Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

Giving props where props are due, I’ve got a lot of respect for Loblaws and their President’s Choice line for opening up new gastronomic horizons for the good people of our country and our neighbours to the south. Without the folks from PC offering us everything from peanut sauce to cheesecake, mango dressing to balsamic vinegar, we’d likely still be a society in which meat and two veg was the order of the day. President’s Choice has allowed Canadians to expand their palates and learn about the food of other cultures without shrinking their wallets.

I buy a lot of PC products, and have been known to get ornery as a bear when various items that I like but which sell poorly are discontinued - hello! Wasabi rice chips!!

However, the one thing President’s Choice really doesn’t do well - at least to my taste - is their prepared foods. Their chana masala is bland. Their fish pie lacking in fish, their pad thai is a glommy clomp of noodles that tastes of ketchup.

(more…)

This article is from last week, but I’ve had it bookmarked because I really wanted to talk about it. It needed some thinking first though, some pondering. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

I stopped eating imported shrimp many years ago after reading one of the many books by Dr. Vandana Shiva in which she details how shrimp farms in India and Thailand are destroying the local ecosystems.

To operate effectively, shrimp farmers destroy mangrove swamps to create a flat, shallow area underwater - conditions in which shrimp thrive. This allows them to harvest the shrimp by trawling.

However, the mangrove swaps are home to many sea creatures whose habitats are destroyed and trawling is indiscriminate - anything in the way of the trawler - including thousands of sea turtles - gets scooped up.

The removal of the mangrove swamps also removes a layer of protection against tidal waves caused by tsunamis. It is widely believed that the Tsunami of 2004 would have done considerably less damage were it not for the shrimp farms that lined the coast of Thailand. Shrimp farms also cause seawater to leach into nearby groundwater, ruining other crops, such as rice.

More details on the specifics of shrimp farming here.

Last week, Wal-Mart announced that they would begin selling only sustainable shrimp.

The company is requiring shrimp farms that have been ravaging the coast of Thailand to change their aquaculture practices or lose the retailer’s business. Under the company’s new rules, the shrimp farms must be certified by Global Aquaculture Alliance or Aquaculture Certification Council as being farmed in environmentally sound ways, he said.It’s no hollow gesture — Wal-Mart sells more than 50 million pounds of shrimp a year (most of it from Thailand), which is about 40 percent of all the seafood it handles, Redmond said.

Wal-Mart is also turning more toward wild, domestic shrimp, even though it’s more expensive, he said. The company has stopped selling some overfished species entirely, although he didn’t name them. - San Francisco Chronicle

As the article says - it’s no hollow gesture. This is HUGE. Not only does it mean that massive amounts of shrimp harvested via previously earth-stripping methods will have to now be harvested sustainably, it will alert millions of people to an issue they didn’t even know existed.

The conundrum is in trying to determine how much of this gesture is good conscience on the part of the retailer and how much is a publicity grab.

Because really, it costs Wal-Mart nothing to force their suppliers to make the changes. I once took a business class where my instructor had written a business plan for a small business person who made a product sold at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart dictated how many he would make, what the wholesale cost would be (less than his cost to make the item - he lost money selling to Wal-Mart) and when they were to be delivered. They controlled every single aspect of the transaction, including the right to not accept the items should the weather not co-operate (the product was a kit for a backyard skating rink).

So I can’t help but look at Wal-Mart’s great announcement as terribly self-congratulatory and a prime opportunity to self-promote. People who already shopped there have no reason to buy their shrimp elsewhere, and certainly there will be enough people with knowledge and concern over shrimp farming that they’ll attract some new customers in the process.

Is it good for the environment? Absolutely. But it’s also very, very good for Wal-Mart. And that factor had to play a really major role in the decision.

Look what I have…

All the way from India, aboard a British Airways flight. 6 whole luscious, juicy, much-coveted Alphanso mangoes.

Okay… now there’s only 5.

Quite possibly the best mangoes in the world, definitely the best in North America, available for only a few short weeks. Actually, I advise my readers not to seek these out, because once you have one, regular old supermarket mangoes will be dead to you. You’ll never be able to eat another one of those hard, yellow woody things.

We went across town yesterday with the sole purpose of bringing home a box of these babies. The flesh is dark orange, juicy and sweet. They’re smooth, melting away to the consistency of purée in the mouth. They’re so fragrant, you can smell them through box and all the paper. All are perfectly ripe.

I’ve been anti supermarket mangoes for a long time, anyway, working on the theory that while local is important, seasonal is the most important factor of all in terms of produce. So I’ve actually been waiting all winter to get my hands on one of these.

Good news for you readers in the US - while we’ve been able to get Alphansos every spring here in Canada, this year the US is finally letting some into the country. They’re irradiated, mind you, as there is the potential for them to carry disease that could wipe out US mango crops, but you folks finally have a chance to taste these gorgeous fruits.

They generally don’t make it too far out of areas with large southeast Asian populations, so most folks will need to find a local Little India to nab some Alphansos, but it’s soooo worth it if you can.

You know how you can go through life believing and trusting someone until you catch them, maybe not in an outright lie, but in a tiny fib, or an omission, and then everything after that is tainted with confusion as you try to determine just how honest they’re being?

Thus is my relationship with author Barry Glassner and his book The Gospel of Food.

Glassner attempts to debunk a variety of theories and commonly held opinions and beliefs about food and eating, and for the most part, he writes a well-thought-out argument in which he supports his claims. When it suits him. That is, he tends not to bring up any documentation that might refute his claims, which makes me question not just the issues in dispute, but everything he writes.

(more…)

I didn’t, but man, it was tough.

Something happens to my brain in May. New produce starts appearing and my brain decides it is bored with those same old apples, oranges, pears and bananas. There is “summer” fruit in the supermarkets, imported of course, and it taunts me so very much.

I almost bought a hunk of watermelon today, but thought better of it and tore myself away. I knew it must have travelled from California and was probably bland and watery and tasteless . Then I fondled peaches, some imported muskmelon and peered sceptically at strawberries. I wanted them all, just not these ones. I wanted local produce, picked at the peak of freshness and sold to me by a cheery farmer. Hey Californians - does the fruit there taste bland and nasty or is it the travelling that makes it so unappealing? I mean, if I was in Cali, this would be “local” produce.

There will be strawberries in a few weeks. Raspberries after that. Some early blueberries maybe. Then apricots, peaches, melons, oh my. But each melon must have its time, and May is not melon time. May is, unfortunately, not time for anything, but those same apples, pears and bananas.

I have no guilt in buying bananas as long as they’re Chiquita, and I justify imported Abate pears because no one grows them here. I’m lucky enough that my crappy local supermarket does carry Ontario apples, and at this time of year, local supermarket apples are actually better than ones bought at a farmer’s market (sorry, farmers) because the ones that make it to the chain stores have been stored properly over the winter, allowing them to stay crisp whereas other apples not stored in a low-oxygen facility are getting mealy and mushy and tasteless. I’ve been inside the storage rooms at the Norfolk Fruit Grower’s Association (in the link) and acres of bins of apples is truly a spectacular site.

So I will try to remain patient. Eating that peach or melon or strawberry now will detract from the sheer delight of biting into the very first of each one throughout the summer. But despite my hatred for the heat and humidity, I sure do wish summer would hurry up and get here. I need some melon like nobody’s business.

I have, in the past, said some not-very-nice things about Whole Foods. I think at one point I even tried to boycott the place. That obviously didn’t last, and while I don’t do anywhere near all of my grocery shopping there, I do hit it once a month or so for a few things I can’t find anywhere else.

Regular readers will know of my great love for fiddleheads, a Down East treat that usually doesn’t appear until mid-to-late June. A few years ago, some farmers in Ontario tried harvesting the tasty green delicacies and they seem to have taken to Ontario soil quite well. I literally made a “Squeee!!!” noise and did a little dance in the Whole Foods produce section when I saw these.

Then I turned around to find (finally!!) organic Ontario asparagus.

As fiddleheads tend to taste similar to asparagus, I tend to go for the stalks until the furls become available. And truth be told, fiddlehead season is frighteningly short. A couple of weeks, tops.

So now I have a conundrum. I bought some of each, just because I’ve been craving both for months and it means local harvest season is finally under way. But I can’t decide which to eat first. Or what to do with them. I typically cook both by steaming and then tossing with lots of garlic, butter and lemon juice. But I think the fiddleheads are going to get a sauté and then popped into an omelette for breakfast. And the asparagus can pair up with some fingerling potatoes and some beets and some vegetarian meatloaf.

Or vice versa.

Or maybe I can put either in pasta.

Or, serve either one with quinoa and some nice trout.

Too many options!

Bill Buford hurts my head. That’s really my first thought when I try to size up the book Heat, An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

He hurts my head because he may well be obsessive-compulsive, and the book is really the literary equivalent of a man obsessed, grabbing the reader by the hand and dragging them off on some wild goose chase in search of knowledge that no one cares about. Well, except Bill Buford.

I’m guessing that most people picked this book up because of Buford’s links to celebrity chef Mario Batali. Buford convinces the chef to give him what is basically an apprenticeship (Bill works for free to learn the ropes) in his flagship restaurant Babbo, and the writer documents his journey through the back of house. There are a few dirt-digging scenes to keep the Batali fans amused; one describes Batali digging through the garbage bin and pulling up celery tops and peelings, insisting they can be used for a soup; but the story is ultimately about Buford himself.

In his quest to know what Mario knows, he heads off to Italy to learn pasta-making from the woman who taught Batali. He researches everything there is to know about pasta and even tracks down someone at Italy’s Museum of Pasta to find out when egg was first used in the dough. The curator there doesn’t know, nor does the professor at the University of Bologna who is an authority on the medieval kitchen. By poring over old texts and cookbooks, Buford pinpoints the first use of egg to be in the late 17th century. But the real question is, why? Who cares?

Great portions of the book are taken up with these obsessions. When he’s done with pasta, Buford drags his poor wife not once but twice to a remote village in Tuscany so he can apprentice with an Italian butcher. Whole sections of the book are devoted to the cutting up of cows. Even the melodramatic Dante-quoting butcher doesn’t make up for the fact that a large portion of Heat is actually quite boring.

To be fair, I can’t say with complete honesty that the book is boring, because I stopped reading about halfway into the butchering chapters. It wasn’t a vegetarian squeamishness, just frustration. I honestly don’t care that the particular term for a particular cut of meat goes by a different name in different parts of Tuscany, or Italy or anywhere else in the world. I don’t care much about engine mechanics either, though, so I likely wouldn’t pick up a book on that subject unless I had been led to believe by book reviewers that it was actually interesting.

While I’m not generally one to ohh and ahh over celebrity chefs, the chapters about Batali’s life, as well as those of his mentor, Marco Pierre White, are the most interesting in the book. Even Buford’s experiences in the kitchen are an enjoyable read. Where he loses me is the obsession to recreate Batali’s education and training and the detail of those experiences. I would have enjoyed this better as two separate works, or at the very least with fewer obsessive ramblings. I don’t know whether to blame Buford himself for this or to point the finger at his editor - a good smack-down might have been exactly what Heat needed.

Ah… publicity shots.

Ramsay’s got a new season of his UK series The F-Word starting this week. And to celebrate, he carried a dead deer through the front of house at one of his restaurants, while it was full of patrons.

I’m not familiar with the restaurant sanitation by-laws in the City of London, but I’m guessing that’s really, really illegal. It certainly is here in Toronto.

I love Ramsay, but sometimes the overt displays of masculinity make me laugh. Apparently in the new season he pulls an Anthony Bourdain and has a little eating contest where he samples bull’s penis and that rotten shark dish native to Iceland. Previews also indicate the shark makes him throw up. Maybe Bourdain is more of a man after all.

I have a friend who is a music journalist. Over the years, she has become quite respected in her field and is often asked to give quotes and interviews on certain bands or music-industry-related issues. She once told me that she refuses to do any interviews for print media, and will only do radio or television, preferably live. This is not, as I had joked to her, that she thought especially highly of herself, but rather that she was frustrated with her words being used out of context in print. Radio and TV allowed her to have more control over how her comments were used. And remember, she is a print journalist herself.

Which makes me wonder if they offer a course at journalism school called “How to make your subjects look like idiots through the wonders of selective editing.” Because the Globe and Mail interview I did is up, and man, did they ever do a fantastic job at making me look like an airhead. (At least in the online version you’re all spared the scary photo that makes me look like I have no neck.)

But, just to set the record straight, here are some “corrections”…

When Sheryl Kirby’s favourite apple omelette disappeared from the menu of her usual brunch haunt, she didn’t waste time mourning.
Little bit of artist license there… Eggspectations in the Eaton Centre was never, and will never be my “usual brunch haunt”. It’s not a great restaurant. They just happened to have one dish I really liked.

…home cooks such as Ms. Kirby are swapping copycat recipes online and buying cookbooks filled with “clones” of dishes from such restaurants as Red Lobster and Olive Garden.
No… we’re not. Or I’m not, at least. That’s the point of the process - to experiment and figure out the recipe on your own. And I don’t think I’ve ever eaten at the Olive Garden, and my annual trip to Red Lobster is something that fills me with embarrassment and shame. I have no desire to eat their food at home, or to swap recipes with folks who do.

“It’s totally fun,” says Ms. Kirby, editor of TasteTO.com, whose culinary sleuthing ranges from high-end gourmet dishes, such as an amazing risotto she ate at a restaurant in San Francisco, to humble fare such as donairs.
“Cuz, like ohmygod, we went to the Galleria and the clothes were all gnarly and I was like, gag me with a spoon!” It really is a shame that they chose to cut out the twenty minutes of the interview where I talk about developing a palate to enable the differentiation of spices, or the experimentation with proportions necessary to achieve a product that is a reasonable facsimile of the original. But nope… let’s make the recipe gal sound like a ditz. Totally.

Now the jist of the piece is about a recipe book by a guy named Todd Wilbur, and most of his recipe copies are of US chain restaurant dishes. But the piece makes me look like someone who cares about recreating Subway’s sauces, or Olive Garden’s pasta, and that’s really a huge distortion of the interview I gave.

What’s worse is that it makes TasteTO look like the kind of site where recipe copying is a topic of discussion. And while I’m always happy and appreciative of the publicity, that’s not what the site is about. Even this blog is not a recipe blog, and the article is really misleading in that context.

Chalk this one up to experience, I guess. But if newspapers come calling and want to do an interview with any of you food blogger folks, be sure you know what you’re getting into beforehand, lest you find yourself made to look like a white trash valley girl with a love of Red Lobster’s cheesy buns.

I can’t remember if I’ve always had a “bionic” nose, or if it somehow developed when I started getting allergies.

For most people scent is very closely tied to memory, moreso than any of the other senses, and certain smells can mentally transport us to another place and time. Certain perfumes send me hurtling back to the first place I smelled them, or bring to mind a particular person - for instance, Oscar de la Renta always reminds me of a wedding I attended in Connecticut when I was fifteen, while Opium reminds me of my friend Alexis.

My sniffer is so strong that I can smell a perfume once and identify it by name when I smell it again months later.

This trait is not always a boon, as it regularly means that I am overwhelmed by certain scents, which can make being in close quarters with someone wearing an unpleasant perfume quite unbearable. I now have an overwhelming fear of being on airplanes - not the flying bit, I love that - but I’m terrified that I’m going to get stuck next to someone doused in perfume and no way to get away from them for hours.

One place where the heightened sense of smell does come in handy is when sampling food and wine. I am able to identify elements of beer and wine that are too subtle for others to pick out.

Yesterday, and I attended a wine event called Somewhereness, that featured 5 small independent Ontario wineries. We tried a variety of wines from each vineyard, and for each, I made my guesses based on the scents. The Riesling from Flat Rock Cellars gave me an overwhelming image of gardenias. I mentioned this and the gentleman pouring the samples looked at me oddly. “That’s right,” he said, “but no one ever gets that note.”

A blended restaurant wine from Tawse Winery astonished me. When Greg asked me what I was getting I looked up in surprise. Skunk. Skunk is what I smelled in that wine. Lest I offend the vintner, I had to explain. There’s a point, a certain distance from a skunk spray, where it actually smells good. It’s sharp and acidic, but also earthy and clean. As I was trying to explain this, another woman came up behind me and said, “I agree, that’s exactly right.”

The Chardonnay from Tawse gave me floral elements as well, and when asked what I thought it smelled like, my answer was “New Orleans”, because the wine smelled of camellias. Not the gardenias of the wine from the other winery, but light white flowers on a hot summer night.

There was also a red I tried that smelled like leather.

I’m not sure where these images come from, and I occasionally wonder if people think I’m just pulling stuff out of my ass, but in most cases, someone else goes, “oh, yeah, I get that too!” I’m not sure if they’re agreeing with me because they want to seem knowledgeable, or if they know a lot more about wine than I do (not a difficult thing, as I’m a complete novice) and that element is really there, but it’s kind of cool, whatever the case.

After all, I’ve got a nose than can tell cassia from cinnamon and tastebuds that can clearly determine Pepsi from Coke. If I smell skunk or leather in a glass of wine, odds are, that smell is there.