A huge treat this week was the world premiere of a feature-length movie, The Islands Project, written and directed by Michael Stadtländer. The great chef showed it at the Royal Cinema on College Street on Thursday evening to a large and enthusiastic crowd as part of the eco-friendly Planet in Focus film festival. First came a charming, funny and scary short documentary movie, P is for Papaya, by a young filmmaker called Aube Giroux. The story tells of her obsessive love for papayas, a passion suddenly threatened by the discovery that most of the papayas that reach us in Canada come from the U.S. and are genetically modified by the addition of a gene collected from a particular virus. Needless to say, the rest of the world shuns this Frankenfruit, but our beloved government has decided not to tell us about it, so Canadians and Americans continue to gorge. There aren’t many delightful anti-GMO films, but this is one.
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Cause and Effect
Thursday night saw the spectacular start of the 2007 Gold Medal Plates campaign with a sold-out crowd of over 600 guests at Toronto’s most glamorous venue, The Carlu. Gold Medal Plates, if I may I remind you, raises money for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Our goal this year is a million bucks, and with events scheduled for seven Canadian cities, I believe we can do it. As ever, it’s the goodwill and generosity of the country’s leading chefs that bring in the high-rolling public—plus the chance to hobnob with elite athletes. Never more so than last Thursday. The multitude was in a generous mood during the silent and live auctions, inspired by an extraordinary evening of excellence in Canadian athletics, cuisine, wine and—as a new departure for GMP—music. Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo performed three times during the evening and almost stole the entire show when he sang a duet with Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies.
Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy
Autumn is so much the favourite season of most Canadians I know (and why not? Canada does it so well) that I feel disloyal when reluctantly admitting that I find the fall melancholy to the point of bitterness. I don’t like watching things die. As an avid gardener (and fan of shambling zombie flicks), I know most of them will come back to life—but it’s still traumatic. Gastronomy offers its own take on life after death. Tasting the delectable porcine products showcased by Mario Pingue at Hart House this week made me humbly grateful to the pigs that gave their all but returned to the world as irresistibly moist and tender prosciutto, divine porchetta (which I ate on its own, without the proffered bun, but with a crisp morsel of chestnut-coloured crackling) and a lean, herb-rubbed cured loin, sliced and wrapped like a pink silk ribbon around a grissini stick. I always thought Ontario prosciutto was necessarily inferior to Italy’s product, usually dry and clumsily salty. Pingue’s Niagara product, aged in a naturally humid cave gouged from the Escarpment, is simply fabulous—swine revenant but transformed. There were plenty of other peninsula treats in the room, but I was waylaid in front of Charles Baker’s table (he was pouring his eponymous Riesling and a Wildass red and white from Stratus’s cadet label) and missed everything else.
Under Canvas
It seems the worst sort of teasing to write about a meal that was available all through September at Splendido, knowing that particular ship will have sailed by the time you read about it. The dinner was a collaborative effort between the restaurant and Stem Wine Group, a wine agency specializing (though not exclusively) in the wines of Italy. Splendido’s sommelier, Carlo Catallo, chose six beauties from Stem’s portfolio then David Lee created a menu to flatter them. It’s something he does extraordinarily well, and the evening was gastronomic nirvana. If I had to pick one of the six courses (weeping and at gunpoint) it would be a rustic little casserole of rabbit soffritto spiked with Tuscan salami and served over orecchiette pasta—pungent, hearty but at the same time quietly elegant in its balance and textural integrity. The wine was a 2001 Brunello from Collemattoni, and it worked brilliantly. It had to because the wine from the previous course was simply terrific—Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Marina Cvetic,” 2004—maybe the ultimate example of what the often humble M d’A grape can do when coaxed and encouraged.
A very fine day
The picture above shows my son, Joseph, and his wife, Kayoko Sugishita, pointing at an unexpected wedding guest—a handsome red fox that trotted into the garden where their wedding was held, just after the pronouncement, and sat down among the roses for a while. It was the final detail needed to complete the afternoon—something slightly magical and strange—though just one of several blessings. Sky god Eochaid the Dagda (from whom my family is descended, according to my Uncle Bob) saw fit to give us a forget-me-not sky and warm sunshine. Katie Luong of Flower World on Spadina created exactly the bouquet and flower arrangements we had hoped for. Above all, The Charles Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake did a superb job as the venue for the ceremony and dinner.
Youth Movements
Having finally got through the cruel deadlines that had accumulated during my self-indulgently prolonged stay in the somnolent madness of Greece, I have been catching up on old webular connections such as the Saylor’s journal. It reminds me that music is essential and hard work epiphanic and that there are friends to be made out there if we only have the courage to introduce ourselves.
More summer treats
Back to Toronto and happy to find that summer still lingers here, though Canadian friends (typically) are getting gleeful about the imminent glories of autumn with its brisk days, colourful trees and hockey. Talking of which, Tie Domi was sitting at the next table to me on Thursday when we had dinner at Mark McEwan’s new restaurant, One. So much more exciting than the fanfaronade of film stars and starlets also swanning about the highly glamorous room. One is already terrific—there’s a Beverley Hills buzz to the place—and the food was impressive for any restaurant that was only three days old. Ingredients of notable quality cooked simply—just what the elite like. I was particularly happy with a warm salad of roasted carrots (so tender and flavourful) paired with big chunks of avocado, fresh orange and a subtle cumin–coriander dressing. By no means complicated but such a great match of flavours and textures. It’s a bit early to be talking about the food quite yet, however. Even the hyper-organized and savvy McEwan deserves a week or two before the critics drop in—though I noticed at least two of them there, quietly forming judgements…
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The Corfu delicacy shop
Everyone loves the idea of a shop that is exclusively devoted to local produce (it would make a lot of sense in Niagara or Prince Edward County). Here on Corfu, Greece’s membership in the EU means that the island is deliberately flooded with things made in other European countries. For years—decades even—people who wanted to find antique furniture and bric-a-brac that was actually from the island had to weasel it out for themselves from dumps or estate sales or a handful of dark little shops in the main town. It was fun but time-consuming. Local craftsmen also had to be tracked down by word of mouth. Finding local food and wine was much easier—until quite recently one could assume that the produce, meat and fish for sale in the market in the old fosse of the Venetian fortress in town was home-grown. Here in the north of the island, where we have no central market, travelling greengrocers used to show up several times a week in the mountain villages, flatbed trucks laden with fruit and vegetables. (Dimitri was our regular guy—he used to let us weigh our babies in his scales). Everything local; everything seasonal.
Salad Days
Three skinny feral cats have fallen in love with my wife and follow her everywhere like a retinue of tiny servants. It might be Wendy’s personality or it might be her habit of opening tins of tuna for them twice a day. I bought some lamb chops on Thursday, intending to barbecue them. While the black and the white cats struck flamboyantly distracting poses in the courtyard to the delight of all, the grey tabby pulled the bag of meat off the kitchen counter, tore it open and ravaged the cutlets. To the victors the spoils. The cats ate the raw meat in the garden, away from the wasps.
Richard Bradshaw
News of the death of Richard Bradshaw casts a deep shadow over the old homestead. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with Andrew Chase (chef, restaurateur, composer and now food writer) who was also a big fan of Bradshaw and the amazing achievements of the COC under his aegis. Chase recalls having dinner at Biff’s after the opera and Bradshaw walked in to join a group at another table. “In New York or London or any major city,” pointed out Chase, “people would have stood and applauded their city’s great maestro. In Toronto, no one even glanced up. It made me so angry!”
Convent olives
My cousin Maggie and her husband, Angus, are staying with us on Corfu. They are farmers in Pembrokeshire (west Wales) and immensely useful guests. Angus has sorted out a plumbing blockage in the bathroom, smoothed the rubble that fills the new terrace, helped me clear the construction site that used to be our parking place and lay a drain across the driveway. Ah, the romance of an Ionian holiday!
Hot off the barbie
I’m posting early this week to give everyone a chance to participate in the World’s Longest Barbecue on Saturday, August 4th. It is the brainchild—love child?—of our most indomitable culinary activist and all-round gastropatriot Anita Stewart, and the instructions can be found here. As can the details of the grand prize—a Weber Genesis E 310 gas grill valued at $899. I’ll be on Corfu by the time you read this but I will take part, doing my bit by firing up the charcoal barbecue on my terrace (using coarse chunks of olive charcoal burnt by pals in the village) to grill whatever meat is available but finishing it with a very Canadian maple syrup-based barbecue glaze.
Pork and pinot
My daughter has secured a summer job as staff photographer at a camp near Minden. She returns to the city for three days while the cohorts of unruly children change—which is heaven for this doting p. who wants nothing more than to cook for her. After a month of wieners and frozen hash browns, she craves flavour and gorges on gravadlax, roast beef and maki rolls. I send her back with a cache of Tabasco, hoping she’ll use it to brighten her lunches not startle some foe by spiking his milk shake. I never went to camp. We didn’t have them in England. Much to my regret.
Four entrances and an exit
I went to Amaya on Thursday and enjoyed myself no end. Call the cooking there New Indian or Contemporary Subcontinental—or better yet, don’t. It’s more like the way very good, rather sophisticated Indian friends cook in their homes with fresh textures and subtle spicing. But the facts, the facts…! Amaya is on Bayview Avenue, where JOV Bistro used to be. Derek Valleau (ex Crush) and Hemant Bhagwani (who owns Mantra in Burlington) are the proprietors, working the room as good owners should, and they have brought the brilliant and charming Lynn Stimpson in as manager from Cava (and a great many other places—she’s a career front-of-house star with a CV as long as the Nile). The chef, Dinesh Butola, also comes from Mantra and he knows his stuff. We finally have someone to contend with Vancouver’s Vikram Vij and with the team at Amaya in London, England (no relation—and no comparison, either, since our Amaya is content to woo Leaside while the London version aims to be the sexiest, haughtiest venue ever).
