A & L Cucina

It started some ten odd years ago on a cold, wet, windy day in May on Pender island. We poured through Auntie Sharon's expansive and exotic cookbook collection-ranging from Encyclopedias of International Cooking to the more practical and West Coast essential, Canning your own Fish-giggling and getting ideas. After some failed attempts at baking (Applesauce Brownies anyone? Tomato Aspic?) we began making lists of the things that would and would not make our future cookbook. We decided to have pepper, cheese, and barbeque sections. The terms gateau, spuds, croquettes, and saucery would, of course, be used liberally.

Now ten years later. We've grown up in some respects, and our tastes have definitely matured. We both still delight in cooking, which is more enjoyable now in our own respective kitchens, rather than in our mothers where the appliances were archaic and kept for sentimental value rather than purpose. It is an age where many people almost take pleasure in the fact that they cannot cook, yet live in a paradoxical environment where a restaurant isn't decent unless it uses arugula, sundried tomatoes, and chipotle peppers in any given dish. Isn't it time we combined the two? That is the purpose of this website; to act as a bridge between living at home with your mom's superb lasagna, and living on your own with ichiban. We're here with the simple and the complex, to show that the difference is in the number of ingredients, and that you don't have to make your own pasta to be gourmet. We're here to say it's not a nightmare. We want to stress that it is not a science. Out of mushrooms? Throw in pepper/sausage/or tomatoes. No measuring cups? They're for the weak anyway. It's fun. Relax. And please, pour yourself a glass of the wine intended for that risotto.