Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

So in the great “eat local” debate, what if it all came down to taste?

Ed Levine posts a really interesting piece today on Serious Eats debating the ethics of eating local over taste.

What if your local produce is actually crap? What if the stuff from waaaaaay across the continent tastes better than the stuff within that stupid 100-mile radius?

Almost every person espousing the 100-mile diet admits to at least one caveat (usually coffee), but local doesn’t always equal better in terms of flavour. What if we’re all missing out by rejecting the imported stuff?

Now, in most cases, local produce is still going to taste better because stuff loses flavour in transit - but what about the things that don’t?

At almost every local/slow/seasonal food event I’ve been to, I’ve been served prosciutto from a producer in the Niagara region. Personally I find his meat lacking in flavour and overly salty. Should I buy what I consider to be an inferior product to support a local producer, or should I direct my money to the folks in St. Lawrence Market who import a far superior ham from Italy?

(That goes for other stuff too, btw. My local health food store carries organic dish soap made in Toronto and stuff from Belgium. Even though it has to be shipped across an ocean, I buy the stuff from Belgium, because the local stuff sucks.)

Says Levine, “So I still pledge allegiance to Waters, localism, slow food, and sustainable agriculture, while at the same time recognizing that sometimes things just taste better grown in one region rather than another.”

It comes down to a question of hedonism. What’s the most important factor when it comes to eating - the “moral” issue of supporting local producers or the hedonistic self-interest of eating something that tastes good?

And if we choose morals, how much are we willing to give up to support the cause when even the 100-mile dieters can’t be parted from their coffee?

So another Summerlicious event has come and gone. I continue to be underwhelmed. This bi-annual event where Toronto restaurants offer a super-cheap prix fixe meal continues to deserve its bad rap - both in regards to cheapo customers and craptacular service.

I only did two restaurants this year, figuring it was all I could handle. Our experience at Starfish, a local oyster joint, would have gone perfectly had it not been for the service at the table next to us.

Our regular waiter was obviously one of those rare lifelong professionals and the service we received from him was exemplary. Even though we were there for the cheap lunch, he was perfect. Not so the gal who was assisting him when things got busy.

One of the appetizers was a plate of raw oysters - four oysters and two scallops to be specific. It came with lemon, horseradish and some nasty seafood sauce type thing. It was probably made in-house, but it was too reminiscent of the stuff people serve at holiday parties with a defrosted shrimp ring.

I’m a naked oyster kind of girl myself, but I know some people find them more palatable with stuff piled on them. Like the girl at the next table who asked for Tabasco sauce.

“Sure, if you want to ruin them!” was the server’s reply. The whole table looked shocked. Greg and I sat at the next table with mouths agape. The cheeky server girl tried to explain that Tabasco shouldn’t be used, that the customer should really start with lemon and see if she liked them that way.

Of course, the customer didn’t have the nerve to tell the girl off, and she was out of earshot from me at that point or I’d have pointed out that if they didn’t want people to “ruin” the oysters, perhaps they should stop serving them with piles of crap like seafood sauce.

I don’t know if she was just trying to be cutely sarcastic or just bitchy, but her reaction ruined the meal for a good half dozen people. People who likely won’t come back and order food off the regular menu at full price, lest they be accosted by a bitchy waitress who mocks their choice of condiments.

So how does a gal who only drinks dark beers and eschews meat end up at a BBQ hosted by a brewery that makes nothing but pilsner?

I still haven’t figured it out, but on Monday I joined Greg, and we trekked down to the Steam Whistle Brewery for a BBQ. Not just any BBQ, mind you, but the work of Team Cedar Grilling, currently the Reigning Canadian BBQ Champions. They are using Steam Whistle Pilsner in a number of their sauce recipes and the day was meant to feature some of their creations.

We started out with the Cedar-Plank Shrimp with Asiago Gratin. Served straight off the plank with a squeeze of lemon, this was the only dish I’d have eaten at home.

I live in an apartment, without a balcony, and while I eat meat at tastings for my job as a food writer, I eat only vegetarian or pescetarian at home. So the rest of the meal was all stuff I’d never normally eat. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t tasty, though.

Next up was the Parrot Sticks with Steam Whistle Chicken Sauce, served on skewers and looking very disturbing. The wings were huge and really did look like they were from a parrot. So delicious, though, with that tangy sauce.

Then… ribs. So many ribs. It was a Monday and the lunch started at 11am, so it ended up being rather poorly attended. At one point we were all filling our plates with some of the salads that had been set out and one of the chefs came over and asked us to stop. They had cooked food for about double the number of people that were there, so we all ate lots and lots of ribs.

I haven’t had spare ribs in years and I doubt I’ll ever have ones as good as that again. This particular sauce recipe, which also uses Steam Whistle Pilsner, has won awards across the country.

Then, Bolivar Beans, aka beans with pork. Apparently this recipe is in some upcoming competitions so the full ingredient list is a secret.

The finale, which took 18 hours of preparation, was a pulled pork sandwich. Sooo good, but I couldn’t finish it. I was full of porkosity, and with a couple of pilsners in there as well (perfect in the summer sun with some BBQed grub, despite my preference for stouts), I could barely roll across the street and past the CN Tower to get home.

I’m still desperately trying to get back on a mostly vegetarian diet, so it’s doubtful I’ll ever eat that much meat in one sitting again, but I get why people like to eat the little pigs. They taste good. Especially covered in beer-based sauce.

Recipes for the Parrot Sticks, Cedar-Planked Shrimp, Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Ribs are available on the Team Cedar website.

So it’s one of those weekends in Toronto that is completely packed with stuff to do. No matter what your interest, there’s something going on. There’s the Outdoor Art Festival, the Indy car race (if you can stand the noise), AfroFest, the Corso Italia Festival, Scarborough Taste/Taste of Lawrence and the Asian Night market waaay out in the burbs, and part of Yonge Street is blocked off for the Live Earth concert event.

We hit the Art Fest yesterday, and as much as we’d love to do the Night Market, the long travel distance minus a car and the eleventy-gazillion people sure to set off my agoraphobia made those a pass. And the Indy just makes the windows shake. So we set out today to check out the eco-fest, AfroFest and the Corso Italia street festival.

They were showing the Live Earth concert on the screen at Yonge-Dundas Square and blocked off Yonge Street to allow vendors. There were various eco groups and businesses hawking everything from green roofs to worm bins, but we went mostly based on the advertised organic food. One booth! One booth with soy-based burger and rib thingies.

Not finding a reasonable facsimile for lunch, we headed to Queen’s Park, hoping there would be better options at AfroFest. And were there ever.

I had never been to this event before, despite the fact that it has been around for 19 years. A lot of the food vendors were still setting up when we arrived, but the choices were overwhelming. Ethiopian, Senegalese, Jamaican, Guyanese, Kenyan and oddly, a couple of fajita stands.

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The holiday was marred by mass homicides throughout the city. Victims were known to travel in groups, usually in green plastic baskets. These particular victims were last seen alive at the Liberty Village Farmer’s Market at approximately 10:35am where witnesses saw them leave the vicinity in the company of a red-headed woman dressed in black and wearing cat’s eye glasses who mumbled to them about pie.

Crime scene specialists have traced splatter patterns which indicate the use of a specially-designed weapon commonly known as a cherry-pitter. This device forces through the flesh removing the victim’s organs in one fell swoop.

This was no amateur spree, but a pre-conceived mass murder by a professional killer. Officials fear a “Jack the Ripper” type maniac may be on the loose, and have grave concerns about copy-cat killings, but warn the public against approaching anyone carrying baskets of cherries as they may be armed and dangerous.

The suspect is widely known as the “Pie Lady”, although she reportedly has a fondness for cake, cookies and fudge as well. She appears to have been concerned about time while committing her most recent rash of murders as she did not follow her usual modus operandi of placing her victim’s bodies between two sheets of pastry, but rather tossed them haphazardly into a shallow grave where their remains were combined with those of raspberries and strawberries. The suspect attempted to cover the carcasses with a layer of softly whipped cream.

Police fear the suspect maybe be holding additional victims hostage with plans to murder them at a later date.

Members of the public are being asked to contact 51 Division if they witness any further stone fruit carnage or if they have any additional information about the Pie Lady or her victims.