July 1, 2009
The cherries haven’t made it to the city yet, and while I love strawberries, they’re a bit cliche. So, foodwise, I’m celebrating Canada Day with these fabulous little red and white turnips.
Ok, so they may not scream “Canada Day celebration”, but they’re beautiful in their own way. I’m thinking maybe candied with a glaze of butter, honey and orange juice.
June 29, 2009
As was the case when I had a real yard to dig in, I’m a more enthusiastic gardener in May than once the hot weather hits. Even when my garden is within reach of a blasting AC vent, I tend to lose interest a bit.
The lettuce that was doing so well last month got tall and leggy but never full and bushy. We ate it, but never planted any more. The herb garden is doing extremely well, and I’m actually remembering to use the stuff – tossing dill in with new potatoes, mint into iced tea and a big bunch of tarragon into that life-changing strawberry jam. Basil doesn’t hate me anymore, and to honour my bushy basil plant, I think it deserves to go onto a sandwich with some buffalo mozzarella and some awesome prosciutto.
I cannot seem to get past killing the summer savoury – no matter what I do it just won’t grow for me, so I’ll have to raid the old man’s patch when I go home in August. I killed the cilantro early on, but I don’t use it enough to miss it, really.
Ans finally, as evidenced by the image above, the most stupendous garden news is that I have actual tomatoes growing on my plants.
They shouldn’t be there. I’m doing everything wrong. I put 4 starters into one 10″ pot – mostly based on advise from everyone that tomatoes wouldn’t do well inside, and in an east-facing window. I fully expected them to croak and didn’t want to spend the time and money getting more pots. Instead, the largest is almost 6 feet high; all four plants are covered in blossoms; and yes, I have fruit. Six in that image and another three on one of the other plants. They’re just cherry tomatoes so I should be able to harvest them soon.
Now that I know it is possible, I’ll take the tomatoes more seriously next year. Don’t really want to wait until next year, but watching these ones grow makes me cackle with glee on a regular basis.
June 28, 2009
I’ve never been a huge fan of strawberry jam. Mostly because I’ve always found it too sweet. But this year I thought I’d make some anyway, maybe using a recipe that wasn’t quite as sweet as normal.
Because jam-making can be scary, what with all of that getting a proper seal and ensuring the jam sets, I was at first inclined to a freezer jam. Now, any jam can be stored in the freezer, and if the jars don’t get a good seal, cooked or not, the freezer is the best place to store them. But all of the recipes I came across for freezer jam reminded me of why I never cared much for strawberry jam in the first place. With a 2 to 1 ratio of sugar to fruit, my teeth hurt just reading the recipe. Switching to a search for cooked jam recipes, that same high sugar ratio popped up, but many of the recipes were based on an opposite ratio; 2 to 1, fruit to sugar. That’s more like it. Except some of them called for added pectin while others called for none at all. This jam thing would be a lot less intimidating and confusing if all you people who post recipes on the Internet would form some consensus.
Finally I settled on a recipe that called for the 2 to 1 fruit to sugar ratio, plus a splash of lemon juice and pectin, although I added only half the pectin called for.
My plan wasn’t just to make plain old strawberry jam, though. I wanted an additional blast of flavour beyond the strawberries. As the pot of cooking jam thickened up to the point where it was ready to can, I poured half of the hot jam into another pot and added the seeds from about half a vanilla bean pod, as well as ground cardamom and about a teaspoon of dried lavender flowers.
To the other half of the jam mixture I added a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, about a teaspoon of ground black pepper and a couple of tablespoons of cropped fresh tarragon.
Both “pumped up” versions include flavour elements known to complement strawberries. The balsamic jam is less sweet and slightly more acidic than the flowery version, and both variations still feature the strawberry flavour first and foremost.
I was incredibly happy with how these turned out, both in terms of flavour and how the jam set up. I was a bit heavy with the lavender flowers so the sweeter jam might be a bit too flowery for some (will likely do it with rose petals next year), but the balsamic-pepper-tarragon version is definitely a keeper.
Note – if you decide to pump up your jam flavours, use a light hand, as the flavours will intensify over time. Use just enough extra flavourings so that you can barely taste it while the jam is still hot. Lavender, in particular, can have a “soapy” impression if the flavour is too intense.
Strawberry Jam
3 lb fresh strawberries (about 9 cups), washed and hulled
4.5 – 5 cups sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp unsalted butter (optional)
1 pkg pectin crystals
Extra flavourings for balsamic jam (for a full batch):
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 -3 Tbsp freshly chopped tarragon
Extra flavourings for vanilla lavender jam (for a full batch):
seeds of one vanilla bean pod
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1 – 2 tsp dried lavender flowers
In a large pot, mash strawberries slightly, then bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Add sugar and lemon juice, stir, and simmer for 2 minutes. Add pectin crystals and bring to a vigorous boil, stirring often. Allow to cook for 10 to 20 minutes until the mixture thickens.
Periodically measure the viscosity of the jam by dripping a small spoonful onto a clean plate. The jam should thicken quickly and form a skin on the top. At this point, add the butter, and any additional flavourings as per above.
While the jam is cooking, wash and sterilize jars and then keep them in a warm oven until they are ready to be filled. Fill jars to about 1/4-inch from the top, then fasten lids securely and boil jars in a pot of hot water for 15 minutes. Remove jars with tongs and let cool, standing upright. Jars are sealed when the centre of the lids does not spring back (or pop) when pressed. Store jars in a cool dry place. Store any unsealed jars in the refrigerator or freezer.
June 12, 2009
This weekend marks the opening of Food. Inc, a film about the food industry in North America. Early reviews describe it as shocking and life-changing, revealing aspects of food production that most people are blissfully unaware of.
We are encouraged to know where our food comes from, and mostly that means local food. Know your farmer; know what’s in season; eat organic, sustainably produced food. And be willing to pay for it.
But as much as we can all sing local until the cows come home, much of the western world still relies on majority world countries to supply our foodstuffs. And we want it cheap.
The BBC 3 series Blood, Sweat and Takeaways, which ran over the past four weeks, followed 6 young British people (who were all accustomed to eating cheap junk food) as they travelled across southeast Asia, working in factories and rice fields to find out the human cost of their cheap food.
The 6 Brits try their hands working at a tuna factory in Indonesia cleaning and gutting fish; a prawn farm (where they spend their days rebuilding a mud levee to keep the prawns from being washed away in a storm); and a prawn factory where some of them are fired for not working fast enough. During the first two episodes they stay in the homes of factory workers, and are appalled by the living conditions and outdoor toilets. They can never keep up with the local workers and are often embarrassed when a job they’ve been assigned has to be assisted or redone by locals.
June 2, 2009
Ever since I attended the All About Almonds event back in November, I’ve found myself addicted to the things. That’s partly because they sent us home with pounds of almonds in various forms, and I’ve been eating them for months, but one item in the swag bag – a package of cinnamon-sugared almonds – intrigued me enough that I’ve been making my own for a while now, working with various ratios and spices to get the perfect addictive product.
There are many different processes for candying nuts. Some recipes called for whipped egg white (which create almost a meringue coating), others instruct cooks to remove the nuts from the boiling sugar and water solution with a slotted spoon and roll in spices and more sugar before toasting, while others still require letting the sugar brown and caramelize. Every method creates a different type of candy coating and once you get spices in there, the options are even more vast.
This final one might just be the keeper, though, as the flavours really seemed to work nicely and the coating has a good texture.
We love these as a snack to replace regular candy or cookies, and almonds are so healthy that we can almost feel virtuous about eating them, even with a tiny bit of sugar and butter in the recipe.
Orange Rosemary Almonds
2 pounds shelled almonds
grated rind of 1 orange
juice of 1 orange plus enough water to make 1 cup
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon and cardamom
1 Tbsp butter
pinch salt – smoked sea salt if you have it
1 tbsp chopped rosemary – fresh if possible, but dried will work
Line two rimmed baking pans with parchment paper and preheat oven to 400°F.
In a medium saucepan, combine the water and orange juice mixture, orange rind, sugar, and cinnamon and cardamom. Bring to a boil. Let boil for a few minutes or until mixture reduces by about 25%.
Add almonds and stir continuously for a few minutes, continuing to let the liquid boil. When liquid has reduced by 50%, add butter. When liquid is almost gone and coats the back of a spoon, add the rosemary and salt. Stir well one final time and then, using a slotted spoon, quickly spread almonds on the two baking sheets. Leave any excess liquid (there shouldn’t be much) behind.
Place almonds in the preheated oven for about 12 minutes, rotating pans at the halfway mark if they’re on different racks.
Remove almonds from oven and carefully stir so they don’t clump together. Allow to cool 10 minutes and then stir again, breaking the nuts up into individual nuts or small clumps.
Store in an airtight container.
May 28, 2009
Photo: Toronto Humane Society
It’s no secret that North Americans have a really wacky relationship with their food. Eating disorders, obesity, replacing love with comfort food… But the weirdest of all has to be how our society deals with meat, especially meat that is cute.
Two items in the news recently have caused that issue to hit home.
The first is the case of Wiggles the pig, a 2-month old piglet that fell off the back of a truck, presumably on the way to a factory farm where she would be fattened up and made into bacon, pork chops and spare ribs. A good Samaritan stopped and rescued her, taking her to the Humane Society where her broken leg will be mended and she’ll then spend the rest of her life in either a hobby farm or a petting zoo.
Being downright adorable, Wiggles immediately won the hearts of everyone who heard her story. There was no talk whatsoever of sending her on to her original destination, and when the factory farm was mentioned, followers of her story secretly shuddered. Then turned the page of the paper and grabbed another slice of bacon, or another bite of their ham sandwich. Wiggles, we care about. The other hundred or even thousand pigs on that truck… not so much. Or rather, we prefer not to think about it. One injured little piggie, sure, she’s so cyooote! But no one wants to be the first to stand up and say no to the factory farming complex. Few are wise enough to truly equate Wiggles with the bacon on their plates, and everything that means, and even fewer are brave enough to say no, I cannot, will not, eat that.
The bigger story, of course, is that of Governor-General Michaelle Jean and her participation in a traditional Inuit ceremony that required her to gut a seal and eat some of its raw heart. Animal rights activists around the world, not the mention people from the EU where a ban on Canadian seal products goes into effect next month, have denounced her actions.
Of course this too throws back to the “cute food” issue. Animal rights groups use images of baby seals with white coats to rake in the donations because adult seals are not nearly as adorable. It has been illegal to kill whitecoats in Canada for over a decade, yet those groups trot out those same old pictures every year in order to manipulate people into supporting their cause.
And like the Wiggles story, the hypocrisy is rife. People who would happily eat a cow or a chicken or a pig brought up in a factory farming system have some twisted issue with hunters using humane methods to kill a seal. Even if they intend to use every part of that seal. People who would never consider becoming a vegetarian will fight and argue the rights of those mean, stinky seals. (Seriously – adult seals are mean buggers, and they eat fish all day, not roses.) But people have been manipulated into believing those seals are cyooote and therefore more worthy of living than an animal that might show up on the average North American dinner plate.
How fucked up is that?
Note re: comments – as a former vegetarian (who desperately wants a pig as a pet), I am familiar with both sides of the issues raised above. The point of this post is to look at society’s attitudes toward our food, not restart the seal hunt debate. Comments are moderated and any that do not directly deal with the food issue will be deleted.
May 23, 2009
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Liz posted a picture of some morel mushrooms on Facebook, indicating that she had picked them while at her weekend home in Warkworth, ON. I commented on the photo, pointing out that I was her friend and that I liked her very, very much, not actually expecting morels to be forthcoming – I’m not sure I’d share if I had my own personal stash, after all.
Liz is a very sweet lady, though, and early last week, after another trip to the country, she emailed me, offering me what was probably the last of her morel harvest. “It’s not much,” she said. “Only about 3 handfuls.”
You know the old saying about never looking a gift horse in the mouth, and so off I went in joyous anticipation to meet a lady about some mushrooms. In trade, I took some bottles of gluten-free beer for Liz’s husband, because when someone brings you the last of their morels, you should reciprocate in some way. And since Liz’s husband can’t drink regular beer, I’m hoping that the exchange was as appreciated on their end as it was on mine.
Liz had the ’shrooms wrapped up in cheesecloth, so it wasn’t until I got them home that I really got to admire them. So beautiful, these magical things, like little balls of brown lace. And so many! I’d have been overjoyed with half this amount; Liz had been especially generous.
I decided to saute them with fiddleheads and garlic and then serve them with gnocchi in brown butter.
The dish was wonderfully reminiscent of spring. The morels had a slight tang to the nose, but were earthy and warm in terms of flavour. And I don’t think anything goes better with morels than crisp green fiddleheads.
My one failure was in not cleaning them well. I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like to wash regular mushrooms, but how to clean out the various crevices and gills of a morel? Various websites advised soaking them, while others advised vehemently against soaking them. One site suggested dropping them, point down, onto a counter to knock the dirt and potential bugs out of the crevices. I ended up just wiping them off and cutting them up, although in retrospect I should maybe have soaked them, as they ended up being grittier than I’d have liked.
Nevertheless, my friend Liz was kind enough to give me the opportunity to try one of the quintessential flavours of spring, and I am truly thankful for her kindness and generosity. I know I’ll be searching them out again next spring to try them again. And I’ll be taking care to wash them better.
May 19, 2009
Basil and sage.
Last year, after an unfortunate incident with some less than spectacular organic seeds, I concluded that I didn’t get enough light in my east-facing apartment windowsill to grow any summer vegetables. Those wee lettuces never got more than an inch high, and I assumed that it had to have been my fault.
But the kicker was that I have plenty of other plants in that window. Tropical palms get huge in here, ivy and ferns regularly need cutting back, and for the second year in a row I’ve had the unsavoury task of “sacrificing the mother so the babies can live” when it comes to my aloe vera plant because the darn thing grows to such huge proportions that it gets top-heavy.
Surely something seasonal would grow, no?
Turns out I’ve got a small farm happening with action not only from the herbs and lettuce but strawberries and cherry tomatoes that currently have the beginning of teeny tiny blossoms. It’s not going to put a dent into my need for trips to the farmers market, but it’s still very satisfying. Turns out that lady at the plant/seed store not only sold me crappy seeds, she gave me some pretty poor advice as well.
Oregano in need of a haircut.
May 14, 2009
It’s no secret that I am adamantly against processed food products that make health claims. And my post about added pro-biotics in yogurt still gets numerous hits each day, which makes me think that this is an issue that confuses the average consumer.
Health and nutrition are hot topics, and large food processors have figured out that anything with an aura of health around it sells better. This phenomenon is actually called the “health halo” or “health aura”, and stems from the fact that people will eat (and by extension, purchase) more of a product that they believe to be healthful. This leads to additional health problems as consumers end up taking in greater numbers of calories, fat, sugar and salt, defeating any impression of healthfulness the food might have had.
Currently, labelling laws in Canada prohibit a great number of these products from being fortified with unnecessary vitamins, and also prohibit those same companies from making health claims. Manufacturers, hoping to target a health-oriented society by fortifying products that are essentially junk food, are pushing Health Canada to speed up the decision-making process that would see these fortified products, emblazoned with health claims, on supermarket shelves.
Of course, the amount of fortification added to many products in negligible, and many items, such as the antioxidants in green tea, would require the consumption of significant amounts of the product to deliver even a small level of nutritional benefit. But, as always, there’s much more to it than these corporations having great care and concern for their customers’ health.
And while these companies cite a US model that permits health claims on processed foods, the Food and Drug Administration in the US appears to be tightening their criteria. Cheerios cereal has been pushing claims, both on the packaging and in print and television commercials, that consumers can lower their cholesterol by 4% in 6 weeks by eating two bowls of Cheerios every day. The FDA has contacted General Mills with a letter indicating that if Cheerios lowers cholesterol at the purported rate, then that claim makes it a statin drug… not a food. And the product therefore has to be treated like a drug.
Critics say that instead of adding useless amounts of vitamins to processed junk foods, they’d like to see these companies make more of an effort to lower the amounts of fat, sugar and sodium in the products. But as long as there is money to be made by confusing consumers with a health halo, it’s unlikely that the deluge of functional foods will stop any time soon.
One of the tenets of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is “don’t eat food that makes health claims“. Foods that make health claims generally have something to hide. If your diet is missing some essential nutrient, it makes the most sense to get it from a natural source instead of a bag of chips, soda pop, or processed cereal. Eating a well-balanced diet focused on fruit and vegetables, nuts and legumes, whole grains, and small amounts of lean meat should give most people all the vitamins and minerals they need. Real, plain yogurt works better than the stuff with the added bacteria; regular water quenches a thirst better than a product with added protein (in water???); the benefits of cranberry or orange juice are not significantly enhanced with extra vitamins.
Unfortunately, most consumers don’t know that, and these food companies are depending on that lack of knowledge to sell their products. We hear buzzwords in the media; antioxidant, pro-biotics, and see health claims like “lowers cholesterol.”
But if a product purports to have the magic bullet that will solve all your health problems, it’s probably too good to be true. In the long run, it’s probably cheaper, and better for your body, to just eat real food, and not try to get your nutrients from processed junk.
May 8, 2009
The Food Blog Code of Ethics has been getting some press around the Intarwebs over the past week or so. Created by two bloggers in California, the code lays out rules and regulations that bloggers should abide by when creating blog posts. It also includes a separate guideline for reviewing restaurants. This code, and a subsequent late-to-the-game code from the creators of eGullet have been hotly debated in the professional blogosphere (ie. sites such as the Guardian’s Word of Mouth) but I’ve seen little mention of it on any of the personal food blogs that I follow.
The basis of the code is the following 5 points:
We will be accountable
We will be civil
We will reveal bias
We will disclose gifts, comps and samples
We will follow the rules of good journalism
In my time editing TasteTO, we have hired a number of bloggers to write for us. We like having a variety of voices and points of view, and hiring bloggers allows us to do that effectively. However – and this is a big one – bloggers are not journalists. And as such, are usually not aware of the rules of journalism. Expecting someone who has started a blog as a hobby to research the basic rules of journalism is probably expecting too much effort from someone who just wants to write about what they had for dinner. Especially when the rules as outlined are not followed by professional journalists themselves.
For instance, disclosure. Personally, I don’t believe it’s necessary for bloggers to reveal that they’ve received an item as a gift, comp or sample. That doesn’t happen in the real world of lifestyle journalism – people don’t really think women’s magazines pay for all the items they recommend people buy every month, do they? All those products for food spreads, cosmetics articles… even clothing sometimes, although expensive items are usually (hopefully) loaned with the expectation of them being returned – those are all comped to the publication with the hope that they will be mentioned. You don’t see little disclaimers all over Chatelaine or Canadian Living indicating that the cookies on page 43 and the cutlery on page 72 were comped. So if we want bloggers to behave like professional journalists, why would we have a separate set of rules for them?
The section of the code related to reviewing restaurants is based on the guidelines from the Association of Food Journalists, a US organization for food writers in that country. Except that the majority of amateur bloggers tend to be recipe bloggers and don’t really do much in terms of restaurant reviews in the first place – at least that’s the case with the many Toronto-based blogs that I follow.
Neither the eGullet rules or the Food Blog Code of Ethics seem to consider recipe bloggers at all, which is too bad because a section clearly outlining recipe copyright laws would have been more helpful than info on terms of service or insisting that bloggers reviewing a restaurant go on multiple visits before posting a review. I see a lot more people violating copyright than I do unfairly slamming a restaurant after only one visit.
My concern with having what is supposed to be an internet-wide code of ethics is that there are millions of food bloggers out there. Not all of them are going to give a shit – especially if they’re blogging for fun. Lists of rules and regulations suck the fun out of stuff very quickly, and already, the comments on the Guardian piece are mostly of the mind that such a code is pompous and condescending.
We have a very detailed guideline for our writers at TasteTO, with a separate guideline specifically on how to write restaurant reviews (which might even be more stringent than the AFJ) – but – we also aspire to be taken seriously as a professional media outlet. I don’t even like calling TasteTO a “blog” because blogging to me has always had an amateur feel to it. (This site, this is a blog…) In part, that’s what makes it fun. If bloggers who want to share recipes, talk about a new product they found, or write a quick review of a meal they had at a local restaurant suddenly have to meet some special list of rules, we may well see the whole medium disappearing.
Tim Hayward of the Word of Mouth blog at the Guardian puts it succinctly; “be entertaining and informative or people won’t bother to read you”. For the average blogger, this should be enough. I’d rather see bloggers put more effort into writing well than making sure they obey all the rules.
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