This episode of All You Can Eat is a tribute to the late James Barber, also known as The Urban Peasant. He passed away Nov. 29th at age 84. James was a mentor, colleague, neighbour and friend. I’ll miss him.
In the podcast you will hear a lengthy interview with James I conducted in October or November of 2006, as I was getting ready to go to Italy and his latest cookbook, One Pot Wonders, James Barber’s recipes for Land and Sea was being promoted. While we talked about the book, we also spent quite a bit of time talking about his earlier years in England and France and how he ended up being a restaurant reviewer and cookbook author.
I left for Italy and while I had the interview with me, I never ended up using it. So, it is being heard for the first time on this podcast. To listen to this podcast directly, click here for the audio file, or visit my podcast page on my website to subscribe. If you would like to pay tribute to James, you can comment on the bottom of this blog entry, or go to his website, where your thoughts are also being accepted.
This episode of All You Can Eat was brought to you in part by Hamilton Beach, makers of the Eclectrics line of kitchen appliances. Check out the great all-metal stand mixers at www.hamiltonbeach.com or www.hamiltonbeach.ca.You can also find all of your website hosting and design needs at my other sponsor, www.godaddy.com. You can save on the products there by entering the code eat1 when you check out.
Dear Don,
thanks for your fabulous podcasts! I’ve been listening to all of them since a couple of years, I guess. Feels to me like we’re old friends. 🙂
I enjoyed your podcast with the late James Barber and immediately purchased his book “One Pot Wonders”. I find it very entertaining and so does my girl friend, who’s been sailing for ten years or so.
Now, I have tried some central recipes: the peanut butter paste and the pasta with potatoes. I encountered a problem with them both and I wanted to ask you, if you experienced the same: With both recipes I reduced the amounts of liquid of various sorts by a large factor – only to find out, that the paste still came out too thin for a paste and the pasta dish was on the watery side also. I tried to make recipe and my cooking sense meet in the middle, but I found it too thin still…
Did something maybe go wrong with converting to metric meassure? Does it make such a great difference to buy German ingredients instead of Canadian ones? Any ideas, Don?
Cheers,
Thorsten.