Urban Peasant Pilot iPhone Version

The Urban Peasant new pilot

In our first episode, James cooks a simple and delicious Salmon Fillets & Mango dish.  Also, learn the secret to cooking perfect salmon, every time!

The Genius of James Barber – His Best Recipies

Distinguished fans pay tribute to a nationally beloved, culinary icon, with a mouth-watering collection of recipes.

We always knew James Barber played an important role in freeing us from our culinary hang-ups but it wasn’t until he passed away in 2007 that a truly astonishing outpouring of tributes from famous chefs and ordinary cooks alike made clear the full extent of his impact. For James didn’t just want to make us better cooks; he wanted to help us live better lives by getting intimate with the cooking side of ourselves. And if getting intimate with food led to other intimacies, so much the better! His approach to cooking was revolutionary in its simplicity and stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from the elitist “great chef” approach that makes most people feel they could never succeed in the kitchen. James loved one-pot cooking, using whatever was left on the shelf and still making a memorable feast. In this book some of his most distinguished fans get together to collect James’ greatest recipes, from Ginger Tea to Indonesian Fish, and talk about what his art meant to them.

One-Pot Wonders

James Barber features over one hundred mouth-watering simple gourmet recipes to enjoy when you’re out on the water.

James Barber—Canada’s most famous television chef and author of more than fourteen best-selling cookbooks—is back with a delicious new book geared toward people who are wet and cold and want dinner in a hurry.

Over the years, Barber has whipped up meals while cruising on seiners, yachts and even a wee Davidson dinghy, so he knows first-hand the challenges of cooking on the ocean in a tiny—or non-existent—galley. One-Pot Wonders makes gourmet cuisine accessible to the average cook, featuring over one hundred simple recipes for mouth-watering soups and salads, hearty breakfasts, delectable desserts and exquisite one-pot main dishes that can be served for lunch or dinner. Each dish is easy and quick to prepare, uses readily available ingredients and only a few essential kitchen tools. There are also tips on how to stock your galley and many suggestions for recipe substitutions and variations to address diminishing supplies—a common occurrence at the end of a long trip.

From Georgian Salmon Stew to Sweet Pear Omelette to Shrimp and Cucumber Curry, these recipes will buoy your spirits and keep you afloat! So come aboard: let James Barber share his passion for good food and inspire you to enjoy a fine meal after a long day out on the water.

Cooking For Two – Revised Edition

New Revised Edition of Cooking for Two!

James Barber is back with a lively reprint of his popular Cooking for Two—”Cooking, like sex and dancing, is a pleasure best shared. This is a book about what two people can do with their own four hands, and not a lot of time.”

Barber’s saucy style and matchless gusto have made him a favourite of cooks, and wannabe cooks, worldwide. In Cooking for Two, he emphasizes having fun with a partner in the kitchen: “It ought to be a shared courtship, a foreplay to the intimacy of a shared dinner. ‘Let’s cook supper’ will do a lot more for your relationship than ‘I’m cooking. Leave me alone.’” Barber’s well-known and easy manner of food preparation is once again a pleasure to read and to follow, often bringing a chuckle to the cooks and certainly bringing a large measure of satisfaction with the delicious results.

Duncan Diary Installment 7 – A Country Wedding

It was a small wedding, just a little different to most. A picture book country affair, nice sunny day, ten people in a field full of flowers, a bubbling stream, lots of food (wieners and champagne ), the groom bright and young, black haired, brown-eyed, big eared, immaculately groomed and somewhat impatient, and the guests giving him advice, while we waited for the brides to arrive. Yes, the brides. Two of them, brown hair, big smiles, one a little plumper than the other, but almost identical . Mother and daughter. Not Mormons. Donkeys. Almost identical. “They’ve shared everything up till now” said the vet, “and since it’s his first time it’s a good idea if at least one of them knows what to do” . Sunshine (once called September) is now 18 months old. For the last couple of months he’s been noisy . A voice like a sad and rusty bugle, as loud as a truck horn, sun up to sun down, audible a mile away. “Lonely” said the neighbours, so we found him a friend, a gelding ( which is a fixed male donkey, a donkey with his libido snipped) because two jacks ( a jack is an unfixed donkey ) will fight, said the neighbours.

So we shopped around, put notices up in the store and advertisements in the local paper . “Attractive young donkey, good blood lines, likes carrots, candlelight dinners and walks on the beach, good sense of humour…” And so came the brides. And the advice.

It appears that donkeys come into heat every two weeks. “Great” said all the neighbouring guys. “Bloody hell ” said their wives. The vet, a nice no-nonsense woman with three kids, four dogs, five horses , a Vietnamese pig and, as she shrugged, “no husband”, said that didn’t mean they want ” attention” every time. “Understandable ” said the wives, “typical” said the guys. “They have to get to know one another first”, said the vet ( same reactions as before from the guys and wives ). She told us that they’d probably walk around together for a bit, eating grass, destroying young trees, rolling together in the dust, bugling, and when she was ready, which may take a couple of months . “Friends first ….” she‘ll tell him when.

This all sounds very romantic . “Does she whisper in his ear?” said the wives. “No”, said the vet, “she kicks him in the head”. “Good idea ” said the wives and again ( predictably ) “bloody hell” from the husbands. “And he bites her in the neck” said the vet, “you may have to put a muzzle on him”.

So they arrived. In a horse trailer. We popped the champagne, drank to their health, backed the trailer up to the gate, let down the tailgate and out they came, prettied up in daisy chains and straw hats. Sunshine cocked his head on one side, snapped the end off a carrot, looked at them both, ignored the daughter and without ceremony piggybacked ( that’s a nice polite word for it ) her mother, who’s called Wren. But sideways, which is not exactly the right way to piggyback. Wren, obviously a stickler for protocol, bucked him off, bared her teeth, backed him into a corner, kicked him in the head and waited for him to figure things out. “Sometimes you have to hand breed them the first time” said the vet. But we didn’t . In two minutes it was all over. Wren went back to eating grass. “Typical” said both the husbands and wives. Together.

But fifteen minutes later, with the champagne all gone, we had a repeat performance. And fifteen minutes after that. Next morning too . My donkey field fronts on to the road, and by late afternoon groups of high school kids were arriving on bikes . Every fifteen minutes . It went on for three days . That was a month ago. The daughter is still looking undecided. We’re thinking of selling tickets when she makes her mind up. “Typical” say the wives. “Right on” say the guys.

James Barber

Duncan Diary Instalment 8 – Piano Man Part 2!

Mr. Bolton came to supper. (The old guy with the muff who was taking piano lessons to please his wife. Who was dead.) Wasn’t fussy, he said, liked meat and potatoes. Spaghetti? Don’t like foreign food. Lamb chops? Lamb’s not really meat. So I bought a beef brisket from the butcher, put it in a pot with water and simmered it for a couple of hours, then an hour before supper (I had to go get him, he hitchhiked, no car) I put in two whole onions, two carrots, two turnips, two quartered potatoes and half a cabbage cut in two pieces, a bay leaf, and a lot of pepper for flavour, and let it all simmer. When we got back the house smelt wonderful (I’d also put in a couple of cloves). We put the pot on the table, he said no to wine (” no thank you” ) but he said what we usually like for supper is a nice cup of tea. “We” he said, “we really like tea.” and he’d told me a year ago the first time we met, that his wife had died six years ago. “We” he said – there were just two plates at the table but three of us at supper. He never told me her name, but there was no doubt that she was there. “We met at a tea party.” he said, “I told her it was too weak and we both liked it strong so we had something to start with. We still do. We like it strong.”

“We” he said, “we used to get up early but we sleep in now.” “We” had enough to do to keep “us” busy – the garden and the laundry (“we don’t iron much but we like things clean”). And we’re thinking about painting the kitchen. We used to grow tomatoes and cabbage and beans and we used to can a lot but we don’t now but we’ve still got enough to do, keeping things tidy and reading the paper. We don’t watch a lot of television and we usually walk up to the park. There’s the cat to feed and of course there’s the piano. We’ve got enough to do most days. .

“We like corned beef.” he said, “W always liked it better the day after, with dumplings.” We had a neighbour who used to come to supper and we always gave them corned beef but his wife died and ‘they’ stopped going out .We haven’t seen much of him lately. I think he misses her.” He had seconds of the brisket, then I gave him a baked apple, stuffed with raisins and brown sugar. “We used to eat a lot of apples” he said , and he told me about the apple tree and how it died one winter, just seemed to give up and not grow any more. “We” had two trees, one was a cherry tree but “we” never got to eat many cherries because the birds knew exactly when they were ripe and just came early in the morning and ate them all. “We” didn’t really mind. “We liked the birds too.”

I said I’d make more tea but he said they ought to be getting home. “We don’t like too late” he said. “And I’ve got to do my piano.” So I drove them home. He said “Thank you, we had a nice time.”

James Barber

Duncan Diary Instalment 9 – Spring in the Country!

I have two cats. One black, one white, and like all cats they are completely beautiful. They are also completely stupid. But they have value beyond the aesthetic and the intellectual. They are a living lesson on how to be an old married couple. They sleep together (but far enough apart that they’re not actually touching), occasionally lick one another, go out and come in together, eat the same food and squabble every hour they are awake. They are inseparable – they even shop together, which for country cats means finding mice in the barn, in the long grass and in the woodshed. They do this together, and having found them they bring them home together, little brown mice, big grey mice, even bigger voles and sometimes (when they’re on special) garter snakes. They bring them in through the cat door, drop them at my feet, then sit back and look as proud as teenagers with a first car.

And then they do nothing. Nothing at all. The mouse runs under the stove, or the fridge, or up in the bookshelves, and the cats spend the next ten minutes looking puzzled, like children at their first magic show: “There was a mouse, now there’s no mouse, where’s it gone?” Kids figure things out eventually (“It’s up your sleeve “) but my cats don’t. Or can’t.

They go from puzzled to impatient. They seem to think that if either or both of them stares fixedly at the place where the mouse was, that it will suddenly reappear. One mouse ran down a hot air vent heat just before supper. Both cats slept all night with their noses by the vent, and were still there at lunchtime. Still puzzled.

Its springtime. And springtime in the country is a sexy business. Cats, donkeys, sheep, llamas, snowdrops, daffodils, frogs, cows, birds, and hazelnut trees, they’re all hard at it, reproducing as fast as they can outside every window in the house. The first of the barn swallows are sussing out the nests from last year, collecting mud and bits of donkey hair to make repairs, looking for the one hole in the eaves of the house that I haven’t plugged, the same hole as they’ve used as long as I’ve been here. The cats sit and watch the hole, they can’t reach it and they know they can’t reach it but they hope that one day in early summer, when the beaks of the baby swallows crowd the hole, waiting for the mosquitoes that Mum and Dad bring back every five minutes of every day, they (the cats) hope that maybe, (just maybe) one of those little birds will forget how to fly and drop to the ground. Just maybe.

The hummingbirds are back. The little ones, the Calliope hummingbirds, come all the way from their winter in the Gulf of Mexico, are little fragile birds who burn so much energy that they need to eat every five minutes. Yet somehow, one day in fall, they’ll all take off and somehow manage a two thousand mile journey packing only their memories of where (and exactly where) they made their homes last summer.

One of my neighbours has a theory that they hitch-hike. “They burrow in to the down on geese” he says “all that soft fluffy stuff under the feathers” and he claims that they then hibernate, the goose takes off for it’s trip South, “and when they get to a warm sunny place they wake up, crawl out, and start being humming birds all over again”. He reckons that one of the reasons a lot of geese stay in Canada for the winter is that they’re “tired of packing all them freeloading liddle bastids along!”

And my woodpecker is back. Just like last year. Pecking. There are lots of dead tree stumps and lots of nice powerline poles, which everybody else’s woodpeckers peck at and dig bugs out of. But not my woodpecker. He sits on the top bar of the orchard gate and from dawn to dusk he hammers away like a five year old with a drum kit for Christmas, bang bang bang bang bang . It’s a metal gate, and the noise, loud enough to wake me (and I’m a deep sleeper) starts exactly at sunrise. My neighbour (the hummingbird man) claims to know all about woodpeckers. “He’s lookin’ for action” he says, “advertising himself as a big strong noisy redhead with a big pecker, bang bang bang.” and then he adds, “But they all catch on eventually.”

Spring in the country ……..