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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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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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

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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When October 7 struck, what was painted as a war on Hamas by the Israeli state transformed to a global call for a permanent ceasefire in support of the native Palestinians, who have been enduring a violent 75 year old occupation by the Israeli state and the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces). The brutal dehumanization of a peoples—modern colonization at play—remained largely unknown and hidden by the global masses, until, of course, widespread social media coverage took over through the grassroots efforts of people like Motaz Azaiza, Bisan Owda, Wael Al Dahdouh, and Plestia Alaqad—and their unabashed coverage of the horrors they have witnessed in Gaza. Most of Western media—The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, to name a few—employ a specific syntactical formula when speaking about Israelites in comparison to the way they report on Palestinians, to avoid publicly holding the state of Israel—and its allies in the west—namely the USA, Canada, and England—accountable for the violent and senseless killings of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, all of them civilians, and most of whom are innocent children.

The rise of social media activism in support of Palestinians gave way to the rise of content being produced by Palestinians in the global diaspora, and many of them are showcasing their ancestral crafts and trades as a way to promote their vibrant culture. Food is one of them, and, as I have come to learn, much of their cuisine has been stolen and appropriated by the Israeli state as their own. In one of the many Reels that has been shared in my feeds, I came across the difference between mutabal and baba ganoush, hence, the need for this edit. Mutabal and baba ganoush are very similar, with one key difference: mutabal contains tahini, and baba ganoush does not. What I called baba ganoush for the majority of my life up until a few months ago is really mutabal. I wanted to revise this post on behalf of what I have learned from the global Palestinian diaspora. Food is a bridge amongst cultures, yes, but food has also always been political. Food will always be political for as long as we do not see true justice for the very people whose existence, stories, culture, and cultural legacies are being demolished and erased, right before our eyes.

I have amended the post below to say mutabal, since my dip contains tahini. Now, the inspiration for this mutabal does come from the baba ganoush my husband and I had in Philadelphia’s Suraya; their baba ganoush contains tahini.

Free Falastin.

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As with most spice blends that have now made a permanent home in my own pantry, I discovered the wonders of berbere through my friends at Monsoon Coast, though they were certainly not my first berbere experience. I first had Ethiopian food in my early 20’s, when a friend of mine suggested we go to an Ethiopian place for lunch one day. We both attended the University of Toronto, where we happened to have some time in between classes to hang out. He grew up in Botswana and was craving something from his home country, and I was a staunch vegetarian in those days, so he thought Ethiopian would be a good compromise between the both of us. The bonus? It was inexpensive! Lunch specials started at $5—perfect for us penny-wise university students. Back in those days, you got a fair amount of food for $5 at almost any Ethiopian eatery in downtown Toronto; this price was for the vegetarian lunch platter. I was sold! He told me he used to have Ethiopian food regularly back in Botswana, and I was intrigued by his descriptions of it. When my food finally arrived, I was struck by how simply and beautifully it was presented. The mains were laid out in small, manageable portions on Ethiopian flatbreads called injera, like globs of colourful paint splayed out on an artist’s wooden palette. You scooped up the mains with torn-up pieces of injera, similar to how you would do kamayan in the Philippines, where you scoop up your mains and rice using your hands! Injera is shaped like a large pancake, and is quite spongey, with a slightly sour taste similar to that of a good-quality sourdough. This Ethiopian flatbread is made with teff flour, an ancient cereal crop from the Ethiopian highlands. Its texture reminds me a bit of buckwheat flour.

In Yohanis Gebreyesus’ Ethiopia, Yohanis describes the making of powdered berbere as a multi-day affair, not including the time it takes to harvest the chilies and dry them under the Ethiopian sun. Berbere starts with the tapping or rubbing of the dried chilies through a wool sack called a doneya. The fine powder that results from the breakdown of the chilies gets sifted out of these wool sacks, so that what is left inside the doneya then gets pounded in a mortar called a muketcha.

Once the chilies have been sufficiently processed in the muketcha, they are then combined with ginger, garlic, rue seeds, besobela seeds (Ethiopian basil seeds), and a variety of herbs to form a paste. This paste get processed in a wooden container called a gebete, but is once more returned to the muketcha for this mixture to be turned into a superfine paste. This resulting chili paste is called delez berbere.

The delez berbere gets pressed and flattened into a single layer inside the gebete and is sprinkled with a fermented Ethiopian honey wine called tej. A layer of besobela leaves (Ethiopian basil) then covers the pressed mixture before the entire lot gets covered with a lémat—a curved plate that has been woven with straw. This is left to mature and to dry out for roughly two days in a dry place, before the lémat is removed and the matured and still-drying delez berbere gets transferred onto mats and is left to dry out completely under the sun.

This delez berbere then gets combined with more aromatics. Lightly-toasted whole spices such as korerima (Ethiopian cardamom), ajwain, nigella seeds, and long pepper are ground and combined into the now-crumbly, dried-out chili paste. This is your powdered berbere!

Spice companies that sell berbere in this part of the world eschew most of the steps I have outlined here; instead, most combine ground-up dried chilies with similar aromatics that traditionally go into turning delez berbere into powdered berbere. Monsoon Coast’s version, for instance, combines chilies with ajwain, fenugreek, and ginger, among many other whole spices.

The red chilies in a variety of berbere blends give dishes like doro wat—an Ethiopian chicken stew—its signature, rusty-red colour. Berbere is also used in simple sauces like awaze (an Ethiopian chili dipping sauce) and duba wat (an Ethiopian pumpkin stew).

Personally, I use berbere anywhere I would want aromatic heat and spice. I flavour my meatloaf with it. I have made homemade ketchup and barbecue sauce with it. I have made homemade sourdough discard crackers with berbere and caraway; it was DELICIOUS. I have flavoured the filling of my cabbage rolls with it. It makes a beautiful tomato sauce. My favourite use for berbere, however, is in my recipe for mutabal.

My mutabal is heavily inspired by the baba ganoush my husband and I had in Suraya—a Philadelphia-based restaurant that specializes in Levantine cuisine. Their baba ganoush made such a huge impression on me, I kept on raving about it for days and days on end after our quickie Philly trip. I was so taken by this baba ganoush, I kept obsessing over it to our host long after we have finished our mains. The star of that night’s incredible meal, for me, was that smoky eggplant dip. Our host then told us that they leave loads of eggplants over the slow-dying charcoal embers in their ovens overnight and then peel off their skins the next day. The deep, dark, earthen smoke that permeates these eggplants is out-of-this-world. Their earthy richness is made lighter with the addition of lemon and pomegranate seeds. Their baba ganoush is then finished with a light sprinkling of urfa biber—these are chili pepper flakes made from peppers that are grown in Urfa, a town south of Turkey near the Syrian border. Urfa biber is not characterized by heat, rather, by their notes of deep red cherries, red wine tannins, and dark chocolate. These chili pepper flakes also have the sensation of smoke, though the Urfa chilies themselves are not smoked, but are simply dried.

For levity, I rely on pomegranate molasses over the use of a lemon. It does the job of both a lemon and maple syrup. Previous iterations of my mutabal certainly relied on the zest and juice of one lemon and a small drizzle of maple syrup for sweetness, but I felt compelled to eschew those in favour of the more traditional use of pomegranate molasses after reading through the entirety of my Levant cookbook collection. If you do not have pomegranate molasses kicking around in your pantry, by all means, use a lemon and some maple syrup instead.

The addition of berbere is entirely my own doing. Berbere adds yet another layer of complexity—not to mention heat!—to the deep, dark smoke that, for me, makes a mutabal my own—Amalgam-style, if you will. This is my go-to mutabal recipe; I have made this so many times now that I simply just eyeball the ratios of the other ingredients based on the size of my eggplants! This is almost a non-recipe; the ingredients I list here rely heavily on personal tastes. Do use your senses when you make this; adjust your ingredients according to your palette. This is more of a guide than it is an outright recipe.

If you scoff at the idea of using an Ethiopian spice blend in a Levantine dish, then by all means, just omit the berbere, ok? But do try to use some urfa biber in your mutabal for some serious next-level business.

I have never had the room or a yard (small space in a big-ish city-living, amirite?) for a grill, so I rely on my oven’s broiler to make my mutabal. I have also been known to char and soften my eggplants over the fires on our gas stove, but the clean up from this method is a massive nightmare, so… do with that what you will, but I do not recommend that method at all, unless you do not mind the clean-up!

Berbere Mutabal
(makes a little over 2 cups)

Special Equipment

• an oven with a powerful broiler, or better yet, a charcoal grill or an electric grill

Ingredients

• 3 large globe eggplants

• 3 to 5 tbsp light olive oil or grapeseed oil

• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced

• 3 tbsp pomegranate molasses

• 2 to 3 heaping tbsp tahini

• 1 to 2 tsp berbere

• 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

• 2 tbsp mint, finely chopped

• salt to taste

Garnish

• 2 to 3 tbsp pomegranate seeds

• 1 tsp urfa biber

• 2 tbsp good-quality extra virgin olive oil

• torn mint and parsley leaves

Method

1. Broiler method: line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Make small piercings all over the eggplants’ surface using a fork. Coat the entirety of the eggplant with grapeseed oil or light olive oil. Lay the eggplants in the aluminum-covered baking sheet and place under the broiler for about half an hour or until the eggplants have fully softened, turning the eggplants once mid-way through the broiling process.

2. Grill method: make small piercings over the entirety of the eggplants’ surface using a fork. Coat the pierced eggplants in light olive oil or grapeseed oil. Place the grill cover on and grill the eggplants over high heat, until the eggplants have softened. Check periodically to turn over the eggplants to ensure each side gets in contact with the grill fires.

3. Place the still-hot eggplants inside a large bowl and cover this bowl with a tight-fitting lid or some plastic wrap for at least half an hour or until the eggplants are cool enough to handle. This will aid in condensation and the ease in peeling off the eggplant skins.

4. Peel off their charred skins and discard. Chop off the eggplants’ stems. You will see a bit of smoky eggplant water at the bottom of the bowl. Discard all but roughly a tablespoon or two of this water. Combine this small amount of smoky eggplant water with the peeled eggplant and mash these together with a fork.

5. Add in the finely minced cloves of garlic and the pomegranate molasses. Mix thoroughly to combine.

6. Add in the tahini, the berbere, and salt to taste. Mix thoroughly. The mutabal should now resemble a roughly-textured but creamy dip.

7. Fold in the chopped parsley and mint. Garnish the top with a generous drizzle of good-quality extra-virgin olive oil, urfa biber, pomegranate seeds, and some more mint and parsley. Serve with toasted pita, carrot sticks, radish slices, or any sliced vegetable you like.

Until next time in my kitchen!
xo, Issha

I cannot recall where I first started to notice ube make the upper ranks in Western food trends, but I feel like the ube train is here to stay, unlike charcoal-infused everything—remember those? I had all but given up on having ube again after my family and I immigrated to Canada. When we found it in some Filipino food stores back in the mid-to-late 90’s—in halaya form or even in ice cream form—they were priced far too high for our food budget at that time as new immigrants.

When I was in high school, during a free period, we hopped the Spadina streetcar to Chinatown for some snacks and bootleg anime tapes. Inside one of the Chinese-run malls where I got my fave bootlegs and anime mags, I was first introduced to boba tea (bubble tea) by my Korean and Vietnamese friends. The many choices in flavours were overwhelming, but my friend told me that for most people new to boba, they start with the taro flavour. So I ordered taro. It was purple! Cool! Upon first tasting that milky, purple liquid, I exclaimed, “OMG! This is like ube!” Up until that point, no ube-flavoured anything has touched my lips since… well… my time in the Philippines. I was immediately transported back to my motherland.

For the longest time, I thought taro was the common name for ube, because every boba stand named their purple drink that tasted very much like ube ‘taro’. I thought this for years and years until I saw a photograph of a taro root crop, and like the protagonist in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, my eyes were opened, and I was like, “Hey, wait a second… TARO IS NOT UBE! Taro is gabi!”

Give me a bit of a break, ok? Wikipedia was not a thing in that day and age, and having the internet was still very much a luxury back in the early 2000’s. Back then, we did not go walking around with access to the information superhighway in our pockets. I came across that photograph of a taro purely by chance. (My god, my age is really showing here, isn’t it?)

We use taro (gabi) in soups like sinigang (pronounced SEE-nee-gahng; it’s like the Filipino tom yum). Gabi is used primarily in savoury applications, and for me, as someone who was born and grew up in the Philippines, there is nothing dessert-y about taro at all. Taro is super lush and creamy when mashed, with just the slightest mucilaginous (aka slimy) mouthfeel—similar to what you get when you eat okra. It sounds unappetizing to the indoctrinated, but mashed gabi on rice with tonnes of sinigang broth, braised vegetables, and fall-off-the-bone pork was one of my favourite meals back then.

Upon realizing that boba spots are essentially misleading some people into thinking taro is the same as ube, I was basically annoyed. I went on a mission to correct people when they say taro is ube. A deeper dive led to my discovering that sure, taro powder is most certainly used in boba, but the taro powder is oftentimes enhanced with a bit of purple food colouring, artificial flavourings, and sweeteners. These flavourings and sweeteners really lit up the ube part of my culinary memory, and the purple colour of the drink really threw me off, so of course, I, too, thought taro was ube!

There is a distinct difference between taro and ube when it comes to flavour and texture. Taro is creamier, with a balanced nuttiness and earthiness when cooked. In striking contrast, cooked ube sort of resembles the texture of russet potatoes; they have a slightly higher moisture and lower starch content compared to the creamy taro. They do, however, have a subtle sweetness—a combination of vanilla, pandan, and pistachio. And let’s talk about the key difference here: their colour! Cut into a taro and you will see a mostly white flesh with some purple specks; cut into an ube, and you will see purple.

It is difficult to find fresh ube here in Canada, but you can find ube in frozen form at your local Asian or Filipino grocery stores. Frozen ube is usually combined with extra water, so before making any dessert with them, defrost them fully, then run the ube through a fine sieve to get rid of any excess water before making halaya or ice cream out of them. You can also find ube in powdered form; you can reconstitute the powder with coconut milk or water to make halaya.

Now, let’s tackle some purple tubers that you might come across in grocery stores like Whole Foods, namely the Stokes Purple.

Scientifically speaking, ube belongs to the species of tubers under Dioscorea alata, and is part of the Dioscoreaceae family. The best-known member of this particular family is the yam. Stokes Purple, however, is part of the Convolvulaceae family, where the sweet potato is a member. These scientific classifications illustrate that yams and sweet potatoes are not interchangeable; yams are not sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are not yams, meaning, yes, they are two different vegetables. The difference between the two, then, lies in the scientific fact that ube is a type of yam, and Stokes Purple is a type of sweet potato.

Admittedly, I have used both interchangeably. Because fresh ube is super difficult to find in this part of the world, and if I am out of the frozen kind and cannot make it to my favourite Asian grocers, I simply visit our local Whole Foods for a couple of Stokes Purples and make ube desserts out of that. The flavours between the two are somewhat similar, with one key difference: ube is far more subtle in its vanilla and pistachio undertones, while the Stokes Purple has a distinctly more pronounced sweetness—a combination of vanilla and molasses—with just a hint of spice—not heat, mind you, but spice—think, chai. There is also a distinct difference between the two textures. Ube, like I mentioned earlier in this article, is starchy with a good amount of moisture content, whereas the Stokes Purple’s texture is creamier, heavier, and more dense than ube, with very little moisture content. I have made ube desserts out of both, but whenever I make, say, a pie or a tart out of Stokes Purple, I call it an “ube” pie (imagine me making the “”-gesture with my fingers too).

One last thing: while it is highly unlikely fresh ube is about to make the rounds at your local green grocers anytime soon, resist the urge to call any purple tuber ube until you know for sure that the tuber before you is part of the Dioscoreaceae family. Ube has a rough, tree bark-like skin; if you spot one of these bark-like tubers in your local Filipino food grocers, and the flesh inside is purple, well hot damn, that would be one lucky find. I still squeal when I see fresh kalamansi in my local Filipino grocers; imagine how I would react if I ever come across fresh ube in this part of the world. I will just have to wait until we vacation in the Philippines next to see the real thing, I imagine, but until then, at least I have access to the frozen stuff… and the Stokes Purple sweet potato.

Update (January 18, 2024): My friend and Filipino-food expert Rezel Kealoha did a fascinating deep-dive into the history of ube halaya and made homemade ube halaya out of her homegrown ube. Read through and learn! She also includes some more resources at the end of her post about the Philippines’ most beloved tuber. Give her a follow too!

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Those who have been following me on Instagram for a while know that I have been working as a regular contributor for Monsoon Coast as both their product photographer and recipe developer. It is a partnership of which I am very proud; their blends are excellent and a pleasure to work with. The company is headed by one of my dear friends too, so there's that added bonus. Monsoon Coast has been around for over 20 years, but Shadel Haddad took over the established company from its original owners in 2019, and consequently made the move from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island in order to best take the brand to whole new levels of notoriety. A good portion of the blends they make have yet to make regular appearances in your everyday grocery stores—blends that have now become personal favourites of mine: berbere, baharat, ras el hanout. Those who grew up in countries that use these blends will of course be no stranger to these, but for those whose spice blend knowledge go only as far as “curry powder”, these blends can feel too one-dish-specific for use in everyday meals.

It is Shadel’s goal to break the monotony in your spice pantry—at least, that is what I cannot help but think when he first introduces me to some of his favourite blends. Now, I am not a stranger to the global pantry, but even my culinary adventures growing up in a city as multicultural as Toronto have only gotten me so far, and besides, I would like to think I am a forever student when it comes to eating. Both of Arab and Armenian descent, blends like baharat and ras el hanout are as ubiquitous to Shadel as the heady combination of bay leaves, peppercorns, and garlic are to me—a Filipina immigrant.

Shadel maintains that these blends can perform more than just one-dish tricks in your kitchen; you can sprinkle ras el hanout over vegetables and roast them in a hot oven, use berbere in your favourite meatloaf or meatball recipe, or use chaat masala in your quick pickles or fruit plates. Various recipes using their spice blends can be found on their growing recipe library—a space Shadel and his small team are keen on growing and building on over time.

Monsoon Coast’s Persian Advieh was released to the public as a limited edition spice blend a few weeks ago, but here’s hoping they keep it as part of their permanent spice library because upon first whiff, I was hooked. It was then explained to me that advieh is as ubiquitous in Persian kitchens as garam masala is in South Asian kitchens, and are used in a variety of stews, meat dishes, and rice dishes. Much like I have used ras el hanout in both savoury and sweet applications (a recipe on one much later), I took one whiff of Monsoon Coast’s advieh and thought it would make a lovely snickerdoodle. But then upon dreaming of an advieh-flavoured snickerdoodle, I suddenly also had a hankering for butter cookies—you know… the ones you get in that signature blue tin, usually around the holidays. So I decided to scrap my snickerdoodle idea and make butter cookies flavoured with advieh. (But by all means, go dig up your go-to snickerdoodle recipe and make it with advieh too; I know I will, at some point!)

A note on this recipe: I have done away with the use of a scale in this cookie recipe, but when measuring out your dry ingredients, take care not to pack your measuring cups tight with your dry ingredients. Aerate your dry starches first—using something like a chopstick or a spoon—then level your dry ingredients off with a knife or your finger.

Advieh Butter Cookies
(makes about a dozen, give or take a few)

Special Equipment

• whisk, a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, or an electric hand whisk

• rubber spatula

• fine sieve

• cookie scoop (~1 1/8”-1 5/8” diameter)

• silicone pastry bag (optional, if piping)

• large 8 or 9-point star tip (optional, if piping; something like this)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1/2 cup icing sugar

• 1/2 cup cornstarch

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1 1/4 cup cake and pastry flour

• 1 tbsp advieh

• 1/2 tbsp vanilla paste

• 1 tbsp cane sugar or turbinado sugar + 1/4 tsp advieh, for sprinkling the tops of the butter cookies

Method

1. Using a whisk or an electric mixer, cream the butter, the icing sugar, the vanilla paste, the advieh, and the salt until pale and fluffy—about 5 minutes.

2. Sift the corn starch onto the creamed flavoured butter and sugar mixture. Whisk again until airy and fluffy.

3. Sift the cake and pastry flour over the aerated butter mixture. Using a spatula, gently fold the flour into the butter. Take care not to overwork the flour, but continue to fold until the cake flour has been fully incorporated into the aerated butter.

4. Use a cookie scoop and portion out the dough onto a tray fitted with parchment paper. Alternatively, if you feel up to the challenge, pipe the dough into an upward spiral—about 3 layers— then push the tip towards the dough before lifting the piping tip off the cookie. The diameter of your piped dough should just be shy of 2 inches, and should roughly be about an inch tall.

5. Combine 1 tablespoon of cane sugar or turbinado sugar with 1/4 teaspoon of advieh and sprinkle the tops of the butter cookies with this spice and sugar mixture.

6. Preheat your oven to 300°F (convection) or 350°F (standard).

7. Freeze the piped or scooped dough solid—for at least half an hour to about an hour. I usually preheat my oven for around 45 minutes while the dough is freezing anyway, just to ensure my oven has reached optimal temperature.

8. Carefully lay out your frozen dough onto a baking sheet with parchment paper, taking care to leave about 2 to 3 inches of space in between the cookies. The cookies should not be spreading too much, but make sure to leave just enough space in between the cookies anyway.

9. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the tray halfway through the baking. Ovens vary; check around the 20 minute mark to make sure your dough isn’t getting too toasty or too dark. You’ll know your cookies are ready when they are just getting the slightest hint of gold on the cookies’ sharp edges.

10. Leave on the tray to cool completely before enjoying!

I hope this recipe inspires you to seek out spice blends beyond your usual go-to choices, and please go check out Monsoon Coast’s offerings. Right now, they are donating 15% of their sales towards IWAV (Islanders Working Against Violence)—a non-profit based in Salt Spring Island dedicated to providing services to women and children throughout the Southern Gulf Islands affected by violence, abuse, and poverty.

See you back in my kitchen!
xo, Issha