Recipes Reimagined: Rethinking How We Cook in the Age of AI

It's been a minute ... on the heel of returning from Asia, I taught an online AI incorporated cooking class with families from a TDSB junior public school last week. It marked the first session of our two-part cooking workshop in Recipes Reimagined, and what a beautiful start it was 🥰.

Together, we explored how simple, everyday ingredients can come together in meaningful ways. We prepared a comforting one-pot lentil and rice soup paired with a vibrant pickled vegetable giardiniera- showing how one meal can be both nourishing and adaptable, and how a simple jar can extend flavour and reduce waste.

A large pot of lentils is inexpensive and stretchable.

It fosters the communal aspect that no one in the neighborhood should go hungry.

The giardiniera-style pickle is designed around using leftover vegetables, slightly soft produce, imperfect or discounted items. This reframes reduced-price food as resourceful and intentional, and as a practical way to salvage and extend the life of food at home.

I also introduced the thoughtful use of AI as a kitchen support tool. Families explored how it can help with menu planning, organizing recipes, and translating dishes across languages- all while keeping their own tastes, traditions, and judgment at the centre. 

Most of the stress isn’t cooking. It’s deciding. AI isn’t replacing your knowledge. It’s a planning helper. Think of AI as a highly organized kitchen helper who has read every cookbook in the world and remembers exactly what you have in your fridge. Just knowing a few simple AI tools can help us save recipes and food traditions.

Each participant was tasked to prepare a favourite recipe contribution from their family, including a story, food photo and artwork to culminate a cookbooklet for their school community 🔪📔

At the heart of it all was food sovereignty: having confidence and control over how we feed our families, using what we have, and honouring the foods that connect us to home.

AI isn’t here to replace what you know- it’s just there to make cooking a little easier and less stressful. Experience and judgment always come first, and like any tool, it’s not perfect. If we can teach our kids how to cook, think for themselves, and use tools wisely, we’re doing more than just making meals- we’re building stronger, more capable families for the future. And that’s what our project Recipes Reimagined is all about 👊💥

Grateful to everyone who joined, shared, and cooked along. This is just the beginning- looking forward to seeing these recipes and stories come to life in our upcoming cookbook and potluck celebration 🤗

If you would like to organize a cooking workshop, please contact me to arrange.

Waste Not. Use Up What You Got...

"We must preserve and respect the very food that fuels us. Waste not. Use up what you got!"-- Susan

Save Food. Save Lives. It's Out 🤗... A cookbook on sustainable and cultural food recipes has been published that culminates a year long effort on fighting climate change by reducing food waste in food workshops conceived by The Arab Community Centre of Toronto in partnership with the LiveGreen project at the City of Toronto. 

Here are a few excerpts from the cookbook including my recipe pages.

Last summer, I was invited by @acct_savefood @acctonline to host a Food Waste workshop incorporating tips, recipes and creative leftover ideas from Asian cultures. This initiative aimed to build community and teamwork around cultural and knowledge exchange on curbing food waste. An important topic dear to my heart. 

When I think about Asian cuisines and our behaviours around food, it is the epitome of nose to tail eating. Eat everything. Waste nothing. Cheap off-cuts are available in Asian markets, meat is often extended to feed and give more and leftovers are repurposed for another delicious dish. 

In my menu, I offered various techniques to encompass this philosophy. 

To talk about preservation, we made Korean cucumber kimchi using ingredients such as fish sauce and salted shrimps to ferment and flavour. Everyone got to take home a little jar as flavours optimize after a few days of melding.

Too much herbs? Make it last longer by wrapping in a damp cloth, placing into a bag and into the crisper. Make a sauce with a bunch of chopped cilantro, mixed with fish sauce, garlic, chillies, lime and oil for a table condiment. Save the stems for soup. 

Buy salmon trimmings if you don't mind picking out bones and enjoy the crispy skin after panfrying for a cheap protein dish. Extend the meat by adding crumbled tofu for a handheld favourite- salmon tofu cakes! Double the protein but not double the costs!

Salmon Tofu Cakes

Turn leftover produce bits, odds and ends into a noodle stir fry! 

Dried beans and rice are pantry staples. They store a long time. Make red bean black sticky rice coconut soup with tapioca pearls for a cheap and cheerful dessert. 

Red Bean Tapioca Dessert

Many of these ladies experienced Asian food for their first time and in unison exclaimed they will certainly be making them for their families! A Win 🥰

As part of another ACCT summer event I was invited to, was to supervise a fantastic graduation lunch cook off we had with a cohort of ladies for the 'Amal Project' (Amal=Hope)- a program designed to assist newcomer women in integrating into Canadian society and forming friendships across cultures.

Feast your senses on this gorgeous and delicious menu of the Arab and Sub-Suharan Africa. So impressed how humble staple ingredients came together to create extraordinary flavours and textures, that were taste-bud blowing 🔥! Take that Harra Osbao (translates to burned his finger) dish- it is essentially cooked lentils and pasta, pumped with cascading rows of crunchy fried pita chips, aromatic garlic cilantro oil and crispy fried onions (on repeat)... soooo 😋😋😋❤! 

Oh, and the burned finger dish name you ask?... it originated when a cook put their finger in the pot to taste it and burned his finger, hence the name "Harra Osbao" "burned his finger" 😄.

- Spinach Strawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

- Goat Cheese and Zaatar Fatayer

- Himbasha (Eritrean Bread)

- Harra Osbao (Syrian Lentil and Pasta)

- Roz 3a Djej (Chicken with Rice and Minced Meat Pilaf)

- Ethiopian Beef Stew and Injera

- Halawit el Jibn (Syrian sweet cheese rolls)

On the home front... with food prices on the rise, affordable hearty comfort is key for winter meals on the family table and teaching alike in my cooking program with @culturelinkto. I've been using budget proteins such as ground beef, canned tuna, and pantry and produce staples such as canned tomatoes, pasta, rice, barley, beans, pulses, and potatoes, onions and leftover veggies to cook up big satiable meals on rotation.

American Beef Goulash (Beefaroni)

Chili Con Carne

Beef Barley Soup

Lentil, Kale and Potato Soup

Lentil and Rice Soup

Tuna Cakes

What's for dinner at your house 🍽🍚?

Year End Wins and New Challenges Ahead...

On the move again... 💪💨 

Newcomer Kitchen got a new kitchen space just in time for our most recent term's first food prep- product to market module for the holiday market at Evergreen Brickworks. There is so much potential in this kitchen for our Willing To Work food business program cooking events but also for taking it to another level- business start ups and expanding opportunities for our past program alumnis💥.

We've been working hard at this and the timing of the move couldn't be better. Seems like the universe is aligning for us 💫🙏

At Trinity St.Paul's United Church and Centre For Faith

Proudly introducing you to my newest group of ladies in the daytime Newcomer Kitchen  'Willing To Work' Food Business Program- Taste Elle ❤! 

In our first module, we prepared a mixed cake tasting box to learn about what goes into the business of Product to Market with traditional cakes from each of the ladies cultures for this weekend's Saturday's Farmer's Market Evergreen Brick Works. 🇮🇳🇺🇦🇱🇧🇸🇾 With holiday parties abound, this International cake box is the perfect host/hostess gift 🍰🎁!

Some have been here within a year, and all working together in a kitchen with this volume (cakes to serve 50) for the first time. It was my first cooking experience having newly moved into this beautiful church's kitchen space and it went wonderfully over two production days. By the end of the day, these ladies were like old friends laughing, helping and encouraging each other 😍! Camaraderie at it's best 😊!

Just look at their baked wares 👀🍰💓!! 

They accomplished exactly what their brand story embodies (Taste Elle) --

We are 5 spirited and nostalgic women from 4 different countries. 

We believe in preserving our cultural food traditions while adding our personal touches. 

We offer a diversity of flavours with our passion for cooking and a combined fusion of tastes. 

We invite you across continents into our home kitchens with the stories we tell. 

Feel our Spirit and Come Taste All with us!

Almost Sold Out 👏!!! #mixedcaketastingbox

What a wonderful day at Saturday's Farmer's Market @evergreen_brick_works bright and early to greet customers with our exquisite collection of cross culture traditional cakes!

These ladies (Taste Elle from Newcomer Kitchen) set up the gorgeous winter display table, arranged product, greeted customers, presented and marketed, told their stories, engaged in conversation and more. Charming and compelling, it is no wonder we were a popular booth and sold well! I just stood in the shadows, observing and smiling. They rocked it big time 👊💥!

Congratulations ladies on a very successful market day! Happy we just had enough left so we can all take a box home to savour and celebrate with our families on our hardwork! Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones! And we will go get 'em again in the new year with more learnings to succeed in more events! Cheers 🎄

One more term with the Mabelle On-line After-School Program before activities go back fully in person. The youngsters over @culturelinkto @clink_youth also had fun creating their crepes online with me with their parents support! Always proud to present at the end, these kids did great, don't you think 👏?

The history of crepes dates back to 13th century Brittany, France. It seems a housewife there accidentally dribbled some thin porridge onto a hot, flat cooktop. Since people back then weren’t inclined to waste even their smallest cooking mistakes, she ate it. The rest, as they say, is history... 🤤

Cripes... it's Crepes 😀!

It's the most wonderful time of the year ❄🎶. Hot potting that is... to nourish and warm you inside and out 🥘♨️. #holidayhotpotting

Looking for a unique gift for a loved one? How about a split pot and a copy of my Hot Pot Cookbook For Beginners (it's a year old- yay!!). 

Taken from my book, "A split pot is a shallow 4-inch deep hot pot, usually aluminum with a divider down the middle. These are commonly used for offering two broths simultaneously, a spicy broth in one and non-spicy in the other. They are inexpensive, and recommended if you love changing up the tastes or if family and guests prefer one broth over the other, such as meatless on one side (12-inch with glass lid: $25 to $40)." Look for it in most major Asian supermarkets. 

Spanning 11 Asian countries with 50 recipes on 138 pages, you can find broths from light Japanese dashi to Thailand favourite aromatic tom yum or Cambodian creamy coconut ya-hon to concoct your incredible hot pot masterpiece. Great for beginners and for hot pot lovers who want to experiment with new tastes 🤤! 

Available on Amazon.ca/.com/.uk and Chapters-Indigo 

And... that's a wrap for the year with TDSB Newcomer Services 🙏🎉!

Finished the last cooking sessions for the year at Beverly Heights Middle School, @johnpolanyici, Woodbine Middle Public School and online @culturelinkto @clink_youth with some festive fun 🎄!

We made spicy shrimp avocado rice crackers and hot spinach artichoke dip with crackers for savoury entertaining, and sweet treats- chocolate candycane bark, white chocolate cranberry pecan clusters, decorate your own sugar cookies and gingerbread people, and a refreshing cranberry mocktail with pomegranate seeds and rosemary sprigs 🌱!

May your festive holiday be a pinch of patience,

a dash of kindness,

a spoonful of laughter

and a heap of love! 💗

Keep on cooking, and see you all in 2023 with some exciting news! Cheers!