Three intensely competitive nights, three very distinct occasions. On Thursday evening, the Canadian Culinary Championship began with the black box competition held in the teaching kitchens of George Brown College. We restricted numbers to 65 guests so that the seven chefs could work in relative ease with their sous-chefs, assisted by some of the talented students at the college. GBC maestro John Higgins and I had deliberately chosen challenging items for the black box: flank steak from the brilliant Ontario supplier Top Meadow Farms (who generously sponsored all the black box ingredients), two Georgian Bay whitefish, a celery root, a bag of Ontario peanuts, a honeycomb oozing honey and (the only ingredient from outside the province) a hand of green plantains. The chefs all obeyed the rules, creating two dishes that used every ingredient plus whatever they needed from a communal pantry, and delivered the plates to the judges within the allotted time.
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Tasting notes
This week, they sent me out prowling the restaurants, bars, bakeries and grill rooms of Ossington Avenue, and there will be much to tell in May’s Toronto Life. But in between all the pho and sucking pig, the tequila-cured salmon and the free-form apple galettes, there was still time to squeeze in some special, extracurricular treats.
Busy like bee
Quelle week, as they say in France—though of course one would always rather be busy and active at this age than morosely, motionlessly wealthy or monotonously toiling away for Matthew and Son. On Thursday, I played guinea pig for a series of new dishes chef Patrick Lin is introducing at the redesigned Senses—fascinating, innovative cuisine and exactly what we have patiently hoped to see from Lin since he came back from Hong Kong. The new menu kicks in once Winterlicious is over, so I’ll wait until then to share the experience in more detail.
Dim Sum
About 1,200 years ago, at a time when Anglo-Saxons were still tearing roasts of meat apart with their hands, a family called Zheng left the imperial city of Tang Changan for a trip into the country. During the morning they paused at an inn, and while Madame Zheng retired to a private room, her cook improvised a fashionable meal of a dozen little delicacies. When the food was ready, Madame was summoned, but she told the party to start without her. “Dian xin,” she said. “Ignite your heart.” Which may have been the equivalent of “Knock yourself out,” but more likely meant, “Follow your heart” or “Choose what you like.” The phrase caught on, and in the south, where Cantonese, not Mandarin, was spoken, it was translated as “dim sum.”
The Mother of All Parties
This blog post, dear reader, is essentially an invitation. An invitation to a three-day gastronomical extravaganza being held on February 7th, 8th and 9th right here in our own backyard. And since you have shown the impeccable taste and good sense to click on this blog, I am delighted to offer you a unique opportunity to take part in the culmination of this amazing weekend at a substantially discounted price.
A Year at Les Fougères
I lost touch with Charles Part and his wife, Jennifer Warren-Part, when they sold Loons, their restaurant on the beachy end of Queen Street East.They had opened it in 1986 and left, I think, in 1992, moving to Quebec and opening a place called Les Fougères in a rural area about 15 minutes outside Ottawa-Gatineau. By all accounts it is a delightful restaurant with an equally valuable little store where they sell the foods they prepare and give cooking lessons during the quieter months of the year. Gold Medal Plates gave me the chance to shake hands with the Parts once again after all these years by inviting them to compete at the Ottawa-Gatineau event (where they have always performed admirably well), but it isn’t the same as having dinner at Loons used to be. I was just starting out as a reviewer back then and was very taken with the restaurant and their cooking. So it was a lovely surprise when they sent me a copy of their book, A Year at Les Fougères. It’s published by Chelsea Books (out of Chelsea, Quebec—the same village ou se trouve Les Fougères) and is available in some good Ottawa bookstores, but the easiest way for most of us to get a copy is to buy it online through the restaurant’s Web site for $34.95.
Rabbit showdown in Corfu
To Corfu for a week of monklike solitude. Thanks to the technological marvel that is Olympic Airways, I reached the island three hours late (sometime around 11 p.m.) and decided to stay in Corfu Town at the Cavalieri hotel, a former townhouse of great comfort that still retains the elegant and world-weary mood of the Venetians who built it 300 years ago. The fabulous rooftop restaurant is closed during the winter, but Greeks eat late and I was confident of finding the Rex or the Aegli open for business. Walking down Kapodistriou Street towards one of these restaurants, I was thinking of a piquant stifatho of rabbit braised with sweet baby onions in a dark sauce spiked with vinegar. Yeah, that’s it—a stifatho! The roads were wet but the clouds had moved on and an inquisitive moon peered down over the citadel, smirking a little, I thought, as I stood outside the dark and padlocked restaurants. These nights between Christmas and the New Year are treacherous with holidays. Some of the bars along the ’Spianada’s stately stone arcades were still open. Too crowded. Instead, I ended up in a café with an exclusively Latin American menu; I made do with a no-name chicken quesadilla and a glass of Chilean plonk. Did the world find Greece while my back was turned or did Greece discover the world?
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Great Scott’s!
In London, England for Christmas, seeing old friends and relations and staying in my mum’s flat on the Fulham Road, I am overjoyed to catch the last episode of season three of The Mighty Boosh on the television (my son gave me seasons one and two on DVD and they travel with me everywhere). I make my mum watch it and she finds it funny, even though (or perhaps because) its theme is acting and its plot hinges on the thespian rivalry between one of the protagonists (Howard Moon) and an alcoholic crab called Sammy. Meanwhile the other hero, Vince Noir, is trying to fit into a pair of very tight black drainpipe trousers so he can be cool enough to perform with a mod band he idolizes. What an amazing series of coincidences! And I’ll tell you why.
Lives of the Rich and Famous
It was the most amazing wine tasting of Bordeaux I had ever heard of—and I wasn’t invited. Château Haut-Brion 1982, 1989 and 2000; 10 different vintages of Château Lafite-Rothschild from 1899 to 1995; Château Margaux 1966, 1982, 1989, 1990 and 2000; Château Mouton Rothschild 1928, 1970, 1982 (in magnum), 1986 and 1989; Château Latour 1966, 1975 and 1990. It is to drool.
A.A. Gill’s new book
Spending the weekend in the shadow of the soaring peaks of Collingwood, checking out the local restaurant scene for a forthcoming story, I have been filling the precious moments between bouts of garlic bread by dipping into A.A. Gill’s latest book, Table Talk. It is a compendium of the famous British journalist’s restaurant reviews—I was going to say ‘in all their acerbic glory’ but they have been castrated, presumably with Gill’s permission. The names of restaurants, chefs and restaurateurs have been omitted so the reader is left with mere invective, undirected and irrelevant—a spinning woozle-bird of malevolent wit floating in space with nothing to give it impetus but its own self-satisfied imagination.
Fast Broken
I have been eating breakfast again—at least on those mornings when I wake up in Stratford: not because I’m hungry—far from it—but because I’m staying at The Three Houses, an extremely comfortable and beautifully decorated B&B owned by David Lester. His breakfasts are the best I have had in many a year. They begin with a goblet of his very crisp and holy granola mixed with sliced banana and apple, pear and fresh berries (I have no idea where he finds such ripe, juicy raspberries with the wind-driven snow drifting in the corners of his garden). There is coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice, toast or some thick buttered slices of the wickedly heavy, moist zucchini bread that he bakes. Home-made jam or marmalade can be applied (I choose the marmalade because Lester uses Seville oranges and it’s delectably bitter). Then there is the egg moment—maybe scrambled eggs tossed with croutons and some of Ruth Klahsen’s soft white goat cheese, or an omelette folded over mushrooms and fines herbs. Scrumptious. And, because the world is small, it turns out that my host is close friends with half a dozen people I know on Corfu, so there’s plenty to talk about.
All That Glisters
Gold Medal Plates streaked across the finish line this week with events in Edmonton and Ottawa. Now we can resume normal programming—at least for this weekend, for I’m heading down to Stratford for three days on Tuesday. Luckily my wife will be at home to feed the guppies. Here are the final reports.
A Tale of Three Cities
This week was very largely taken up with the Gold Medal Plates travelling folderols—flitting off to Montreal on November 13, to Vancouver the following day and then to Calgary on November 15, staging a dazzling event in each city and raising a dazzling amount of money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. The Calgary auction alone netted $164,950—never mind ticket sales and the pot from the other cities. Our goal of making $1 million this year seems attainable. For me, the kick of being part of it all is tasting food from the leading chefs in each city, linking up with other food writers and critics whose work doesn’t reach Toronto, being a member of a talented and exceptionally friendly team (a novel feeling for a writer who rarely leaves the solitude of his garret) and hobnobbing with some of the world’s best athletes. Then there’s the fun of hearing a live performance by Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo at each event and the impromptu duets he performs—with Steven Page in Toronto, Kevin Parent in Montreal and Simon Whitfield (the gold-medal triathlete) in Vancouver. It’s all terrifically good fun.
Stratford Bound
Woken yesterday morning at 6:45 a.m. by small black and white cat faces very close to mine, mewing for their breakfast. Grumble, mutter, shuffle downstairs and find no newspaper on the porch. Choking coughs and gurgles of coffee machine announce start of day. Cats crying for the outside world, though I know when I open the back door and the damp arctic air hits them they will race back indoors complaining of my cruelty. Why, then, am I smiling? Because this Ethiopian coffee that I buy from Moonbean in Kensington Market is not the first thing of surpassing excellence to pass the lips this week.
Morimoto at Rain
To Rain early in the week for a special dinner of alternating courses cooked by Guy Rubino and guest chef, global superstar Masaharu Morimoto, also known as the Iron Chef. The two men know each other well and though Morimoto is currently promoting his first book (it’s called Morimoto, is published by DK and sells for $40 US or $50 Cdn.—I guess DK hasn’t heard about the loonie’s soaring flight or the greenback’s tumbling gyre) he was clearly here for two nights as a mark of friendship and respect to Rubino.
