Thailand Travels to Kitchens in Castles with Alison Kent

Alison spends her life following what she is curious about and has built herself a personal toolbox that now allows her to live the life of her dreams.

A typical day in the office for Alison can look a little like this: traverse Thailand and stay with local families in their villages so her son can be immersed in learning about Thai cuisine, consulting on a kitchen design project for a castle in France, finally for dinner on a Tuesday whip up a beef tongue sous vide for taco Tuesday.

This episode has a surprising layer to it, life lessons to share with the youth in your life, my favourite from Alison:

"Support your kids passion in the moment and encourage them to follow what they are curious about and build their own toolbox."

This episode includes:

• An in-depth look into a foodie's travels in Thailand
• What traveling with intention really looks like.
• Tips on how to find your own unique culinary adventures when traveling.
• How kitchens from around the world influence Alison's own kitchen designs.
• Listen carefully and you will get some great parenting advice on how to encourage curiosity in our children.
• Alison't recipe for a traditional Thai dish:  Wing Bean Salad

I can’t wait for you to hear all that Alison has to say. This is an episode to really savour, sit back, relax and enjoy!

HELPFUL LINKS

• Get my FREE guide:  10 Unique Travel and Food Tips You Won't Find Anywhere Else
• Alison is offering 5 spots for free 30 minute 1:1 kitchen design consultations. Email Alison at: alisonkenthome@gmail.com for more info.
• Get Alison’s Thai Wing Bean recipe
• Visit Alison’s website for more recipes and kitchen design inspiration: https://thehomekitchen.com/
• Follow Alison on Instagram: @AK_theHomeKitchen

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SAY HELLO

In My Kitchen creates connections one dish at a time, by exploring culture through food. I do this through unique culinary workshops, speaking engagements, and of course, this podcast.

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Transcript

Alison Kent: There's going to be a beautiful place where those three things down the road intersect and only you can do them because only you took that path.

Paula Mohammed: That is Alison Kent from The Home Kitchen. Alison was an architect then turned kitchen designer and really exemplifies spending your life following what you're curious about and then building up a personal toolbox. And having trust in the fact that eventually that's all going to come together. A typical day in the office for Alison can look anything like this: traversing Thailand and staying with local families in their villages, so her son, who's an up-and-coming chef, can be immersed in learning about Thai cuisine. Consulting on a kitchen design project for a castle in France. And finally, you know, just whipping up a beef tongue, done sous vide style, sauteed in bone marrow for Taco Tuesday. These are just a couple of the things that we touch on in this episode. If you have any desire, plans or have been to Thailand, you're not going to want to miss this episode. 

Alison takes us on the journey that her and her son did a few years ago, and it is truly a once in a lifetime trip. We talk about everything from culture, family, cooking, travel, kitchen design, and more. So, let's just get right to it!

Hey Alison, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here today.

Alison Kent: Thanks for having me Paula. This is fun.

Paula Mohammed: Yeah, I'm really excited about doing this chat with you. 

I'm just going to, for our listeners, give a quick background to Alison before we dive right in. Alison runs madly around all sorts of circles over at The Home Kitchen, which is her kitchen design business. Alison's passion is taking her career in architecture and blending it with her love of cooking, hosting, and entertaining to design functional, professional level kitchens for serious home cooks and for chefs at home.

When Alison is not designing kitchens around the world, she is traveling the world, often with her chef son, exploring and immersing themselves in culture through food. And I can't wait to dive into that more. So going right into it, speaking of home kitchens, Alison, tell me a little bit about how you got started designing home kitchens and, you know, what came first as passion for kitchen design or a passion for cooking?

Alison Kent: I think it was an evolution and I, it's what I tell all my kids too, is that I think if you're always following your passion, at some point in time, even though you might follow this passion, that passion, this passion, it's all going to come full circle at some point in time and become something in the world that really only you can do in a way because you've taken those different paths and now you've melded them all together into one super joyful, amazing thing.

So I started, as you said, in architecture. Um, just got really tired of dealing with city hall and everything that comes with the city of Vancouver. But I loved cooking for many, many years. I have people remind me that I actually used to host dinner parties back in college and I'd forgotten all about it. I didn't even know I could cook anything back then because I lived off creamsicles when I went to college. And I lit so many kitchen fires. It's amazing that they ever thought I made a meal, but I guess I did. So I came out at pretty early on. And then when I got married and ended up with four kids, I was cooking because I still wanted to eat all the good food I've been eating all over. I've been eating through college and everything and I just couldn't, we couldn't afford to be eating out three meals a day as I was when I was working in an architectural firm downtown. So I had to learn how to cook, or I had to learn, I had to give up good food. And the latter wasn't an option, so I learned how to cook, and, and myself and my husband, both being the eldest in our families, we tend to host most of the gatherings. We host most of the people, um, so it's just become such a huge component of our lives here, and I, I was looking at kind of trying to do something a little more creative than reading bylaws and building codes for a living. I just thought, you know, I just love kitchens, and I was designing my second kitchen in this home, uh, my kitchen for the second time in this home, and I was just like, I love this. Like, it's still the technical aspects of architecture, but it's, it's that passion for food that kind of joins in. So I went, I studied, I've studied, um, restaurant kitchens and how they move about the space and how efficient they are with their movements because they have to be. There's a bunch of chefs in one space, but just taking the best parts of things like that and bringing them in. Taking tips from kitchens I've looked at in my travels and bringing it in. And it just was so important to me on a different level of kitchen design that it just really works for a cook or somebody that cooks. If you don't cook, you probably don't want to hire me. You can hire anybody. I've had a lot of interior designers tell me they actually don't even know if the kitchens they're designing work. And I'll tell you that a lot of them don't. Um, they just care that it's pretty enough for a magazine. I'm like, it can be pretty and work. Like, we need to make the kitchens function. It's the most expensive square feet in the whole house.

Paula Mohammed: And it's the heart of the home, isn't it? I There's two things that you said there that really resonated with me and one is what you told your kids is that follow, do what you love, explore things that you're curious about, what you enjoy, and you kind of build a toolbox over the years.

And they may not make sense at that given time, but then you sort of culminate in this. When you kind of find your thing where you can pull from that toolbox and use all those different things. So yeah, I, I, I get a sense Alison as I talk to you more and more that I could get a lot of good parenting tips from you as well.

Alison Kent: We've had our days, but yeah, there's, uh, with our family, we've had to be very creative. My daughters are quite a bit older than my sons. And, um, I started working from home after kid number three, and it just would, like, we've just been very creative in how we have been a family for the last 20, 30 years. Oh my goodness. The girls are 30. 

Um, so it's just been a real journey. Definitely ups and downs, but I just love that, you know, if one of them one day wants to be a fashion designer, and then the next day they want to be a photographer, and then the next day they want to be a travel agent. There's going to be a beautiful place where those three things down the road intersect and only you can do them because only you took that path.

Paula Mohammed: Exactly.

Alison Kent: And I just think that as long as we're always following things that we're just really passionate about, we're going to find that just really exciting work for our lives. Like it's, it's fun. It's fun to watch those processes and especially in your kids.

Paula Mohammed: Absolutely. And the other thing that you said that I think is just really worth repeating. You said, you didn't come up through a culinary school. You didn't grow up with a nonna beside you teaching you everything, but you are an amazing home cook and, and it's, it's not something that you have to be born into or that you have to train to do. And we're going to go into that a little bit more with Alison as well, and later Alison and talk about your travels. You've got, you've got some really cool tips about how to sort of build that toolbox as well for culinary experiences.

Alison Kent: Definitely.

Paula Mohammed: You once told me, " I don't personally have a lot of culture per se, having lost all connection to English, Dutch, German, and Welsh roots. So it's a treat to be included in other cultures when I travel."

I know you recently were welcomed with open arms into the Thai culture in Thailand and had a once in a lifetime experience there with your son. Can you tell me about that experience?

Alison Kent: Oh, it was just like, even from the moment we landed, I was, I was quite afraid. I'd never been to Asia. My son had never been to Asia and he was invited to the wedding of one of the first chefs he worked with, when he was like 14 years old. And he's kept in touch. Actually, I think I'm most proud of him for keeping relationships going than I am for how far he's gotten in the kitchen structure. I think I'm most proud of his relationships that he's built. But, um, they had invited him to the wedding. He's just 19 and never been to Asia, never traveled alone. So they said I had to go with him. I was like, okay, if I must. And it's always a journey and it's always a bit scary to go somewhere new, but just from the moment we landed, we stayed in, um, Old Town, Bangkok, Old Town Chinatown, Bangkok, during Chinese New Year.

And so from the moment we landed and got out at like, one in the morning, we were already surrounded by just like spices and carts and bustle and people and they're putting up all the decorations for the weekend. And you can already smell the foods by the side of the road and stuff. And my son was just like immediately like, "Dump the bags we're going back out there. We're getting us some street food". And just to even just start from there to where we got to by the end of that trip, it was such an incredible journey. Being there during a chaotic time was kind of cool, because it adds those extra layers to what you're already kind of experiencing. We had, I had planned three, um, separate Michelin stops for us because he's working at a Michelin star here in Vancouver. And so I planned a street food one, which is Jay Fai, that lady with the big goggles, kind of, we've all seen on TV. Um, I planned a traditional Thai, so very authentic to the culture and the history kind of dishes. And then a modern Thai. And so the one, Jay Fai, apparently the lineups get eight to 10 hours long. So that first night we're like, you know what? We're already jet lagged. Let's just go line up. We're just going to go line up. We were there by six in the morning, I think, 6:30, and we weren't the first in line. We were like fourth or fifth in line already.

Paula Mohammed: Wow.

Alison Kent: And we didn't eat till 11.

Paula Mohammed: And was it worth it? 

Alison Kent: That crab omelette was definitely worth it. It was incredible. And that's, this is just like all happened, the food carts and Chinese New Year and this and all happened within our first few hours of landing and we're already like, "Oh my goodness, I love this place. Bangkok's amazing." Um, but yeah, we went, I ended up, we were in Bangkok for a whole week and it's kind of a long time to spend in Bangkok.

So I was Googling on just Airbnb experiences, which is one way you can sometimes find some really cool food experiences. And so I messaged this guy, I said, "You know, my son's a chef. We're looking for something really authentic. Like we don't want to do the tourist food. We want, how would you take a chef around your town kind of thing?"

And he says, "yeah, I'm not that person, but you should call this other lady." And he sent us to this lady with a tour group called Chili Paste Tours. I was like, okay, well, I don't really know how this is going to work out. But I'm like, you know, kid, we've got a day. Let's just go figure it out. 

It was incredible. She took us in her car. Within, I think, two hours down along the bay, the water there in, um, from Bangkok down, she talked the entire drive, there and back, the entire day about all the authentic recipes, how the Northern version of this recipe is different than the Southern version of this recipe. And my son's just trying to like madly write notes in his little pocket paper book thing then. I'm trying to put notes on my phone so I'm in the back seat just going, "Ah I don't want him to miss any of this information!" And she took him to salt flats. We went to, um, palm sugar farms. He got to actually like make, it took two hours, but he got to actually boil and make the palm sugar cubes from start to end.

Really cool. She took us to like the floating boat docks, but they were very slow because it was a holiday weekend. So he got to actually go into the market and make the food on, from the vendors. Like she talked, she knew the vendors so well she's like, "and now Taylor's going to cook that." He's like, "ah, okay."

Paula Mohammed: Alison, was she, so maybe you mentioned this and I missed it. Does she do this on a regular basis or is she, is she just somebody who did this for your son?

Alison Kent: No, her name's Chin. Definitely look her up. Um, I would recommend her to anybody, but she takes chefs on tours. We went to the lady that makes, uh, shrimp paste from scratch. We met the guy that invented sriracha sauce. Like, it was food at its core, and it was so good. We booked an entire second day with her, and she took us around old town Bangkok to, like, little men who have grown every single version of every Thai spice in his little old house.

Or these people who are going through these wood chips for tea. I'm gonna get this wrong, but it was a version of tea that was wood chip, and she was just going through it and filtering it all out by hand. Like, these people are so of the earth and just immediate in these ingredients, and it was incredible.

Like, what a way to experience local food on such a raw level. Like it was just really, really cool.

Paula Mohammed: And were the vendors in the market and the people that you met that she took you to, were they excited to share this with you? Their culture?

Alison Kent: Oh, so excited. Yeah, no, I'm just taking photos the whole time. I'm being a useless, useless person, but my son was just all over it. And um, she was so, I think she was excited because he was excited. Do you know what I mean?

Paula Mohammed: Absolutely.

Alison Kent: For her to be able to share all this knowledge with somebody who actually wants this depth of knowledge. She changed the entire, she probably had a whole agenda for the day, but as soon as that first hour in the car happened with my son, they just, she changed the entire itinerary for the day. It's just like, nope, we're going to do some cool stuff. I think we tried, we tried to count, I don't even remember. I think we tried at least 50 different foods that day. I was dying, but was good. It was really good. 

And then the, um, of the Michelin's we went to, the last one we went to was modern Thai, Le Du in Bangkok, turned out to be his favorite stop and they turned out a few months later to get number one in Asia.

Paula Mohammed: I'll put this in the show notes to everything that we've talked about here for everyone's reference. So you had one week in Bangkok and two days was doing the food tours. Did you go outside of Bangkok? And I also want to hear about the wedding.

Alison Kent: I know, it was just such an epic trip. I could go on for an hour just about this trip. Um, yeah, we did, we went to Pattaya, which was a beach. Because we'd done the city, we'd done the food, we'd done all this, but we hadn't yet seen a Thai beach. And apparently Thai has some, Thailand has some pretty good beaches. So, I just booked another kind of tour thing. Because we didn't have a car while we were there. And, it wasn't the most amazing tour. We're not going to necessarily write that one down, but um, we did get to go to the beach and he got to snorkel. He's obsessed with fish. He's been obsessed with fish since he was really small.

And then we sat and we just had the cocktails and the coconuts on the beach. And you know the whole fried fish like they do in Greece and everywhere too, like the whole fried fish. We just had it in Mexico a few months before, but this was the best full fried fish I'd ever had in my life. Like, it was so flavorful somehow. I don't even know what they did different. It probably was in the ocean 30 minutes before that. Like, I don't even know. It was delicious. But that was one, our kind of one flaky beach day where we weren't checking out something purposefully to do with food. The rest of the trip, I don't even think we saw a museum. We might have gone to one of the um, not a chapel, but you know, the temple.

Paula Mohammed: Right.

Alison Kent: When him and I travel together, it's just a hundred percent like how much food can we see, talk about, consume, visit?

Paula Mohammed: What did you take away? Like, what was an ingredient that you were just wowed by or hadn't experienced before that you will use now?

Alison Kent: Well, one of the problems with me and traveling for food is that I tend to take an extra entire empty suitcase so that I can bring it back full of food. Like we brought back rice from the farm, his chef's farm in Northern Thailand. We brought back some of that original sriracha. We brought back shrimp paste. We brought back the palm, palm sugar. I'm gonna get sugarcane and palm sugar mixed up. Palm sugar cubes that he actually made by hand in the thing and we had an entire suitcase. One thing that I'm kind of obsessed with right now because I've been drinking iced coffee all summer is I'd actually bought a whole thing of coconut sugar. Liquid coconut sugar. And it was just, it's dreamy in your coffee. Especially with an espresso coconut, iced coconut pods.

I like finding things I haven't seen before. \ Most of the time, when I go to France, I'm usually bringing back the same six things. I'm getting my finishing salts, I'm getting my truffle salts, and there are things that I bring back every single time from France. But usually I try and bring back stuff that I've not seen before. We might have it here and I just didn't notice it until I had it in place, right?

Paula Mohammed: Often, for whatever reason, those ingredients are better in the country that they're made. And we were trying to figure out why is that? Like, there's obviously some things are added or additives or, you know, we know about the Italian wine and bread is so much better there.

Uh, the wedding, was it a traditional Thai wedding?

Alison Kent: It was. We were up north, slightly east of Bangkok, almost at the border of Laos. And we could not have gotten there by ourselves, so thank goodness somebody picked us up and took us around for a few days. Again, just incredible. Like, we got off the little airplane and the first thing we did was we went to a restaurant that was a fusion of Vietnamese and Thai and we ordered probably like 15 dishes and it was so delicious. Like just, I just love the freshness of the ingredients. So many fresh herbs and herbs are just piled in and so many fresh vegetables that are barely cooked because they don't need to be. And I like wasn't even focused on protein at all over there.

But then we got to the wedding. It was kind of at the end of our time there. It was actually the night before we had to leave. So for the rest of that week, they were taking him around and showing him their sugarcane fields and how they do the burning, how they do the harvesting, how they stack them up, how they get them on the trucks, how it's exported, like from A to Z on sugarcane. It was such an education. Really cool. 

They were picking coconuts out of the trees. They're teaching him how to find the right coconut, how to machete it up, how to do everything with the coconut. Like, everything was just so immediate and so fresh, and just like, "I think I'll have that coconut right now", and just done. 

Paula Mohammed: Beautiful.

Alison Kent: And then he had the, because the village is very, very tiny, and it's basically the chef's family is probably half of the village. So every morning around 6am, they'd come and knock on the door and they'd take him over to around the corner to the grandma's house or the auntie's house or whatever it was. And all they had outside were just two kind of, like stone, lava stone kind of pots with charcoal. And then, they put their pots on top with water and herbs and whatever, and they would start cooking for the day. And they would start sun drying their fish from the morning's catch or they would start doing a little fermented bok choy kind of thing that by the end of the day in the hot sun would be completely fermented. So every morning he'd go out and I would follow an hour or two later because I just like to sleep. And, uh, they'd be just like, they don't speak any English at all. The only word they knew was his name. And they would just point at things and say this, this, this, this, cut, do. And he would somehow make, every day he was making three or four different, completely different original Thai dishes out there.

And then by the end, the last day he got to cook, help cook the meal for the monks that came and they give the monks all this food and it was quite a ritual for them, right? And he got to be a part of that ritual and part of the wedding in that way, which is amazing. That can't be replicated. Like, he wants to go back and I'm like, it was just too much. Like, it was, you can't replicate stuff like this. You have to, the opportunity comes up and we could have said, "no, we don't have time to go". We could have said, "no, we don't really have the money to go". I'm so glad we went because you never know. We had no idea the trip was going to turn out as incredible as it did.

Paula Mohammed: He's very lucky to have you as a parent, Alison. I mean... 

Alison Kent: I think so.

Paula Mohammed: Yeah. Nobody can see me in the podcast, but I'm sitting here listening to Alison describe these stories and I'm holding back my exclamations, and, and, uh, so I don't speak over her, but how amazing. I mean, what an experience and invaluable to, uh, a young chef, up and coming chef.

I'm always curious about routines and especially around food in other countries and other cultures. In the village, what was the meal structure like? If you could walk me through breakfast, lunch, dinner...

Alison Kent: Breakfast we were, I don't even know if there's really breakfast. We kind of dove right into whatever was being cooked that morning for lunch. And then by the time it got to dinner, we'd gone to a few of the markets, we'd picked up some more ingredients, we picked up some more prepared things, but it's all fresh right out of the local markets at the, in the town that was maybe a 15-minute drive away. There was a very small town about 15 minutes away. And so then dinner was kind of everybody just comes and brings things too. It's also hard to compare because this was wedding weekend for their whole family. So people were constantly there and in and out and coming and going. That might be how every day there is. I don't know. We were there during a very special time. So that's how it was when we were there. 

But dinner would just kind of be gathered. They were already finished with their hot stoves, which they probably did in the morning because nobody wants to do that in the middle of the day in a hot, hot country that's, you know, you're just boiling by the little charcoal stoves. Very family-oriented lifestyle.

Paula Mohammed: Speaking of family, your son, did his love of cooking and his desire to get into the industry come from growing up with you and your family travels or was this something that he developed later in life.

Alison Kent: Uh, it's hard to say. I mean, the girls are quite a bit older than the boys. So when he was born, we took our first trip to Europe with the girls when he was four months old. So we went to France, packed up, went to France, and I think our younger daughter was in grade seven or so. So they were a bit older, they were ready to travel, but we couldn't just leave a four month old at home.

We traveled all over for the next, well, we still are. We still travel as a family a lot, we all love it. I think part of that definitely infused him a little bit. Um, when the girls were younger, they would only eat like the most plain; my husband used to cook just ichiban noodles for breakfast and a boiled egg for them or something. Like nothing had a lot of flavor. Nothing was healthy. Nothing was amazing. So I start cooking. And so when they were younger for their birthday, when we would have the family over, just family, it would be like 20 people, 25 people, they got to pick a country from anywhere in the world. And I would make the entire dinner for 20, 24 people from that country.

We spent a ton in spices. Because every country has like...

Paula Mohammed: That's right.

Alison Kent: ...their own like 50 spices that you need for this meal. I'm like, oh my goodness. Every spice is like $5. It was another way that, you know, the boys just kind of grew up into that, right? Like by the time I was done doing it, the boys were already on their own.

By the time he was maybe, five years ago, within the last five years or so, we'd be talking about his own birthday. And I asked, what do you want for your birthday? And all he wanted was a truffle mushroom. And that's it. I'm like, well, if I buy you this, like $300 mushroom, that's it. Like you don't get gifts. You don't get a party. Nothing.

You can invite a family over and we'll make a whole dinner with this mushroom. He's like, "yeah, that's all I want".

Part of it I think is just in his blood, but part of it probably was, there was association, because there was always just food coming through the house.

Paula Mohammed: So tell me what you made with this truffle mushroom for him and his friends.

Alison Kent: Oh gosh, um, he did it two years in a row; he did it with the mushroom. And fortunately he's a January baby, so it is truffle season in Europe. Some kind of pasta for sure. Some kind of, um, all French. Probably all French, I'm sure. can't remember. After that, he switched. He goes, "okay, I want, I want a salmon." 

So, I can't remember how much I spent. The salmon was massive. It was the biggest salmon I could find. And then he got to learn the butchering of it. So he got to practice, right? For him, this was, this was cooking school. He didn't go to cooking school. So, this was it at home. And so, I bought this massive salmon. And then, I think the year after that, I surprised him this time. And I bought him a whole pig. So I went up to Cioffi's in, on Hastings there, right? And I called ahead, I said, "it's my son's birthday. He wants to learn how to, the cuts and the butchering and, and do all the things. Do you guys have whole pigs?" 

They're like, yeah, sure. So I take him there and they see him right away as we come in the back and they're like, we know you, we know who you are. Come in the back with us. And he got to pick out whichever one he wanted, the big pig. They stuck it in a clear plastic bag and he had to carry it down Hastings Street with his two arms, and the head and the back legs were just flopping around. And the little old ladies were just laughing at him so hard. By the time we got in the car, within three minutes, he called three of his friends and said, "Meet me at my house. We're going to do this. We're taking down this pig." And they had it fully butchered, packaged, in the freezer wrapped and everything within about two hours, I think.

Paula Mohammed: I just love that because with many of our teens, it's working on cars , I don't know, baking... this is the first time I have ever heard of a whole pig being that project, butchered down. And then and having friends who are like jumping and biting at the bit to come and do it as well.

Alison Kent: Oh, definitely. And I think even at that point, maybe he was never going to become a chef. He might've gone to business school, but then there'd be a point where his love of food and his love of business might have intersected, right? Like you just got to follow it. This is his passion right now, so we're like, cool, let's, let's dive into it. And then if something else becomes a passion for any of the kids, then it's like, we'll dive into that.

Paula Mohammed: I think this is some really great advice. I want to come back to travel a bit and food and culture. I know Thailand, obviously you've just been chatting to us, it's not the only place where you've connected to culture through food. And I know this is how you live your life 100 percent and how you love to travel. How did this passion for travel and food and culture initially grow inside you?

Alison Kent: Hmm, that's a good question. I think it's, I think each time you venture out there and it is like there's just a certain amount of bravery it takes to get out there in the world sometimes. But then you get that magical experience; one or two little magical experience each time and you just want, it pulls you back. You're like, I can still remember I went on a missions trip to Nicaragua, and I can still remember these little boys just climbing up the mango trees and pulling mangoes right off the tree and I'd never seen where mango comes from before that. I was just like, wow, that's just, it's such a imprint on your memory. I think when your memories are surrounded by food, you're just hitting every sense in your entire being because it's cultural. It's the smells, it's the taste, it's the, you know, seeing it pulled from the tree, from the origins, in the dirt, and in that moment of you're seeing the sun and how the sun's hitting those lemons in Positano or how it's like, you're getting like every sensory kind of overloaded in that memory that has to do with food that you're also tasting versus a museum. My husband loves museums and they're fine but you're not, it's not the same, it's you're standing there properly and you're not talking and you're just looking and you're not touching, you're not tasting, you're not sharing a honey rocky around the table with your kids and just like this is insane.

We were in Greece once. We went, took the kids to Crete. And we, it was our first night, and we just sat at whatever random little street side restaurant. Hadn't, didn't Google it. Didn't look for it, nothing. And we got through the dinner, and he's like, well, you guys should have dessert. We're like, okay, sure. And he goes to the tree behind us and just starts pulling the fruit off the tree behind us. And came out 20 minutes later with dessert. And we were just like, wow, people in other parts of the world can just do that. We don't grow things the same here as a lot of other people do. 

Paula Mohammed: Can you share with me some of the other culinary experiences you've had in other countries? We often just go to a wine tasting or a cooking class but I have a sense that you've discovered some pretty unique experiences.

Alison Kent: When we all traveled, all six of us, we would spend at least one dinner, dinner's money, all taking a cooking class together. So even if the boys were little and weren't really paying attention, we were still doing it. It was fun. Uh, in Crete we did one in an old olive mill, and it started with a tour of the grounds around and all the herbs, and we're actually picking the herbs out of, and they're just wild, it's not a garden, this is just like, in the dirt behind the olive mill, and by the way, that's oregano, and by the way, that's thyme, and we're like, oh my goodness. So things like that can be really cool, so if you're looking for like a, a cooking class experience, trying to find one that's really an experience, like it's, you know, as authentic as you can get. I tried so hard to find a cooking class in Hawaii, last time we were in Maui. And they were all Asian cooking classes, which I will do in Asia. But I was in Hawaii. I wanted to learn different ways to cook with pineapple. I wanted to learn different ways to use their coffees and stuff like that. And I just couldn't find it, so we didn't do it. 

I did, French sauces at a school in Paris, which was very appropriate to where I was in that moment. And the classes can be great. We went to one and it was not amazing. It was in Positano. And basically we ended up cooking the restaurant's... we ended up doing the prep for them for the restaurant for their dinner menu.

Paula Mohammed: Oh my goodness.

Alison Kent: And we went to eat some of the dinner, but literally we made so much, we clicked into us after halfway through, we're like, we're actually just their prep team right now. We're just cooking for the restaurant. And they didn't give us any extra information. There's nothing like, nothing super special about it. And it was just like, oh, that was disappointing. I mean, you can't win them all. But better to go and try than not. Right?

And then we have those experiences every time we come back here. And I make that beet dish that we learned in that olive mill in the middle of Crete, we're all taken back there, like immediately. And it's such a cool souvenir. Like, it's a cooking class and it's a thing to do as a family and it's a thing, it's a way to get your dinner made. But it's also just such a souvenir to bring back home. And then every time you cook one of those dishes, you can see yourself immediately back in that space.

Paula Mohammed: I love bringing dishes and linens and tableware back with me. That's something I didn't even think about, but it started when I was very young backpacking and not the smartest things to bring around in your backpack for six months. But it never stopped after that. Uh, is that something that you bring back as well?

Alison Kent: That's definitely the other place I do a lot of hoarding because every time I'm going through Paris, even if I'm going somewhere else, I make sure I'm there for flea market weekend. And my suitcases are terrible. I pay so much overweight fee on my suitcases. They're bad. This last time I found these really beautiful bouillabaisse bowls and they're so unique and I had to have all six of them. Again, luggage. If I go through my dishes and my linens and stuff, I'm like, I know where that's from, I know where that's from, I know, and it's very similar to my, kind of my, spices wall. Where that salt is from Mexico. That is from here. That's from there. It's a cool way to bring all your adventures back home.

Paula Mohammed: You talk a lot about seeking out and it's obvious that you've go to Michelin restaurants. I loved how you planned three with very different perspectives in Thailand. And then you obviously have a passion for the home cooking and the authentic experience.

Can you tell me a little bit about what your preference is for each of those over the other? 

Alison Kent: First of all, the Michelin, when we go, it's also, I have to make sure it's also budget friendly because we're not like out there spending thousands of dollars on meals and stuff like that. So I'm looking partially at budget is how I'm filtering. If I'm in, if I'm in Thailand, like I said in Hawaii, if I'm in that place, I want to eat and learn that food, so I'm not going to likely choose a Japanese restaurant in Thailand. I'm not going to choose, you know, a Korean restaurant in France. I'm going to choose French food, but maybe interpreted in a different way. I think regardless if we're doing something home cooking or in a restaurant that we've heard about and wanted to go to and experience, I am trying to bring one thing home: a new taste, a new ingredient, a new technique or preparation that maybe I wasn't aware of before. Um, something that maybe I can make again because over the years, uh, especially with all the professional level cookbooks, the professional level appliances that are out there, you can actually make whatever they just did in that restaurant at home, even if it's a three Michelin star, you, you can if you really want to commit yourself to that process. 

So it's trying to bring back some kind of little tidbit that I can maybe incorporate into a dish here. Last time I was in Paris and this restaurant, Moustache, which I fell in love with, served tomato burrata and everything, but with raspberries and I just died. It was so delicious, it never occurred to me to put fruit in a tomato salad and tomatoes are fruit. So I guess it makes sense. But I have not stopped putting fruit in my tomato salad since. Right now it's peaches, but that's a takeaway, right? It's like something, wow, I haven't seen that done that way. Or for example in Thailand, we got introduced to these winged beans and now I'm obsessed with them.

And I, now we make this winged bean salad all the time because it's an ingredient. We go to the Asian supermarket a lot, but I probably wouldn't have noticed it really, or known what to do with it. Once you learn a little skill or you look something up or whatever. 

The other thing we like to do, the first time my son and I went to a Michelin ever, was David Toutain in Paris. And we'd had a chaotic day and I felt really bad and I was nervous. Never been to a Michelin restaurant before. This is before Canada got Michelin. My perception was that it's going to be snotty and rude and I had had to change the time of our reservation. And I was feeling kind of bad about it already, but in the notes, every time I make a reservation at a restaurant like that, I'm like, my son's a cook. If there's a seat anywhere near the kitchen, he would just love to like, kind of watch your process. I'd forgotten I'd even written that note. And then we get to the door and, the, we later found out who she was, but this lovely lady, Ty, comes to the door and says, "You must be Taylor. I have a seat just for you." And it's right beside the window of the chef. Literally, almost awkwardly, like right there in your face. And they were so lovely and just so welcoming and warm. We found out not until the very end of the meal that that was his wife, the chef's wife. She took him in the kitchen. He got to take photos. We bought the cookbook, like right on the spot, kind of thing. And it was just such an incredible experience. So now if we are eating out, we're paying the money to eat out, we're also paying in a way for his education, a little bit, right? He's watching how the kitchen is being run, again, didn't go to culinary school. So all of this is kind of leading to his volume of knowledge. It adds another layer to something maybe you're doing or you're into already when you're watching the kitchen, maybe you see, "Oh, I didn't even notice those little herbs" or something that you can, again, you can take away.

Paula Mohammed: I'm so inspired, Alison, by the way you travel, you cook, the way you raise your kids, the way you explore life. And the word that keeps popping up in my head is intention. It's like you do it with intention. That's my takeaway from this podcast. Not just racing through things, but what do I want from, from this experience?

You have such great tips from your experiences from traveling and finding these, interesting culinary adventures.

Can you just share with us a little bit about how we can find similar experiences, like not so much the what you did and where you went, but the process?

Alison Kent: When I travel, I put a lot of planning effort obviously into a trip because I'm spending all this money, I want the most out of it that I can get. I'm looking for things that would kind of, like, what would I just love to see and learn about? Last time I was in France, a few months ago, we went to an escargot farm. I'm like, that's cool. I've never been to an escargot farm before. And we learned so much and the farm part wasn't even open, but we talked to this lady for hours. A few months before that, I was in downtown Vancouver and I was at a restaurant and they were hosting this whole thing about how to cook salmon. And there's a lady there from California, and she was learning how to shuck oysters and cook salmon here in Vancouver. Because if you're in Vancouver, that's something that's very local and relevant, kind of, to do. So I think that if there's a food you're really, that excites you and you're excited about, then doing a deep dive into it when you travel, I think that's a really good idea. And it's something that might, you know, you might be able to carry with you for the rest of your life. We did olive oil tastings in Italy. You're in that culture, you're in that moment. What can you learn that's very immediate? 

You meet your people, you kind of meet your, your own tribe when you're traveling in ways like that, that you might not have met those people otherwise.

Paula Mohammed: You mentioned the winged bean salad, and I think that is the recipe that you're going to share with us. Tell us a little bit more about that salad and if we don't use winged beans, what do we use, wherever we're listening from?

The winged bean is just this like really fancy bean. It's almost kind of flat, but it kind of stars out at the four corners. So when you cut it, It looks like bat wings, kind of, in a way. It was just such a fresh, delicious thing to have in that moment. I, when I was trying to recreate, I was just trying to write down what we had, basically.

I won't claim it's my recipe, necessarily. This was just of, of the culture and of the moment. I wrote it down as best I could. But when I was looking online at versions of it, there are a lot of versions with a lot of extra ingredients. This is just from the farm in the middle of Thailand and it was just so fresh and simple and it really was all you need.

If you can't find winged beans, you can use green beans. You can use yellow beans, you can use bias cut asparagus. Big chunky bias cut asparagus would be really good in that one too. Or a combination of them. You can add different herbs. I don't think they used mint, but I noticed a lot of other recipes for that salad combine mint and cilantro, or mint or cilantro. Some had chicken, prawns, other stuff added to it. The one that, that I tried to write and repeat from our experience as best I could was just the simplest, freshest, to me the most beautiful version.

Thanks for sharing it with us. And that's going to be in the show notes. Coming back to kitchens from your travels, what do you see in other cultures and how they set up their kitchens and has that influenced how you design kitchens now?

Alison Kent: I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled every time I'm traveling for how, not just like what they're cooking, but how they're cooking it, what the space is like, how it's maybe laid out differently. Even aesthetically, you know, Mexico, they just use those beautiful, beautiful tiles everywhere. And it still looks, it doesn't look fussy. It actually looks still clean and nice. I noticed when I was designing a few kitchens in Colombia, they had to incorporate this concrete base in their kitchens. All over the world, people cook in different manners and so for me as a designer, how is it, how are we making your kitchen work for your style of cooking? It used to be, people would always be like, "Oh, the kitchen has to be, it's all for resale value". But I think people now understand that it's about enjoying it while you have it. 

Paula Mohammed: You mentioned you're doing a project in Colombia. So you're doing kitchen design projects outside of Canada?

Alison Kent: I was just talking to a few people about starting to do some projects in Mexico. I've got five or six projects in France right now. Somebody's, somebody's first restaurant kitchen, which I'm taking very seriously because somebody's first kitchen that they're investing in, like my heart just goes to them. It's going to be a process. A cooking school. I'm helping out with a kitchen in a turret in a castle in Normandy because it's such, it's such a tricky layout problem. It's like an octagon inside of a turret in a medieval castle. I'm advising on that one, helping them, you know, make sure that it does work. Make sure the right things are happening. Make sure that when it's done, it will work for how they're going to cook when they're on that floor. The kitchens in medieval times, they used to be in the basement and then they just had a dumbwaiter come up to the dining room and people would serve from there. People don't live that way anymore. So if you buy a medieval castle, you might have to change things up.

Paula Mohammed: Alison is kindly offering five spots for 30-minute one-on-one consultations for kitchen design. So if you're someone who is wanting to learn more about having a kitchen that works for you and are passionate about the flow of kitchens and cooking, I highly recommend you jump on this as I don't think those spots will be available for very long. The details for that will be in the show notes. 

You are a perfect example of follow what you're interested in and curious and passionate about in the moment and trust in the process that later in life, it'll all come together.

Alison, this has been such a treat to chat to you and I'm really hungry right now.

Alison Kent: It's one o'clock and we haven't eaten anything while we talked about food for an hour.

Paula Mohammed: Can you share with my listeners how they can learn more about you and follow you on your experiences? 

Alison Kent: I'm fairly present on Instagram at AK_TheHomeKitchen and my website's at thehomekitchen.com. and you'll find everything food. I'm always cooking something. Last night's challenge I'd never cooked before was beef tongue.

Paula Mohammed: I saw your post. How did you end up doing it?

Alison Kent: It turned out well. I ended up doing it in the sous vide for about 36 hours and then I diced it. And then I did a hot sear in bone marrow fat, which is delicious. And that was the base for our Taco Tuesday. But it's just taking something and being like, hmm, never done this before, let's give it a try.

And there's a 50/50 chance it was going to fail, but it was pretty good.

Paula Mohammed: That's taking Taco Tuesday to a whole new level.

Alison Kent: Oh yeah, but it's delicious.

Paula Mohammed: Well, I don't know about you, but I'm ready to jump on a plane to Thailand. That was great. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I would love to hear your thoughts about this episode. Please feel free to message me at any of the links above and please sign up for my free guide: 10 Unique Food and Travel Tips You Won't Find Anywhere Else. The reason why you won't find them anywhere else is they're actually from our In My Kitchen hosts; some great information there. The link is in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for tuning into this episode and hopefully see you next week!