food – Page 37 – Sheryl Kirby

Sunday Sips – The Wines of Portugal

My experience with Portuguese wine until a week ago was primarily from my teenage years when a Portuguese family across the street from my parent’s house would make wine every year and would deliver half a dozen jugs of the stuff to our doorstep, at which point my Dad would give the man bushel baskets of tomatoes from our garden.

This exchange was more in the name of neighbourliness than in securing goods of equal value and quality, for even to our untrained palates, the neighbour’s wine was pretty bad. For some reason, I continued to believe that all Portuguese wine was of similar quality and it really wasn’t until I showed up at the Wines of Portugal Trade Tasting at the Fairmont Royal York on June 3rd that I realized I had been missing out.

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One City, One Table

It could have been, truly, a clusterfuck, but the weather gods and organizing gods shined down on the One City One Table event today at the Distillery District. Part of the Luminato arts festival, this food fair took over a whole block with one long table down the centre, and local restaurants offering tastings and street food items for $5 a pop along one side.

While it was busy, it wasn’t stupid packed, and there was very little wait time at each booth to get the food. Most chefs had put some thought into their offerings so it was mostly hand-held stuff like sandwiches, tacos or things that didn’t need a fork and knife.

Enamoured of the food as I was, I completely missed getting a shot of the 500-seat table, although it was never all full at once as people kept getting up and moving around as they tried new things. I missed photographing a few things that we tried and really enjoyed like the baked perogies from Chef Nathan Isberg at Coca, and the braised hangar steak sandwich from Chef Ted Corrado at C5.

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The Harlem Shuffle

Harlem
67 Richmond Street East
416-368-1920
Dinner for two with all taxes and tip plus beer or wine: $110

The Harlem Shuffle – an R&B song originally written and recorded by the duo Bob & Earl in 1963, named after a line dance step that is an homage to the dance clubs that existed during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. More recently, the rearranging of plates on a table at Harlem Restaurant when it becomes obvious that too many side dishes have been ordered.

The term “authentic” gets bandied around a lot these days when it comes to food, with most people not really knowing what the authentic dish should taste like in the first place. So when a commenter on a food-related board dissed the food at Harlem for not being “authentic soul food”, I found myself shaking my head.

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Sunday Brunch – Dunn’s Famous

Dunn’s Famous
284A King Street West
416-599-5464
Brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $34

I’m still looking for a Jewish Grandma. Seriously, there must be some kind-hearted elderly lady out there hoping for someone to drop by and eat their homemade gefilte fish. Call me.

In the meantime, until someone adopts me, I’m forced to find my own latkes and blintzes and rugelach. Which is what led us to Dunn’s for brunch; seeing as they have the best latkes south of Bloor, they’re my go-to place when I get a craving.

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Apparently bitching and Complaining WILL Get you Somewhere

It’s okay to eat chicken again. Or at least chicken from KFC. In Canada.

After years of protests and campaigns by animal rights groups PETA, KFC has bowed to pressure and has agreed to work only with suppliers that can ensure less crowding for the chickens it uses, as well as phasing out non-essential growth hormones and drugs. KFC will also source chicken only from suppliers who slaughter birds with gas, considered the most humane method of processing.

An added caveat will be that KFC will add vegan and vegetarian “unchicken” options to its menu, making the chain a consideration for a demographic of customers who might never have eaten there, and allowing those of us who love the magical 11 herbs and spices coating to get our fix without guilt.

Full story at the CBC website.

Sunday Sips – Twist and Serve

For the sake of full transparency, I feel compelled to offer the fact that I have not consumed a pre-mixed bottled beverage since my 19th birthday. Someone had the bright idea that we should all have our own 2-litre bottle of kiwi cooler (which we pronounced “kewwwwwllerrr” for some reason) to celebrate my coming of age. After passing out halfway through my own birthday party, I awoke to discover that, like the fuzzy navel before it, kiwi cooler was dead to me.

Which was probably a good thing, and which I did not lament. It was 1987 and we worshipped the Absolut bottle like the good little clubkids that we were.

As the years passed, I watched the “party zone” section of the LCBO grow in size. The colours got brighter, the flavour combinations more unique, and I noted the advent of bottled mixed drinks such as rum and cola with a nod to a good idea but no interest in actually buying or drinking such a thing.

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More Rhubarb

I grew up reading and re-reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder “Little House” series, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized that the pie plant she uses to make a pie for the field workers was actually rhubarb. (I think I imagined it to be eggplant, which we never ate as a kid.)

While we always had rhubarb in our house growing up, it usually got made into squares or stewed with sweet dumplings and after acquiring a pretty huge bunch a couple of weeks ago, I considered a pie. Turns out most of the rhubarb pie recipes I have are sour cream-based, which is odd to me. They’re probably good, but I dunno, something just doesn’t sound right. Greg always likes the strawberry rhubarb pie, although I am not a fan – I find it too mushy and wet.

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Comfort and Grace

Grace
503 College Street
416-944-8884

There’s a recession coming. Gas prices are going up, the housing market looks set to crumble and everyone is preparing to tighten their belts. Inevitably, at the table, our thoughts will turn to comfort food. Hearty, healthy fare from the family recipe books will win out over expensive, exotic ingredients or dishes we can’t pronounce. The trend toward local and seasonal produce and admonishments to not eat anything our great-grandmothers wouldn’t recognize as food has us considering the delicacies of past generations, only with a more genuine attitude. The retro kitsch of “comfort food” and thirty-dollar meatloaf has been replaced by what Grace chef Dustin Gallagher refers to as “modern farmhouse”; a more elegant, timeless way of eating that honours the past and the present, using fresh, seasonal ingredients with a nod to tradition, family and the classics.

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Product of Canada

Did you know that Canada grows some fine pineapples? Or that we have many thriving chocolate plantations? If you’re a grocery label reader, it might be easy to assume that all of those prepared products labelled “product of Canada” were grown here. But the current law is a little bit slippery.

A recent Reuters piece about changes to labelling laws indicates:

Current rules state that a label can say “Made in Canada” or “Product of Canada” if 51 percent of the production costs are Canadian and the last substantial transformation of the product took place in Canada.

So cocoa beans shipped to Canada to be made into chocolate bars here go to the stores with a “product of Canada” label, even though they came from somewhere else.

The Calgary Herald explains the changes:

The new standards require that any label claiming a food product is a “Product of Canada” necessarily needs to have all or virtually all of its contents be Canadian. That includes ingredients, the processing and the labour used to make the product; an exception has been made for some foreign content to be included in a Canadian product and labelled as such if minor additives or spices are not available in Canada.

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Sunday Brunch – Gayley’s Cafe

Gayley’s Cafe
1424 Dundas Street West
416-538-3443
brunch for two with all taxes, tip and coffee: $28 (cash only)

The choosing of this brunch review was left up to fate. We’d ride the Dufferin bus north in the drizzle than permeated the city on the Victoria Day Sunday, and if there was a streetcar coming at Dundas, we’d head as far as Ossington and try our luck at the communal table at the Dakota Tavern. If there was no streetcar in sight, we’d cross the street and head to Gayley’s. a local place that we had passed a hundred times but had never been to.

Fate saved me from communal table brunch with jam-handed toddlers (with music for the kids!), but I’m not sure we chose the less frustrating option.

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