fundamental fare
 
2008-02-04: fundamental fare

This year I am officially on a quest. Well, a few different quests, I suppose when you get right down to it. I want to pursue the "ultimates" in cooking and eating; look out Tyler Florence, the Domestic Goddess is in town and she's starving.

Everyone makes new year's resolutions - to lose weight, to make more friends, to be a better person. Not so for me this year. I lost weight when I was sick, I have many friends and frankly I think I'm a damned fine person (!). So my resolution is to find or to make the best of the best in food this year. I don't intend to fly to Paris for cheese or Greece for olive oil, but I think I'll do okay regardless. Some of the very best food is right here in Toronto and the surrounding areas...and I don't mean to boast, but on good days, some of it comes out of my very own kitchen.

And just as a small sneak peek, you have June's SHF to start thinking about already..."How Sweet is Canada?", when I will be searching out and asking you to help me source or make the sweetest parts of this country. Stay tuned, it's going to be a huge event!

This week I searched and scoured my cookbooks for the ultimate brownie recipe. S. wanted a chocolate-laden dessert for his post super-bowl hankerings and my brain settled on brownies immediately. Simple but delicious and unsuspectingly filling they are the perfect dessert for someone who loves chocolate as much as him. But what is the ultimate recipe? Would it be the cake-y brownie that is light but with a great crumb and the perfect balance of chocolate? Or would a cocoa-dense brownie that is dry but mouth-wateringly scrumptious win the day? Or perhaps the best would be the dense eggy-ness of traditional chocolate brownies, studded with chocolate chips, that you rarely see nowadays?

To see the winner, you'll have to check the recipe...personally I thought these were the best brownies I've ever had. And the best part about making them yourself is that you can cut them as large as you want!