Category: toronto

Getting Grubby

Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces
Gayla Trail
Clarkson Potter, paperback, copyright 2010, 207 pages, $19.95

It’s a romantic notion to think that we could all move to the country and start a farm. The fact is, the majority of people live in cities out of necessity, and few of us have space for a huge garden. But Gayla Trail thinks that fact shouldn’t stop us, and that most people have a little bit of space, whether it’s a yard, a balcony or a fire escape, in which to grow great grub.

Trail’s book is an excellent primer for anyone looking to get started on their own organic garden. Concepts and directions are presented in a straight-forward, down to earth manner that is welcoming to even the most alternative of personalities – and which will speak more to hipster than horticultural society matron. In fact there are a few passages that were even a bit shocking to me, such as the chapter where Trail discusses companion planting and uses the analogy of sticking “Jesus-loving uncle Bill next to your abortion doctor sister-in-law” at a wedding. Funny stuff, but it might offend anyone picking this up without being familiar with Trail’s style of writing.

Grow Great Grub touches on all the basics of gardening in small spaces, from how to build boxes or plant potatoes in garbage bins to creating great compost. A small section on community gardens and guerrilla gardens offers more alternatives to those with no space of their own, and Torontonians will recognize photos of some of the garden spaces included in the book from various spots around the city, particularly Queen West and Parkdale.

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A Toast to the Roast

A few years ago, Toronto was all over the communal dining trend. Restaurants installed big harvest tables and hoped that customers would not just bump elbows but start up a conversation with one another. But because Torontonians are mostly of the “keep to yourself, mind your own business” variety, the communal table wasn’t a huge success when it came to the average customer.

So what to do with those big old harvest tables that customers avoid like the plague? Unless a restaurant can book a large group to take over the thing, it’s kind of like a no man’s land.

Thank heavens for the resurgence of comfort food and lots of talk in the press about the importance of family dining. The idea of Sunday dinner is often romanticized by chefs like Gordon Ramsay who once created a campaign in conjunction with his F-Word series to get Britons to go back to the tradition of Sunday dinner.

It’s not a bad idea, really – most people enjoy eating a big ol’ roast – it’s all the prep and cooking that sucks the fun out of it. So a number of restaurants are now serving up family-style meals, often on Sunday, and usually, but not always, communal. Here’s a few that we found…

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(Robert DeNiro’s Waiting) Talking Italian

We have wine writers here at TasteTO for a very good reason – because neither Greg nor I know squat about wine. Oh, we like wine well enough, but we tend to stick to a few things that we know, and more often than not, we prefer beer, which we’re both much more comfortable with. Because while beer is made by huge numbers of craft brewers around the world, most offerings are a variation on a dozen or so styles. Wine, however, varies not just from winery and grape variety, but by region, and don’t even let’s get into the difference in harvests from year to year.

Particularly intimidating are the wines of Italy. A country famous for its wine, and various wine regions, wine from Italy can be intimidating, especially to someone who doesn’t speak the language. What I needed was a simple, basic, get you started kind of course that would let me compare a few wines without overwhelming me.

So when Angela Aiello of iYellow Wine Club invited me to check out iYellow Wine School, I jumped at the opportunity to attend the class on Italian wines.

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Y’all Come to Supper!

Hank’s
9-1/2 Church Street
416-504-9463

A few weeks ago, when I interviewed Scott and Rachelle Vivian about their take-over of the Wine Bar and Hank’s, the duo let me know about their plans to open Hank’s at night with a menu of southern favourites that Vivian had learned to cook growing up in Atlanta. Hank’s at Night was unveiled and opened to the public this past week, and the menu is indeed a collection of homey and stick-to-your-ribs southern comfort food.

Sourcing all beer, wine and the majority of ingredients from local growers or producers (there’s a chocolate dessert, but no stewed greens until they come back in season locally), the pair are offering up a pretty decent assortment of southern dishes, done really well.

Here’s a few of the things on the menu…

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Don’t Count Your Chicken Before You’ve Tasted Them

The phrase “tastes like chicken” is beyond cliché. We use it for any whitish meat that we can’t accurately describe any other way – frog’s legs, alligator, lizard – guaranteed someone trying any of these for the first time will compare them to chicken.

But what, exactly, does chicken taste like? The specimens we get in supermarkets or most restaurants are all the same breed (White Rock), probably fed with some mixture of GMO corn and other grain, raised in a barn for optimum growth in a minimal time frame, and likely pumped full of a saline solution during processing to make the meat look plump and full and heavy.

But chickens come in different breeds, and like beef and pork, those different breeds have different characteristics, in the kitchen and on the plate.

At a recent tasting event at Victor Restaurant, participants got to clearly see the difference between breeds, and the phrase “tastes like chicken” no longer applies.

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Stirring the Pot with Angela Aiello

Angela Aiello is a dynamo wine ambassador with 10 year of experience in the local wine industry. She runs iYellow Wine School, an organization that offers events and courses that help teach people about wine in a fun, relaxed atmosphere. Ange is the regular wine host for the CBC’s Steven & Chris Show and for Le Gourmet TV.

How did you become interested in wine? What steps did you take to learn more about it?

The simple and short answer to both questions is “I drank a lot of it”. I started in the wine industry young, but truly developed a passion for wine as I grew older. I believe that you can really only learn about wine if you’re tasting it, so when I stopped working in wine country and in the industry, I started a wine club and starting drinking with friends and colleagues and we all explored, discovered and shared as we went along. And now after close to 12 years in the wine industry I am proud to say I’m still learning! And that is one of the greatest things about wine – every year, every vintage and every wine is constantly changing, so as it turns out you’re constantly learning, and that means you’re constantly drinking, tasting and reflecting on the wines you like. So in reality I am constantly taking steps to learn more about wine including traveling, attending wine schools and tastings at events. I think building your own confidence with your own palate preferences is a very important step to being interested in wine. For me I love Rieslings, Pinot Noir, sparkling wines, Syrah and dessert wines. Knowing what you like is half the battle, anyway!

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Pinch Me – Alexandra Park Comes Together Over the Stove

People who know Alexandra Park can speak to its great ethnic diversity. Like a smaller version of Toronto itself, it rings with the sounds of a hundred languages, and the delicious cooking smells of many different cultures. A Pinch of This – Recipes From Alexandra Parkis an initiative of Recipe For Community, a resident-inspired partnership with a focus on food, convening, youth engagement and neighbourhood beautification. The organization has spear-headed an number of projects that range from window flower boxes and public art to an outdoor commons area that includes benches and picnic tables. An organic vegetable garden has been created in a central courtyard with a variety of plots, two of which are raised to provide access for those with mobility restraints. There is also an outdoor kitchen with barbeques so residents can prepare meals and swap recipes.

A  project of the Green Space Collective, Recipe For Community brings together local residents to share their individual recipes, foodways and cultures. A Pinch of This offers recipes from Jamaica, Trinidad, China, Italy, the Middle East Afghanistan, the Philippines and others. With the assistance of food writer Marion Kane, and contributions from Kane, local councillor Adam Vaughan, and mayor David Miller, the book offers a culinary snapshot of the neighbourhood.

Recipes include pastelles (a Trinidadian twist on tamales), a vegetarian version of a Jamaican mackerel dish, kosheree, chicken adobo, and an oxtail stew contributed by resident Effie Henry, whose claim that she doesn’t cook by books inspired the ‘pinch of this’ title. While a few of the recipes, such as Henry’s, are obviously long-standing family specialties, a few are culled from published cookbooks and obviously represent the vibrancy and diversity of the neighbourhood. The ingenious part is that this is how many Torontonians eat – choosing to “visit” different cultures through their restaurants or recipes, so such a diverse collection doesn’t seem odd at all.

Money raised from sales of A Pinch of This will go to the Alexandra Park Green Space Collective to fund a community cooking program and gardens. The book is available for purchase for $5 by calling 416-678-3439 or emailing greenspacecollective@yahoo.ca.

Image: Geanie Sarjue prepares for the launch party of A Pinch of This – Recipes From Alexandra Park in early December. Photo courtesy City of Toronto.

Why We All Need to Wise Up

Ocean Wise celebrated its 5 year anniversary this month by announcing a number of new restaurant partners across the country. Readers who haven’t heard of the Ocean Wise program need not feel out of the loop – it’s only been a year since a handful of Toronto restaurants signed on, and while this anniversary celebration included some of the newest Toronto-area restaurants to join, the total still numbers under a dozen.

Created as a conservation program by the Vancouver Aquarium, it makes sense that the majority of restaurants involved in the sustainable seafood program are in British Columbia. While Torontonians have been on the sustainability bandwagon for a few years now, that same diligence seems not to apply to fish, an item that regularly hits our plates without any concern as to how it got there or where it came from.

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Assessing the Haggis

I was just about haggised out after putting together last week’s round up of Robert Burns activities and dinners. Then Chef Martin Kouprie of Pangaea (1221 Bay Street) sent me a message on Twitter. He was holding a haggis competition for his kitchen staff; the winning dish would be served in the restaurant on Robert Burns Day. Would I like to come and be a judge?

I was of two minds; my experience with offal – all organs and all animals (I’ve only recently learned to like foie gras) – hasn’t been good. But then I remembered the advice of Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, that you must try a food at least ten times before you can determine that you truly don’t like it. I’d had haggis once before and found it repulsive, but here was an opportunity to try seven additional versions of the dish, created by seven different professional cooks who would be pulling out all the stops to make the lowly stuffed sheep’s stomach into gourmet fare.

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Cooking With Love at the Wine Bar

 

Wine Bar
9 Church Street
416-504-WINE

It seems clichéd to start a piece about a new restaurant and roll out the “food = love” metaphors. But in the case of the Wine Bar, it seems apt, given that the principals involved are two couples who have saved what has become known as a landmark dining spot from what might have potentially been a corporate overhaul.

When word came out in the summer of ’09 that Jamie Kennedy was selling his Church Street Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar restaurant due to financial troubles, nobody knew for sure what might happen to the place. Kennedy offered the place to staff members first, and Chef Scott Vivian (who had run Kennedy’s Gardiner museum restaurant) along with his wife, pastry chef Rachelle Cadwell (who had been head of pastry for all of Kennedy’s operations) decided to take over the place and make it their own. Along with Vivian and Cadwell, Ted and Mary Koutsogiannopoulos (who had previously run Joy Bistro) came on board to remake the restaurant, now simply called the Wine Bar.

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