Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

I found this article in the Toronto Star last week. I love the concept of this conference because it promotes gastronomy and the general idea of good food rather than eating a vegetarian diet for health. Sure, veggie diets are healthy ones, but the thing that scares so many people off and back to the steak and pork chops is that they truly believe vegetarian food is “rabbit food”, or that it doesn’t taste good.

There are concerns around eating too much processed soy, but for those of us who enjoyed eating meat but wanted a healthier diet, some of the soy and wheat meat replacements are really very tasty and fulfilling.

A meeting of veg-minded souls

Vegetarians awaken to idea of promoting the taste of their food instead of the politics
May 24, 2006. 01:00 AM
NETTIE CRONISH - SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Grand rapids, MICH.—Let’s stop labelling food vegan, vegetarian and meat-free. Instead, let’s describe the ingredients that make a dish exciting and flavourful. Let’s be open-minded and curious, and use our senses to figure out whether the smell, appearance and ingredient lists of different dishes satisfy our needs. Let’s spread the word about tofu, seitan, dairy-free chocolate and sea vegetables.

These were some of the messages delivered at the first Vegetarian Awakening Conference last month, showcasing vegetarian, vegan and raw food cuisine. Held at the Grand Rapids Community College, the conference attracted 125 people, including professionals who work in university cafeterias, dietitians whose clients have food sensitivities, and chefs who want to create gourmet vegetarian food.

Chairperson Kevin Dunn, a hospitality education teacher at the college, stressed he was “a chef first, vegan second” and emphasized the importance of flavour and presentation.

Dunn, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, was just 35 when he was diagnosed with diabetes and heart disease. That’s when he began redeveloping classic dishes into healthier, vegan alternatives. Now he argues that culinary management students be well-educated in all types of cuisine, including vegetarian, vegan and raw.

According to Beverly Lynn Bennett and Ray Sammartano, authors of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vegan Living, “eliminating animal foods from one’s diet has gone from being thought of as a strange `health nut’ fad to receiving wide acknowledgement as a nutritionally sound, healthful and even optimal way of eating.”

Diet and lifestyle play a major role in developing certain illnesses and diseases. This conference addressed how consumers and food professionals can prepare delicious, sustainable, time-wise vegan food.

Seattle-based David Lee showed off his protein-rich, “vegan grain meats” made from wheat gluten or seitan. Known as wheat meat, seitan is made from the gluten, or protein portion, of wheat flour. It has no cholesterol and little fat.

Lee’s Field Roast Grain Meat Co. prepares loaves, cutlets and sausages in flavours such as lentil sage, smoked tomato or wild mushroom. (They’re not sold yet in Canada.)

Calling himself a vegetarian “meat” activist, Lee suggested that “meat is delicious” and that we “need to embrace meat culture.” He argued that products made with integrity and healthful ingredients respond to the public’s demand for mock meat products.

Conference-goers were reminded not to deny that there are people who want to eat meat substitutes.

Howard Lyman, ex-cattle rancher turned vegan activist, weighed in on a discussion about how vegetarian/vegan menu items are named. He pointed out that no one serves “dead cow.”

Is it important to use established, understood words to explain vegan alternatives? Take tofu ricotta, for example. People are familiar with the texture of ricotta cheese. By pairing that familiar term with tofu, perhaps we can translate what the texture and appearance of tofu ricotta will be.

This two-day conference was inspiring because it was full of vegetarian and vegan culinary professionals who are earning a living cooking this way — and who put food ahead of politics.

It’s that invisible, emotional umbilical cord that ties us to our past. Chinatown, especially when it’s hot, reminds me of that day in August of 1987, when I stepped out of an airport limousine and into a different world.

The stench hit me even before the heat that day, and as long as I lived there, I wondered if I carried the smell with me; if I invaded nightclubs and restaurants perfumed with the smell of durian fruit and greasy bread and sesame oil and fish.

Today, my quick tour through Kensington Market and Chinatown is mission-based. Beads of sweat forming on the back of my neck, I want to get what I need and get out.

I don’t dally in the market, hitting the health food store and the fruit stands for what I need. It’s too hot, and I want to be home in front of a fan. On Spadina Avenue, in the crush of bodies and racks of knock-off Hello Kitty purses and cheap luggage, I move with purpose, sliding gracefully around the tourists and the delivery people pushing dollys full of boxes. Like riding a bike - this way of moving, thinking, looking up to assess the sidewalk - comes back easily. This is my ‘hood. Get out of my way.

After a quick stop to grab a Vietnamese sub and cold chow mein noodles for my lunch, I brace myself for the Chinese supermarket. Down the stairs, past the sidewalk displays of produce and dried shrimp, the smell is damp, salty, with a vague undertone of rot, and reminds me of the caves and grottos along the Bay of Fundy when the tides have rushed out ten miles or more, all wet sand and Irish moss.

Produce. Nothing is labeled in English, and I guess at herbs, packed in cellophane, feeling lost because I cannot make my way through foreign territory by smell. Thai basil I know by sight. The strong smell of Cilantro permeates the plastic. I have no idea whether I’m buying peppermint or spearmint, but into the basket it goes.

Next, fat wet Japanese udon noodles, and a package of oil-fried tofu. Then down the aisle to the intimidating wall of noodles. Thirty different kinds of rice paper wrappers for spring rolls; different sizes, flavours and brands. Vermicelli noodles, enough to tie a string, if placed end to end, around the world. Ah, sweet potato vermicelli. I grab at what looks good, searching for the brands I know. It’s all the same, isn’t it?

And sweet potato candy, dried and sugared, three packages for a dollar. Jars of pickled ginger and garlic, four for a dollar. And tea; all the tea in China, it seems, but it cannot be. Again, which one to pick?

My arms full, I struggle to the cash. I have no hands free to nab moon cakes or rice candy. Next time, next time.

My hands are full as I walk down the street, so many bags, but there’s more. Shaded by a wide umbrella, there’s a display of fat juicy lychee, plump and sweet. The man fills a bag of them and directs me inside to pay,. There are still so many strange and wondrous fruits I’ve never tried, afraid I guess, figuring they’ll all be as weird and dank as durian. Manilla mangos get added to my pile on the counter, and the woman at the cash looks at me approvingly as I juggle my bags to find change for her.

“You like shop Chinatown, yes?”

Yes, yes I do.

Every year, Toronto holds a city-wide festival during the last weekend in May called Doors Open where the public gets to go on free mini-tours of places they might not otherwise have the opportunity to see. Many of these buildings are ones that the public can get into if they have a reason to be there, either because they’re on a paid tour, or because they have business of some sort in the place.Few people have reason or opportunity to wander through a chocolate factory, though, so when the news came out that Cadbury was going to open the doors of its Toronto factory as part of Doors Open, people were excited. Unfortunately, while the concept of Doors Open is a good one, designed to encourage an appreciation for historical and architecturally unique buildings, what we got at the Cadbury’s factory doesn’t really even count as a “tour”.

Now I didn’t go expecting to see Oompa-Loompas. I didn’t expect to be greeted by Johnny Depp in a top hat. I didn’t figure there would be a river of chocolate. But on a “tour” of a chocolate factory, I do kind of expect to see some chocolate getting made.

At least put in a nice plate-glass window so we can watch the bars of chocolate whizzing by.

I understand that, for reasons of safety and sanitation, we shouldn’t have expected to get up close and personal with a running enrober. I didn’t expect to come home with goofy photos of Greg sticking his head in a concher. But I expected more than a one-room “museum” full of old chocolate wrappers, a store, and a 5-minute spiel on “chocology”, the hilight of which was eating a roasted cocoa bean.

We walked in at the end of a “chocology” session where the woman giving the talk was in the process of answering an audience question as to why Cadbury didn’t use Fair Trade chocolate. We didn’t hear the whole response, only a bit about how “it would be unfair to the farmers.” Not sure of the original question, I resisted the urge to shout out about how non-Fair Trade chocolate isn’t really fair to the child slaves that harvest the stuff, but I held my tongue.

We also learned that Cadbury’s signature Dairy Milk chocolate bar, following the footsteps of the folks who make the secret recipe mixture at Kentucky Fried Chicken, is made in two parts, in two separate locations and brought together at a third location so that no one knows the secret ingredient that gives Dairy Milk its special and unique flavour. As Dairy Milk is one of those bars, along with the disgusting Hershey’s Kisses, that tastes and smells of sour, milky, baby puke, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out the secret ingredient.

The only good point of the tour, other than the cocoa bean, was that 100% of the day’s sales in the on-site store went to charity. So we bought a Malted Milk bar (one of the few mainstream milk chocolate bars I can stomach) and got Greg a super-fresh bag of his favourite wine gums candy

So much as it was for Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt et al, the chocolate factory was a disappointment. We were there when the doors opened and waited only about a half hour to get in. I felt bad for the people who were at the end of the line, almost two blocks away, when we came out, where the expected wait time was close to two hours. If I had waited two hours to see some nostalgic candy wrappers, a cocoa bean, a store and some woman who has been so brainwashed by the corporation she works for that she believes Fair Trade to be bad for cocoa farmers, I’d have been not just disappointed, but downright pissed off.

You know, you can take the girl outta the goth; you can destroy her Sisters of Mercy albums, you can slather her in cold cream and get all that black gunk off her face, you can take her bat-shaped purse away, you can take her black clothes and… well, nevermind that. But sometimes you just can’t take the goth outta the girl.

Such is my love for Charles Addams. So when Greg called me up to tell me he was spending foolish amounts of money on the Deadwood DVD box set, he softened the blow and assured my co-operation by informing me that he had also ordered me the Charles Addams cookbook.

It’s not really a cookbook. It’s actually a collection of his food-related cartoons (many of which feature the Addams family characters), interspersed with recipes for various wacky and unappealing delicacies such as blood pudding, stewed pigeon and potted squirrel.

About half of the cartoons are new to me, many mere sketches that have never been published. I’ve got four or five Charles Addams books, so to find new stuff is quite delightful.

I doubt I’ll be making stuffed beef hearts any time soon, but the “Mushrooms Fester” sounds quite good, and there’s even a recipe for fiddlehead ferns, although if you followed the directions, they’d be overcooked and underseasoned.

I still don’t get how Morticia was ever able to cook anything without setting those sleeves on fire, but then she probably enjoyed it.

One of my scores at the candy expo last weekend was a 200g (just under a half-pound) bar of Varlhona Noir Orange cooking chocolate. There was a recipe included for shortbread, which I promptly ignored, partially because it was all in metric and partially because it called for 5 egg yolks, which just seemed unnecessary.

Instead, I dug out my Mom’s old-faithful shortbread recipe and used that instead.

Shortbread

2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Combine flour, sugar and room temperature butter in a food processor until crumbly. Turn into a bowl or onto a floured surface and knead until smooth.

Add:
100g Varlhona Noir Orange chocolate, chopped into chocolate chip-sized pieces
1/2 cup slivered almonds, chopped

Continue to knead until chocolate and almonds are well incorporated.

Press dough flat into a large baking sheet (with sides), or roll and cut into shapes as desired. If using the cheater method of one flat sheet, cut into squares or diamonds immediately upon removing pan from oven.

Bake for 15 minutes at 350′F.

what’s in the packages?

The gold box. In India, or Indian culture, this comes bearing a sweet gift. For us, it was a gift to ourselves. The small pink packets are one of our main reasons for a venture across town to Little India. The packaged cakes were just an added bonus.

Sweet jewels.

Burfi
Burfi (or barfi) is an Indian sweet made from condensed milk, and is similar in consistency to fudge - perhaps a bit creamier. It is often made from nuts, including pistachio and cashew. Also flavours such as chocolate and mango. During festive times such as Holi or Diwali, burfi is given as a gift, and many more flavours are available, often garnished with bits of edible silver leaf.

Bursting from the seams.

Paan
Paan is a digestive treat made by filling betel leaves with sweet concoctions that include fennel seeds, candied anise, coconut, cherry paste and more. Many paan shops offer a menu of 15 or 20 kinds of paan, including ones with bits of betel nut, or even tobacco. These paan were made by a woman, which is atypical; paanwallas are almost always men, and some of them are quite famous.

Heaven melts in your mouth.

Soan Cake
Soan cake is something almost indescribable. Cardamom flavoured chickpea flour is spun and compressed, creating a cake with a consistency somewhere between halva and dragon beard candy. It’s moist but also fluffy, and the strands of candy crumble away from the cake. This requires a moistened fingertip and persistence, but it’s important not to let one single bit go to waste.

This recipe is from this month’s Eating Well Magazine, and originally called for fresh cherries. I didn’t have fresh cherries, although I will make this again when I do, but dried cranberries filled in nicely.

Custard
4 large egg whites
4 large eggs
1 cup skim milk or soy milk

Seasonings
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Bread and Filling
4 cups whole-grain bread bread, cut into 1” cubes
1 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup sliced almonds

Topping
1/4 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 375F. Coat an 11” x 7” baking dish or casserole with cooking spray.

To prepare custard, whisk eggs, egg whites and milk in a medium bowl. Add seasonings (sugar, vanilla and cinnamon), whisk to combine.

Toss bread and filling in a large bowl. Add the custard mixture and toss well to coat. Transfer to the baking dish and press down to compact. Cover with foil.

Bake until the custard has set, 40 to 45 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with the topping and continue baking until the pudding is puffed and golden on top, 15 to 20 minutes more. Transfer to a wire rack and cool 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

At first, we weren’t sure we had read it right. Scrolling across the screen on the 24-hour news channel was information about a Sweets Expo at the Toronto Convention Centre. It took some investigating to finally find the website: http://www.sweetsexpo.ca. No, Beavis and Butthead, not “sweet sex po”, get your minds out of the gutter. Sweets Expo, aka, a room full of candy.

Bright and early, there we were, headed into the convention centre, the smell of sugar surrounding us. However, had it not been for two things, the Sweets Expo would have left a rather sour taste in my mouth.

First of all, it hadn’t been especially well-promoted, as far as we could tell. That fast-moving news scroll was the only mention we had seen of the thing, and judging by the turnout, not many other people knew about it either. And apparently, the same amount of effort that went into promotion went into attracting exhibitors. It was considerably smaller than we expected, and with a couple of exceptions the calibre of product wasn’t that great. None of the many Toronto area chocolatiers were present; Stubbs, Soma and JS BonBon were not to be found. There were also none of the chain, or indie, candy stores - no Sugar Mountain, Tutti Frutti, Nutty Chocolatier or Candy Island. Also, no big brand names - no Nestle, no Cadbury.

What there was was an awful lot of those companies selling chocolate in fun and silly shapes. You know, that awful waxy milk chocolate that is created specifically for molding into bunnies, roses, sets of tools. Also, candy corn, cotton candy, fudge… it was all there. But hokey, like the kind of stuff you’d see at a county fair. And no, thank you, I don’t need a Pampered Chef catalogue so I can con all of my friends into suporting a pyramid scheme by buying overpriced kitchen gadgets. The wackiest product was a new “energy ball” - similar in intent to power bars or cans of Red Bull, this was a candy-coated ball of energy-enhanced chocolate (containing stuff like guarana and a massive dose of caffeine), about the size of a large gumball. Let’s just say the energy ball and I didn’t get along too well, and while it was tasty at the time, I don’t expect I’d pay $1 a pop for a trip to the loo.

What redeemed the candy show was two things.

First a booth by the folks who import all of the swank single-origin and estate chocolate bars. We normally buy these bars for between $4 - $8 a pop. Today, $3 each, or 4 for $10. For a measley $32, we came home with about $90 of the best chocolate in the world, including a $14 (retail) bar of 85% Varlhona baking chocolate that we got for $4. That more than made up for having to deal with face-painted toddlers hopped up on sugar competing on some sort of DanceDance Revolution machine.

Candy Swag

The second thing that made the show worthwhile, and was actually one of our reasons for going, was an appearance by Candyfreak author Steve Almond. Now apparently, Steve Almond was expecting that he would be doing a reading, not playing quiz-master to a bunch of little kids painted like tigers who most certainly didn’t know what year chocolate was first made in bar form. He was a sport and handed out a pile of much-coveted Goo-Goo clusters anyway, but he was a very confused guy afterwards. We went up to talk to him once the children realized he had no more swag, and he thanked us for being the only people in the audience who had actually read his book. We all chatted a bit and then one of the exhibitors offered him a free sample of her flavoured organic cotton candy. We had tried this earlier in the day and vouched for its tastiness. She beckoned us to come to her booth as well, she would give us a free sample. Given that she was selling the stuff for $8 a package, we were more than happy to accept the freebie.

Author Steve Almond receives many free samples.

She loaded Steve down with a sample of all five flavours. He leaned over and said, “stick around for a minute”, and we obliged. We walked out with Steve Almond and he handed us four of his five tubs of cotton candy, explaining that there was no way he could carry it all home on the plane. Apparently, once you write a book about candy, every candymaker in the world sends you free samples in the hopes that you’ll write another book and include their product. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with all that cotton candy, either, but the kids next door were happy to take it off our hands, and even came back asking for more.

So the Sweets Expo was a decent way to spend a Sunday; we scored big on the chocolate, we met an author whose work we admired and enjoyed and we ended up with enough cotton candy to ensure the everlasting devotion of the kids next door.

I had a lovely foodie weekend, but then I caught an awful cold, and now everything just tastes like pasty-mouth.

We headed to the market looking for cheap lobster, because it’s lobster season and it should be cheap, but it was Saturday at the yuppie-oriented market, so the lobster was overpriced. It should be down to the $11 - $12 range by now, but it was still $14.99 per pound. We bought mussels and clams instead, and brought them home and cooked them up in beer. Served up with fries and a loaf of saffron bread from the market, it was just about perfect.

It was a real “down home” shopping experience actually. I had gone in search of asparagus to hold me over until the fiddleheads were ripe, but some enterprising Ontario farmer has started growing his own, so I’ve got fiddleheads for dinner tonight to go with some maple-glazed trout. We also bought a blueberry strudle made with Nova Scotia blueberries. If you’re sitting there asking “what’s the difference?”, then it’s obvious that you’ve never had Nova Scotia blueberries. Best in the world and the flavour is completely different from berries you’ll find anywhere else.

The market visit also netted us bagels, hot out of the oven, a batch of purple kale, and a selection of cheese including Scrumpy Jack apple cider cheddar, and a walnut cheese called St. Julien from France. It looks like Mimolette season is over for now, there wasn’t even any young stuff available.

What else? I made a dairy-free coconut and pineapple cream pie, chocolate almond and cranberry bread pudding, and then I started sniffling and required the Thai lemongrass and mushroom soup from the local Thai place. Photos forthcoming at some point, once I’m feeling better.

Our groovy multicultural supermarket had stacks of amaretti in their Italian section last night when we were buying groceries. I bought two packages and am considering going back for more.

The word amaretti is Italian for “little, bitter things”. Problem is, most amaretti are made from sweet almonds which are not really bitter at all.

My first encounter with the meringue-based cookie came in the late 80s when my then-boyfriend lived next door to an Italian bakery. We would buy huge boxes of their amaretti, along with delicious marzipan. These amaretti were larger, crunchy on the outside, soft and almost pasty on the inside. Like most amaretti made in North America, they were made with almonds.

What I consider to be real amaretti, though, are made not from ground almonds or almond paste, but apricot kernal paste, which just happens to taste like almonds. Think about the liqueur, Amaretto diSaronno - no almonds in there, folks - it’s made from apricot kernal oil. Other than cocktails, some cosmetic products and supposedly curing cancer, apricot kernals don’t have much use. I bet all of you throw them in the garbage, just like I do.

Amaretti made with apricot kernal paste has the distinctive bitter taste (caused by the chemical amygdalin), however, and while they are still sweet, they have a lingering flavour that the almond versions just don’t have, which make them more of a delicacy, to me, anyway.

As you might have guessed, the packages of cookies I found are indeed the apricot kernal version, and I’ve been eating them all day, taking the tiny cookies (they’re each slightly larger than a quarter) and letting them melt slowly on my tongue.

I’m working on the alternative medicine theory that all that amygdalin really does fight cancer, so as far as I can tell, eating all of these amaretti is good for my health.