Author: Sheryl Kirby

Old Habits Die Hard

Ever wonder where the male dominance of professional kitchens comes from? Or why pastry is often considered a woman’s job?

Greg found and downloaded a BBC documentary called A Tudor Feast at Christmas. The show had nothing to do with the holidays other than the 2006 air date, however the premise of the piece was that a group of food historians and archaeologists took over the kitchens at Haddon Hall (a Medieval castle) and spent 3 days cooking a Tudor-style feast. They hunted and fished and prepared food as it would have been done in 1590 when the kitchen was built (it had not been used for over 300 years when the documentary was filmed), right down to the peacock pie complete with the skin and feathers of the bird arranged atop the pie so it looked as if the bird were alive. (Fans of the TV series The Tudors will recognize the technique as the same one used for the swan served to Henry VIII after the death of Anne Boelyn).

In the interviews with the historians, two points came up that intrigued me.

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Sunday Brunch – The Free Times Cafe

The Free Times Café
320 College Street
416-967-1078
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and beverages (includes coffee and juice): $52

It’s only logical that after last week’s post about blintzes, I had to find some. And since I haven’t been to the “Bella, Did You Eat?” Sunday brunch at Free Times Café in a couple of years, it seemed like an excellent time to revisit an old favourite. For some reason we had balked as the price rose to the current $19.95 per person, but having probably eaten more than that amount of blintzes, latkes and gefilte fish during our review visit, I can’t really remember why we ever thought it wasn’t a great deal.

Greeted at the door by owner Judy Perly, we’re immediately made to feel at home. Having run the Free Times since it opened almost 30 years ago, Perly remains gregarious and welcoming. Despite the fact that it’s busy, customers feel more like guests in someone’s home.

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Thinking Outside the (Heart-Shaped) Box

I kind of hate Valentine’s Day. In a world where we should all be saying “I love you” any chance we can get, or where buying a partner flowers or candy should/could be a regular occurrence, there’s just way too much pressure to fill one particular day with a year’s worth of romance and caring. And because most people are out of practice when it comes to showing others that they care about them, they fall back on “tradition” (aka. the tacky and clichéd). So while, in truth, I don’t have too much problem with a heart-shaped box of assorted chocolates (I actually like the orange creams), so much of what falls into the standard Valentine’s Day gift list (a dozen red roses, champagne, romantic dinner for two) sort of makes me retch. Or at least roll my eyes and groan – and not in a good way.

Now while I can’t help readers with the other issues aside from advising that a gift that suits the recipient’s tastes is better than a gift that is simply “traditional” (ie. buy a cool plant or a bouquet of their favourite flower instead of those tacky roses; skip the teddy bear unless the giftee is under the age of 10; and wait until Sunday and go for a lovely brunch instead of getting shafted on an overpriced V-Day dinner…), I am able to recommend some non-traditional sweets and candies that show a lot more thought and creativity than a gift picked up at the gas station.

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Watching the Clock With Martha

I’ve got to admit that I’m not a regular reader of Martha Stewart Living. I don’t buy very many “women’s” magazines at all, so this may very well be a trend that has been on the go for some time now. But yesterday I was in a magazine shop flipping through stuff and the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living was especially disturbing. A visit to the website reveals the same. Almost all of the food photographs have been taken from above. The “clock shot” has reared its ugly head.

From its very inception MSL broke new ground when it came to food photography. Stewart’s whole schtick was clean, tidy, and organized paired with rich yet classic elements. This was not only obvious in the magazine’s recipes but in the photographs of the food. MSL set the standard for many, many years in terms of how magazines styled and shot their food articles. It was the MSL photographers who turned on their macro settings and got us in there to see the crumb of a cake, the glistening crispy skin of a roast chicken, the grain of a slice of roast beef or the detail work of a spectacularly decorated cookie. “Food porn” originated in the MSL studios where they managed to make food look sexy well before anyone else ever thought of it that way.

MSL was the inspiration not only for every other food magazine, cooking show and blog that followed in its footsteps, but it made us all strive to not only become better cooks, but better food photographers.

Which is why the shot from above place setting is so disturbing.

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Where Can I Find – Blintzes

My first experience with Jewish food was at an old Spadina landmark called Switzer’s. I lived in Kensington Market, and Switzer’s (which was one of a handful of Jewish delis in downtown that survived into the 80s) was right around the corner. It was here that I discovered the wonders of latkes, smoked meat sandwiches, egg creams and my beloved blintzes.

I remember that I ordered on a guess, going only by the description and an assurance from the waitress that they were delicious. When the ricotta and cream cheese-filled crepes arrived with their side dish of blueberry sauce, I was hooked, and for the remaining years that I lived in the market, I was a regular at the Jewish restaurants in the ‘hood, from KOS to the Bagel and Free Times Cafe.

As the delis got crowded out and moved on, blintzes became harder to find downtown. They don’t show up on the menu of the average greasy spoon; they’re one of those things that requires some hunting. I’ve been having a craving recently, and this is what I uncovered.

As the last Jewish deli holdout in the Spadina area, The Free Times Cafe (320 College Street) is probably a good place to start in a search for blintzes. In addition to their Sunday brunch buffet (which includes blintzes, latkes and gefilte fish), blintzes appear on their regular menu, both alone and combined with latkes (be still my heart!).

I’ve never tried the blintzes at United Bakers Dairy Restaurant (506 Lawrence Avenue West), but they’ve gotten very postive feedback on local food forums.

The blintzes at Dunn’s (284A King Street West) are passable in a pinch, although based on a review we did of brunch, their other breakfast offering might not be up to par.

I came across some Internet buzz that Canoe (66 Wellington Street West, 54th floor)  used to serve a dessert blintz stuffed with ricotta and hazelnut, but it no longer appears on their online menu.

Sadly, that seems to be it. The now defunct Shopsy’s used to serve blintzes, and I’m pretty certain that I once, years ago, had them at Fran’s in the middle of the night, but they’re off the menu there now.

It’s kind of a pitiful list, really, and makes me sad for the loss of the many downtown delis that shaped my love of Jewish food. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Free Times, though, so a visit there for blintzes is on my to-do list in the coming weeks.

The Compassionate Carnivore

The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat
by Catherine Friend
Da Capo Press, 2008, 291 pages

I read this book over the holidays and it’s been sitting on my desk waiting for a review ever since. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk about it or discuss it, but rather that the message seems somewhat mixed and I haven’t been sure how to approach it.

Maybe I’m too much of a “seeing the world in black and white” kind of gal, because while I know that there are plenty of farmers out there who treat their animals well, who advocate for better lives and more humane slaughter methods for livestock, there’s still a part of me that can’t help thinking, “Yanno, if you really loved animals, you just wouldn’t kill them for food at all.”

This is even more difficult to parse when Compassionate Carnivore author Catherine Friend admits that she’s addicted to ready-meals and county fair pork on a stick. Yes, she and her partner raise sheep in an ethical and humane way, keeping to organic and sustainable principles as much as possible, but her own eating habits are less than stellar and certainly don’t put her in a position to preach to anyone else.

Therefore, I tried to concentrate on reading the book as an account of life on a farm, similar in context to the book Sylvia’s Farm or the blog Farmgirl Fare. And from that point of view, The Compassionate Carnivore scores well with plenty of stories of how Friend and her partner deal with all the issues of sheep-rearing from birth to slaughter.

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Starting a Baking Business – It’s Not a Cakewalk

At least once a week we receive email here at TasteTO from someone wanting us to cover some small local food business. The majority of these appear to be bakery-type businesses selling cupcakes, cookies or custom-made cakes. The emails are often referrals from friends or customers, and sometimes come in the form of professionally-written press releases from the business owners themselves.

As we’re always looking to support local independent food artisans, we always check out these leads, and often find professionally-designed websites, gorgeous photos of even more beautiful products, and what appears to be really skillful bakers and artisans wanting to take their hobby to the next level. Unfortunately what we also almost always find is that these businesses are operating illegally out of a home kitchen.

That’s right, I said “illegally”. People who make food at home and sell it to the public are breaking the law, because it is completely and utterly illegal to sell food to the public that has been prepared in a home kitchen.

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Where Can I Find – Huitlacoche?

For all of our multi-cultural pride, Toronto has a really small Mexican community, and finding authentic Mexican ingredients, despite improvements over the past couple of years, can still be tough. And while fresh tortillas, or quesa fresca can now be found relatively easily, that Mexican delicacy huitlacoche is still hard to track down.

Huitlacoche (kweet-lah-KOH-chay), the Aztec term for “raven’s excrement” is also known as corn smut or Mexican truffle, and is a black fungus that infects individual kernels of corn. The result is a blackish grey, mushroom-like fungus that is cooked up with the fresh kernels and served as a filling for tortillas, tamales and crepes and as an ingredient in soups.

In Canada and the US, corn smut is considered a disease, and as our culture tends to find foods that have gone bad or become infected to be inedible, farmers work diligently to ensure that their crops do not become infected with this fungus because it makes their product unusable for its intended purpose.

In Mexico, the story is much different and crops there are often intentionally infected specifically to create corn smut for human consumption.

Tracking down the stuff as an ingredient was less of a wild goose chase than I figured it would be, but that’s in part because the options are pretty limited. As both Canada and the US work diligently to keep out products that are tainted and could potentially pass on infection to existing crops, fresh huitlacoche is almost unheard of at any time of the year. Despite many chefs singing its praises as a gourmet ingredient,  to obtain it fresh would normally require smuggling it in illegally – although last summer’s rainy weather caused it to occur on corn crops here in Ontario and a few local chefs managed to get some to work with.

Canned versions can be found at a few Latin American groceries in Toronto, however, and Perola’s Supermarket (247 Augusta Avenue) would be my recommended first stop. If they’re out, check the Latin America Emporium (243 Augusta Avenue) a couple of doors down.

When it comes to restaurants serving huitlacoche, the only place I could confirm was El Trompo (277 Augusta Avenue) where they offer it as a filling for their corn quezadilla, although it’s possible it shows up occasionally at places like Rebezos (126 Rogers Road).

It’s not, to be fair, something that is in great demand, and while hardcore fans of Mexican food seem to love it, the account of the canned product on the popular blog Steve, Don’t Eat It! doesn’t make it seem especially appealing. Mind you, I’ve eaten tripe, headcheese and bull’s testicles, so to each their own.

Photo by Stu Spivack.

There Probably Is No Bus, Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy the Ride

I was gleeful at the news yesterday that the TTC had approved the atheist bus ads that have been running in the UK. And then less impressed by the response from both the media and the public.

How is it that when a Christian organization runs an ad on a bus, we’re all supposed to accept it as their right to free speech, yet when an ad runs supporting another belief system, it’s “disgusting”? The TTC has stated that it would be illegal for them to refuse the ads but added a caveat that they would consider removing them “if there are complaints”. And how long will it take before complaints are filed?

The group behind the ads, the Freethought Association of Canada, simply wants to open a dialogue, yet so many people have already come out with small-minded comments that preclude any kind of conversation.

Which, from a personal standpoint, is part of why I became an atheist in the first place. Because most organized religions seem unable to accept differing points of view, and have been brainwashed taught into thinking that only their version is the right one, that only the people who follow their doctrine will make it to the afterlife – without even knowing if an afterlife exists. They can’t all be right, can they? The logical conclusion then (and note I’m stressing the word logical here) is that the probably isn’t a God. And yet – the world hasn’t stopped spinning. Imagine that.