Category: food

Toronto Taste 2009 – Good Eats in Pictures

Fabulous whitefish sandwiches from Epic at the Royal York.

We came, we saw, we ate.

Second Harvest’s Toronto Taste fundraising event was, by our observation, a resounding success. Spread out over Cumberland Street and the Village of Yorkville Park, over 30 of Toronto’s top restaurants, as well as a number of wineries and breweries, offered samples of their finest fare. While tickets were $225 a pop, attendees were offered unlimited food and drink, plus the opportunity to rub shoulders with some celebrity chefs including Michael Smith and Mark McEwan (anyone who lingered too long at the One booth could also have earned themselves a cameo in an upcoming episode of McEwan’s TV show The Heat), not to mention event host and TV personality Carlo Rota. It was wonderful to see attendees dressing up (I was tempted to start snapping photos of cute outfits as well as the luscious food) and even a little bit of rain didn’t put chefs or guests off their game.

Here is a collection of pics taken by Greg and I throughout the evening. There wasn’t a lot of signage or a list of who was serving what, so some of the food porn doesn’t have a chef or restaurant attached to it. Apologies in advance to the chefs who I haven’t been able to match to their food. If you were there and can identify the chef/restaurant of the mystery dishes, please let me know.

Finally, thanks to the organizers for such a fabulous event, to all the chefs and restaurants who made it a true feast for the senses and to the many, many volunteers who went out of their way to ensure that guests had forks and napkins and clean plates. Congratulations to you all – truly a job well done!

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Blood, Sweat and Takeaways – The Other Side of Local

This weekend marks the opening of Food. Inc, a film about the food industry in North America. Early reviews describe it as shocking and life-changing, revealing aspects of food production that most people are blissfully unaware of.

We are encouraged to know where our food comes from, and mostly that means local food. Know your farmer; know what’s in season; eat organic, sustainably produced food. And be willing to pay for it.

But as much as we can all sing local until the cows come home, much of the western world still relies on majority world countries to supply our foodstuffs. And we want it cheap.

The BBC 3 series Blood, Sweat and Takeaways, which ran over the past four weeks, followed 6 young British people (who were all accustomed to eating cheap junk food) as they travelled across southeast Asia, working in factories and rice fields to find out the human cost of their cheap food.

The 6 Brits try their hands working at a tuna factory in Indonesia cleaning and gutting fish; a prawn farm (where they spend their days rebuilding a mud levee to keep the prawns from being washed away in a storm); and a prawn factory where some of them are fired for not working fast enough. During the first two episodes they stay in the homes of  factory workers, and are appalled by the living conditions and outdoor toilets. They can never keep up with the local workers and are often embarrassed when a job they’ve been assigned has to be assisted or redone by locals.

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Sunday Brunch – Bonjour Brioche

Bonjour Brioche
812 Queen Street East
416-406-1250
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $25 (cash only)

People seem to either love or hate Bonjour Brioche. I regularly come across raves about their exquisite pastries and breads, but the service, and the line-up on weekends, can be a sticking point. In fact, in order to ensure we’d get a table to do this review, we actually visited on a Friday. Even then, by noon the place, including the patio, had filled up.

I suspect that a big part of Bonjour Brioche’s charm is that it’s so charming. Mixed furniture, pretty blue cotton tablecloths and tchotchkes mix well with display cases of tarts and cakes and baskets of bread, brioche and flaky croissants.

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The Many Flavours of Riverside

Greg tells many great stories of the time he lived at Queen and Broadview in the late 80s, upstairs from one of the guys from  Skinny Puppy. Those stories almost always come back to the fact that there was a dearth of restaurants in the area back then, and save for but a few greasy spoons, you pretty much had to leave the neighbourhood to find a decent place to eat.

What a difference a couple of decades makes, with the recently-named Riverside District having become a magnet for young families, boutiques and galleries as well as hip restaurants, cafes and food shops. A stroll along Queen Street East from the Don River over to Carlaw offers up any number of great places to eat and shop for food. And let’s not forget the coffee.

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Almond Joy

Ever since I attended the All About Almonds event back in November, I’ve found myself addicted to the things. That’s partly because they sent us home with pounds of almonds in various forms, and I’ve been eating them for months, but one item in the swag bag  – a package of cinnamon-sugared almonds – intrigued me enough that I’ve been making my own for a while now, working with various ratios and spices to get the perfect addictive product.

There are many different processes for candying nuts. Some recipes called for whipped egg white (which create almost a meringue coating), others instruct cooks to remove the nuts from the boiling sugar and water solution with a slotted spoon and roll in spices and more sugar before toasting, while others still require letting the sugar brown and caramelize. Every method creates a different type of candy coating and once you get spices in there, the options are even more vast.

This final one might just be the keeper, though, as the flavours really seemed to work nicely and the coating has a good texture.

We love these as a snack to replace regular candy or cookies, and almonds are so healthy that we can almost feel virtuous about eating them, even with a tiny bit of sugar and butter in the recipe.

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Sunday Brunch – La Tortilleria

La Tortilleria
1040 St. Clair Avenue West
647-344-2429
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and hot chocolate: $30

Rubbernecking as the St. Clair West bus rumbled eastward on a Saturday morning, the hungry husband and I both see the sign at the same time “Now serving weekend breakfast”. So we pass up the roti at the Green Barns Farmers Market and walk back to Dufferin to La Tortilleria. Because we loves us some Mexican food.

However, when we arrive we realize that our knowledge of Mexican food really only involved the more typical dinner entrees – what the heck do they eat for breakfast in Mexico anyway?

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Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet – We’re Hunting Donairs

donair_primetime1

In a city that prides itself on being one of the most multi-cultural in the world, it’s laughable to think that it’s difficult to find authentic Canadian foodstuffs in Toronto. From balut to yak milk, grape leaves to berebere spice, somewhere in the small ethnically-oriented neighbourhoods of our city, foreign food items can be found. Yet when it comes to classic Canadian dishes, it’s easier to book a flight to Halifax than it is to find an authentic version of an east coast favourite like the donair.

Those who are unfamiliar with the experience of stumbling drunkenly to the infamous “pizza corner” in the wee hours of a Halifax night to gorge on that city’s most beloved street food might not understand that a donair is not the same as a gyro. Same premise, yes, but many differences.

The meat is different (beef for donairs versus lamb for gyros); the donair sauce, made with evaporated milk, sugar, garlic powder and vinegar bears only visual resemblance to the traditional tzatziki-based gyro sauce, and I’ve seen people come to fisticuffs over the addition of toppings beyond the de rigeur diced raw onions and tomatoes.

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Bowled Over

Last Wednesday evening, the line-up outside the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art stretched as far north as Bloor Street. People had come prepared; many had snacks, drinks and umbrellas to shield them from the warm May sunshine, because to be first in line meant having the dedication to wait for hours to get in. But being first in line also meant having first choice when selecting a bowl, as well as getting to the variety of soups from the participating local chefs before they all ran out. And they would run out.

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On the Shelf – May 24, 2009

Here’s a few new things we came across this month that are definitely worth sharing.

Margaret’s Artisan Bakery Crisps
We came across these at the Ontario Cheese Society tasting in late April. Better known for their Margaret’s Artisan Flatbreads, these organic flour crisps from MJ Fine Foods are made in Vaughn and come in a variety of flavours that pair wonderfully with cheese, pate or dips. I’ve been treating them like the British version of “crisps” and have been eating them like chips. Favourite flavours include rosemary pistachio, mango curry and cashew, caramel apricot almond and cranberry pumpkin seed. They retail for around $5 a box and are available at gourmet food shops.

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Magic Mushrooms

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Liz posted a picture of some morel mushrooms on Facebook, indicating that she had picked them while at her weekend home in Warkworth, ON. I commented on the photo, pointing out that I was her friend and that I liked her very, very much, not actually expecting morels to be forthcoming – I’m not sure I’d share if I had my own personal stash, after all.

Liz is a very sweet lady, though, and early last week, after another trip to the country, she emailed me, offering me what was probably the last of her morel harvest. “It’s not much,” she said. “Only about 3 handfuls.”

You know the old saying about never looking a gift horse in the mouth, and so off I went in joyous anticipation to meet a lady about some mushrooms. In trade, I took some bottles of gluten-free beer for Liz’s husband, because when someone brings you the last of their morels, you should reciprocate in some way. And since Liz’s husband can’t drink regular beer, I’m hoping that the exchange was as appreciated on their end as it was on mine.

Liz had the ‘shrooms wrapped up in cheesecloth, so it wasn’t until I got them home that I really got to admire them. So beautiful, these magical things, like little balls of brown lace. And so many! I’d have been overjoyed with half this amount; Liz had been especially generous.

I decided to saute them with fiddleheads and garlic and then serve them with gnocchi in brown butter.

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