This Summer I got a chance to visit Toronto and to attend the Taste of Toronto food festival. Lucky me! Quite a few years ago I attended Taste of London so I had a sense of what it would be like. The Taste food festivals are not your typical free for all food event, because the restaurants are really consistently high quality and included by invitation only.
This event is a particularly good one if you want to familiarize yourself with the Toronto restaurant scene. Here were some of my favorite dishes and the restaurants I would surely like to visit, on my next trip.
One of the first things I tried was a gazpacho like soup from The Harbord Room. The crushed heirloom tomato soup with spicy wild watercress, creamy buffalo mozzarella, crunchy toasted sourdough crumbs and a refreshing dollop of tomato and white balsamic sorbet was perfect on a fairly steamy evening. Truly a winner.
Khao San Road was the one booth where I tried all three offerings, starting with the cooling iced Thai shake. The crispy rice salad with ginger, cilantro, sour pork sausage, lime leaf and peanuts was the knock out dish for me, it was just an explosion of flavors and cooked to order so fresh and crunchy.
The final dish I tried from Khao San Road was the spicy shrimp salad with onion, red pepper, fish sauce, chili, garlic and cilantro. It was cool and perfectly cooked, but a tad too spicy.
I was curious to try something from Anthony Rose, the chef and restaurateur with three successful spots in Toronto. From Rose & Sons came a BLT with Dr. Pepper bacon (more like pork belly) fresh tomatoes, lettuce and a feta and herb mayonnaise. It was extremely succulent and I could understand why this nice Jewish boy is revered for his sandwiches, and the BLT in particular.
Two of my favorite dishes came from Yours Truly a cutting edge restaurant which sadly just closed. Needless to say I will keeping my eyes peeled for the next venture with chef Lachlan Culjak. The first dish was a creamy fresh made "queso" with early Summer garnishes and an orange blossom vinaigrette. It was bright and had layers of texture. The freshness of the produce including ramps, fiddle heard ferns, mushrooms and berries shone brightly. And the plating was gorgeous.
The other dish from Yours Truly was charred sous vide BC octopus with chorizo and green mango.
While I didn't necessarily think of maple syrup and Toronto before, I do now. Thats's because I got to try the maple products from
Ninutik. They were serving a variety of cheese wrapped in maple taffy, thanks a bed of fluffy snow. The thick maple syrup is usually poured over fresh snow to make a chewy candy, but in this case, a popsicle stick with a piece of cheddar or blue cheese (yes!) was wrapped in ensconced in maple. It was divine!
So too were the little buttons of maple sugar that melt in your mouth, nothing like the dry crusty maple sugar candy I was used to eating. They can also be used in cocktails.
And best of all? Maple Supreme, something I've seen elsewhere before and which I have had in other parts of Canada too. But it never quite as good. It looks white and creamy but it really has the consistency of butter, and the flavor of maple. Divine! Wonderful on buttered toast, but also over ice cream or oatmeal.
Toronto, you sure are a delicious town. And
Taste of Toronto was only the tip of the iceberg...
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| Parmigiano Reggiano display at Eataly, NYC |
As you may recall, the idea of the global dinner party is is to pick some recipes, invite your friends over, cook, eat, and then share photos of your feast if you're so inclined. In the past there have been some very avant garde recipes made available, such as a broth made from the rind of the cheese, and
risotto cacao e pepe, but you can make whatever you like as long as it includes Parmigiano Reggiano. There's a
video about it from last year when it was celebrated at Eataly in NYC.
Parmigiano Reggiano is a cheese I fear sometimes gets taken for granted. When I was at Eataly in New York last week I saw a great selection of the cheese, including one of my favorites vacche rosse and some aged 30 months. I hope you’ll take this opportunity to celebrate it.
Sign up on the Parmesan website and you'll be notified when the free app is ready.
The gift basket is worth over $250 dollars and includes the following:
• Two wedges of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
• Paesano Bread
• Il Mongetto Diavola Sauce
• Rustichella Spaghetti
• Zingerman's Travel Olive Oil
• Leccino Olives
• Cristal Peppers
• Crespone Salami
• Antonio Mattei Biscotti
• Espresso Blend Coffee
• Zingerman's Wooden Crate
If you would like to win this fabulous gift basket, please leave a comment telling me your favorite way to use Parmigiano Reggiano. A winner will be picked at random. A winner will be chosen on October 7, 2014. You must have a mailing address in the continental US and you must include your email in the proper field to win, it will not be published and no one will see it but me. One comment per person, please.
My love of pasta is no secret, but I’m cutting back. An
article in the New York Times covering the latest research about the benefit of low carbohydrate diets has me rethinking my noodle consumption. I won’t give them up completely but now and again I can see trying something different. Something like zucchini noodles.
For a long time I’ve wanted one of those spiralizer type tools. But they are rather expensive and I just wasn’t sure how much use I’d get out of them. There is actually an easy way to make “noodles” out of zucchini or other vegetables using a box grater. You just
lay the grater on its side like a mandoline! But I’ve just recently tried out the
Microplane spiral cutter and it’s an even better option. At $14.95 it’s a lot less expensive than some of the other tools and takes up very little space. It also has two sizes so you can shred larger or smaller vegetables.
The downside to using this gadget is that it takes some time to get used to it, and to figure out how much pressure to exert to get the thickness of noodles you like. It also leaves a little stubby core of the vegetable. But it’s relatively easy to use and clean once you get the hang of it.
I don’t like raw zucchini, but by cooking the zucchini noodles in a pan sauce, you get a lovely texture and the zucchini does seem to absorb a bit of the sauce. You can also blanch the "noodles" quickly in boiling water to take off the raw edge and then toss them with a cool sauce like pesto. I’ve only begun experimenting with zucchini noodles but I’m enjoying them so far. While not chewy, they do have a lovely slippery feel.
Zucchini Noodles with Fresh Tomato Sauce
Makes 2 servings
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
1/3 cup peeled small to medium raw shrimp, optional
Trim then
shred the zucchini using the large holes on a box grater or using a “spiralizer” tool. Heat a skillet and add the olive oil. Add the tomatoes and cook gently until they begin to break down and become saucy.
Add the zucchini and garlic and cook until the sauce reduces by about half. Add the shrimp, if desired, and cook just until the shrimp are pink and cooked through, the time will vary depending upon the size of the shrimp but probably no more than a minute or so. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: My thanks to Microplane for providing me with the spiral cutter to test.
On my first trip to a city I always try to experience the things that the place is famous for, especially the food. Recently I was in Toronto which is a very diverse city with all kinds of food, but the peameal bacon sandwich is one of its most iconic specialties.
Toronto was once known as Hogtown, thanks in part to the vast stockyards where in the mid to late 1800’s cured pork products like bacon were sent to the United Kingdom, where there was a shortage at the time. In 1900 over half a million pigs were processed for export in Toronto.
So what is peameal bacon exactly? It’s what we call “Canadian bacon” in the US. It’s made from pork loin, rather than belly, so it’s much leaner than typical bacon. It’s brined and cured, not smoked. It was originally rolled in ground dried yellow peas to help preserve it, but cornmeal became much more widely available in the 1900’s and also preserved the meat better.
Peameal bacon, also sometimes called back bacon, is juicy and salty but not nearly as salty as streaky bacon. It’s served sliced and makes a very fine sandwich.
One place to try the famous peameal bacon sandwich is at the
St. Lawrence Market. You can see peameal bacon in the cases of butcher shops and there are at least two places that serve the sandwich,
Paddington’s Pump, a full service sit down restaurant and
Carousel Bakery, a market stall. The Paddington’s Pump sandwich features thinly sliced peameal bacon and comes on a crusty roll with tomato and lettuce and some slaw and pickle on the side. At Carousel Bakery the sandwich is served on a hamburger bun with thick cut peameal bacon. You can also get the “breakfast on a bun” with peameal bacon, a fried egg and cheese.
After you try the peameal bacon sandwich, I recommend trying the eggs benedict at the classic diner,
The Senator which is Toronto’s oldest restaurant. It’s two poached eggs on peameal bacon with hollandaise sauce on a homemade biscuit. Both are so good that I'm not sure which I prefer!
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