult-to-find varietals in this part of the world. I came across Bhumi Growers through Andrea Gentl of Gentl & Hyers, a food photographer duo whose work I have long admired. Bhumi Growers only ever shipped to the US until fairly recently—they have now expanded their shipping to Canada, much to my delight. Not so much for my wallet, however. Their yuzu is my one major splurge of the year. I feel a little ashamed doing it. Truth is, I avoid any and all extravagant purchases that fall outside of any tech maintenance I need for my jobs: my camera, my studio lights, and my laptop. So I don’t recommend people do this, unless you have the means, of course. I reckon some people spend hundreds on concerts, facials, clothes, shoes… I spend those dollars on fresh yuzu. Such is my fervent, frenzied, and at times, deranged dedication to getting my annual supply, though I weep over my having once purchased them at $3.99 a pound, and now I am spending over seven times that price. Please don’t judge me too much.

Last year, I was only able to make a small supply of yuzu marmalade for our household pantry because a friend of a friend smuggled in some yuzu straight from Japan and sold me some of his haul. It felt a touch criminal, this act of procuring from a person who got this for metaphorical pennies in Japan, but I consider my pantry fully stacked as a result of my yuzu procuring and preservation efforts. Truly, the ability to flavour my food with yuzu throughout the year whenever I see fit brings me so much joy.

This year, I e-mailed Jane Squier of The Garden in Salt Spring Island, completely on a whim. I have long heard rumours of a magical farm in Salt Spring Island tended to by a farmer who has successfully grown all sorts of citrus varietals. She was spoken about in hushed and reverent tones by some of the locals in Salt Spring Island. Of course, some of the top restaurants in BC—Burdock and Co. and Pilgimme, to name a couple—order their citrus from her. I emailed her in hopes that she would sell some to me. I was very honest with my intentions; my yuzu haul is only for personal use. I needed only 5 pounds, maybe 10, to split with a friend and fellow yuzu lover like me.

She was definitely willing to sell me a small amount of citrus because this year’s yield gave her so much fruit, but I had to be in town to pick up the fruit because she does not ship such small amounts to Vancouver. I could not travel to SSI on such short notice, but I thanked her profusely for taking the time to respond to my inquiry. A few weeks later, she emailed me again, saying that she had some fruit leftover after her restaurant clients’ orders were fulfilled, and she thought of me! So she put them in a box on a seaplane to Vancouver, where I picked up my goods in person. I paid for the yuzu and the shipping. It was well worth it! I feel better about purchasing these yuzu from a more local source than the one in New Jersey. I am over the moon with this year’s haul!

If you have made it to this point, I apologize for the lengthy preface; I only wanted to highlight the lengths and difficulties I will go through to get my hands on fresh yuzu. This is an Amalgam Pantry post, after all, and yuzu, be it in juice, ponzu, kosho, or marmalade form, has been a constant in my pantry since 2018. It lends such a beautiful finish to everything on which I use it, both in savoury and sweet applications. So while it is close to impossible to get fresh yuzu unless you happen to be living in Jersey, or in California where they are now cultivated and can be found for $6.99 a pound AT MOST (damn you, California, land of beautiful, bountiful citrus!!!), yuzu juice can be found quite easily at your local Japanese and Asian grocery stores! Yuzu marmalade might be a little tough to find, but they are becoming quite common in specialty food stores these days. If you come across either one of these products, pick up a jar or bottle and experiment with them. You won’t regret it, although believe me, I do not wish my deranged yuzu obsession on anyone.

Let’s get on with the yuzu marmalade now, shall we?

This marmalade recipe relies heavily on ratios than cup by cup quantities. If you do not have a kitchen scale and a candy thermometer as part of your kitchen tools, I suggest making a relatively inexpensive investment to add these as part of your culinary arsenal. Additionally, if you plan on making these shelf-stable, I would suggest investing on some equipment for pressure canning. There are some stores that sell the whole kit and caboodle, complete with a tall-sided stock pot, sterilizing rack, jar lifter, magnetic lid lifter, a sure-grip jar wrench, and a wide-mouth funnel. These kits are usually good value, especially if you do not own a stock pot big enough to pressure-seal tall jars. If you do own a large-enough stock pot, you are halfway there! Instead of a sterilizing rack, you can pad the bottom of your stock pot with a cushiony layer of clean bar towels. This prevents your jars from making contact with the bottom of your pot, preventing any breaking or cracking while the pressure-seal is happening. All you really have to get is a wide-mouthed funnel, a magnetic lid-lifter, and a jar lifter—believe me, these tools make canning a lot easier, and safer! You can take or leave the jar wrench; I have yet to use mine from the kit I purchased a long time ago.

Yuzu Marmalade
(makes roughly 3 x 8 oz. jars)

Special Equipment

• 8 oz. canning jars

• kitchen scale

• candy thermometer

• a tall stock pot that holds anywhere between 20-30 quarts of liquid

• sterilizing rack or some clean bar towels

• mason jar lifter

• magnetic lid lifter

• wide-mouth funnel

• clean tea towels

• cheesecloth

Ingredients

• 5 lbs yuzu

• organic cane sugar

• sea salt or kosher salt

Method

1. Process the yuzu. This takes the longest amount of time to do. Fresh yuzu is more peel and seed than juice, so it pays to have proper mise-en-place. I have my cutting board and sharp paring knife set up and ready to go. I will have one bowl for the peel, one bowl outfitted with a small, fine sieve for the juice, one plate to hold the seeds, one plate to hold the membranes, and another bowl for compost: five bowls and plates all in all.

2. Slice the yuzu in half. Juice the yuzu. Collect the seeds onto a plate; do not discard these seeds; you will need them for the marmalade.

3. Spoon out the inner membranes of the yuzu with a spoon. Place into a plate.

4. With your sharp paring knife, slice out as much of the white pith out of the peel as you can. Discard the pith. Julienne the peel, and place them into a bowl. At this point in your mise-en-place, you will see juice, peel, membrane, and seeds. Only the thicker parts of the white pith and yuzu stems (if any) will go into compost. Repeat these steps until you have gone through all the yuzu.

5. Clear and clean up your workspace before the next steps.

6. Immerse the membranes into boiling water for ten minutes. Strain them out, chop them into something resembling a thick paste, and set these aside.

7. If desired, you can also boil the peel for ten minutes to reduce the bitterness of your marmalade. Personally, I do not bother with this step; I have done this step only once to experiment with its flavour and I found I quite like my yuzu marmalade on the bittersweet side, and more bitter than sweet.

8. Weigh your yuzu peel and membranes. The peel/membrane to sugar ratio will be between 1:1.5-2, depending on how sweet you like your marmalade. I usually prefer the 1:1.7 range. This means if you have 350 g of peel/membrane, you will use 595 g of sugar: 350 x 1.7 = 595.

9. For every 350 g to 450 g (roughly a pound) of peel and membrane, I use 50 ml of juice. Pour this juice into the sugar and peel/membrane mixture.

10. For every 350 g to 450 g of peel and membrane, I use 1/2 teaspoon sea salt. Add this to the sugar, peel/membrane, and juice mixture.

11. Mix thoroughly.

12. Place the seeds inside a cheesecloth and tie it closed. Place it inside the saucepan with the peel, membranes, sugar, and salt.

13. Affix the candy thermometer onto your large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and turn your heat to medium-high. Over the course of around ten to fifteen minutes, the sugars will start to liquify and the peel will start to shrink and soften. Continue to heat this mixture and continue to stir as the natural pectin from the yuzu seeds and its peel get activated to thicken the marmalade.

14. When your thermometer registers 220-222°F, turn off the heat. Fish out the bag of seeds from your marmalade.

15. Sterilize your jars. In boiling water, boil the jars and their lids for 10 minutes. Use your jar and lid lifters to take them out of the hot water. Place these on a clean tea towel.

16. Using a funnel, fill your jars with the marmalade, leaving about a 3/4-inch open space from the lid of your jar.

17. Wipe the tops of the jars with a clean towel, and do the same for the lids. Screw on the lids until finger-tight, or as tight as possible using only your hands.

18. In your stock pot under boiling water, gently lower the jars, and boil for ten minutes. Make sure there is enough water in which to fully immerse the jars in their entirety. No lids should be peeking out from above the water level.

19. Turn off the heat after ten minutes and let the jars sit inside the hot water for 5 minutes before taking them out of the water.

You will know that your jars are properly sealed when you hear the distinct popping sound of the jar lid, and that the tops of the lid no longer have a hump. To test this, place a finger on the middle of your jar lid. If the lid springs back up, the jars are still unsealed and you will have to process the jar again.

My marmalade never lasts more than a year in my household; I use yuzu marmalade all the time, and not just for eating straight out of the jar. Depending on the brand of jars you get, the seals should last between a year and a half to well over that. It’s really just me and my husband over here, so we don’t make insane amounts. This year, I doubled my yuzu marmalade production, only because I purchased more than my usual haul this time around, which means I will have lots of marmalade to work with so I don’t have to be so “stingy and precious” with my use of it, haha!

Like a lot of recipes here in Amalgam, making this is a labour of love, but you will be rewarded with this all year long. If you cannot find fresh yuzu, definitely use my tips and tricks here for making any kind of citrus marmalade! I am not, by all means, an authority on preserving, so it pays to do some research on preservation techniques, ratios, and setting points too. I have Batch and The Preservation Kitchen in my library as my primary resources on preservation and canning, and then of course, there are lots of tips and tricks listed in your favourite brand of canning jar’s websites: Kilner, Ball Mason Jar, Bernardin, to name a few.

I have neglected this space for about a month because I was busy preparing for and was participating in some local pre-holiday markets here in Vancouver, but I am back now, and I have some holiday recipes in store for this month, so I thank you so much for sticking around.

Until next time in my kitchen!
xo, Issha

Snickerdoodles are an excellent last minute bake. Of course, you will need to soften your butter, but if you cannot wait for your butter to soften, melting will yield beautiful results too, even if the cookie comes out a bit flatter than when one uses softened butter. Just make sure to cool your melted butter completely before adding in your eggs.

While most snickerdoodle recipes insist that you use room temperature eggs, in all the many, many times I have made this cookie, I have only ever used eggs out of my fridge. They still came out great! Out of curiosity, I did test this recipe a few times with room temp eggs, and honestly… I could not tell the difference between my cold-eggs cookie batch versus the batch I made with room temperature eggs.

There are a few things you must do when you bake these cookies. You must whip the butter and sugar for at least 3 to 5 minutes, until your butter and sugar looks pale and airy. Add the eggs in, one at a time, then beat until pale yellow and well incorporated. Fold in your dry ingredients in two parts, and mix until you no longer see any streaks of flour in your dough. Let your dough sit for at least half an hour so that your dough has enough time to absorb all those beautiful spices. And do not overbake! You want soft and pillowy cookies, not crispy biscuits.

The two most important ingredients you must have to achieve the texture and colour of this snickerdoodle are cream of tartar and black cocoa. Cream of tartar is a type of acid, most commonly known as the powder you use to stabilize egg whites in the making of a meringue. It also prevents the sugar from crystallizing long after heat has been applied to the recipe, which is why you get a softer, pillowy cookie in a snickerdoodle than, say, your typical chocolate chip cookie. And because cream of tartar is an acid, it gives the snickerdoodle a little bit of a tang.

Black cocoa is an ultra-Dutch-processed cocoa, which means it has been ultra-treated with an alkaline solution to decrease its acidity. When using Dutch-processed cocoa in your baked goods, it is important that you use leavening agents that will compensate for the lack of acidity in the cocoa. Snickerdoodles use baking soda, which is a base alkaline, meaning it will need to react with an acid for it to successfully leaven a baked good. This is why it is important to use cream of tartar in this cookie recipe; using an ultra-Dutch-processed cocoa will render the baking soda null. Black cocoa will also colour your cookies black, or at least, more black than cocoa brown. This really adds to the dramatic look of these snickerdoodles. That said, your regular grocery store might not necessarily stock black cocoa powder; they are typically found in speciality food stores or online. Any good-quality unsweetened cocoa powder will do—natural or Dutch-processed—but note that your cookies will not look as black as these ones.

Because it is almost Halloween, I have decorated these cookies with candy eyeballs. Obviously this is just an extra step I took because of the season. Simply melt a little bit of chocolate over a double boiler, and use this melted chocolate as a “glue” to affix these candied eyes onto your snickerdoodles. Adorable! Of course, you can dispense with the candy eyeballs and leave them as is; they look so beautiful and elegant, with their sugar coating sparkling like diamonds against the deep, dark black of the cookie.

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This recipe came about when I found myself with a surplus of ripening bananas on my counter a couple of years ago. What do most of us do in this part of the world when we have too many bananas, right? We either freeze the lot for future smoothies… or we make banana bread! And we seem to keep innovating on this classic bake! We have added nuts, chocolate chips, nut butters, and various spices. We have made it gluten-free, sugar-free, whole grain-laden, and so-called “healthier for you”. Truth is, banana bread is one of the most basic, most simple bakes in an average cook’s arsenal of recipes, and there are so many different ways to make it!

A few years ago, I kept seeing tahini-based banana bread recipes making the rounds on various blogs, food YouTube, and social media posts, so I was inspired to make one too. I like the idea of making a banana bread with a more pronounced savoury note. I had both white and black sesame tahini in my pantry, so I thought it’d be a clever thing for me to do a marbled tahini banana bread. I did a quick Google search to see if other people had the same idea as me, and sure enough, there were definitely a few posts out there, but not very much, which surprised me! I used my base banana bread recipe and went from there, but I went through a fair amount of recipe trials before I finally nailed the flavour, texture, and rise I had been mentally going after.

White tahini can easily be found in most grocery stores these days, but black tahini is not as common a grocery find. You can find small jars of it in Japanese grocery stores or Asian grocery stores; countries like Japan and China use black sesame paste in a variety of sweet and savoury dishes. Black tahini has a more pronounced bitterness than its white counterpart, with a bolder, nuttier, earthier taste. I use black tahini to make Japanese-inspired dressings, like my quick black gomae. Up until recently, that was about the only reason why I keep black tahini in my pantry, whereas I use white tahini pretty regularly in my cooking! So when I sought out to make a tahini-based banana bread, I wanted to find a way to use black tahini too. I use this brand here, or any brand I can find in my local Japanese grocery store. In Vancouver, I sometimes come across black tahini in a specialty health food store, but it is very easy to find it online too.

If you absolutely cannot find or get black tahini where you are, don’t worry, you can always make this batter with just white tahini! It’ll be just as delicious.

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I really do savour this season when it comes, as it all becomes very fleeting from the moment it begins. I am not a consummate or prolific homesteader, and my ideals at canning and preserving this late summer season’s bounty are lofty at best—though I do try to do a bit more canning every season. I usually just eat my weight in tomatoes every year, enough to sate myself until next summer. Of course, this level of satiety does not exist in my world; more often than not, I crave the late summer’s bounty in the deepest, darkest depths of winter, but I can at least pretend eating my weight in tomatoes over the summer will preemptively cure me of the winter blues.

Vancouver has been getting quite hot every summer, and most houses and apartment complexes here do not have built-in air conditioning. I cook less and less over a stove every high summer, so I eat these tomatoes raw, with just a bit of salt, pepper, and quality olive oil. For me, putting in effort looks like tearing up a bunch of fresh basil leaves and burrata over these tomatoes, and drizzling in a bit of balsamic vinegar. Effort also looks like making a panzanella—a rustic Tuscan salad composed of chopped tomatoes, onions, and stale bread soaked in those chopped tomato juices.

High-summer-dinner-party-me looking to impress results in the making of this tart. It involves assembly time and oven time, which can be a bit frustrating for the average home cook in high summer, but this tart is fantastic for those who like to make things well ahead of serving time. I assemble the crust at night, when it is much cooler, then I just throw the tart shell in the freezer until it is ready to bake. I also bake off the tart hours before the dinner; it is best at room temperature, as the custard will have settled by then. It is also quite good cool from the fridge, so by all means, bake off this tart a day in advance and allow it to sit at room temperature for thirty minutes before serving. I then serve this tart alongside a simple cucumber salad; simply toss the chopped cucumbers in salt, pepper, olive oil, and any vinegar of your choice. For me, this is a high-summer dinner party at its finest, and the pièce-de-résistance that is this savoury tart will be very much a hit.

Ras el hanout is a North African spice blend, highly lauded in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and is prized for its intoxicating aroma and its fabled medicinal properties, especially where the potency of one’s sexual vigour is concerned. Ras el hanout roughly translates to “top of the shop” in Arabic, and indeed, some versions boast up to two dozen different spices or more, where only the most highly-regarded spices are used. Purists frown at the addition of salt, sugar, and dried allium granules—like onion and garlic—to a ras el hanout, in addition to spices with more pronounced savoury notes—like fenugreek, cayenne, and cumin. Personally, a quality ras el hanout should be able to toy the line between sweet and savoury. A good quality blend will elevate and enhance gamey meats like venison, lamb, or beef, as well as highlight the sweetness of, say, honey-stewed stone fruit, without turning the compote into something so outwardly savoury.

There is no distinct ras el hanout recipe or spice ratio; one would have to go through numerous trial and errors to find a blend that works for your personal tastes. Thalia Ho, author of the cookbook Wild Sweetness, has a recipe in her book that is made up of 14 different spices, wherein she uses both cayenne and cumin—two spices from a ras-el-hanout-purist’s no-nos. I am not one to judge in this case; ras el hanout is intensely personal. One must try several blends to arrive at one’s own ideal. I, however, am happy to purchase a blend I love instead of trying to create my own. My current favourite comes from Monsoon Coast.

Ras el hanout varies by region, and is highly dependent on a spice vendor’s personal tastes. Perhaps they have even inherited recipes that have been passed on within their family. Higher-end versions may include saffron and grains of paradise, but the versions I love tend to have floral notes that linger in amongst the camphoric aromas and pepperiness of spices like cardamom and nigella. I want to be able to use ras el hanout in both savoury and sweet applications, so ultimately, the blends I tend to go for will be more akin to that of a ras el hanout purist. Read the ingredient list when you come across a ras el hanout blend in your local specialty store, and let that inform your purchasing power.

Nigella, also known as kalonji, black caraway, or black cumin, is the seed that comes from the flowering Nigella sativa—a plant native to parts of Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa. Intensely black—with a shape similar to that of black sesame seeds—they taste like a cross between cumin and oregano, with just the slightest whimper of a peppery hit, and a soft, resinous pine needle-note finish. I find that even just a sprinkling of nigella can carry a dish far. It’s brilliant in homemade breads, like naan and parathas. It is equally brilliant in buttery cookie recipes, like shortbread.

The use of ras el hanout in this tart brightens the custard that envelopes the sweetness of the tomatoes and plums, while the nigella adds a grounded dimension to the overall dish. The finished tart looks dramatic, like a late summer sunset, and when you stud the top of the tart with baby basil leaves, they gleam almost like emeralds against the specks of nigella and the dark jewelled tones of caramelized tomatoes, plums, and nigella.

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For the uninitiated, shiso leaves might be a bit of an acquired taste, specifically for those who do not like the taste of cilantro. To me, shiso leaves have flavour overtones of basil, marjoram, angelica, tarragon, clove, and lemon peel, with a refreshingly astringent and bitter finish—delicious. They belong to the Lamiaceae family, the same family of flowering herbs as mint, basil, sage, thyme, and lavender, to name a few. In various Vietnamese and Korean dishes, shiso leaves, alongside other herbs and leaves, are paired with rich stews, fried foods, and fatty meats. The bright, herbaceous bitterness of the shiso leaf cuts through those unctuous fats, and presto: you’ve got texture, levity, balance, and most importantly, deliciousness.

I have been making this ice cream since the late summer of 2018. I was working at a specialty food stall in Granville Island; we were the only stall in that public market that carried shiso leaves. Shiso leaves are not something you can acquire at just any grocery store here in Vancouver; you can really only find them in Japanese grocers, Southeast Asian, Korean, and Chinese food purveyors, or at farmers’ market stalls. A friend of mine, Meredith Kaufman—a wildly-talented baker—used to sell her baked goods at market pop-ups under the name, The Salty Cookie; she had a few market pop-up dates in the Granville Island grounds that summer. She stopped by my stall one day and bought a couple of bunches of shiso leaves, and in between our catch-ups, she mentioned she would be making a strawberry-shiso ice cream with the leaves she just purchased. I, of course, was intrigued; shiso in ice cream!!! She said she typically chiffonades the shiso leaves and adds them towards the end of the ice cream-churning process. Meredith also says she mixes in some chiffonade leaves into macerated strawberries—YUM! She encouraged the use of shiso leaves in desserts, and her descriptions of her own shiso-based sweets sounded amazing to me. Naturally, I had to purchase some with the explicit intention of making ice cream!

It was August, the peaches were plentiful, and I have always wanted to make a peaches and cream ice cream, so I decided to give shiso a go here. Y’all… shiso and cream is a revelation! The shiso somehow further amplifies the fruit in a fruit-forward, cream-based dessert; must be those flower meadow, Lamiaceae family flavour profiles, amirite?! I have since used shiso in panna cotta, infused whipped creams, creme brûlées… Basically, I feel like any milk or cream-based, berry, or stone fruit-forward desserts will work with shiso! I have made a nectarine version of this ice cream, for one! A shiso and stone fruit sherbet and sorbet (for the vegans) would be wonderful! I feel like I am just scratching the surface on shiso in desserts here.

I served a strawberry and shiso pavlova for a dinner party this past June and I had some of my family asking if the herb I used is basil… I mean, close enough, right?! For those who don’t eat shiso on the daily, the addition of shiso in your dessert will leave your people mulling over the flavour, but they will also be unable to stop eating this ice cream or pavlova or whatever shiso-infused dessert you have concocted, I guarantee you.

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We are all in this together.

I am very much a tea drinker.

My switching to tea from coffee started during my last year of university. It was my undergrad thesis year as a student in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Toronto. I and my fellow thesis-mates were wholly focused on our end-of-year thesis undergrad show. This show was not only for the Visual Arts faculty and the students at UofT, but would also be viewable and accessible to the general public. It was a huge deal, and we were all very much stressed, but also exhilarated, because we got to work on our biggest body of work to date based on a socio-political issue or a theme of our own choosing. But because this is our thesis year, we also had to defend our work in front of some key members of the Visual Arts faculty. It was the best of times, it was the most stress-induced of times… but mostly, my final year in art school made up some of my most memorable experiences in my life to date.

During my thesis year, my diet consisted of coffee—lots and lots of extra-large cups of coffee—from the 7-11 at the corner of Spadina and College. The Visual Arts Department was situated inside the “castle” at Spadina Crescent—our home away from home. The only other meal I would grab when I found a moment to eat and had a few more dollars in my wallet, would be in smoothie form or a vegan muffin from the Urban Herbivore (RIP). I was a vegetarian and was also in the midst of experimenting with veganism back in my early 20’s. Sometimes, I would chip in to a group order with my thesis mates to get some cheap calzones from some Italian-adjacent take-out place that we knew would be open in the wee hours of the morning (we are talking anywhere between 2 to 5 a.m. at our Spadina Crescent studio here). My life revolved around thesis, long-distance running, and coffee. I ignored everything else, including sitting down to a proper meal.

I was in the printmaking room working on my latest intaglio print when I felt an unusual pain near my abdomen. This caused me to at first throw up in the women’s washroom, then, when I gathered enough strength to walk back to the printmaking studio, I collapsed, clutching my abdomen in pain. I think one of my classmates found me before calling my printmaking professor. An ambulance was called, then my professor called my mum. I was carried out on a stretcher and into the emergency room.

Everything was a blur after that, but the doctor who examined me said I was developing the very beginnings of an ulcer. He asked about my eating habits. I described my current diet at that time and he was, quite understandably, horrified. He basically scolded me like a parent would, and said that if I did not eat properly—and regularly—the pain that caused me to collapse can become more serious than just an ulcer. He also told me to stay off of coffee in the interim. “You are drinking too much of it. I need you to stop,” he said, admonishingly. “If you must have caffeine, drink tea. Focus on green tea, but you can start with black tea to help ween you off of coffee for a bit.”

~

Not very many people know I have spent almost a decade of my entire hospitality career working in tea shops. My first foray into the vast and complex world of tea was working for the now-defunct Tea Emporium in Toronto. The Tea Emporium had a few locations spread around Toronto-proper and was led by Shabnam Weber—now the president of The Tea Association of Canada and is a certified tea sommelier and tea educator—and Frank Weber—the proprietor and owner of the Toronto-based online tea shop and tea wholesaler, TeaSquared. I consider them both my mentors and primary educators in the world of tea. I credit Shabnam for imbuing me with key knowledge around the growing regions of teas and tisanes and the processing methods of Camellia sinensis, and Frank for inspiring me to cook with tea and tea blends. My time at The Tea Emporium helped cement my interest and love for food. Working with and around tea really pushed my culinary forays to a whole other level. I was in my early 20’s, barely cognizant of the possibility that I can make my love for food and food visuals a future career. I was very much on the tail-end of my studies at the University of Toronto, after all, and was strategizing my entry into the world of contemporary art, which, as you may now know or suspect, never really happened for me.

I have been making this matcha latte since Frank first introduced me to this wonderful, almost alchemical union of ginger and matcha. I have revised my most basic recipe over the years, of course. Back then, The Tea Emporium served matcha lattes already pre-sweetened with grape sugar. I personally found that their sugar ratio far outweighed the matcha in their blends, and so, like the rebellious employee I was, I would sometimes make myself a matcha latte out of their oft off-limits staff stock of matcha, and sweeten my latte with a tiny bit of honey. One afternoon, Frank hands me a bag of a pre-sweetened matcha latte blend mixed with ground ginger with which we were to do a taste test. I immediately fell in love with this matcha and ginger flavour combo.

With my staff discount, I finally purchased my first-ever bag of ground matcha after receiving one of my paycheques, and then obsessively made myself an iced ginger matcha latte with my precious bag of matcha on days when I felt like a treat… which was, admittedly, often. That precious little bag of matcha did not last me very long. My addiction to matcha was cemented because of that ginger-matcha blend.

The selling and drinking of matcha in both plain and latte form was a fairly new thing in Toronto back in the mid-to-late-2000’s. Toronto was very much steeped in coffee culture, though the first wave of “artisanal” coffee shops were only just starting to make its rounds in the culinary scene as I was nearing my graduation day at UofT. Matcha was primarily seen as an unattainable, expensive, health-food thing—something that the general public in Toronto thought would not last in a coffee-centric world. (Never mind that tea is the second-most popular beverage in the world next to water… but I digress.)

Matcha was always a tough sell at The Tea Emporium; people would shudder at the $6 price tag attached to a matcha latte, and buying a small amount of ceremonial-grade powder for $25+ was considered exorbitant. Of course, these days, nobody bats an eye at a $25 20-or-30g-tin of matcha; in fact, that price is now considered on the reasonable side of things, particularly if the ceremonial-grade matcha you purchase is of a particular harvest time or region, or both! Even the popular wholesale retailer, Costco, now sells a 100g tin of organic culinary-grade matcha for $20! That’s a lot of matcha lattes for the price of 3 regular-sized matcha lattes at your local trendy cafe. Point is, matcha has become as ubiquitous as fair-trade, single-origin coffee beans, and matcha-flavoured anythings have now transcended culinary trends. Matcha is a given—a norm—in today’s culinary landscape.

Drinking matcha has long been touted for its health benefits. It is well-known by now—through a series of clinical research, science-based, and evidence-backed findings—that not only can green tea help reduce the risks of getting certain types of cancers, it can help prevent the growth of cancer cells, and even cause them to die. Matcha is made by grounding young, shade-grown tea leaves into a very fine powder, so you are essentially drinking in the whole leaf instead of only steeping it. The shade-grown techniques behind the production of high-quality matcha contribute to the elevated amounts of chlorophyll and thianine; these make up matcha’s vibrant green colour. Matcha also contains high amounts of natural antioxidants like polyphenols, which are comparable to the effects of Vitamins C and E in the body, only these polyphenols are far more powerful and more effective at scavenging free radicals than Vitamin C on its own.

The preparation of matcha is a mini-ritual. If you want to commit to drinking matcha lattes in the morning, know that your matcha is going to make you work for it. It is not an instant drink the way steeping tea leaves in hot water or making French press coffee is. This is the reason why I like preparing matcha almost every morning. The making of a matcha latte requires a degree of mindfulness that jolts me out of my sometimes still-half-asleep mind. On the mornings just before my chemo sessions, I will still make time for my morning matcha latte. I need it, I crave it, and it has been my drink of choice in the morning for well over a decade now. I am not saying I drink a matcha latte every single day; I do not. Pre-cancer-diagnosis, sometimes, only a strong coffee would do. Other days, I would eschew the drinking of caffeine in the morning and make myself a smoothie or drink some fruit juice instead.

I cringe when I see food and wellness bloggers use a crappy, mini metal whisk or an electric milk frother with which to prepare a matcha latte. In the long run, it’s all good—you do you—but I remain steadfast in my matcha prep. For me, there will be no using metal whisks.

I am not a stickler for any sort of purist methods; heaven knows I bend the rules a lot, but I have been taught by a Japanese woman on the art of whisking a matcha, and though my technique is certainly not as flawless or as graceful as hers, whenever I get asked about my matcha prep, I will always suggest that you invest on the proper tools, and most importantly, invest in the time it takes to make the drink. The time it takes to prepare a matcha latte takes about 5 to 10 minutes, so while it most certainly is not instant, ten minutes is not that long of a time either.

The tools below will last you a very long time, including the chasen (the bamboo whisk), if you take the time to care for them properly.

• chasen - this is the bamboo whisk that you use to whisk your matcha. Its flared shape allows your matcha to be properly aerated and contributes to the production of that fine foam you get in a properly-prepared matcha. The foam is key, most especially if you ever make yourself a cup of plain matcha. The foam contributes not only to the velvety mouthfeel of a quality, ceremonial-grade matcha, it also allows those flavour notes from that matcha to come through—vegetal, grassy, savoury, sweet, creamy, smooth, silky, nutty. Ceremonial-grade matcha should have no traces of astringency when prepared properly; it should feel rich, luxurious, complex, nuanced (more on this later). Even though this post is all about the matcha latte, I try to preserve that foam even if I plan to pour my plant-based milk of choice over it. Yes, the average price of a single chasen is around the $20-$25 range, and the one I linked is a whopping $54 CAD, but there is a reason for this. Its tines and its handle are meticulously carved out of a single piece of bamboo. Mind-blowing, really.

  
  Always pre-soak your chasen in hot water for a couple of minutes to prevent the tines from cracking on you while you whisk. Soaking your chasen in hot water also promotes flexibility in your tines and will make your chasen last a long time. I have only ever gone through five chasen in well over a decade of drinking matcha.
  

• chasen-tate or chasen-naoishi - this is the chasen holding stand that allows you to retain the shape of your chasen.
  

• chashaku - this is the bamboo tea scoop with which to scoop your matcha powder. You can certainly do without this and use a measuring spoon instead, but I use the chashaku exclusively as my matcha measuring tool of choice.
  

• a wide-bottomed chawan or a katakuchi - the chawan is the tea bowl from which one prepares, and then drinks the matcha. A katakuchi is a spouted bowl traditionally used for serving sake. Personally, I use a wide-bottomed, high-sided katakuchi when making my matcha lattes; not only do I whisk my matcha in it, the spout makes it that much easier to pour my amped-up matcha into my milk of choice. By all means, use whatever small, wide-bottomed bowl or spouted bowl you have in your kitchen cabinet!
  

• a small sieve - for sifting the matcha powder over your chawan or katakuchi, thereby eliminating any big clumps and contributing to a more effortless whisking experience!

I made a reel on how I make my matcha latte here. You can see how I use the tools I have outlined above in my short video!

I just want to quickly go over the difference between ceremonial-grade matcha and culinary-grade matcha. With matcha, you really do get what you pay for. I admit to purchasing a 100g tin of organic culinary-grade matcha from Costco for $20, but I will never make a straight matcha out of it. Its flavour profiles are so much less sophisticated and less nuanced compared to this $48.50 40g. tin of ceremonial-grade matcha from Yame County, Fukuoka Prefecture—available at Cultivate Tea. I would never mar the beautiful flavour profiles of a ceremonial-grade matcha with almond milk, oat milk, or ginger powder. In comparison, the tin of matcha from Costco smells overpoweringly of nori—not at all unpleasant, sure, but even with optimal water temperature—175°F/80°C or slightly cooler (you best believe that as a tea drinker, I have a temperature-controlled tea kettle)—the astringency and bitterness on the palate is very evident, so this matcha really is best used in lattes or mixed in with flavours like ginger. That said, there are culinary-grade matcha powders that are far more sophisticated than the $20 Costco tin I have in my pantry (see this or this), but I am not Beyonce, y’all, and I drink matcha lattes on the regular. As much as I am a stickler for the highest of quality, I’ll take the value that the Costco tin gives me. I have, however, recently splurged on my current favourite, the Matcha “Yamabuki” from Cultivate Tea for my matcha lattes.

I have two matcha latte recipes here, one for iced lattes, and one for warm lattes. Summer is now in full swing here in Vancouver, so I have been drinking more iced matcha these days. It makes me feel like I am drinking a milkshake every morning.

You will notice that I use an adaptogenic mushroom powder in my matcha lattes. The use of this is entirely optional. I was gifted a jar of it when one of my best friends assembled a cancer care package for me, and I am hooked. There are tonnes of scientific studies around the benefits of mushrooms and their role in helping to prevent the growth of, and even at times, eliminating cancer cells completely (I will work on a post about mushrooms one day, and will cite sources).

I use this brand, and it pairs wonderfully with coffee or chocolate too. The powder itself is quite malty in smell and taste, but it is also subtle and not at all overpowering. I promise you your matcha latte will not taste of mushrooms.

Issha’s Chemo-Supportive Iced Matcha Latte
(serves one)

Ingredients

• 8 to 10 oz. unsweetened plant-based milk of your choice

• 1 1/2 tsp or chashaku/scoop’s worth of culinary-grade matcha

• 1/4 tsp 5-mushroom powder (optional)

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp maple syrup

• ice cubes

• ~1/4 to 1/2 cup of 175°F/80°C (or slightly cooler) water*

Method

1. Sift the matcha, ground ginger, and mushroom powder into your chawan or katakuchi. Pour in the vanilla extract and maple syrup.

2. Gently pour a little bit of water into your chawan or katakuchi. Grab your chasen. With the help of your wrist, whisk your matcha in very quick, deliberate, and even strokes. Avoid the use of your forearms when doing this; your whisking motion should be all on your wrist. According to my Japanese teacher, the tines of your chasen should feel like they are barely grazing the bottom of your bowl while you are whisking. If you are successful, the surface of your matcha should have developed a fine foam. Set this aside.

3. Pour your plant-based milk of choice and ice cubes in a tall glass, leaving enough room for the matcha. Slowly pour your matcha into the iced milk. Stir to combine, and enjoy immediately.

Issha’s Chemo-Supportive Warm Matcha Latte
(serves one)

Ingredients

• 8 to 10 oz. unsweetened plant-based milk of your choice

• 1 1/2 tsp or chashaku/scoop’s worth of culinary-grade matcha

• 1/4 tsp 5-mushroom powder (optional)

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• 1 tsp coconut oil

• 1 tsp maple syrup

• ~1/4 to 1/2 cup of 175°F/80°C (or slightly cooler) water*

Method

1. Sift the matcha, ground ginger, and mushroom powder into your chawan or katakuchi. Pour in the maple syrup.

2. Gently pour a little bit of water into your chawan or katakuchi. Use your chasen to whisk your matcha quickly, deliberately, and evenly, as outlined in the above recipe.

3. Pour this warm matcha mix into a vessel of your choice.

4. Steam or warm up your plant-based milk of choice. Dissolve the coconut oil into the warm milk, then pour over the matcha. Enjoy immediately.

*Hot tip: If you do not own a kettle with built-in temperature control, boil your water as is, then leave it to cool for at least 15-20 minutes; I know this is a pain, but it is absolutely important you do not use extremely hot water when brewing any green tea; this will burn the delicate leaves and you will lose not only the flavour profiles of that beautiful tea, you will also be left with bitterness. If you own a culinary thermometer, feel free to mix your freshly-boiled water with some cold water until your thermometer registers 175°F or 80°C or slightly cooler.

A final note on storing matcha powder—there are two camps: those who store their matcha in a cool, dark, and dry place, away from light and in containers that are opaque, and those who store their matcha inside the fridge or freezer. I have done both, but I think storing the powder in the fridge helps the powder retain its vibrant green colour and freshness. I have no science to back this up; my preferred method is all conjecture at this point. Do what’s best for you, just make sure that if you don’t store yours in the fridge, keep your matcha away from heat, store in a cool, dark place, and keep it in an air-tight, opaque container.

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope this post helps take the mystery out of matcha! Invest in the tools! Practice makes perfect!

Until next time in my kitchen,
xo, Issha

I am just popping back into Amalgam for a quick post to remind my local Vancouverite subscribers that I will be holding an in-person prop sale this coming weekend on the 27th and 28th of May as part of Cannery Row’s Annual Building-wide Garage Sale. This prop sale will be my biggest one yet.

When I got my cancer diagnosis and staging this early January, all I could think about was not ever being financially able to take some proper time off to travel. I have also invested in my own freelance photography practice over the course of almost a decade, but since the pandemic, my food clients have grown much smaller compared to my product and printed editorial work, so now is the time to let go of some of these ceramics. This ceramics sale will allow me to set aside funds to take time off of my freelance practice and finally see what’s outside of North America.

There will be lots of sets, individual pieces, mugs, plates, bowls, serving platters, and vases from artists whose work may be difficult to access because their work sells out so quickly. Some of the artists represented in my sale are Aura May, Makiko Hicher, Kasper and Aage Wuurtz, bird Ceramics, Kristie Forwick, Kate Metten, Candace Boese, Oatmeal Ceramics, Janaki Larsen, Sharon Alpren, Christopher Plumridge, and many, many more.

This is the first year I am letting go of any Janaki Larsen ceramics and I will have quite a bit of her pieces on this sale.

Prices will vary anywhere between $25-$250 CAD, but rest assured they will be 20%-40% off of what I originally paid for them, depending on the artist and the piece in question. This is your chance to come and grab some pieces from my oft-coveted prop closet. For my fellow prop stylists, food photographers, product photographers, and florists, I can issue receipts for your tax write-offs next year when you pay by credit card. I will have the ability to take EMTs and cash as well. Please note that credit card payments will be subject to a 3.75% processing fee, but this is way less than our provincial sales tax, at least.

Here are the details of my prop sale:

2001 Wall Street, Vancouver, BC
May 27: 10 to 4 pm
May 28: 11 to 4 pm
My table will be set up in a room on the ground floor, accessible to the general public.

Any prop sale leftovers will be posted online for shipping or local pickup at some point in June. For any out-of-towners, I will issue a shipping receipt separately from the purchase, as it will take some time for me to figure out the exact amount it will take to ship to people who live outside of Vancouver. I will only ever issue the exact shipping cost to your address; each package will vary depending on its weight and volume. I will be using Canada Post to ship, and will send you a tracking number with your package.

Last year’s prop sale lasted only one day as I sold out of 90% of my inventory by 2 pm, so I am encouraging people to come early to snag pieces from your favourite artist. I will also have some of my cookbook collection up for grabs, anywhere between $10-$20 per book.

Please tell your friends! I am hoping for a nice day for this sale! The weather so far is looking good!

Looking forward to seeing and meeting all of you!

xo,
Issha