how many times, as a teenager, did i eat at pizza pizza?
it is not even possible to count.
I am on so many foodie listservs that I've decided to start collating the interesting posts and links that come through my mailbox. Here's a couple of items I looked at this week:
Fishphone -- old news, I know, but worth posting. You text the word "fish" to 30644 with the name of the fish you are about to order and the Blue Ocean Institute will text you back that fish's sustainability information.
Raw Milk -- amazing article at Harper's about the raw milk debate.
Jenny Fremont, a graduate student on one of my academic listservs has a food blog going called Daily Prandium.
The words St. Lawrence Market and the word "cheese" are pretty much intertwined for me. Actually, the words "food" and "cheese" are pretty much the same thing for me, the way that "meat" and "pig" are the same word in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Years ago you could only buy cheese at the South Market, at the amazing store in the back of the main floor. There must be hundreds of cheeses stuffed into this tiny space, sitting in the refrigerator. I've literally spent *hours* shopping for cheese in the South Market, talking to the merchants and sampling the wares. Seriously.
Check out Le Rustique camembert, above: an awesome Normandy cheese.
King of Cheeses: Parmigiano Reggiano
Okay, I'm as chauvinist as the next expatriate Canadian, but even I have to admit: if the Canadian brie isn't artisanal, don't buy it. St. Andre, on the other hand: stock up.
What's changed since I've left Toronto is that you can now get really good cheese in the North - farmer's - market. I mean, you could always get cheese curds - for your poutine, naturally - but now you can get these amazing raw milk artisanal cheeses. These are all from this sheep's milk dairy called Best Baa that sells their cheeses under the Ewenity label. Best Baa is in Fergus, Ontario, a small farming town where my friend Martha and I spent many happy childhood hours....
brebette cheese
this cheese isn't listed on their site but it's a triple cream that's rolled in
herbs and then allowed to age and mold. stunning and herbal. I thought of pairing this with champagne .
Finally, this cheese blew my mind. It's called Violet Hill and it's an ash-covered sheep's milk cheese made at Milky Way Dairy.
St. Lawrence market, in Toronto, is right next to where I used to take ballet classes when I was little. I spent a lot of Saturdays going to class and then going shopping for groceries with my mother.
A million years later and thousands of miles away I still miss it, almost as much as I miss the city itself. I always go visit St. Lawrence market when I'm home. There are actually two markets - North and South - that make up the larger one. The North market has fresh produce and artisanal foods, while the South has meat, cheese, spices, and peameal bacon sandwiches (more on that later).
These pictures are from the North market, where we always go first, because you want to catch the produce before it all disappears. I got some great pictures of some foods that I really miss; I'm going to post some South market pictures soon.
It's fiddlehead season! I like the way the Japanese serve fiddleheads - lightly steamed with a sesame sauce
Candy apples! I ask you: why is it impossible to buy candy apples in the States? These used to cost 25 cents outside Huron Public School.
Homemade cinnamon buns, no nasty white icing. a homemade apple-rhubarb pie
Pie! Pie everywhere! Now I know where I got my love of pies....
I bought a quality digital camera! That's not it, above, that's me at Swatow restaurant in Toronto, using the excellent point and click that we've been using for the last two years. I'm about to retire it to family use only - I found a great deal on a Canon Digital Rebel XTi body. Now for the lenses: I'm looking for a good macro lens to do better food photography and I'm hearing the following advice: either buy the Canon 100mm with a 2.8 aperture (I think) or buy a common lens with a macro filter. What do you think? I'm taking any advice I can get.
What I'm definitely getting is a tabletop tripod. I am so over motion blur!
Deep Fried Duck with Special Sauce
These are some pics from the seven days we've spent eating our way through Toronto. Yesterday we ate at Swatow on Spadina, my cousin R.'s favorite Cantonese restaurant. I'm going to make a bold call here: I've been living in California for ten years now and except for Din Tai Fung in Los Angeles, I have yet to eat Chinese food in California that's as good as the Chinese food I've eaten in Toronto. Is it because I'm particularly used to Cantonese food or some specific ethnic Chinese flavor palate? Is it because I'm nostalgic? I don't know. I just know that Chinese food is better in Toronto than any other Chinese food I've ever had, anywhere else.
Lobster... oh, glory.
The price of lobster is now double what it was when I left. A gazillion years ago it was $16.99 for a double order of lobster. Now: $35! But worth it, totally.
mystery greens, possibly watercress?
Is this watercress? My mother ordered this dish and I can't remember what it was. It's here to affirm that at least once this weekend I abandoned fat and meat and ate a vegetable.
Spicy Shrimp and Eggplant
Best dish of the night: shrimp and spicy eggplant. Crazy good. More on St. Lawrence market, including about a thousand pictures of cheese, tomorrow.
I'm home visiting family in Toronto and, this being my family, we've been running around town eating. A sandwich here, appetizers at the bar there, goat roti at my aunt's, lamb at my other aunt's. Lunch at my grandmother's and the farmer's market tomorrow. Phew. I'm stuffed.
Here are a few shots from a few meals and other experiences.... Above is a shot of Holt Renfrew Cafe. (Holt's is the Canadian equivalent of Neiman Marcus.) We had a really great pineapple Tarte Tatin with vanilla ice cream and pots of Mariage Freres green tea. One thing about the Holt's Cafe is that three times a week they fly their bread in from Poilane bakery in Paris. Swank as that may be, I know that's one thing you'd never see in San Francisco. There would be major protests about carbon footprint. But the Tarte Tatin, not that they grow pineapples in Toronto, was excellent. My mother is stealing the idea for her restaurant.
We stopped in at the Illy Caffe earlier in the day while shopping for some new camera equipment. Toronto isn't in the throes of the Third Wave coffee revolution right but given that we have one of the biggest expatriate Italian populations on the continent, we've always been able to get great unfussy espresso drinks, long before Starbucks McMerded the espresso.
I know that this picture is over-exposed but I'm waiting for my new camera (Canon Digital Rebel!) and the lighting was not very good. This is a plate of cheeses from Splendido, one of my favorite restaurants in Toronto. I have a lot of good memories from Splendido - last night, sitting with my mother and aunt at the bar is now definitely one of them. Two Old Fashioneds, a plate of duck prosciutto and foie gras, something other appetizer I can't remember and a cheese plate with madeira and the rest is fuzzy. Above you will see the cheese board from which we chose our plates. In clockwise order from top left: Valdeon, a Spanish blue that only gets better topped with unpasteurized Ontario honey; Beemster X.O. from Holland - a double aged Gouda; Le Grand Manitou (third-down on the page), a washed-rind Quebecois cheese of mixed pasteurized goat, sheep and cow's milk; Riopelle (again, third from the top), an aged triple cream raw milk cheese; bottom right is Filou, a raw-milk cheese with a layer of ash running through the middle; cant remember this one, sounds like guignol or leguignol or something like that; and finally last on the left is an Okanagan blue.
Today was a completely lazy day in which T. and I drove down the peninsula to buy some outdoor furniture. Next planned purchase is a barbecue, now that the weather is warm enough to eat outside pretty consistently.
Not quite on a whim, I decided to make a pot of something that would last us at least halfway into the week, because since I've been running up to the city consistently I've been horrible about packing lunches instead of spending on the ten million yummy things one can spend money on in SF.
I decided on lentil dal, not only because it's one of the easiest things you could ever make but because on Saturday I went to hear this dynamic duo* give a talk about their new book at the Asian Art Museum, along with this totally inspiring food writer. At one point in the talk, Naomi described how if it's 6:30 at night and there's nothing to eat she or Jeff will often make a quick pot of dal for the family. And I thought: I haven't made dal in a million years.
That and a pleasant hour dawdling at Haig's (the weird postcolonial store on Clement St. where you can buy Lucozade and other yummies) with The Pegster later that afternoon sealed the deal. I came home with a jar of Patak's (cheating, I know!), some yellow split peas, fresh ginger and garlic. (Also: noodles and tofu for T. and half a duck plus some gi-normous har gow for me and Lizzy, which is already polished off.)
A quick recipe for a busy week:
6 cups of water (but keep a kettle boiling with a few more cups on the side, in case the water goes too quickly) 2 cups of yellow split peas cumin seeds, roasted and ground coriander seeds 1 knob of ginger, about four inches long and peeled 8 cloves of garlic four small onions, sliced into bite-sized pieces - I like cutting them into half circles 6 tablespoon or so of Patak's curry - I like the madras blend canola oil
Boil the water and add the two cups of split peas. Lower to a simmer and leave, stirring occasionally until lentils are soft. Add more water if the lentils get too dry. When the lentils are soft, drain them and put them aside. Roast one tablespoon of cumin seeds in a stovetop pan and, when you begin to smell them cumin aroma, put them in a spice grinder with another tablespoon of the coriander seeds and grind both until fine. Put the ginger and garlic into a separate small blender or food processor and pulse until somewhat coarsely chopped. Add the ground coriander and cumin and pulse again until the spices, ginger and garlic are combined and seem finely chopped. Heat about 6 tablespoons of canola oil until it is shimmering and add the onions. Cook onions until they have just become transparent (but really just barely transparent so that they retain some of their natural sweetness). Add the garlic-ginger-spice mixture to the onions. Fry for a few minutes, stirring constantly and then add the Patak's curry sauce. Lower the heat slightly and stir for a few more minutes. Add the lentils, stirring until the lentils and spices are completely mixed. Serve on rice.
(Cheat note: I added about 3/4 of a cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice to the mix because I like my curries sweet, but you don't have to.)
By the way, check out what we found in the farmer's market today: arugula rabe. Have you ever had that before? What would you do with it?
Have I ever mentioned that I dislike, I mean, reallydislike, hummus? The reason this comes up - and usually I wouldn't blog about what I dislike but rather only avoid it - is that it's Passover and I've been racking my brain to find things that go on matzoh. What goes on matzoh? Dips, that's what.
Maybe I should amend that first statement: I dislike most hummus(es?), especially the North American variations. I'll pass on a hint that my aunt M., who lived in Israel for a decade, passed on to me: in Israel they soak the chickpeas until the skins come off and then they grind them up with tons of tahini and lemon and garlic to make a much smoother paste. I like that hummus, especially when it foregrounds the astringent bite of sesame paste with the tang of lemon that most Middle-Eastern palates prefer. But the tragic gritty stuff we've inherited from the aesthetically depressed spirit of sixties hippy vegetarianism is not something I'll ever inflict on anybody I care about, i.e., me.
Good news though: I've found this Israeli brand that is pretty bearable: Sabra. Check it out. I'm going to start mixing in a little lemon juice and adding some harissa or hot sauce on top to make it even more authentic. Other things Middle Eastern that I think go with matzoh are chopped salads.
chopped salad, before
I made a hybrid Greek-Moroccan version last night with leftover feta and preserved lemons that I bought at Rainbow Grocery. T. and I threw back two huge bowls each because we've been eating frozen and takeout foods for the last two weeks while I've been fighting this awful cold and I think we're craving fresh vegetables.
Chopped Salad, with variations
1.5 lbs tomatoes, diced 3 cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced (actually, I'm okay with seeds but a chacun son gout) 4 preserved lemons the heart and yellow tender stems of a bunch of celery, including the leaves feta (if you want) parsley (curly or flat, whatever) 2 or 3 belgian endives, outer leaves removed, inner leaves and core diced calamata olives, pitted and coarsely chopped olive oil, to taste lemon(s) touch of kosher salt, deending on the saltiness of the preserved lemons
Any and all of the above amounts can be altered according to taste. Wash, chop, combine, serve.
Happy Passover! I think the JibJab guys pretty much sum it up here:
I've been such a bad blogger! Sorry about this; between family trips, conferences, and just recently, a serious cold, I've hardly been doing any writing at all.
It might be a good aesthetic experiment to see what I could come up with, though, given the fogginess in my head. Maybe some sort of acetominophen-fueled stream of consciousness. In the meantime, I'm going to leave you with a recipe for my favorite cold remedy, via my grandmother.
Ginger-Lemon Tea
One three-inch knob of ginger 16 oz of water one lemon 3 tbsp of honey rum, to taste
-- Slice the ginger any which way but not too thick; put it in a pot with the water; bring to a boil; lower the heat and allow to simmer for about seven minutes; strain the mixture into a cup reserving the ginger for another use; squeeze a lemon into it; sweeten with gobs of honey; add a shot of rum if it's night time or if you don't have to drive. Get better.
Last course at T's birthday dinner was a lemon-lime cream tart adapted from Jamie Oliver. Tarts are a new thing with me; I've usually made pies, especially because I like to make latticework crust.* But lately I've started to fall in love with the elegance of a good tart shell. Anyway, my pie shells are not that picturesque yet.
The tart turned out really well, not least because I mixed up the lemon-lime juice mixture to be about equal parts Meyer lemon and key lime. And I used a LOT of Meyer lemon zest. By the time I served dessert I was three sheets to the wind so I can't even remember if I ever brought out the topping, but there was also some lovely organic whipped cream to go with it all.
Jamie Oliver really knows how to teach and it comes out in his recipes. Here's a good example: he says to put the blind-baked tart shell on the oven rack and then pour in the lemon-lime mixture into it before baking to avoid spillage. So obvious, but who thinks to do that?
By the way, have you seen his new Jamie At Home series? With the most to die for English farmhouse and garden you've ever seen? Awesome. He even cooks on this old wood-burning stove. Be still my nineteenth-century heart!
Ingredients
1 12-inch tart shell, blind baked 1 1/2 cups of sugar 8 large eggs 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream 4 tablespoons or so of lemon zest, preferably Meyer, and preferably organic 1 1/2 cup of lime juice 1/2 cup of lemon juice [or, increase the lemon juice and decrease the lime if you have Meyer lemons)
Preheat oven to 350. Whisk sugar and eggs together; add cream, zest and juice. When the oven is ready, put the tart shell in the oven, on the middle rack. Pour custard mixture in. Bake for 40-45 or until the middle of the tart is still jiggly when you move the tin. It will finish cooking as it cools.
I had some leftover custard because I used a 9-inch tart shell instead of a 12-inch, so I poured the custard into 4 ramekins and baked them in a bain-marie at 350 for about 35 minutes. We shared them with our neighbours.
T.'s bday was a roaring success and culminated in a house party that lasted almost twenty hours. Completely fun.
Dinner went well too, or so they tell me: all I can remember is that the asparagus and pea risotto (no pictures, unfortunately) took twice as long as Jamie Oliver told me it would so everyone had to wait for the second course. No worries: they were busy with the first, white bean puree.
As it turns out white bean puree is super easy to make: take whatever amount of canellini beans - I used about four tins - cover them with vegetable or chicken stock. Add peeled garlic cloves to taste and boil the mixture until the beans are soft and mash up easily when you press one between your fingers.
Drain the beans, rinsing them with cold water. Put the beans in a food processor and pulse until they are roughly pureed but not entirely smooth. Add some very green olive oil to the puree. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pulse again until the puree is entirely smooth.
At the last minute I got worried that the whole thing was a bit flavorless. I decided to make a confit of garlic cloves by covering peeled garlic with olive oil in a small cast iron pan and putting it under the broiler for about 30 minutes, or until the were golden brown and juicy to the bite. I topped the whole thing with oil from the garlic confit and garnished with the golden garlic cloves and some sea salt. A dash of ras el hanout and sprigs of rosemary from the bush outside our front door added a bit of perfume. Some toasted olive bread and we had a first course.
For me the best part of the evening was using our wedding china, finally. Doesn't it look pretty?
yes i know it's blatantly ripped off but i couldn't think of a better way to illustrate cans
Right, so T.'s birthday dinner is this weekend and I'm starting to get the early stuff done. Here's the menu:
A white bean puree and flatbread Risotto with roasted asparagus, fresh asparagus and smoked mozzarella Salad Lychee and rosewater sorbet with Meyer lemon tart Quince ratafia
I started preparing the sorbet this afternoon, during a bout of impatience with my fourth chapter. There used to be this gourmet store in the Rosedale neighborhood in Toronto - I forget the name of it, it belonged to some really posh caterer, David something - and they served homemade sorbets. I had this flavour with my father one day, rosewater and lychee, and I never forgot it. Years later I found a recipe in Arabella Boxer's London Sunday Times Cookbook that made the same sorbet but with whipped egg whites.*
I'm not blessed with a great memory except when it comes to flavours and mouthfeel. I've never been able to get this sorbet out of my head. I made it today in about five minutes flat and I'm looking forward to seeing how it interacts with the lemon tart.
instant pleasure
Ingredients 2 tins of peeled lychees in heavy syrup 3 tbsp of rose water, or less according to taste
Puree everything in a food processor until the mixture is only minimally chunky or not chunky at all. Do it in two batches if necessary. Process the mixture in an ice cream maker according to instructions. Freeze until hard. Serve.
Voila! I love it when this stuff is easy. More to come on the rest of the menu....
* - Must ask David Lebovitz: is that normal or common to make sorbet with egg whites? Sounds kind of old school.
Years and years ago when I got into food culture and writing, a big part of my interest came out of my commitment to feminism; I was interested in cooking and recipe writing as women's cultural production. These days I am much more sophisticated in my feminism - it's not just about the woman thing - and anyway it's obvious that cooking doesn't belong to women only.
But while, as a working feminist, I've outgrown the Gen-X wounded pessimism and defensiveness about identity politics that seems so common among my peers, my initial, admittedly sentimental, investment in cooking as women's art has returned to me. I like cooking because it is something that usually happens in female spaces, because it is a global art and a material sign of everyday human ingenuity. I admire the women who came before me, who turned a devalued skill into a fine way to make a living.
As today is International Women's Day, I'd like to note a few women who have shaped today's food culture, to whom I feel that I owe a great debt.
The inimitable, the only, Alice B. Toklas
Vertamae Grosvenor, of Geechee Girl Fame
Julia, natch
Catharine Beecher, arguably a mother of Home Economics
Elizabeth David, who birthed food writing as literature
MFK Fisher, also a literary doyenne
Claudia Roden, anthropologist of diasporic Jewish culture
Edna Lewis, historian of Southern Cuisine
Maria Parloa, sadly forgotten but a great 19th century food writer
It is a truth universally acknowledged that bad moods can be cured by pasta with lots of cheese. And man, yesterday I had a bad mood to put behind me.
I decided to treat us to big plates of pasta. We don't eat very much pasta now that we have to buy all of our cooking and drinking water. I really wanted a pasta al forno which would be nice and gooey and settle down into our guts like a rock. Plus we need to start using up the canned tomatoes before the spring batch comes in.
Ingredients
Just over 1 lb of Rigatoni or other dried pasta
UPDATED: 1/2 SMALL BAG OF FROZEN PEAS OR 3.5 CUPS OF FRESH PEAS 1/2 pint of tomato sauce 15 oz of ricotta (not low fat! what is this, the eighties?) 2/3 lb of parmesan, grated
Boil pasta in a large pot of salty water. In a large bowl combine 1/2 of the grated parmesan with the ricotta and tomato sauce. Preheat the oven to 400. [UPDATED: AT THE HALF WAY BOILING POINT ADD ONE HALF BAG OF FROZEN PEAS. ALTERNATELY, JUST BEFORE REMOVING THE PASTA ADD 3 AND A HALF CUPS OF FRESH PEAS.] When the pasta is still a few minutes from being al dente - this is really important: the pasta has to be undercooked because it will be baked for another half an hour - drain it and rinse it in cold water. Stir the pasta [AND PEAS] into the tomato-cheese sauce until it is fully mixed. Pour the mixture into a rectangular baking dish, either 9 by 12 inches or 8 by 13 inches. Top with the remaining parmesan and bake for twenty minutes.
I am a writer and a cook. I did my PhD in literature and history at Stanford. I've written about culture and arts for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Globe and Mail and many other publications.
