Leaf fan: Matchbox Gardens grows rare and wonderful lettuces (Image: Jay Shuster)
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All stories relating to pork
A sticky situation: how to make Union’s finger-licking ribs
Chef Teo Paul describes his 20-year quest for the perfect ribs
(Photograph: Edward Pond; Illustration: Jack Dylan)
“Back in the ’80s, there was this place by our house, near Dupont and Davenport, called Mickey’s Ribs. The kitchen just did ribs to go. It took them an hour to make them, and they were expensive as hell—my dad would only get them as a special treat. They were unbelievably awesome. So for the past 20-odd years, I’ve been trying to recreate them. When I opened Union last year, I put side ribs on the menu and called them sticky ribs, because that’s want I wanted—that amazingly saucy, meaty, sticky goodness. But they weren’t sticky. For three months, the three other chefs and I talked about them every night. We played with the liquid ratios and tried different cooking times. Then, one night, because the oven was full, I put them on the bottom rack. That was the ticket. They worked perfectly. Here’s what you do.” Read the rest of this entry »
Barbecued meat causes cancer. How to avoid carcinogens but keep the flavour
That's all, folks: simply adding rosemary can reduce cancer-causing agents in charred meat (Image: Tambako the Jaguar)
There are still some things that don’t cause cancer (yet), but barbecued meat is not one of them. Charred flesh contains heterocyclic amines (HCAs), a toxic substance that bonds to DNA, causes genetic mutations, and has been linked to pancreatic, prostate, stomach and breast cancers. The good news is that HCAs can be greatly reduced—and flavours can be greatly boosted—by barbecuing old school.
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Where to eat lunch this week: Chuck and Company
Liberty Village may be late to the party when it comes to the fancy burger trend, but good things come to those who wait
Lamb and portobello burgers (Images: Catherine Hayday)
Where to eat lunch this week: The Queen and Beaver Public House
This downtown resto-bar elevates pub grub to swish dishes
Celebrating the Week of Eating In with the nine “grossest packaged foods ever”
Licence to eel (Image: Tesco)
Pork brains in milk gravy contain 1,170 per cent of an adult’s recommended daily intake of cholesterol (though the upchuck factor may mitigate any long-term effects). This is just one of the meals featured in the Huffington Post’s new assemblage of “grossest packaged foods ever”—a parade of grotesqueries that break virtually every food rule in the book. Number one, Armour Potted Meat Food Product, contains traces of meat from several different species (beef hearts, separated chicken, partially defatted “tissue”). The canned eels occupying the penultimate slot are jellied, as if they weren’t putrid enough on their own. HuffPo is running the slide show to honour the Week of Eating In, which encourages readers to cook from scratch in their own kitchens. To be sure, even those faced with the barest of larders could do no worse.
Liberty Village bread factory is relocating to Hamilton
Hamilton will smell like freshly baked bread (Photo by jytyl)
It’s been just over a month since we first reported on Canada Bread’s announcement that it will be closing three aging Toronto plants in 2013—including the massive Liberty Village bakery—and building a substantial factory somewhere in southwestern Ontario. Yesterday, the company announced that Hamilton will be the site of the new $100-million facility.
The 375,000-square-foot behemoth will occupy a piece of land on which Maple Leaf Foods, which owns 90 per cent of Canada Bread, wanted to build a pork-producing facility in 2005, which would have created 900 jobs. Neighbourhood opposition nixed Project Pork, but the city seems to be eager for the bread plant (which will employ up to 300), judging by how quickly the deal went through.
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Black Hoof buys Berkshire pigs for restaurant
A wee little Berkshire pig (Photo by Xabier Cid)
In an effort to make charcuterie bastion Black Hoof more self-sufficient, the owners have purchased two female Berkshire pigs—tentatively named Brunch and Dinner.
“I chose Berkshire because the meat is just so dark and purple, it’s got the best marbling, and the fat content is the perfect amount (read: lots of fat),” writes co-owner and chef Grant van Gameren on his blog, Charcuterie Sundays.
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Toronto’s best southern food
For pure comfort, nothing satisfies quite like bone-sucking, finger-licking, rib-sticking southern food. Here, the best barbecue and fry-ups in town.
Southern fried chicken from The Stockyards (Photo by Daniel Shipp)
Best food movies of all time, rejecting Michelin stars, a bagel Toronto can call its own
Meryl Streep as Julia Child, Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka (Photos courtesy of Columbia, Paramount)
• A good food movie should have good food scenes, says an astute L.A. Weekly. More specifically, those scenes should be “passionate, visual and sometimes absurd.” With those criteria in mind, the magazine rates the top 10 food movies of all time. There are some predictable choices in there—Julie and Julia at number six, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at number five—but topping the chart is the Danish film Babette’s Feast, a film about a maid who spends her lottery winnings on the most lavish meal imaginable. Notably missing from the list: 9½ Weeks. [LA Weekly]
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Riding the gravy train: Smoke’s Poutinerie plans new locations and a poutine truck
Smolkin shows off his triple pork poutine: bacon, pulled pork and sausage atop fries (Photo by Karon Liu)
Fries, curds and gravy—three simple ingredients that, when combined, create a dish as Canadian as hockey. Toronto’s love affair with poutine started years ago with haute incarnations from Jamie Kennedy and in restaurants like Bymark (it’s hard to go wrong when both lobster and fries are involved). When Café du Lac opened in 2008, we swooned for its foie gras–topped version. It was perhaps inevitable, then, that poutine-focused restaurants would soon follow, and the first was thanks to Ryan Smolkin, an ex-advertising exec with no hospitality experience.
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Graydon Carter’s terrifying lunch, fruit fly infestation, DIY pizza ovens
Cure all: the story of Niagara prosciutto maker Mario Pingue appears in the Star (Photo by stu_spivack)
• Every Ontario gourmand who knows prosciutto from pancetta has heard of Niagara meat maestro Mario Pingue. Now the Star tells his whole story, from his cash-strapped early days to his meat’s near-omnipresence at Toronto restaurants. [Toronto Star]
• Home chefs shamed by clouds of flying insects in their kitchens will be relieved to know they’re not alone. Fruit flies have descended on Toronto this summer, and pest-control experts are blaming the garbage strike. Since city workers are being blamed for everything, can we pin the rainy summer on them, too? [Globe and Mail]
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Girl on grill action: Ontario’s barbecue queen fires up Hogtown
The honours, all mine: The head of the Diva Q team clutches her well-earned trophies
She smoked the competition on the Ontario barbecue circuit, has taken a prize for Best International Team at the prestigious Jack Daniel’s Invitational in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and earned an invite to the National Barbeque Association’s showdown in Georgia. Now the grilling goddess, Danielle Dimovski—better known as Diva Q—brings her fiery style to Toronto for the first annual Crazy Canuck Championships at Woodbine Park on June 20.
“There’s not much I haven’t put on a barbecue,” says the self-described OCB (obsessive compulsive barbecuer); she’s even tried ice cream bars and chocolate cheesecake, the Death by Diva, which won top honours in a Kansas City competition. When we catch her, she’s tending to 50 “atomic buffalo turds” for a TV spot on the series Playing House. The snack, which she calls “the crack candy of the barbecue world” (we say cardiologist’s nightmare), is jalapeño peppers stuffed with spices and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and cooked low and slow for three hours.
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The InterContinental’s SkyLounge patio is now open (and serving a recession-busting grill menu)
Hot off the grill: steak burgers, chorizo hotdogs and pulled pork sammies (Photo by Karon Liu)
When the publicist said the biggest name who had RSVP’d for the InterContinental’s SkyLounge patio opening last night was Rick Campenelli, we expected it to be a long evening—especially when said ET Canada host failed to show up.
No matter. The shindig gave us (along with a bevy of networking industry types and unnaturally tanned, unnaturally blonde recession/fashion/style-istas) the opportunity to sample the TIFF hotspot’s new recession-friendly Thursday grill menu.
Dalton McGuinty hams it up
Riot police look on as Tamil protestors demonstrate at Queen's Park (Photos by Karon Liu)
The provincial government hosted a photo-op luncheon at Queen’s Park this afternoon, complete with Dalton McGuinty robotically slinging the province’s pork products. “They’re nutritious and delicious!” he said, attempting to calm anxieties over swine flu transmission via meat. Anxiety of a different kind, however, was running high on the legislative lawn, where pro-Tamil protests and hunger strikes continued.
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