Melora Koepke

Running my hands over the smooth and
 nubbly turrets of green nopales, the cactus pads that Chuck Hughes is trying to de-needle on camera like an habitué, I follow along as he picks up the items on his grocery list: yerba santa, an aromatic that tastes like nutmeg and mint, and huitlacoche, bulbous black mushrooms that cling […]

I’m in the mood for goose and I’m in luck. Pride of place at themarché nocturne in Casseneuil, a stone-house settlement in Lot-et-Garonne, in Southern France, belongs to the goose guy, whose combo plates are scrawled on yellow poster board. I pick the deluxe option – foie-gras-stuffed goose neck with magret and salad with slices of air-dried magret […]

In September, I went to a friend’s farm in Aquitaine, France, and the first thing I saw when I entered the converted pigeonnier, on the big French farmhouse table, was an advance copy of The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts. Then, in October in San Francisco, a cookbook store […]

When you walk into Moment Factory, let the door slam behind you – the banging noise makes the giant circular projected LED clock in the entry way jump back two hours.If you keep your eye on it, though, it soon snaps back to the present. The purpose of this, apparently, is to show us that […]

The first time I went downstairs to find the facilities at Le Comptoir charcuteries et vins, chef Ségué Lepage’s wine bar in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood, I opened the wrong door and ran straight into that week’s pig. He was hanging out (or rather hanging up) in a cold room. Across the hall – still not […]

“Audiences want truth as opposed to reality” – Wim Wenders on life, work and the meaning of both. Wim Wenders’ Pina is as simple, artful and perfect as a dance movie can be – and watching it with 3D glasses on the big screen, it’s tempting to think that this is exactly why Stereoscopic 3D was invented. Wenders […]

Hanadi Sleiman’s tastefully decorated office at McGill University’s Department of Chemistry is dominated by a large picture window revealing the spires and rooftops of the 190-year-old Montreal insti- tution. Displayed on the windowsill are several DNA knick-knacks: Francis Crick and James Watson bobble head dolls and a model of the iconic double helix. “This model […]

It’s almost like the farms and markets have been waiting all year to give us the meal we’ve been waiting for. There’s so much bounty in the harvest here, that a great meal can be made from fall in Montreal every day… Us Montrealers are busy pickling the bejeezus out of the fall harvest—recipes for dills, […]

There are two kinds of audiences who adored The Hangover, and they will love the sequel just as much. First, there are those for whom the whole idea of waking up in a state of sweaty- eye-balled shame like the one depicted in the first movie is inconceivable—so for them, it’s pure schadenfreude. And then there’s […]

Swine and Dine: Our writer hams it up at a Charcuterie course in France. “Squeeze the sausage tightly so that the meat cures evenly,” says cook and food writer Kate Hill, showing me how to churn the manual meat grinder with one hand while managing the growing coil of saucisse de Toulouse with the other. […]