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What’s great about the world of food is, more often than not, people turn their passions into their jobs.

Sometimes it happens quite by accident, and before they realize what has happened, the individual is knee deep in requests for the product that was once their hobby.

That is the story I heard when I went to the Cheese Boutique on Monday, and listened to founder of Upper Canada Cheese Company, Wayne Philbrick,  talk about how he had started his business. Making cheese was something he did for friends, and the “wine club” that this foodie belonged to, wouldn’t let him show up to their monthly tastings without a sample of his home-made cheeses.Lauren Arsenault, original Guernsey Girl

Now, I’ve had a soft spot for Upper Canada Cheese Company before I heard this story, since I drove by it many a time as I planned my wedding just down the street from their storefront at Inn on the Twenty last May.

In fact, seeing the local cheese store inspired me to add Artisanal cheese stations to our cocktail hour which was a huge hit with our guests, and I do believe their Niagara Gold was featured in the lineup.

So as this burgeoning cheese company grew, it needed to expand. Enter Lauren Arsenault—cheesemaker extraordinaire. She’s the lady or the “girl” (it’s OK, she told me she doesn’t mind being called so) behind Guernsey girl Cheese. A Scandinavian-style cheese, Guernsey stays firm on the outside and even crisps with heat, and the inside gets soft and gooey.

Lauren, who is part Norwegian said she was excited to bring this "bread-style cheese" to the masses. The cheese is versatile enough to grill on the barbecue, so she's hoping that the current excitement about Guernsey Girl is just the beginning as the weather warms up.

Now there was more to the event than just talk. There was a live cook-off happening, featuring Guernsey Girl and let me tell you that I gladly sampled all the offerings.

Lora Kirk wooed me with her Slow Braised Ribs and Guernsey Girl Poutine, Andrea Damon Gibson The winning entry(founder of Fred’s Bread) made me pause with her interpretation titled Guernsey Girl Goes Mediterranean—an olive and chipotle bread smothered in melty cheese, but it was Jason Bangerter (Auberge du Pommier) who I fell hard for with his Artichoke and Guernsey Girl Terrine. The terrine featured all Niagara ingredients (including the prosciutto). It was baked, but just before serving fried up in a pan and drizzled with a Muscat vinegar reduction, a garlic infused oil and some micro greens. 

Bangerter confessed that he didn’t dream up the recipe for the cook off, but rather re-interpreted an old favourite he had created while working in Switzerland where he used cave-aged Gruyere, instead of the Halloumi style cheese. However, this reincarnation has won him over. “I think it’s better than the Gruyere,” he said. “The cheese has a buttery finish that blends well with the other ingredients. You have to cook it to get it's full flavour."

It seems I'm not the only one who thought so, since when the votes were finally tallied, Chef Bangerter's dish emerged victorious.

When I was a child, there was one thing that my mother made with regularity that we always looked forward to, and that was pizza.

Piled high with toppings, often sectioned into segments of what each of us liked (no olives on my part please!) and a thick pillowy dough that had us eating every last piece of the crust.

Yep, mom made great pizza, and we were spoiled. There was something about my mom's pizza that brought us all to the table, and not once did we ever complain that we didn't get "take-out" like all the other kids.

One time, one of my cousins left his slice of pizza unattended while he washed his hands, and when he returned found the dog had helped himself to the slice. My cousin tried to take the piece of pizza back, before he was reassured that we would gladly give him a new slice, if he surrendered his piece to the dog. It really was that good.

Now that I have my own family, pizza isn't as regular as it was at Mom's house, but it's still something the whole family loves.

I've tinkered with a dough recipe for a while, wanting to make it more "multi-grain" and came up with what I think is a pretty good balance. The trick to good dough is repetition. Eventually, you find the right texture and consistency that you like.

Here's my multi-grain pizza dough recipe:

1 1/3 cups warm water

2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

1 tsp honey

Dissolve yeast and honey in warm water. Let sit until yeast starts to foam.

Meanwhile mix

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup ground flax seeds

1 tsp salt

Add yeast and water mixture to dry ingredients and knead well (12 to 15 minutes).

Take 1 to 2 tbsp of olive oil and grease a large stainless steel bowl. Place dough, covered with plastic wrap in a warm place to rise for 1 1/2 to two hours.

Then proceed to roll out dough on some additional cornmeal.

Once it's rolled out, you can top it with whatever you like.

You could add some of these:

One of my favourite combos is a combination of chipotle salsa and olive oil spread thinly over the crust topped with mozzarella, chicken, red peppers, fried onions and sauteed mushrooms.

That's the beauty of pizza though. No matter what your family likes, you can find a combination that will please everyone. If not, just do like my mom did and divide it up into sections! Enjoy.

Lately, I've had the urge to bake bread. There's something about kneading dough that is cathartic, therapeutic even.

Maybe I'm nesting? Who knows? Baking bread, as soul-soothing, as it can be, is a long arduous process, dotted with kneading, rising, more kneading and often more rising.

Monkey Bread Enter the stand mixer, with it's constant whirring, and bread making is not such a challenge anymore. I used my KitchenAid to make brioche dough this weekend because I was inspired by a recipe on the blog Smitten Kitchen. Strangely, I find the hypnotic whir of my KitchenAid almost as cathartic as kneading the bread myself. And truly with a brioche dough, warm hands can wreak havoc, so the machine is often the best way to go.

Monkey Bread has had a surge in popularity lately. It's gone from being a virtual unknown cake/pastry up here in Canada, to having William's Sonoma carry special mixes and pans for baking this sugar-crusted treat.

When I saw the recipe and photos at Smitten Kitchen, I read through her blog post. One of the recommended ways to make the bread was with a brioche dough. I knew how to make brioche dough, so I figured I would try it that way.

I used this recipe, for the dough which yielded enough for two batches of monkey bread, or, a batch of monkey bread and a small batch of cinnamon buns (I opted for the latter).

The recipe also called for a cream cheese icing, which is also found with this dough recipe, so it was a perfect combo.

Here's what you need.

1/2 portion of brioche dough

1/2 cup of melted butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp cinnamon

Grease a bundt pan well with butter. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl.

Roll our your portion of chilled brioche dough into an 8 x8 inch square and cut into 64 pieces. Seperate the dough, before it warms. Roll each piece into a ball. Dip with a fork into melted butter, then coat with sugar/cinnamon mixture.

Stagger coated balls into bundt pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for one hour. Preheat oven to 350F. Bake for 30 to 35 min.

Coat with a cream cheese icing.

1/3 cup butter (room temperature)

1/3 cup of cream cheese

1 cup of icing sugar

zest of one orange

1/4 tsp almond extract

1-2 tbsp milk

Cream together butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy with beaters. Add in icing sugar and incorporate well. Mix in zest and almond extract. If necessary, add milk to achieve desired consistency.

Verdict:

Although fun to pull apart the crusty little bite sized pieces of cinnamon dough, the outer layer was too crisp for my liking. I personally think the cinnamon buns are a much better use of brioche dough. The family agreed.

So I whipped up a half batch of these babies alongside the Monkey Bread, since I had the extra dough. I used walnuts instead of the standard pecans, but boy where they tasty. There's nothing like a good brioche dough. Even though I've never actually used it make brioche.

Why would I when I can make these instead?

There was a time in my life that I was vegetarian. As someone who now butchers my own chickens, and fillets my own fish, it seems like a lifetime ago.

During that time, I wasn't the healthiest eater-- quite the contrary actually. I relied heavily on dairy Non-vegetarian lentil soupproducts and eggs to supplement what I wasn't getting from meat and as a result ended up less healthy than when I started. When my doctor diagnosed me with high cholesterol, that was the last straw. I was depriving myself of things like succulent prime rib, and guilt-inducing bacon and I had high cholesterol.

I threw in the towel and rejoined the ranks of the carnivores, or as one of my stepsons likes to say "meat-a-tarians." Hubby, who is a personal trainer by day, once explained to the boy that there was no such thing.

The conversation went a little like this:

Boy: "Dad, if vegetarians are people who only eat vegetables, what do you call someone who only eats meat?"

Husband: "Dead. They don't live long enough to give them a name."

End of conversation.

Can you tell we were struggling to get him to eat his vegetables? Anyhow, that was a couple of years ago, and I'm proud to say that, despite his ongoing aversion to tomatoes, he's a pretty good veggie eater otherwise.

The following soup is not vegetarian. But it could be. You'd just have to leave out the bacon and replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock. You know, take out all the flavour. And what fun would that be?

French-inspired lentil soup

Ingredients

1 cup lentils

2 small carrots

1 red pepper

1 small cooking onion

1 clove of garlic

1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste

4 strips of bacon

1 900 ml container of chicken stock

2-3 sprigs of thyme

1 bay leaf

10 grape tomatoes

Prep

Dice carrots, onion and red pepper. Mince garlic. Slice grape tomatoes into quarters. Cut bacon into small strips.

Cook 

Fry until toasty brown in a stock pot. Remove bacon from pot, leaving drippings. Reserve bacon. Add onion, carrots and pepper into pot, cook until softened. Stir in garlic and tomato paste. Continue to cook for another couple of minutes until tomato paste starts to brown. Deglaze with stock. Add lentils, thyme, and bay leaf. Simmer over low heat until lentils are cooked through, stirring infrequently, so as to not break up lentils.

Add cherry tomatoes and cook for another couple of minutes. Remove thyme stems and bay leaf. Garnish with bacon. Serve.

While patisseries are nothing new on Queen Street West, here in Toronto, there's a new kid on the block, and I gotta say, I'm a little tickled.Pain au chocolat

Giving established places like Clafouti something to talk about Nadege is an unassuming bakery with sleek lines that evoke a "France moderne" but the food is definitely deeply rooted in French tradition (with a few exceptions). Macarons, the French meringue based confection usually sandwiched with ganache entered the scene a few years ago, so Nadege has stepped up to the plate with a variety of offerings from Blackberry and Chocolate (yum!) to Mojito (pass). Of course they also have the regular pastry offerings you would expect, Croissant, Almond Croissant, Pain au Chocolat and the most decadent Chocolate Almond Croissant. I tried a unique pairing of Pistachio and Dried Cherry which was didn't quite have the depth of flavour I was hoping for.

But the one thing that has me truly tickled about Nadege is their introduction of Cannele to the Toronto scene. I have yet to see these little Bordeaux specialties anywhere else in the city.

Baked in copper molds, they are speckled with vanilla and have a soft custardy inside.

CanneleAlthough I didn't try their sandwhiches, they were pretty enough to frame. I'll definitely be going back for one of those soon. So definitely give Nadege a try. Although don't get carried away and ask the staff for a "Café Crème" or a "Café au Lait" because they'll look at you strangely. Just order a latté like the rest of Toronto does.

 Nadege, 780 Queen St. W. 416-368-2009.