RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Extravaganzas’ Category

Langdon Hall’s VISA Infinite extravaganza

16 Jun

 

Chef Jonathan Gushue

Chef Jonathan Gushue

Executive Chef Jonathan Gushue was on superb form last weekend for the annual VISA Infinite Dining Series gala at Langdon Hall. The two-day affair, brilliantly organized by the IDMG team, was blessed with perfect weather and guests made merry throughout the great hotel and its splendid gardens. Several people remarked to me that they felt we were living out an episode of Downton Abbey, but without any of the show’s attendant melodrama.

We began on Saturday evening with cocktails, bubbly and delectable canapés on the croquet lawn then moved indoors to the dining room for the first five courses. Gushue’s food has always been extraordinarily refined and delicate but these days it seems even more ethereal, inspired by the fresh produce of Langdon Hall’s garden and grounds and the early harvest of farmers and growers in the vicinity. “It hasn’t really been a conscious decision towards lighter and fresher food,” the chef explained to me, “so much as a natural process based on my own tastes. I’m more interested in working with vegetables and fish and I find I just can’t look at another piece of chicken-fried bacon or something foolish like that. I was part of an event at Norm Hardie’s place in Prince Edward County earlier this year. There were 23 chefs there and 21 of them cooked a meat dish. Some of them were amazing, but I’ve been on a bit of mission ever since.”

This light touch has always suited Langdon Hall where so many of the guests are planning a romantic stay. Gushue has received dozens of hand-written letters over the years from guests who appreciated being able to enjoy a six- or seven-course dinner without feeling exhausted at the end of the meal. Too much rich, heavy food can sometimes snuff out the pilot light of passion.

peas and ricotta

peas and ricotta

The amuse offered a perfect illustration of Gushue’s philosophy – perfect peas, freshly picked and popped from their pods, served raw, as Nature intended, with some of their dear little tendrilly leaves and a trace of fresh mint. He posed them beside a spoonful of pea purée to give another viewpoint onto the vegetable and paired them with a dab of ricotta. Not just any ricotta. This was the 2013 Grand Champion from the Canadian Cheese Grand Prix, voted the best cheese in Canada. It’s made from sweet whole milk by Quality Cheese in Vaughan and it’s wonderful. The other element of the dish was a lemon verbena water. The herb grows all over the property and Gushue uses it frequently. This time he made it into an infusion that he chilled and thickened until it reached a point somewhere between a liquid and a jelly – a subtle suggestion of flavour to complement the ricotta. The 2010 sparkling brut rosé from Hinterland in Prince Edward County was a perfect accompaniment, introduced, as were all the wines, by Langdon Hall’s assistant sommelier, Melissa Marynissen.

Gushue’s second dish was another masterful understatement. He started with beautiful little gem lettuces sourced from Deerfield Nurseries in Hagersville, briefly brining the leaves to give them a slightly marinated feel but leaving them still, essentially, raw. On top of them he perched a plump Digby scallop that he had warmed in the oven, not really cooking it, just basically bringing it up to room temperature, barely seizing its sweet, sticky juices. To this he brought the lightest sauce imaginable, made by thickening milk with a dash of puréed scallop, adding a thinner second sauce of lettuce juice. So light and fine! But the finishing touch was like sprinkling gold dust on the bedsheets. He brined and then dry-cured egg yolks for 12 weeks until they ended up looking like golden, semi-translucent glass but with a strange pliant texture that Gushue described as “like cutting into a gummy bear.” He grated the yolks and scattered them over the lettuce like pollen gilding a lilly. The yolky flavour was as rich, in its way, as the scallop, and a fine contrast for the pristine lettuces. A 2011 Loimer Grüner Veltliner was wine enough to match the scallop and egg but fine enough not to bully the leaves.

asparagus with chive blossom

asparagus with chive blossom

By now, our palates were becoming calibrated to the vegetable-seafood-dairy world of Gushue’s imagination. The third course pursued the theme further – a dish of Deerfield Nurseries asparagus tips moistened with cold-pressed canola oil and roasted for a moment in the oven. “That asparagus is so good I like to leave it to its own devices,” said Gushue, but of course he added some subtle enhancements. The base of his sauce was tomato water – the pale, sweet but tangy juice that drips all night from a muslin bag filled with chopped raw tomatoes. Gushue  infused it with marigolds from the garden then finished it by adding a little of the sheep’s milk yoghurt they make in the kitchen. Nothing shows off the taste of asparagus like nutty ingredients and Chef brought in three elements from that section of the gastronomic orchestra: a drop or two more of the cold-pressed canola oil with its unique, faintly nutty taste; some powdered hazelnuts; and some red quinoa, a particular type of quinoa that holds its crunch even when cooked and has an unusual walnut-like flavour. To finish, a little squeeze of lemon juice over the asparagus and a final garnish of chive tops. Gushue told me once that if he could only have one garnish on Earth it would be chive tops – not just because of the gorgeous mauve colour but because they have real flavour and a honey-sweet finish behind the oniony allium aroma. I would have reached for a Sauvignon Blanc with this dish but Marynissen chose a red, the 2008 Mercurey 1er Cru Les Champ Martins from Domaine Michel Juillot, and it worked admirably, picking out the nutty flavours perfectly.

Atlantic halibut

Atlantic halibut

It was time for something more substantial and now Gushue turned to his Halifax fish suppliers, Fisherfolk, for some superb Atlantic halibut. Fisherfolk is a family firm and most of its members are fishermen themselves so there’s no need for a middle man. Seafood comes from the cold Atlantic to Langdon Hall’s dining room within hours not days – something Gushue hadn’t experienced since he was at The Wedgwood hotel in Vancouver. He roasted the halibut very simply, just gilding its surface with a white wine glaze. Alongside it he served black salsify – the last of last year’s crop from Anthony John at Soiled Reputation – slowly braised in a warm bath of Chardonnay, fish stock and shallots. As a second vegetable he heated the same braising liquid to boiling point and used it to blanch chunks of peeled cucumber. It ended up with the texture of vegetable marrow and nearly stole the show. Sprinkled over the vegetables was crumbled, very crunchy chicken skin that had been roasted until it gave up all its fat, quickly seasoned with salt and pepper and then crushed to dust. He used the rendered schmaltz to make a mayonnaise, a very tiny amount of which went into the sauce that finished the dish – a light stock spiked with wild herbs from Langdon Hall’s woods. The Chardonnay was an assertive, perfectly balanced beauty – Bachelder’s 2010 Wismer Vineyard from Niagara.

There had been no starch whatsoever in the meal to date – and no meat, either. But now the carnivores were rewarded for their patience. Grandview Farms wagyu beef sirloin is grass-fed so that famous wagyu marbling isn’t nearly as pronounced. It’s leaner and lighter than corn-fed beef and it doesn’t exhaust your palate the way a big slab of USDA Prime does (awesome for the first three bites, then a burdensome duty after that). Gushue has a bone to pick with modern beef-lovers who measure the quality of their meat by how soft it is. “There’s a difference between tender and soft,” he says. “I like a little toothsome crunch to my beef – I don’t want it to cut like liver.” It didn’t. And it tasted divine. Beside it, Gushue set scallions, simply grilled and brushed with Langdon Hall butter, and a medley of pink and golden beets. The sauce was a shallot broth made by roasting shallots at 450 degrees for an hour until one side of them is almost charred black then moving them into a new pan and cooking them down at 225 degrees for 16 hours. They give up all their sweet, golden juices but there’s also an intriguingly sour, bitter note from the preliminary blackening that brings the broth to life. A 2010 Springfield Estate Cabernet Sauvignon did its vinous duty by the beef.

And then it was time to move on to the conservatory for a spectacular array of Canadian cheeses, all of them prize winners at the Canadian Cheese Grand Prix and introduced by Debbie Levy of Dairy Farmers of Canada. Behind the cheeses were desserts created by Langdon hall’s brilliant pastry chef, Sarah Villamere. There was pansy and rhubarb mousse, intense bite-sized chocolate and lovage tartlets and scrumptious white-chocolate-strawberry-hazelnut cake.

The firepit...

The firepit…

But the evening didn’t end there. Out in the candlelit darkness by the reflecting pool, Gushue had set up a firepit and was melting raclette cheese, to be eaten with marinated onion and prosciutto. Or for those who needed something sweeter, Villamere had made cheesecakes in little glass jars. Someone played guitar and the starlit sky promised a clear sunrise.

Sunday morning on these weekends means a spectacular brunch and this time Gushue and his tireless staff set up the party around the swimming pool. There were dozens of dishes to taste and Sarah Villamere was front and centre with a bakery’s worth of cookies and scones, praline brioche with honey butter, Danish cheese tarts, croissants and pain au chocolat, cookies and miniature pots of blueberry-basil crème brûlée topped with crème fraiche.

I can’t list everything but I can’t forget the pizza-like dandelion tart flecked with pancetta, cheddar and marinated raisins. Or the eggs en cocotte cooked with cream and Bleu d’Elizabeth cheese and walnuts. Or the salads – one of tart sea buckthorn berries, green grapes and pear, another tumbling strawberries, feta and celery, still another of melon, grilled apricots and marmalade.

It was a perfect day and Wendy and I lingered deep into the afternoon, long after brunch had been cleared and the guests had driven away.

My sincere thanks to Ksenija Hotic who took these beautiful photographs. www.ksenijahoticphotography.com.

 
No Comments

Posted in Canada, Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General, Restaurants

 

Langdon Hall on June 8

25 May
Langdon Hall itself

Langdon Hall itself

Two weeks from today – on Saturday, June 8th, to be precise – I will be motoring down to  Langdon Hall for the amazing VISA Infinite weekend, one of the highlights of my year. Not only is it an opportunity to spend a night and the best parts of two days in my favourite Canadian hotel, it also involves two spectacular meals from Grand Chef Jonathan Gushue – of which more later. We did this last year, some of you may remember and it was spectacular fun. You can find my report on this site by searching for Langdon Hall Weekend.

This year Chef Gushue has vowed to raise the bar even higher. Saturday’s dinner will begin in a clearing in the estate’s woodlands where there will be music and lively conversation. Then we’ll proceed to the croquet lawn for the second course (honestly, anyone who hankers after the Downton Abbey lifestyle needs to be part of this) and then into the dining room for the next four courses. Dessert, I gather, will be outside by torchlight in the warm summer night. Langdon hall’s sommelier, Kathleen Moore, will speak about the wines she has chosen for each delectable course. I’ll be introducing the food but I promise not to talk too long.

Brunch by the reflecting pool

Brunch by the reflecting pool

Sunday morning sees a truly spectacular brunch down around the pool. There were something like 50 dishes last year, a jazz band and some very glamorous cocktails. It was one of those days you wish would never end.

The whole weekend is an endless succession of treats, all set in what Condé Nast Traveler magazine has deemed to be one of the top 15 hotels in the world. If you haven’t booked your room yet just dial 1 800 268 1898 and do so. The price is $1,250 per couple – which includes everything.

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General

 

Make Wine Not War – the Massey College wine grazing 2013

27 Feb

grazing

One of the signal privileges of being a member of the Quadrangle Society at Massey College is that I get to help with the College Wine Committee’s annual Grazing. It’s always a delightful occasion with about 100 guests (half of them junior fellows of the College, half of them senior fellows and Quadranglers) moving from food station to food station in the Junior Common Room and Upper Library, tasting the precisely devised dishes prepared as perfect matches for the wines. The wines themselves are selected by the Wine Committee with a theme in mind and this year we attempted to show some of the different things that can happen to a grape when it’s grown in Ontario and in California. Jonathan Bright, who heads the Committee, came up with the title for the event, a cunning reference to the War of 1812 and the peace movement of the 1960s: Make Wine Not War.

I had discovered in previous years, much to my amazement, that some of our guests were unfamiliar with Ontario wines – old prejudices formed 30 years ago still nudging them away from the local shelves at the LCBO, the local pages of a restaurant wine list. They had passed from the last century into the present one in a state of ignorance, their lives immeasurably deprived of Ontario’s shimmering, racy Rieslings, our sleek Bordeaux blends, our Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs and profound late-harvest elixirs.

So there was an element of evangelical zeal in my introductory comments to the evening’s wines. I attempted to explain that, here in Ontario, we really don’t have to struggle to make wines of true elegance and that it isn’t all that hard to showcase the crisp acidity or the aromatic intensity that comes from interesting soils and a long hang time on the vine – especially now that our vineyards – and our winemakers – are reaching the glory of maturity. And, dare I say it, our summers do seem to be warm and fruitful more often than they used to be.

For California, the problems were always the other way around. All that heat and sunshine – the macho show-those-grapes-who’s-master winemaking taught at U.C. Davis – the early taste for over-oaked, overly potent Chardonnays and inky, over-extracted Cabernets… The one thing they seemed to lack in those old days was any whisper of finesse. But all that is changing too. Today’s winemakers are seeking out cooler areas where altitude or fog and wind from the Pacific mitigates the heat and where grapes ripen more slowly, developing more interesting aromas and keeping some notion of acidity. So our theme wasn’t quite such a cool-warm divide as it might have been 10 or 15 years ago.

We began with a delicious bubbly from Prince Edward County, the 2008 Grange of Prince Edward Sparkling, a méthode Champenoise blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with a pinky, beigy, papyrus colour – one of those elusive nacreous half-tones you see in a dawn sky or near the edge of an opal. It had an intriguing nose with plenty of yeast on top – like bread or biscuit dough overlaid upon notes of ripe red apple and a hint of pear. Tasting it, the apple was much sharper – like a Granny Smith – and there was some citrus there and a definite minerality as if one were sucking a cold, clean pebble from the bed of a stream – a trademark of a Prince Edward County wine.

I wish I could tell you where to find the 2008 but I think we drank the last of the vintage. It was very generously donated by Caroline Granger who founded and owns the winery. Her father had bought the property when she was a girl and she spent her summers there before growing up and becoming a fashion model and actress in Paris and New York, then a schoolteacher then a forensic accountant. In 1997, she and her three small children returned to Prince Edward County and the family property where she conceived the idea of growing vines. She planted the first 10 acres by hand – literally, when her tractor broke down – all the while studying chemistry and biology at Loyalist College. 2003 was her first harvest and, as an accountant, she couldn’t resist crunching the numbers from her investment. She calculated she would have to sell each bottle for $7,000 to break even on her costs to date. Today she has 60 acres under vine and a great success on her hands.

We had tasted the bubbly in November, together with Massey’s brilliant culinary director, Darlene Naranjo, and with Greg Cerson, the College steward and the man who makes our Grazing possible in every logistical way. Darlene came up with a perfect canapé to pair with the wine – a warm scone topped with a quince and green apple compote and a hint of fresh ginger. Scrumptious.

After that little appetizer we moved to the Upper Library for the first real pairing. We’d wanted to show that both Niagara and California are capable of perfumed, exotic wines beyond the usual pale. I had also thought it might be interesting to show off a Muscat from California, partly to justify the extraordinary and unprecedented infatuation that state is currently showing for the grape and also to show that not all Californian Muscats are sweet, one-dimensional, deeply tiresome wines that taste more soapy than floral and appeal mostly to people who like drinking Blush Zinfandel or are slaves to the Dark Master, Coca Cola. We found something much nicer. Uvaggio’s 2010 Moscato is dry, lightweight and has a true Moscato aroma like grapes, ripe canteloupe and gardenias.

Next to this we opened a 2010 Gewurztraminer from Cave Spring Cellars, grown on the Beamsville bench in Niagara on the sloping hillsides right under the escarpment. Cave Spring’s winemaker, Angelo Pavan, lets the grapes hang quite late into the harvest to build up sugar and aromatic complexity but picks while the necessary balancing acidity is still intact. It has none of the voluptuous weight of an Alsatian Gewurz but it’s still decidedly seductive with aromas of elderflowers and dried rose petals. There’s a little sweetness when you taste it and flavours of spiced pears and bubble gum but a lovely tangy acidity that keeps the wine honest. It opened up quite dramatically in our glasses and there were oohs and ahs all around the room, especially when I mentioned that Cave Spring had generously donated the wine for the evening.

We wanted something decadent and delicate to pair with these two wines and we came up with a milky infant of a ricotta cheese cradled in a bitter leaf, sweetened with floral-infused honey, a touch of anise and a final kiss from a rose petal – as if some wayward aunt had waved her perfumed hanky over the innocent ricotta as a blessing.

On to the Chardonnay station. When we were in the very early stages of thinking about this evening I had contacted Martin Malivoire, proprietor of Malivoire Wines on the Beamsville Bench in Niagara, to seek his advice and suggestions. He was supportive from the outset and proposed that his 2009 Moira Chardonnay might be just the wine to show how dazzling Niagara Chardonnay can be. He only makes 100 cases from the vineyard he and his partner, Moira Saganski, planted in 1995 and I was thrilled to pour it. This wine was praised by Jancis Robinson in terms that made many a Burgundian producer green with envy when she tasted it in London a couple of years ago. It’s made in a cool, clean Burgundian style with some of the juice fermented in French oak barrels made for Martin by a Burgundian cooper and some aged in steel. The oak is part of the choir, not the solo performer, harmonizing with refreshing acidity and minerality and  rather a yummy nose of honeysuckle, pear and lemon zest. En bouche, you find – if I may plagiarize Martin’s web site – flavours of “pineapple, pear, honey and custard cream with a zesty mineral finish.”

We felt this wine needed a dish of its own. Martin has since emailed me that he had opened a bottle of it for dinner on New Year’s Eve, and cooked up a perfect pairing – butter-poached lobster on linguine with a lobster and tomato reduced cream sauce with roasted fennel and oven-dried tomatoes. We came up with something fairly similar – shrimp cooked in butter with tarragon and just a hint of saffron to bring out the oak.

Alongside this gem, we served the 2009 Mer Soleil, grown in the Santa Lucia Highlands of Monterey County by the Wagner family. This is a perfect example of what Californian Chardonnay makers are after these days – a site that is naturally cooled by Pacific air and ocean fog being sucked into the valley. But there’s plenty of wind to keep the vines healthy and dry and a great deal of sunshine. Even 15 years ago, Californian Chardonnistas used to use so much French oak to ferment and age their wines that it ended up tasting like pineapple juice sucked through a straw from an old leather boot. The Australians were doing the same. Most of them have moved on. And yet this wine seemed undeniably oaky after the chic and taut Malivoire, full of spicy vanilla aromas along with hay and honey – and Mr Wagner also finds Meyer lemon on the nose but that may be the power of suggestion since his vineyards are surrounded by lemon groves. The oak is certainly there when you taste but, in the mouth, the wine is surprisingly delicate and not full-bodied at all – just a delightful and easy-going Chardonnay with an adorable smile… Darlene found a terrific match with a gratin of potatoes with molten Emmenthal cheese and lemon thyme cream.

Our third station was devoted to Pinot Noir, indubitably Ontario’s most promising red. There are some thoroughbred beauties strutting out of Prince Edward County, where the soil is almost identical to the Cote d’Or, and now that the vines there are reaching maturity, the Pinots are getting more interesting every year. But there are also some spectacular versions from Niagara’s benchlands and our Pinot Noir was from Tawse – voted the Canadian Winery of the Year by Wine Access magazine for an astonishing three years in a row – 2010, 2011 and 2012! Moray Tawse makes several Pinots from various vineyards. We tasted the Growers Blend from the long, hot 2010 vintage – a year which gave delicious concentration and complexity to the wine. From the vast spectrum of potential aromas Pinot Noir offers we found ripe cherries and blackberries with a hint of violets and some earthy, truffly, mushroomy forest floor background.

Our Californian Pinot came from Kenwood (the 2010) and was a good one, typical of what can be achieved down there now that winemakers have stopped manhandling the fruit as if it were Cabernet Sauvignon. So many Californian Pinots basically taste like raspberry juice with streaks of spice added by ageing in oak. This one was much better integrated and more interesting, grown in the Russian River valley of Sonoma – relatively cool and close to the ocean – and the winemaker decided to add 1% Syrah to the mix to add complexity and body and probably a bit of extra colour. Is that cheating? Not if it improves the wine. We found the nose to be a bowl of fruit – raspberries and strawberry jam, Ocean Spray cranberry cocktail – even a hint of Ribena. The taste was more complex – refreshing, suprisingly tannic in the way cranberries are and though there wasn’t any sense of a barnyard or those forest floor mushrooms there was a pleasant background of cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper. I urged our guests to go back and forth between the two, looking for the difference that climate can make – especially to the intensity of the aromatics and the underlying acidic structure. The Californian is cheerful, likeable wine – very easy to spend an hour with – but if you want long involved conversation deep into the night, the Tawse was the Pinot to choose. And to eat? Darlene prepared a splendid dish to go with both wines – slow-roasted pork topped with a mushroom brunoise in a dried cherry and pomegranate marinade.

I suppose the area where the biggest difference between Ontario and California can be seen is in the category of Big Red Wines – especially Cabernets. We can get some really good colour and intensity from C Franc in a long, hot year – but perhaps we should be looking for supple strength rather than brute force. For our Ontario red we left the benchlands and moved down to the plain – the Niagara Lakeshore appellation that lies around the road from St. Catharine’s to Niagara on the Lake. Like Malivoire and Tawse, Stratus is a brilliantly conceived winery, utterly eco-friendly, gravity-driven, so the wines aren’t constantly being pumped around and stressed. The vineyards there were planted with the deliberate knowledge that the principal wines made were going to be blends – the speciality of winemaker J-L Groux, a man of professorial intellect and a thorough individualist. We tasted the 2007 Stratus Red which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot – all three mainstays of Bordeaux of course – with a little Burgundian Gamay added – something you would most decidedly not find in a Bordeaux. 2007 was another of those long, hot summers in Ontario when Cabernet Sauvignon was able to ripen properly – which is not always the case here in cool years. J-L gave the components 644 days ageing in French oak barrels – 88% of them new ones. Then he chose the barrels he liked best (the rest went into Stratus’s second wine, called Wildass). The ’07 Stratus Red was finally released in 2010 and it proved to be a super, elegant wine that deserves the most concentrated appreciation. It’s so smooth and well-integrated that it’s actually quite hard to analyze! There’s a lovely juicy, round acidity and all sorts of rich, ripe, sleek black-fruit flavours right in the centre of the palate. And though it’s more than five years old now, it still tastes marvellously vibrant and young.

Our Californian Big Red was the 2009 Ridge Estate Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The name is a tad misleading as it’s also a blend, containing 23% Merlot to soften and humanize the dark, disapproving, rather austere frown of the Cabernet. These vineyards were planted in the 1960s and their roots grow deep, which adds all sorts of nuances to the wine. 2009 was also a summer of heat waves in California – one after the other – and we could taste the ripeness of the fruit. The Ridge is just reaching its peak now and it met with universal approval – not too extracted or jammy but huge, full-bodied and powerful. The tannins were smoothing out but there was plenty of acidity tucked away behind the tell-tale Cab Sauv blackcurrant and the aromas of black tea, fennel, brambles and cigar boxes.

We paired both reds with a cassoulet prepared with double-smoked bacon lardons and wild boar sausages made for us especially by Peter Sanagan at Sanagan’s Meat Locker in Kensington Market – (my local and therefore my nomination for Toronto’s best butcher’s shop). My favourite cassoulet wine is an inky black Fitou from Roussillon, tasting of charcoal and liquorice and sinful mid-afternoons. I once drank such a wine with a magnificent cassoulet made by the wives of the vineyard workers of Carcasonne and it was a humbling experience. I made the mistake of asking for seconds and my Oliver Twist-like presumptuousness ruined me for the rest of the week. At Massey, no such Armageddon occurred – but I think the Ridge worked better with the cassoulet than the Stratus. Darlene also served some mimolette cheese, gouged à la minute. I am on record as saying this is my favourite cheese in the world.

And so to our finale. We had thought about presenting an Ontario Icewine but we figured everyone already knew what they’re like. So, to bring symmetry to an evening that began with a lone Ontario bubbly we ended with a lone Californian sticky, another Muscat but made from a different kind of Muscat than the dry Moscato we tried earlier. This particular grape is called Orange Muscat and its aroma is like apricots and the orange flower water that barefooted street-children sell you in Marakesh. As far as I know only one producer makes it – a couple called Andrew and Laurel Quady who live in Madera in the San Joaquin Valley. They had experimented with making their own port during the 1970s – they rather cleverly called it Starboard – but in 1980 they came up with the fortified  Orange Muscat they call Essensia and it became an instant cult hit among dessert wine lovers. They have continued to experiment and these days Essensia also contains a few percentage points of Muscat Canelli which enhances the citrus character of the wine and a tiny bit of Malvasia Bianca which boosts and complicates the floral aroma. This is really one of those wines that takes the place of dessert but the idea of pairing it with a final treat was irresistible – some crystallized orange peel dipped in dark chocolate.

And that was our evening. It was certainly a wonderful occasion for me because my son is currently a Junior Fellow at the College and he came to the Grazing as my guest. Although Massey is one of the planet’s most enlightened and stimulating educational environments, that night we were not really there to learn. Our sole purpose was more simple and more profound – the clear-eyed, utterly single-minded quest for shameless hedonistic pleasure.

 

 
No Comments

Posted in Drink, Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General, Wine

 

SOUPSTOCK, baby! Yeah!

15 Oct

What did you do to stop the Mega-Quarry, Daddy?

It was the topic of the morning the other day as we sat in the departure lounge of Regina International Airport: the great gathering of Soupstock down in Woodbine Park in the Beach (or Beaches, if you prefer) on Sunday, October 21st. It is going to be astonishing! A cross between last year’s Foodstock and the perennial fundraiser Empty Bowls, with over 170 chefs gathering to offer soup to the multitudes, it could be the largest-ever culinary protest in the world. The purpose, if you haven’t heard, is to protest against the proposed Mega-Quarry north of Toronto. I really think we all have to go and be counted amongst the righteous. Or face the puzzled frowns of our unborn children when they ask what we did to stop the Sons of Fomor from destroying our beautiful province. Do you want this farmland to end up looking like the Tar Sands of Alberta? Money’s lovely, of course, but some things are more important.

Now here are the official messages from people who are already doing their bit.

“While Foodstock was amazing, it  only whet our appetite for something even bigger,” says Chef Michael Stadtlander from the Canadian Chefs’ Congress, which is co-hosting the event with the David Suzuki Foundation. “Soupstock is going to be the culinary celebration of the year; delicious, huge and truly inspiring.” Joining Chef Stadtlander are well-known culinary champions like Lynn Crawford, Jamie Kennedy, Brad Long and Donna Dooher. Up-and-coming chefs like Jon Pong of Hoof Raw Bar, Craig Harding of Campagnolo, and Calgary’s Connie DeSousa of Charcut, will also showcase their talents.

“By participating in Soupstock we hope to motivate Torontonians to join the inspiring movement to stop the Mega-Quarry and protect our precious headwaters and farmland,” says Chef Jamie Kennedy of Jamie Kennedy Kitchens. Chefs have volunteered to concoct original soup creations for Soupstock that celebrate the Melancthon region’s rich agricultural, cultural and natural history. In addition to culinary star power, local Ontario producers are donating the produce to be used by the chefs in the soups.

“It’s exciting to see our local farmers matching the incredible generosity of the chefs by donating fresh ingredients for Soupstock,” says Dr Faisal Moola from the David Suzuki Foundation. “From beets and bones to potatoes and dairy, these producers are kindly sharing their bounty and making the event a true celebration of local food.”

The mega-culinary event hopes to raise awareness about the need to stop the Highland Companies’ proposed limestone Mega-Quarry in the Township of Melancthon just 100 kilometres northwest of Toronto. The Mega-Quarry would permanently destroy more than 2,300 acres (930 hectares) of the best potato farmland in Ontario. The company is backed by a $25?billion Boston hedge fund and has proposed to blast a pit deeper than Niagara Falls in a landscape of great agricultural, cultural and ecological importance. The Mega-Quarry would require 600-million litres of water to be pumped out of the pit each day in perpetuity. Up to one million Ontarians downstream rely on this water. Thanks to a growing community of support to stop the Mega-Quarry, last fall the  Ontario government ordered the province’s first Environmental Assessment of a quarry application. Of course, we have no actual government now, so I’m not sure how that will pan out.

Funds raised at Soupstock will be used to continue building a community of support to stop the controversial Mega-Quarry and support other environmental and food-related issues. For more information, please visit www.soupstock.ca, or contact: Jode Roberts, David Suzuki Foundation 647 456 9752 cell, jroberts@davidsuzuki.org.

 

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General

 

The Great Chowder Chowdown

10 Oct

Here’s a delicious way to show support for Ocean Wise’s ongoing campaign for sustainable seafood: the 2012 Vancouver Aquarium Ocean Wise Chowder Chowdown! It’s taking place at the Fairmont Royal York, Toronto, on November 21 and promises to be a sell-out, so grabbing a ticket now is a smart decision. There will be 13 competitors serving up their own chowder creations – all of them local chefs who support the Ocean Wise initiative – and it’s a strong field:

· Chef Albert Ponzo | Le Select Bistro

· Chef Patrick McMurray | Starfish Oyster Bed and Grill

· Chef Shaun Edmonstone | Bruce Wine Bar

· Chef David Kokai | Loic Gourmet

· Chef Morgan Wilson | Trios Bistro at the Toronto Downtown Marriott Eaton Centre

· Chef Amira Becarevic | EPIC at the Fairmont Royal York

· Chef Daiji Tanaka | Hapa Izakaya

· Chef Kristin Donovan | Hooked

· Chef Frank Byrne | Fishbar

· Chef Thomas Heitz | Port Restaurant

· Chef Reuben Major | Earls Kitchen and Bar

· Chef Alexandra Gaponovitch | Calphalon Culinary Centre

· Chef Stacey Blois | Western University Canada

As if that line-up isn’t enough, the judges for the event include a number of famous faces – Anthony Walsh, Jamie Kennedy, Carl Heinrich (who won Top Chef Canada 2), Rebecca LeHeup of Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance, and Micah Donovan of The Food Jammers. Of course, there will also be a People’s Choice award.

“This friendly, but competitive, cook-off brings together 13 of Toronto’s top chefs as they showcase their original ocean-friendly seafood chowders, paired with craft beer, at this fun and delicious consumer event,” says Mike McDermid, Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise partner relations manager. “The winner will be crowned 2012 Ocean Wise Chowder Chowdown Champion.”

Tickets are $45 for adults, or $40 for students, and are available at vanaqua.org/chowder-chowdown.

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General

 

Coronation Day

21 Sep

 

Chef and co-owner of Atelier, Marc Lepine and his sous chef, Jason Sawision

To Ottawa for the coronation of Chef Marc Lepine of Atelier as Canadian Culinary Champion – a joyful and delicious evening. If you missed the competition last February, Lepine was a very worthy champion who leaped into the lead during the first of the three contests (the Wine Matching contest) and never stumbled. It was a strong field and all the chefs were on top form but Lepine was simply on fire. It was like watching Andy Murray in the Olympic finals – no one was going to keep him from that gold medal! The verdict among the judges was unanimous and a worthy Champion was celebrated.

On Tuesday last, we held the actual coronation, the traditional launch to the next Gold Medal Plates campaign. The trophy was presented before a small crowd of media, VIPs and all the Gold Medal Plates Ottawa-Gatineau judges who had taken Marc Lepine to the podium in last year’s regional event. Cameras flashed, glasses were raised and the general mood was one of undimmed merriment and congratulation.

Lepine and his team had generously offered to cook for some of us so we duly sat down. Those who had eaten at Atelier before were just as full of anticipatory excitement as those of us who had not. I wasn’t sure what to expect – a couple of apps? In the end we were treated to a 14-course dinner of extraordinary quality.

Smoke

But first, a word about the restaurant. There is no name on the door of the low, detached building at 540 Rochester Street, Ottawa (613 321 3537). The windows are guarded by a fashionably rusted metal grill and there are rough stones laid around the base of the façade. Inside is a tiny room with grey walls hung with very small framed paintings done by Chef’s daughter when she was five years old. The wee room seats 22, mostly in huge, cream-coloured leather armchairs that are wonderfully comfortable. I counted 5 people in the kitchen and three servers – a ratio of staff to customers that promises much but must challenge the restaurant’s profitability. Interestingly, there is no actual stove in the kitchen. “He uses induction, and circulators, and sometimes a blowtorch or a soldering iron as a heat source,” someone mentioned.

Not to mention a warm sense of humour. The first canape to be passed among the little throng was an empty shot glass. Not quite empty: there was a tiny pinch of dark dust at the bottom. We were instructed to down it in one. Our mouths tasted gin and tonic.

Then there were wobbly brown bubbbles that burst into liquid gazpacho in our mouths. Confited quail legs coated in prune purée (the soft, seasoned flesh sliding from the bone between our lips). A popsicle of frozen yoghurt that wasn’t sweet at all, just a brilliant palate cleanser.

Lepine was a stagiere at Alinea in Chicago a few years ago. Clearly, it was a highly influential experience. I have eaten in the restaurants of several Grant Achatz alumni. Though Lepine doesn’t have a kitchen brigade of 50, he comes closest to Achatz’s aesthetic of surprise, wit, true flavours, wry juxtapositions and unexpected harmonies.

Lepine’s dishes all have amusing names, apparently chosen from suggestions offered by the team in the kitchen. The best was the last course, involving mango as purèe, jelly and as a dehydrated pickle paired with lemon balm, cardamom ice cream and fried bread covered with saffron syrup. The dish is called “A Mangoes Into a Bar” – which is great. But I’m jumping ahead.

Give Peas a Chance before the soup hits the porcelain

The problem for the critic is that each of the 14 courses involves at least 14 ingredients and a dozen different  techniques, some molecular, some not, others more a matter of studiously letting something like a marigold leaf or a tiny yellow chili appear entirely unadulterated. I’m sitting here looking at my laborious notes and realizing that listing a hundred flavourful grace notes isn’t really going to give much of an impression. The pictures show how stunning the dishes looked and perhaps you can see the little coloured dots and moments of pale powder and minuscule dice made of jelly. Analysis is probably not the right response (though I think Lepine appreciates the awe of the ingredient-nerd). It’s the same with Susur Lee and Claudio Aprile in toronto – and maybe Grant Achatz, too. They are magicians who would rather the audience sat back and were amazed than bent forward, squinting, to try and understand the sleight of hand. But let’s look closely at one or two plates and see if we can see what’s going on.

Here’s the dish called “Smoke,” which arrives under a glass cloche filled with applewood smoke that is whisked away, perfuming the dining room. On the plate is a PERFECT piece of Quebec bison, cooked sous vide for half an hour at 52oC the pan-seared. The meat is heavenly – juicy and red with a faint flavour of woodsmoke. Beside it is a teaspoonful of crumbled fried potato, like the sort of pan-roasted breadcrumbs my mum used to serve with gamebirds. A finger of deep-fried French toast sings a similar song (and what a good idea for breakfast!). there’s a sautéed radish, some white drops of onion soubise, a dollop of ground pink peppercorn mustard, three salt-cured grapes that have the texture of cherries and a fine tarragon powder. The dark smooth sauce at the top of the plate is a liquidized boudin noir – rather an extravagant way to make gravy but it tasted amazing. A single marigold leaf was the token green on the plate. Busy? Yes. Crowded? No. And the bison’s role as star of the show was never jeopardized.

“Give Peas a Chance” comes from a less multi-dimensional place – almost an experiment to see what can be done with something as simple as a pea, the better to express its essential peaness. It begins with solids in a bowl – fresh little peas, chunks of sweet pea meringue, and more pea meringue crushed to powder. A smear of crème fraiche up the side of the bowl lets pea tendrils climb almost vertically from the tiny pool of pea purèe at its base. Slices of green grapes cling to the slope; a morain of frozen green apple snow brings sharp acidity. And see the golden cubes of apple cider jelly! They add a different sweetness to that of the green peas, and a different kind of tang to the green apple’s tartness. Now the waiter pours on a chilled pea soup – thick and green as Wiberg’s pine essence for the bath, sleek as paint. The dilemma is whether to scoop a bit of everything greedily into the spoon or try to pick out the different components, as curiosity demands. Either way, it’s absolutely delicious.

Piggie Smalls

Those are just two moments from the evening. “Sebastien and Pinchy” featured lobster and crab. “Piggie Smalls” showed off piglet tenderloin with blowtorched corn, pickled chanterelles, a powder made of ramps and truffle oil, and umpteen other nuanced details.

What fun it all was.

On Monday, we begin this year’s cycle of Gold Medal Plates events with a chauffeur-driven judges’ day visiting our competing Toronto chefs and tasting their dishes – all in lieu of a gala this year. Then it’s on to Regina for the great party on October 11. I can’t wait.

yer actual trophy (not actual size)

 
No Comments

Posted in Canada, Canadian Culinary Championships, Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General, Restaurants

 

Olympic report

20 Aug

Eugene (aka Dr. Draw) our awesome troubadour on the pub crawl through the City of London

What fun the Olympic games were! London looked absolutely splendid, everything worked and while Canada didn’t do quite as well as we all hoped, we matched the total number of our Beijing medal haul. I was there to help make sure the Gold Medal Plates guests had a lovely time (though our event experts Lisa Pasin and Cressida Raffin did all the heavy social lifting and organizing) but ended up having a very cool fortnight myself, hanging out with the likes of Jim Cuddy, Marnie McBean, Adam Kreek and Kyle Shewfelt. We were down at Eton Dorney to see Adam Van Kouverden win a magnificent silver and Mark Oldershaw an unexpected and valiant bronze (two medals in the space of 40 minutes) and though I regret the pork and chili sausage I purchased behind the stands it was a great day in all other respects. We had been in the stands beside the Serpentine the day before when our dear friend Simon Whitfield swam so brilliantly then came a terrible cropper on his bike. His mother and his wife were very brave.

As far as restaurants went, I think my recommendations went down well. Excellent modern Indian food at Trishna. Smashing canapés and cod at the Admiral Codrington. And three unforgettable pub crawls thanks to my friend Dr. Kit Barton, a professor at Regent’s College London who knows more about pubs and beer than anyone I have ever met. We started at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street, moved on to the Cockpit (a real neighbourhood pub where the bellringers of St. Paul’s cathedral come to drink on Christmas Day). Then across the Millennium Bridge to The Rake (320 different beers and an outcry from behind the bar when someone asked for a Guinness), finishing up in Borough Market at The Market Porter. Dr. Draw was our troubadour, improvising abstract, pagan music on his violin in the ancient lanes and yards of the City and delighting the crowd in the Porter.

The tubes were like saunas, the cabbies grumbled that business was down, but everyone else agreed that for a fortnight London was generous and merry and astonishingly friendly. Everywhere we went in our patriotic red and white, the Gamesmaker volunteers called out “Hello Canada!” and we felt entirely welcome. I wanted the Games to go on forever.

 

 

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Gold Medal Plates, Life in General

 

Langdon Hall weekend

16 Jul

 

Langdon Hall (all images courtesy of Virgil Knapp)

Langdon Hall is my favourite hotel in Canada – a country house in the English style and the perfect setting for Shakespearean comedy. Had I my players yet, my poor dear rogues, I’d fill the gracious halls and sitting rooms with noble lords and ladies, ardent lovers and a nimble-witted clown. There could be dainty dalliance in the orchard and repartee upon the croquet lawn, moonlit assignations in the woods. Such games, such comical misunderstandings! Perhaps a pair of twins to tangle up the plot before the final act, then resolution like a pent-up sigh – all’s well – ending in music, marriage and merriment, the natural order glorified, the whole a kind of masque or party…

We came very close to such high jinks a few weeks ago when VISA Infinite took the entire hotel for Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch. It was a splendid opportunity for Jonathan Gushue (Relais & Chateaux Grand Chef, Gold Medal Plates Toronto champion and all-round hero) to show us why Langdon Hall was named one of the top 100 restaurants in the world by the San Pellegrino academy. He did not disappoint.

Gushue’s not-so-secret weapon is the property itself, particularly the vegetable garden. It really is a magical place – especially early on a summer morning. Get up before everyone else and tiptoe across the dew-soaked croquet lawn; push open the gate into the garden… It’s like that moment when Dorothy opens the door into Munchkinland and suddenly everything is full of colour. There’s a sense of murmurous fecundity and the illusion of movement, of green things twisting upwards, the scent of fresh herbs and of rich, moist earth in the warm sun.

All that freshness sang out from Gushue’s amuse. He began by taking the year’s first local strawberries and turning them into a quick pickle, Japanese-style, with sugar and salt. Beside the berry was a crunchy baby cucumber, a moment of serrano chili and a teaspoonful of gazpacho sauce made from cherry tomato, cucumber and red pepper, a dash of Cabernet Franc vinegar and another of Ontario’s own Extra Virgin – rich, golden, cold-pressed canola oil.

White asparagus with two sauces

It was a great awakening for the palate and a fine introduction to the first course of the evening, a charmingly simple salad of chilled white asparagus from Cookstown Greens, peeled, blanched and chilled to perfection. Gushue garnished it with bittersweet, leafy lambs quarters from the garden (the name has nothing to do with lamb – it’s a corruption of the medieval Scottish name for August 1st – Lammas Quarter – a quarter day when the church came round for its tithes). There were two sauces, the first a citrus mousseline made with equal parts of hollandaise and whipped cream, spiked with Grand Marnier and orange zest. The second was more unusual – a rich meaty daube jus – beef cheeks slowly braised with red wine and orange, reductio but not ad absurdum, then forked apart until it became a profoundly beefy ragout. If the idea of daube jus on asparagus sounds like gravy on salad (it did to me), you must trust Gushue’s judicious use of it – just a little here, a little there… It was wonderful!

Langdon Hall’s sommelier, Katy Moore, was charged with selecting the wines for the great feast. She aimed squarely at the asparagus with a Staete Land 2010 Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand… Bull’s eye. Her second match was even better – Domaine Patrick Javillier’s 2009 Meursault, Cuvée les Clousots – as rich and elegant and blonde as Paris Hilton, but much more useful, especially when it came to pairing Gushue’s second dish.

This was the gastronomic sensation of the weekend. Jonathan Gushue comes from Newfoundland and he loves snow crab, waiting impatiently for the season to begin in June when the boats go out up the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador – almost all the way to Greenland. Tonight, the chef’s team picked all the meat out of the crab, then they separated the soft brown parts and beat them into a butter with a good deal of white wine. The white meat was poached in that crabby butter then laid in the empty bottom of a pristine soup bowl. Then the crab meat was smothered in flower petals picked from the garden, in much the same way that neanderthal people buried their dead, back in the day. English daisies, oxeye daisies, bachelor’s buttons, calendula, marigolds, sweet borage blossoms, many other dainty, colourful species… And even more were used to create the dish’s final element, an infusion of flowers in warm water – very delicate, herbaceous, perfumed, chlorophyllic… So early in the season, the flowers make a subtle tea so Gushue added some tomato skins to provide a touch of tangy acidity. Then just a drop or two of Pristine Gourmet’s Indonesian-style soy sauce by way of seasoning and balance. As we sat in that smooth sea of white linen, in that sumptuous dining room, the waiters appeared and poured the hot flower broth over the petal-covered crab, not to flood it but to bring it all to life, loosening the butter until it mixed with the broth. A stunning presentation.

The pickerel

How to follow that? Leap back to Ontario – Lake Huron, to be precise, and the Purdy family’s wonderful pickerel. Everywhere in the world, “pickerel” means a baby pike. Not in eastern Canada. Here we use the word to name a walleye, state fish of both Wisconsin and South Dakota and the provincial fish of Saskatchewan (eat it with a new respect). Gushue roasts the fillet and flatters it on the plate with a lettuce fondue. That is another charming treat made by enriching fish stock with bacon and cream then blending it with whatever lettuces are at their best in the garden. As he blends it, he adds a couple of raw scallops to give texture and body (it ends up as sleek and heavy as satin) as well as a certain marine sweetness. Before serving, he beats it by hand with a whisk just to aerate it a little – the protein lets it keep that slightly voluminous mouthfeel without it becoming a foam. Sharing the course is a fricasee of wild asparagus from Saskatchewan and sea asparagus from the Queen Charlotte islands. Underneath it, like a rich, tangy continuo, was a treatment of onions – last year’s red and torpedo onions from Antony John at Soiled Reputation – cooked for 32 hours with a little butter so that they basically melt, then finished with an elderflower and apple reduction. The elderflowers come from Gaspé; the apples from the garden – the combined acidity balances the sweetness of the onions.

             It was a brilliant dish and Katy Moore paired it unexpectedly with a red wine, a 2010 Lagrein from Kellerei St. Magdalena in the Alto Adige, light, fragrant but with enough gumption to dance with the shape-shifting flavours on the plate.

The party had acquired its own merry momentum by the time the main course arrived, a dish Jonathan had recently cooked in New York for the Relais & Chateaux dinner, to great acclaim, by all accounts. It was a canon of lamb – a cut we call the “best end” in England, which is basically the ribeye. Gushue’s lambs were local, the muscle lightly trimmed and crusted with crushed hazelnut and Alpindon cheese from Kootenee Alpine Cheese company in British Columbia. The lamb’s sweetbreads also showed up, cooked sous vide like a confit for two hours then lightly sautéed with no flour. There were more of last year’s onions from Soiled Reputation – sweet little cippolini this time, cooked in their own juices. A smidge of wild herb purée was improvised from whatever the kitchen found growing in the wild places around the property – wild watercress, chickweed, hen-bit, purslane, wild garlic, anise hyssop, yarrow… It was crisp, herbal – the sort of purée well-informed lambs dream of eating. Gushue completed the dish with a spiced jus made from lamb stock enhanced by white wine, shallots and garlic. He finished it with a spice butter using wild ginger from the property, last year’s dried chilies from the garden, star anise, and also some sultanas that have steeped in Earl Grey tea until they pick up the perfume of bergamot and orange pekoe – the sort of flavour you are vaguely aware of but can’t quite identify until someone tells you what it is – and then you suddenly taste it loud and clear.

There was no starch on the plate. Or anywhere in the meal, come to that, though the house-baked bread was pretty irresistible. Katy Moore chose a Châteauneuf du Pape to match the lamb – Château de Beaucastel 2007 – another fine decision.

At this point, the evening took a rather dramatic turn. Everyone stood up and wandered into the conservatory and the billiard room, where the table had been covered and turned into a fabulous cheese and dessert buffet. Sarah Villamere, Langdon Hall’s dessert chef, created an infinity of little bites and treats and temptations and Gushue had his own array of goodies to go with the cheese, including honeys made by Langdon Hall’s own bees (you could tell from the flavour where they were foraging – one batch scented like Tuscan blue rosemary; another like lavender) and a most intriguing ale jam. The cheeses themselves were some of Canada’s finest, generously sponsored by Dairy Farmers of Canada: Le Guillaume Tell, Tomme de Grosse Île, Niagara Gold, Louis d’Or, Alpindon, Avonlea’s clothbound cheddar, Celtic Blue and Le Rassembleau.

And then it was time for bed.

Jonathan Gushue puts the finishing touch to one of the many many scrumptious brunch dishes

And then it was time for brunch! How to explain the amazing feast that filled our morning? It was all done out of doors around the lawn and reflecting pool, next to the century-old Camperdown Elm. Smart people sought out the tables in the deep shade beneath its boughs for the sun was cruelly hot that morning.

I can’t do justice to the DOZENS of dishes Jonathan Gushue and his team presented at many stations spread out around the garden. Close your eyes and imagine what you can from this shortlist of highlights.

A whole pig roasted since 2:00 a.m. the previous night – glorious in its unctuous belliness and crispy crackling.

Asparagus dressed with a tapenade made from last year’s bumper crop of Langdon hall black walnuts.

Sweet Pickle Potato Salad – a very traditional southern-style potato salad with sweet pickles, bacon, onions and pickle juice that soaks right into the new potatoes if you time it just when they’re steaming.

Endless cheeses and some superb local charcuterie from Cameron Bell, a local farmer and chef who also grew and cooked the aforementioned pig.

Stuffed lobsters on the grill.

Smoked local catfish and smoked fried chicken with a summer squash and Louis d’Or cheese pudding.

Musicians played, the sun shone on, we ate and ate and (after 11:00) drank Mimosas. A very good time was had by all.

The weekend, for me, was the culmination of a very pleasant couple of years hosting dining events for VISA, evenings brilliantly organized by Paul Alsop of IDMG.ca. Many happy memories… Thanks to Virgil Knapp for these images.

 

Drinking:  Rosehall Run Vineyards Cuvée County Chardonnay 2010. A great year down in Prince Edward County, obviously (they picked in the last week of September – the earliest harvest ever) and the big body proves it. Lovely ripe citrus and apple on the nose and a judicious amount of oak. It’s tangy, intense, but with a sturdy acidity to carry all that fruit. Very refreshing in these heavy temperatures. This wine will be released at the winery in the fall and will retail at $21.95.

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General

 

Coffee at Splendido

17 Apr

Van Houtte coffee expert Marie-Claude Dessureault and Splendido chef-co-owner Victor Barry

The idea for a meal matching dishes to coffees instead of wines began over breakfast in a famous Canadian hotel – a hotel renowned for its restaurant and its wine list and, quite rightly, for the fulsome breakfast buffet it offered its guests. There was everything from fruit salad to kielbasa, mushrooms on toast to chocolate croissants, smoked salmon to bacon and eggs – a huge variety of foods – and only one kind of coffee. Imagine only serving one kind of wine with a menu so disparate! A sommelier would despair. So why only one kind of coffee?

Coffee is like wine in many ways. Every coffee expresses its own terroir, reflecting the place where it is grown. We love the bright citrus notes in Kenyan beans, the sweeter flavour of Costa Rican coffee, the earthy, woodsy notes of coffee from Indonesia. Like wine, coffees have different acidity, intensity and body. We experience each coffee differently on our palate – salt, sweet, sour, bitter – while our noses revel in the complexities of aroma, the illusions of cherry and citrus, cinnamon and chocolate, caramel, nuts, smoke, mushroom, earth, etcetera. And just as a winemaker changes grape juice so dramatically through fermentation, so a coffee expert creates a unique product by roasting to different levels.

In short, coffee can be just as complex an accompaniment to food as wine.

In my disgruntled state, that distant breakfast time, the invitation from Van Houtte coffee to work with the company as Ontario brand ambassador seemed decidedly opportune. Van Houtte offers scores of different arabica coffees from 15 different countries: that’s plenty to be playing with if you want to start thinking about pairing specific coffees with specific foods. If I had had them all beside me during that hungry morning I might have chosen a Costa Rica Light Roast, with its subtle honey notes and vibrant acidity, to drink with my fruit salad. With mushrooms on toast, perhaps a Honduras San Luis Planes Medium Roast with its strong woodsy notes but delicate aroma and its hints of toasted bread. And to match that spicy, meaty kielbasa how about Napoletano, with its rich bitterness and dark, smoky depths?

Trout tartare

Well, one thing has led to another. Yesterday morning some of us gathered at Splendido for a lesson in professional coffee cupping from Van Houtte’s expert, Marie-Claude Dessureault followed by a magnificent six-course lunch created by chef and co-owner Victor Barry. I had presented him with six very different coffees and challenged him to create a matched dish for each one, talking it through one afternoon with him and co-owner-sommelier Carlo Catallo. We were looking for balance, contrast or compliment, connection, harmony, perhaps even an epiphany… When Victor came back with his dishes for a preliminary tasting, we were not disappointed. In fact we were thrilled!

It began with a Costa Rica Light Roast, mellow and fruity with zero bitterness but bright acidity, seved (as all the coffees were) in a stemmed wine glass. This was the match that looked the least promising on paper (coffee and fish not that well known as an ideal marriage) but it was a revelation. Victor began with fresh Ontario rainbow trout from Jim Giggy up on Georgian Bay (he brings them to town alive and knocks them on the head at the kitchen door), curing the fillets very lightly in lemon juice, Dijon mustard and chives then chopping them into a rough tartare. Close by were some drums of compressed cucumber that had been very briefly grilled on the plancha, the light charring finding all sorts of resonances in the flavour of the coffee. Dill fronds and dill oil brought out a herbal note while tiny spikes of lemon zest caught the coffee’s citrus acidity. Victor finished the dish with a cucumber relish, tiny dime-sized toasts of pumpernickel, fried capers and a miniature loop of sweetly pickled red onion. A buttermilk crème fraîche was simultaneously rich and refreshing but the overall textures were as delicate as the Costa Rican brew. It was a brilliant overture.

breakfast of champignons

Our second course featured Mocha Java Light Roast, a much earthier, woodsier coffee but still with a bright acidity undiminished by much of a roast. This time, Victor decided to play up the silvan character of the coffee with mushrooms – a dazzlingly eclectic fungal salad starring

maitaki mushrooms, raw sliced king oyster mushrooms, honey mushrooms pickled in lemon juice, shallot, garlic, olive oil and thyme and a mound of morel duxelles. The sweet earthiness of it all was amplified by whole roasted jerusalem artichoke and jerusalem artichoke chips. Tangy ramps came three ways – charred, pickled and as a soft white snow. There was a roasted spring onion and a dfark green pool of stinging nettle purée, crushed walnuts and a truffle crumble that looked like fine soil, dabs of tangy, house-made Guinness triple crunch mustard and to crown everything, fine shavings of the season’s very last Perigord truffles. It was another extraordinary dish and I loved how the coffee’s gentle, pervasive sweetness lifted the many mushroomy-truffly flavours.

Boudin noir and deconstructed Black Forest cake

Our third course starred Van Houtte’s Africana blend, medium roast – a fruity, slightly spicy coffee with audacious acidity. What I hadn’t really tasted in it was clove, until I sipped it alongside Victor’s soft, almost moussy boudin noir. There was clove in the sausage and it reached right into the darkness of the brew and found a clove-shaped bell hanging there which it immediately struck with a hammer. Amazing. Alongside this superior boudin Victor offered a sort of deconstructed Black Forest cake, components that were somehow fruity and chocolately without being sweet – a cherry purée, little shards of very bitter dark chocolate tuile, dehydrated cocoa cake like hard foam and moments of cherry compote. Hazelnut crumble and hazelnut snow added their own rich nuttiness. The clove epiphany attracted most attention but the cherry and the dark chocolate also found echoes in the coffee – another fine match.

 

Smoked venison and beets

 

On to medium-roasted Honduras coffee – toasty, and woodsy, with a hint of caramel. This time Victor found smokiness in the brew so he took some incredible red deer tenderloin, smoked it lightly with maple wood, cooked it sous vide then in the oven, and finished it by wrapping the meat in a scarf of brioche and bronzing it in a pan. The subtle smokiness mingled with the sweet juices of the meat in a perfect equilibrium of flavour and our guests from the media moaned with pleasure. Sharing the plate was a medley of sweet earthy beets – yellow and candy cane; roasted purple beets; slices of beet cooked in gastrique of sherry vinegar, honey and five-spice; raw beet shavings… There was a cranberry-port-caramel compote, a celery leaf for greens and a last moistening of pan juices flavoured with thyme, peppercorn and sherry vinegar.

For a fifth course we poured dark, bold, fruity Colombian coffee, brewed a little stronger to stand up to the intensity of the 85% chocolate ganache on shortbread crust that was our nod to dessert. Between the ganache and the cookie, Victor insinuated a layer of apricot-fig-nectarine-blood orange marmalade that picked up some fruitiness in the coffee. It was his take on a Sacher tort but the cake was almost eclipsed by the ice cream beside it – smoked burnt maple syrup ice cream with crushed candied pecans. The bold idea of cold ice cream and hot coffee worked brilliantly.

a savoury finale - stilton, pork belly and Sumatran extra bold

I wanted us to finish in left field not home base, to challenge our palates not appease them. The last course succeeded in that. We made Sumatran dark roast extra bold coffee and served it with Stilton. The wierdness of the mix forced concentration. The coffee didn’t really affect the flavour of the cheese; it was more that they sidled around each other, like prize fighters looking for an opening. It was weird and I loved it. The second component of the dish was an easier match. Victor roasted some pork belly in the restaurant’s Green Egg then bathed it in a gastrique of maple syrup, soy and sherry vinegar and tossed it with peanuts.

Thanks to Victor, the whole event was a triumph. Why not drink different coffees instead of different wines with a savoury meal? I think the idea will catch on.

 

 

 
No Comments

Posted in Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General

 

The Iron Sommelier

03 Mar

Canada's three Master Sommeliers, Jennifer Huether, John Szabo and Bruce Wallner

On Tuesday night, the disconsolate blue-and-white crowd that streamed out of the Air Canada Centre and past the soaring glass façade of Aria Ristorante were unaware that a contest was under way, behind those lofty windows, of a much more subtle and hard-fought intensity than anything the Leafs have provided of late. The Iron Sommelier competition, 2012, came folded into a VISA Infinite dining event – and that meant good times for the audience of 150 eager food-and-wine lovers. Not only would they have a superb meal at the hand of Aria’s Executive Chef, Eron Novalski, they would also taste the wines chosen for each course by Canada’s three Master Sommeliers and then vote on which of the three deserved the title of Iron Sommelier.

I was to share the MC duties with the excellent and always amusing Nick Keukenmeester from Lifford wine agencies which had provided the portfolio of dozens of spectacular wines from which the competitors could choose their matches. By some deft and ruthless manoeuvring I was able to shuffle off the lion’s share of the work onto Nick’s shoulders, leaving myself with a single duty – to describe the dishes themselves.

And so we began, milling about in the restaurant, sipping 2002 Feuillatte Grand Cru Blanc de Noirs Champagne and nibbling on Chef Novalski’s awesome canapés: confited duck tongue with duck egg aioli… Green olives stuffed with duck meat, veal and sausage then breaded and fried… Wicked little duck breast spiedini with orange sea salt (“speedies” are all the rage in Western New York State’s more fashion-forward bars these days, and are certainly coming soon to a restaurant near you.)… Duck prosciutto crostini with apricot chutney and shaved foie gras… Have you spotted the theme? Yes indeedy. Every course was to feature duck and of the potential wines available to the sommeliers, the vast majority were Pinot Noir. The white Pekin ducks, incidentally, were generously sponsored by King Cole of Aurora, Ontario, a hugely successful, righteous farm that lets the birds lead clean, happy, outdoor, organic lives.

Nick introduced Canada’s three MSs, and I was delighted to see that he was perfectly prepared to take the mickey out of them, as they were out of each other. So it was a merry contest from the outset and I was left free to torment Nick whenever I could think of something. John Szabo MS (uber-consultant, whose latest project is STOCK restaurant in the Trump tower)  looked splendidly virile in the black, embroidered dolman and pelisse of a Hungarian hussar, though he had left his shako, boots and sabre at home. Jennifer Huether MS (o.i.c. MLSE’s wine program next door at E11even, the ACC, and everywhere else) was all charm and good-magical-energy but with a rapier for a palate and cool acuity where the public’s preferences are concerned. Bruce Wallner MS (lately of Paese) was the joker of the pack tonight, though he is a man on a serious mission to turn Ontario on to excellent wine.

Course number 1

 

Ma foie...! (image marcpolidorophotography.com)

 

Chef used duck foie gras to create a slightly Italianized version of a classic French foie gras mousse, served in a most original way. That Italian component comes in right at the beginning when he marinates the whole foie gras not in Cognac or Armagnac or Calvados – but in a grappa that has been aged in port casks. After an hour or so he strains the grappa off into a pan, pours in some chicken stock, adds bayleaves and peppercorns and brings it to the boil. The cool pink foies are lowered into this hot bath to relax for a while. Then they are separated again and allowed to cool down to room temperature before the foie is put back into the liquid and they go into the fridge. It all sounds like some elaborate day at the spa. Then the foie and its fat is buzzed in a food processor together with a great deal of butter – to be finished in a pacojet. By now it’s a mousse – you would be too if you had endured such treatment. Eron spreads it out across the whole plate like hummus and then adds crazy extra flavours – orange peel that has been dehydrated and then ground to powder; crispy sage leaves for earthiness and baby shiso leaf for mentholated tang; crispy duck skin, deep fried then crumbled over the top; and dehydrated cherry, like the weightless, chalky “berries” you get in a packet of cereal, partially powdered, partially crumbled over the top.

I was able to pass on instructions about how to eat it. Eron had baked some foccacia and turned it into crostini. He suggested we all just broke a piece off and wiped it right through the plate so it picked up a little of everything. Pop it in one’s gob – and while the flavours are still ringing and resonating around the palate try one of the wines and pay close attention to what happens.

All three MSs chose a Pinot Noir – each wine a star in its own right. Jennifer went for Barnett Savoy 2010 from California’s Anderson Valley. It was far more sophisticated than I expected with complex swirls going on under and around the vibrant cherries. It was such a good match it seemed to disappear in the welcoming embrace of the foie. John’s Pinot was a magnificent old Burgundy – Louis Jadot Corton Pougets Grand Cru 2002 – the most delicate red Corton of all. He urged us to think about texture and he was right – silk on silk – heavenly but, again, so perfect a dancing partner for the mousse that I lost sight of the wine behind the foie’s broad back. Bruce’s wine came from Niagara – Malivoire Mottiar Vineyard 2009. Cherries all over the place, but there was a distinctive Niagara vibrancy to it – an acidity that was different and alive – as if this wine was playing an electric guitar while the other two were playing in the strings section. It was a great match but it also let the wine stand out in its own right. It got my vote.

Course number 2

Duck consomme (image: marcpolidorophotography.com)

Our next dish was a (possibly unintentional) homage to the Marx Brothers and their immortal movie, Duck Soup. A great consommè always begins with the bones, of course – in this case, roasted and then boiled into a brown duck stock with a mirepoix of carrot, celery, onions, cinnamon, allspice, rosemary and thyme, all simmered over eight hours. Chef let it cool, then strained it, then boiled it up again, this time adding a little gelatin, orange zest (one of the ubiquitous secondary flavours of the evening) and some pat chun sauce (like a tangy, citric hoisin). To clarify it, he froze the soup, wrapped it in cheesecloth and let it slowly thaw at room temperature, drip-drip-dripping through a perforated pan. The result was a beautiful consommé, clear and the colour of dark honey – like the chunks of topaz shoeless children try to make you buy in the Atlas mountains – and with layers of flavour that go on for ever.

Three tortellini bobbed about in the soup, filled with a smooth mixture of confited duck, grated parmigiano reggiano and a pailful of porcini mushrooms that had been cooked down with roasted garlic and puréed. He finished the dish with some chopped chives and just a droplet of truffle oil that created an invisible, intangible ambience of truffle hovering in the air about a foot above the bowl.

Soup is a notoriously tough match for wine (cold and hot liquids rarely work well together) but the MSs were unfazed. John began by pointing out that the consommé was basically an umame bomb but that the tortellini might be the key bridge. “There is also umame in wine,” he opined, “when grapes are perfectly ripe or even over-ripe…” His choice was a white Alsatian show-stopper, rich and heavy, sweet and complex, the Zinck Rangen Grand Cru Tokay Pinot Gris 2007. A gorgeous wine, but I found it too big and sweet for the surprisingly delicate soup and the subtlety of the tortellini. Bruce took a totally different route, using a very rare and prestigious sparkling rosé from Franciacorta, the Ca del Bosco Anna Clemente Rose 2004 (a wine that retails at $219.95 a bottle). It showed magnificently and was brilliantly refreshing with the dish, and perfectly capable of singing its own song clear and true against the complicated orchestration of the dish. But did it actually add anything to the moment? Was there a sublime epiphany? Not so much. Jennifer took yet another route into the soup, picking up on the savoury, umame, mushroom, truffle components in the consommé with a classic match – a mature Burgundy with its own delicate, earthy, mushroomy notes, the Louis Jadot 1er Cru Beaune Theurons 2006. Bingo! A great balance of texture and intensity. The Beaune got my vote.

Course number 3

Pasta - basta! (image marcpolidorophotography.com)

The pasta interlude. The pasta in question was hand-made cavatelli, one inch long, sturdy and filling. The sauce…? Well of course it was all about the sauce. Chef Eron made a marvellous duck ragu, first roasting whole ducks until they were brown then braising them slowly for six or seven hours in a mixture of red wine, veal jus, tomato paste and a mirepoix of vegetables. When they were done, he took of the duck’s skins and forked off all the meat from the bones, He strained the braising liquid and added it to the meat, then passed the vegetables through a mouli and added them, too. Then he started a new sauce with onion and garlic and fresh tomatoes, folded in the ragu and just before serving added a couple of spoonfuls of mascarpone to add extra richness and silkiness of texture. As a final flourish he roasted chestnuts, froze them, then grated them over each dish as it went out.

John declared this rich ragu to be the toughest match of the evening, though not the most complex. He chose a Carrick Central Otago Pinot Noir 2009 from New Zealand – a smooth, perfectly balanced Pinot Noir that seemed to slide gracefully over the surface of the food without ever making much contact with it. Bruce also went to Otago for his Pinot, the Felton Road Cornish Point Central Otago Pinot Noir 2010, a wine that still showed the clumsiness of youth, needing time in the bottle to achieve perfect integration. That clumsiness, which revealed itself as a separation of the wine’s components – glorious cherry and berry fruit up front, acids and tannins swirling in a little late to the party – was exacerbated by the dish but I thought the match was actually more interesting with the tannins and acids managing to penetrate the textures of the dish, letting the fruit reach out to the sweet duck and spices. Jennifer found a Pinot Noir from Sonoma, the Freestone Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 2008. This wine is another beautifully knit smoothie with a great balance between the tangy, ripe red fruit, vibrant acidity and minerality. That vibrancy managed to handle the richness of the ragu – in my opinion, the best match of the three.

Course number 4

The breast (image marcpolidorophotography.com)

The main event. Someone asked me, “Why ducks on the menu tonight?” I tried to explain by asking her to imagine the shoreline of a great continent, the place where the land of food meets the ocean of wine. Armies of foodies ceaselessly roam the land; great navies of wine aficionados bob about on the seven seas. But in between lie vast tidal flats – lonely  and unvisited places, silent and wet under the infinite sky. But look there…! Far away across the miles of shining mud – distant figures are at work. It’s the sommeliers. They make their living where food meets wine, filling their string pouches with the glistening treasures they discover, collecting unique knowledge and original ideas. It can be a solitary place and they find companionship where they can – especially with the shore birds – the eiders and harlequins, the velvet scoters, the oldsquaws and goldeneyes – all the marine ducks – like the sommeliers, as comfortable on the water as on the land. I’m sure that’s why we had a duck menu.

And why, for our next course, Chef Eron worked with the breast, rubbing it with a dry marinade of liquorice, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, thyme and bayleaf and then sealing it in a vacuum for a couple of days to contemplate the error of its ways. When the meat was truly contrite, he cleaned it and then rubbed it with a second, fresh marinade of the same spices, but this time they had been toasted to mellow their pungency. Then the breast was quickly seared and sliced and the meat was arrayed over a velvet cushion of puréed celeriac and Gala apple, enriched with cream, thyme, bay and peppercorns.

There was also a tiny perfect brick of polenta that was mixed with butter and Parmigiano when it was still in its stirrable infancy. Eron spread it out onto baking pans and put it in the fridge to solidify. Then he cut it into rectangles and pan-seared them to reactivate the cheesiness.

As the evening’s token vegetable we had fennel poached in milk, then laid gently onto the polenta cake, only to be smothered in breadrumbs and cheese and gratineed under the merciless flames of the salamander. The sauce was a Veal jus with cocoa in it that was rich enough pass for a mole. There was a dusting of pink peppercorn powder around the plate and a final crumble of raw cocoa nibs – primal chocolate as a dark, savoury spice.

Such a complex, profound, tricky dish, with so much going on! The MSs did not let us down, working with three very serious Pinot Noirs. Jennifer chose an Australian star, the Kooyong Mornington Peninsula Estate Pinot Noir 2010, a very smooth and well-integrated wine that relied on fruit to make its statement. Bruce chose a huge Pinot, the Sequana Pinot Noir Dutton Ranch 2008 – a great wine in which he detected even caramelized notes. To me, the food exaggerated those hints, making the wine oddly sweet. This time John aced the round with a wine he described as “the most old-world of the new world Pinot Noirs,” Adelsheim Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2009 from Oregon. This time the food gave the wine a leg-up and then they continued to climb towards the sun in a slowly turning gyre.

Jennifer Huether, Iron Sommelier, 2012

So who had won? My vote was just one of 150. While the numbers were tallied we feasted on. Debbie Levy of Dairy Farmers of Canada introduced a cheese course of aged Lankaaster (Ontario), Le Mont Jacob (Quebec), Avonlea clothbound cheddar (P.E.I.) and Bleu d’Elizabeth. I had lots to say about dessert – a layered verrine called Ciocolatto e Caramello created by Aria’s pastry chef, Melanie Harris. She loves salty things almost as much as sweet and this delectable little item reflected that. Layered from the bottom up was salted caramel-white chocolate mousse; pure salted caramel; a 77%-cocoa dark chocolate mousse then a very dark (99%) ganache. On top was a chapeau of espresso-flavoured whipped cream and on top of that a magic white powder, soft as talc, made from pure olive oil. Only a total dessert nerd would attempt to consume this layer by layer. Most people just dug in, enjoying it with a dazzlingly well-chosen drink – Bowmore 12-year-old single malt whisky, Islay’s most elegant malt.

Ah, but by now the results had been tabulated. No 2nd and 3rd was announced – just the name of the winner: Jennifer Huether. It was a most satisfactory conclusion to a fascinating evening.

 
No Comments

Posted in Drink, Events, Extravaganzas, Life in General, Wine

 
« Older Entries