Feeding the Inner Chef

I’m a collector of only a very few things. When I’m travelling, I’ll scout for unusual objets for my bookshelf— a stone cicada from a village in the south of France, a hot-pink owl I picked up in a design shop in Copenhagen. And I’ve got a bar cabinet stocked with local liqueurs from those travels, too (an herbal génépy from the Alps and a juniper-forward borovička from Slovakia are among the more unusual in that selection). But what I really love to collect are cooking tips. Squeeze a lemon around a fork to extract all the juice. Cook eggs low and slow for a creamier scramble. Put a whole kabocha squash in a hot oven for 10 minutes before you prep it, and it’ll slice like a dream. So of course I pored over “Too Many Cooks” (page 70) the moment the piece landed on my desk so I could absorb all of the hot—and sweet—cooking tips that our team here collected from a few of Western Canada’s top chefs. It’s just icing on the cake that these great ideas arrived in time for our annual kitchens (and baths) issue. While you’re dreaming of your ideal kitchen, you can layer in all of the perfect meals you’ll be preparing on those lovely new marble counters (or Caesarstone, or Dekton—your dream kitchen is your oyster). And speaking of kitchens, we have a few tips for those, too. Some of our favourite local designers have shared their best tricks to make that room sing, starting on page 38. I’m already sketching out a very-teal update to my own kitchen, inspired by designer Andrea Ewanchyna’s warm and woodsy space—and I can’t think of a better environment in which to cook up a batch of low-and-slow eggs for my next brunch party.