Newcomer Kitchen and The Depanneur Connection...

 

Beautiful Open House event with The Depanneur on March 27th inaugurating Len Senater's new office/event space @csitoronto Spadina down the hall from us at Newcomer Kitchen and to celebrate the launch of his new cookbook! #neighbours 

"In one small, beautiful place, The Depanneur captured the soul of Toronto. Diversity. Surprise. Openness. Randomness. Deliciousness. And fun."-- David Sax

Ditto!! Three years in the making and the cookbook is finally published (100 recipes, 100 cooks) and getting into the hot hands of foodies, chefs and the like as one of most anticipated cookbooks this year! Congrats Len @thedepanneur and cofounder of @newcomerkitchen, it is evident you poured your heart and soul into it 💞. Partly because he didn't want to miss out on anyone's contribution in creating the lifelong memories at the little corner store that could- The Dep. 

Flashback to 2016: Len Senater heard that many Syrian refugees who came to Canada were living in hotels and had no kitchens to make their own food. He did have a kitchen and wanted to provide a space where Syrian refugee women could cook. Read about Newcomer Kitchen's humble beginnings here.

Accolades to everyone involved including the lovelies in this contribution gallery @maryfreij @chefdorisfin @mamashack @queenkeisha_luke @chefsangkim @manningcanning @newcomerkitchen @cheferikaaraujo 🙌🙌🙌! Stunning photography, captivating storytelling and mouthwatering recipes! Can't wait to dig into it all 💞 Buy @indigo @amazonca

I got my copy personally autographed at Len's cookbook launch reception I catered for with the women in my daytime program @newcomerkitchen Cuisine Connections. It was an E.P.I.C interesting learning experience for the group 🥳🎊🎉🍻

The contents in this book is "a powerful reminder that food is our common ground" 👊🥄💥

A gorgeous menu of mixed cultural appetizers welcomed the crowd who also came to celebrate and pick up Len's newly launched cookbook "The Depanneur" with a lovely Moroccan and Nigerian sit down dinner menu to follow. The women from our W2W daytime food business program collaborated with a few from the XP program to cater a wonderful experience that night ⭐!

Nigerian chicken sausage rolls, kala chana chaat on endive leaves
and Moroccan roasted red pepper dip with toasted pita chips

The deliciousness of the sit down dinner catered by the XP Program women were Moroccan roasted chicken with preserved lemons and olives, beet salad, Indian corn chaat salad with Moroccan orange cake and Nigerian upside down pineapple cake (not shown) for serve yourself desserts.

Yayyyy! Another term under our belts, another sense of accomplishment! My last teaching group for now as I pursue other challenges within our organization. Congrats Cuisine Connections and Seven Senses Kitchen @newcomerkitchen #winterterm for 14 weeks of fun, learning and achievement together 💫! 

I wish you each all the best in your endeavours as I will work with some of you again while continuing your entrepreneurship journey with us in our next XP Program! Cheers 🙌!!

2023 Wraps and 2024 Begins...

Happy New Year everyone! 

Sharing two notable holiday dinner spreads with close friends - homestyle Greek pork souvlaki, tzatziki, roasted lemon garlic potatoes, Turkish bulgur and Lebanese fattoush salads, Chinese bbq pork char siu and Japanese mochi cake with @lisaeats.

And take out Iraqi assorted kebab and roasted chicken platters with homemade Lebanese fattoush salad, crispy roasted potatoes and Vietnamese veggie rolls with my bestie.

What is the common theme in both these meals? As much as they lean towards one cultural cuisine, it welcomes and embraces the addition of other country flavours, making the experience both global adventurous and harmonious on the kitchen table.

Takes me back to my roots, as far as I can remember in the beginning of my food career. In my early Kraft Kitchen Days as a recipe developer, I always had multiculturalism in mind. I believe I was instrumental in bringing global diversity to the forefront in both our What's Cooking? and Quebec equivalent qu'est-ce qui mijote? magazine recipes to the mainstream audiences. That was nearly 20 years ago. And my love for multiculturalism only ramped up from there 🌐💞.

In a world where change is constant, imminent and inevitable, somethings just never change...

And that in itself, is some kind of wonderful❣ #ethos 

It was a great year end wrapping up my food programs at Newcomer Kitchen and at TDSB Community Services 💞! I am so ever grateful for being able to combine two loves in my career. They are my I.K.I.G.A.I #lifepurpose 💫

On my Passion for Empowering Newcomer Women:

To mirror Cara, NK Executive Director's sentiments which is so beautiful and powerful,

"Watching such special women burst into smiles

Also knowing how scared they are inside

To do their best, that "positive stress"

And their transformative experiences no matter how small they seem at the time

Are why we do what we do ..."

How extraordinary it is to witness this regularly 🥰.

On my Passion for Cooking With Kids:

My dream is to make a difference…

for our children now and tomorrow

Equip them with solid skills, not just borrow

Food education at home, at school

Pass on how-to knowledge, that’s the tool

Important skills that must be taught

Life lessons gained that can't be bought

Too many suffer from not knowing

Cooking is the key to healthy growing

There is a better choice

Empowerment is the voice

Together we can make a difference…

for our children now and tomorrow! -- Susan 

Follow Your Ikigai... 💫

🎉 2023 was a year of tremendous growth at Newcomer Kitchen! From moving into a larger office space equipped with a demo kitchen, to hiring 2 additional staff and launching our second XP food business program with pride, including our first series of Moroccan Mnencha workshop over at Evergreen Brick Works for the holidays... this was certainly a year to celebrate our wins 🎊! 

Congrats to our recent cohort grads- Afro-Asian Eats and DISTIINCT for completing our Willing To Work program. We wish you all the success in your endeavours, and will work with some of you again in XP!

To the ladies currently in our XP, we are very proud of your accomplishments as you take the new learnings to the next level. Your individual menus look incredible and delicious, and we can't wait to see where you go from here 🙌! 

To our friends, partners and followers, thank you for your ongoing support 🙏. May the new year bring you many laughter and happy memories! We look forward to bringing you more events, more workshops to tantalize your senses and take your taste buds on a global adventure. Many cheers!!

And to wrap up this post... As The Depanneur owner Len Senater exclaims "2024 is going to be amazeballs!"

Announcement 📣: New cookbook launch 🙌👩‍🍳👨‍🍳📚 The Depanneur Cookbook is finally arriving in March!

(All excerpts are from Indigo's overview of the cookbook) It celebrates Toronto’s astonishing cultural diversity, telling the modern immigrant story of the city through 100 recipes from 100 cooks and exploring the Dep’s transformation from old corner store to a buzzy place of tremendous culinary creativity.

More than three years in making, The Depanneur Cookbook: Stories from Canada's Unlikeliest Restaurant — Canada's most successful Kickstarter cookbook ever — is finally hitting the shelves March 5th!

Pre-Order the Cookbook HERE

Over a decade ago, Len Senater set out on an adventure to create meaningful experiences using food as the medium. Since then, Len’s idiosyncratic pop-up space, The Depanneur—a tiny, old corner store transformed into “A Place Where Interesting Food Things Happen”—has featured hundreds of talented cooks and served thousands of eclectic meals. Through culinary events such as casual Drop-In Dinners to family-style Supper Clubs, hands-on Cooking Classes to insightful Table Talks, The Depanneur has discovered unique ways to foster community through food, all while avoiding the pitfalls of more traditional restaurant experiences. From a decade of unbridled culinary creativity emerged the idea of celebrating the remarkable accomplishments of this experiment as a book.

Launched as a Kickstarter campaign in November 2020, The Depanneur Cookbook showcases the astonishing range of Toronto’s culinary talent. Equal parts documentary, manifesto, and cookbook, the book features delicious food, poignant stories, and beautiful photography. More than just a collection of authentic home cooking from around the world, it is the only cookbook that truly captures the incredible culinary diversity of Toronto.

Len used to sit on Newcomer Kitchen's Board of Directors. Congratulations! We look forward to more collaborations and inspiration in all that you do 👏🎊!

Looking forward to what food ventures 2024 has in store.... I say Bring. It. On!

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 🍽🍚?