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Balls Falls, a smaller, quieter Niagara

A windy Saturday morning in Niagara. Definitely sweater weather though the sun was bright and the sky full of innocent-looking blue areas giving the lie to the forecast of showers. We began with my colleague David Lawrason giving us the fascinating low-down on Niagara’s sub-appellations, neatly illustrating the geology with a trip to Balls Falls where Twenty Mile creek trickles over the escarpment in gentle imitation of Niagara itself. Then on to Tawse winery where we learned the importance of gravity-driven winemaking, tasted lovely wines (including the lush, beautifully balanced 2007 Robin’s Block Chardonnay) and discovered a small Szechuan button plant growing in a planter at the door. At least it looked like Szechuan button. Egged on by the eager mob, I guinea-pigged myself and ate one. Yep. The same tingling numbness and sudden salivation. “Now eat one of those,” they cried, pointing at a tree covered in glossy, hard green berries. Basta… I had no wish to take the edge off my appetite.

             We ate lunch at the Good Earth Food and Wine Co., Nicolette Novak’s whimsical shangri-la of a cottage, garden, orchard, cooking school and now vineyard and winery all hidden away in her 55-acre peach farm. The team there is picked for individual enthusiasm and charming eccentricity as well as talent, taking their lead from Nicolette, the “facilitator of fun.” It was a really good meal, starting with those gnocchi in the picture – ethereally light, made from local Upper Canada ricotta cheese, egg, a little flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg, and bathed in a cream sauce topped with smoked roma tomatoes. Nicolette’s rosé wine (“the panty-remover” she calls it) was a vibrant, strawberry-scented match.

The Good Earth's insubstantial gnocchi with applewood-smoked tomato

            Resident chef Patrick Engel was so eloquent about the dishes we were given that I had nothing left to say and tucked in with everyone else, particularly enjoying the meaty, dry-rubbed pork side ribs that had spent hours in the smoker in the garden, and a fine pork tenderloin that Engel had marinated overnight in buttermilk, dredged in cornflour and briefly fried – the Angelina Jolie of all schnitzels. No one knows more about peaches than Nicolette, obviously, so I was interested to see how she would use them in our dessert. First she made peach ice cream streaked with caramel, then she halved and pitted whole peaches from her trees, dipped them first in melted butter then in brown sugar, pan fried them for a moment until the sugar crust was caramelized then slipped the pan into the oven for about 15 minutes. Oh my. Simply a peach juice explosion with every bite.

            We spent the rest of the afternoon at Malivoire and Flat Rock Cellars, tasting old vintages of their finest offerings then went back to the hotel to change for dinner.

            Frank Dodd has been chef at Hillebrand Estates winery since 2006 and I love what he does there, hence my decision to bring the group back there after a brilliant dinner in the barrel cellar on the 2008 tour. He didn’t let us down. We’d have needed blankets and hot water bottles to dine in the cellar this time around but it was the ideal place for a pre-prandial vertical mini-tasting of Trius red 2007, 2002 and 1998. Dodd had provided some nibbles and I’m ashamed to say they very nearly proved terminally distracting from the serious wine-tasting business, sitting there calling out to me in their tiny canapé voices. Superlight, creamy whipped foie gras mousse in a biscuitty cone, topped with a slice of cherry that had been macerated in Cabernet Franc icewine… a fat brick of marinated smoked salmon with a curl of cucumber… bison carpaccio wrapped around a juicy little pickled cattail… Heavenly.

            We sat down to dinner upstairs in the pavilion beside the vineyards, starting with a terrine of pressed watermelon and tomato, a shot of tomato water with a watermelon popsicle and Koskamp Farms burratta. The dairy prepares these cheeses like a regular mozzarella but during the process they pull each form open, fill it with pure cream then close it up again, returning it to the warm whey to seal the deal. You have to eat it within a day or two and these ones were very fresh, dressed by chef with salt and pepper, virgin cold-pressed soya bean oil and baco noir balsamic syrup. We helped ourselves with a large spoon, scooping up the soft white cheese and the cream that flooded out from its heart as we cut down.

            The next course was the highlight of the evening – a study in the naturally raised Berkshire pork from Dingo Farm, near Bradford. Dodd made a sturdy terrine from the pig’s head, studded with smoked potato. He fashioned crunchy little blood-sausage croquettes of peppery richness and great depth of flavour which was a lovely match for a 1997 Trius red, the Bordeaux blend that made Hillebrand’s reputation in the 1990s. He prepared a consommé from the ham hocks and added little shreds of pulled pork, tiny white beans and flecks of poached tomato. Each of us had a small ceramic pot of this amazing soup, piping hot beneath its pastry cap.

            If you’ve ever tasted those little perch the Purdey family catch in Lake Erie you’ll know the flesh is unusually firm and dense, tasting like fresh, sweet shrimp. We each got a whole perch for our main course, butterflied along the spine and set over a melange of ingredients tailor-made to flatter the accompanying wines (two Showcase single barrel Chardonnays from 2004 and 2006). Gorgeous little wild spot prawns from Queen Charlotte Sound almost stole the show from kernels of local corn, sweet peas, baby yellow Ontario chanterelles and a buttery cauliflower purée.

            Dessert was peaches poached slowly in icewine in a thermal circulator that preserved their texture beautifully. The peach juice and icewine formed a predictably sumptuous nectar of a sauce, further chilled by a compressed white peach sorbet.

            Beyond that waited coffee and tea, though most of us felt we had no room left. Some of our younger element discussed a possible visit to the Niagara casino but then thought better of it. A small contingent repaired to the bar when we got back to the hotel to close off the evening with a cold beer while discussing the treats that Sunday might bring. More on that tomorrow.

Szechuan buttons discovered growing at Tawse winery. Boldly we tasted!

Halfway across Lake Ontario in a 40-foot Hunter sailboat, we were having a most invigorating morning. The wind was strong and from the west and with our sails reefed we were speeding along at a rate of knots, the boat tilting dramatically so that I, high on the starboard side of the cockpit, could look down between  my feet at the faces of my companions on the port. The urge to shout “Woohoo!” was almost irresistible. We were two hours out from Port Credit, still two hours from Port Dalhousie on the Niagara side when the squall smacked into us. Fortunately, our skipper, Mike, had seen it coming and taken in sail. One of our other boats was less fortunate and its sail was torn asunder. Lake Ontario – 330 feet deep at that point – had never felt more like an inland sea as we motored on through the warm but rough water (three-metre waves according to the CBC), soaked by rain, holding tight to whatever seemed steadfast. It was altogether excellent. But that squall blew away the summer in a single violent gust. The temperature had dropped ten degrees by the following morning and those with a nose for such things looked up at the grey and white clouds scudding across the blue and sniffed the first intimation of autumn.

            But what an amazing summer it has been! Too hot for strawberries and cherries – too hot for the pickerel and perch in the Great Lakes who have stayed in the cool depths, to the dismay of our commercial fishermen – too hot for the buffalo herd at Koskamp Farm so that the awesome cream-filled burratta cheese we tasted on Saturday night at Hillebrand was made not with their milk but with that of their less sensitive understudies, the Koskamp Farm cows. That said, everyone else on the peninsula seems to have a smile on their face. The grapes are ripening several weeks ahead of schedule – picking of Chardonnay Musqué has already begun – and it’s going to be a spectacular vintage as long as it doesn’t rain too much in September. The peaches are better than I can ever remember and still have a week left in their season. This year, the tomatoes – especially the 300 or so different heritage varieties that grow at Linda Crago’s Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in Wellandport, some of which we tasted at various restaurants throughout the weekend – are historic in every sense of the word.

            They began our weekend – almost – as the first course served at our winemaker’s dinner at Treadwell in Port Dalhousie. We actually started with flutes of 13^th Street’s 2006 Cuvee 13 Rose, sipped outside on the terrace looking out at the swift green eddies of the old Welland canal that passes right by the restaurant – the sun had come out and it was warm in a windy kind of way – but I’m not going to describe every last thing that passed our lips on this long weekend (45 wines, five amazing meals, various sundry breakfasts, snacks, leaves and foraged treats). The tomatoes, however, were exemplary. There were half a dozen different varieties, some red, others yellow, orange, green and purple, some like tiny pears, others thinly or thickly sliced, each one offering its own interpretation of summer’s balance of tangy acids and sweetness. Our host and chef Stephen Treadwell had paired them up with a little tomato sorbet, some crumbled feta (mild, sweet and creamy) from Best Baa Dairy out near Dundas and a crispy deep-fried basil leaf from a farm we visited on Sunday – Victory Organic Greens (of which more later). As one of our group wisely pointed out, the tomatoes were perfectly salted – evenly, invisibly, as opposed to having someone fling a handful of fleur de sel at the plate – which enhanced their spectrum of flavours immeasurably. The wine poured with this bouquet of tomatoes was the stunningly delicious Hidden Bench Rosomel Vineyard 2008 Fume Blanc, introduced to our party by none other than Hidden Bench’s affable proprietor, Harald Thiel. I had intended to be very scientific and try to work out which tomato worked best with the wine but it was all so yummy and we were all so hungry after our sail that our plates were empty far too soon for any forensic work.

            Next up was a dish built around some of those elusive Lake Erie pickerel – perfect little fillets, their juices just seized in the pan. Treadwell orchestrated them with some Saskatchewan chanterelles acquired through the area’s new mushroom source, Marc’s Mushrooms (of which more later). They were some of the best chanterelles I have ever eaten – so fresh they were almost crunchy, squeaky as silk and tasting of sweet, creamy woodland flavours. Tossed in amongst them were little crispy pieces of Mario Pingue’s guanciale, a stem of smooth-stemmed, thick-leaved New Zealand spinach grown nearby by Dave Irish, some impeccable fingerling potatoes and a subtle sauce salted with soy and some shaved summer truffle. Treadwell showed me the truffle in question. It was the size of a man’s fist and though it had only a fraction of the potency of a winter truffle it was ideal for this dish. “Where did you get it?” I asked. “Er…” Treadwell, always so generous and precise about the provenance of his ingredients, hesitated a moment. “From a guy…” Okay, Stephen, we won’t be pushy. Everyone tends to guard their truffle sources. The wine match, Flat Rock’s 2007 Chardonnay Reserve, introduced by Flat Rock’s owner, Ed Madronich, was the best wine match of the entire weekend.

            A little palate cleanser was in order before the next course (veal Wellington matched with Southbrook’s rich, elegant, supersmooth 2007 Whimsy Cabernet Franc) but Treadwell took it to a new level with a zapper rather than a cleanser. Each one of us was presented with a single Szechuan button, a slightly conical seed ball of the Brazilian plant Acmella oleracea, about the size of a fingernail. I’ve mentioned these things before in a posting about the national cocktail championship but if you missed it let me explain that this plant contains a strong analgesic called splianthol which numbs and tingles in the mouth like the cold-hot sensation you get from Szechuan peppercorns – something like licking a 9-volt battery. Bravely our group bit and chewed the buttons! It was a nice little coup on the chef’s part though I wondered how it would affect our appreciation of the Cabernet. So did its creator, winemaker Anne Sperling, sitting at the far end of our table. In the end, time solved all – a ten-minute gap, some water and bread, soothing the effect.

            After that, it was plain sailing through the marvellous Wellington followed by a roasted peach topped with Mennonite granola, sheep’s milk sorbet and rosemary caramel sauce and finally lingering, satisfied conversation and a teeny taste of Anne Sperling’s awesome Riesling from her family property in the Okanagan

            All in all, an excellent start to the weekend. What happened next must wait until tomorrow’s posting.

The Gastronomo Vagabundo truck stops at Flat Rock Cellars

In the midst of a gastronomic golconda, we are tempted by a gypsy jewel.

 Life is strange, no? Here we are, half way through our spectacular culinary/oenological tour of Niagara, having just had a brilliantly executed, cunningly assembled, altogether delectable lunch at the Good Earth Wine and Food company (of which more later) framed by famous tastings of the finest wines of Tawse, Hidden Bench and Malivoire, when some of the group ask if we can stop briefly at Flat Rock Cellars to buy some bottles of the dazzling Chardonnay tasted last night (see my next posting). What should be parked in the driveway of Flat Rock but the white ice-cream-truck-style travelling wagon of Gastronomo Vagabundo.

Quick backtrack here… The latest trend in New York and Vancouver is for gourmet street food – imaginative, righteously local/seasonal high-end cooking provided by bona fide chefs in wandering vans and carts. We don’t see that kind of guerilla haute cuisine in Toronto, where municipal legislation stamps out any attempt at impromptu creativity but, take my word for it, it’s the new cool way to eat on either side of the continent. Only last month, talented young chef Josh Wolfe left his hit Vancouver restaurant, Coast, to take to the streets and he is not alone.

But I digress. Gastronomo Vagabundo is the creation of Australian chef Adam Hynam-Smith and his Canadian partner, Tamara Jensen. Hynam-Smith was most recently working at the esteemed E18hteen in Ottawa, but he and Jensen have sunk their savings into the white van and moved to the Niagara peninsula. I had a look inside the nifty vehicle and saw fridge and freezer, deep fryer and griddle, sink and a good-sized work surface, all pristine clean. The menu is eclectic to say the least, rich in local Niagara ingredients such as the awesome heritage tomatoes from Tree & Twig but with plenty of exotic European, Thai and South East Asian twists picked up on the chefs’ travels. Many of them use a crisp taco as an edible plate. A dish called “hulk,” for example, is coconut green curry chicken with cucumber, coriander, fried shallot and lime juice. “Kraken” is Greek-style pickled octopus, taramasalata and cucumber. “Ahab Rehab” involves crispy roast pork belly, rum-punched pineapple and bajan hot sauce.

Alas, we didn’t have time for cooking. The rest of our party were already in the coach ready to leave Flat Rock but I couldn’t resist a quick order of foie gras sushi. Hynam-Smith makes a yummy torchon of foie gras seasoned with a hit of brandy and poses a slice on a maki roll of vinegared rice garnished with ginger pickled in beet juice, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a drop of ponzu caramel sauce. So delicious – and just the thing after an hour or two tasting primo Ontario Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Gastronomo Vagabundo will not be denied a Toronto appearance. The trick is to find a private place to pause – like a private car park or driveway – and set themselves up as a temporary catering venture. Then they will use twitter and other social media to spread the word. Go to their web site, www.elgastro.com to become a follower. You may be tasting the future of Canadian urban cooking.

That’s what I told the folks in the coach. They didn’t boo me for being late, probably because I had enough foie gras sushi for all. A little extra treat on the Tour of Niagara.

The menu

I have always relied on the kindness of others. So when a dear friend offered to use some of his airline points to fly me to and from London this summer, I very gratefully accepted. My gratitude knew no bounds when I found out the tickets were first class. “There were no other seats on the days you wanted,” explained my benefactor. Lucky me.

            In the normal course of life, regular travellers see little of their first-class companions. They have their own check-in desks and lounges. The impatient line-ups at the departure gate must step aside to give them priority. They turn left, not right, as they enter the plane and are gone, protected from the vulgar gaze by curtains, vigilant attendants and the innate sense of social propriety that beats fiercely in the hearts of all who choose to fly British Airways.

            So, what’s it like in that far forward cabin? My dears, all is comfort and light. On the Boeing 777 that flew me home there are only a dozen or so first-class seats – though seat is the wrong word: it’s more like a space-age chaise longue that turns, miraculously, into a bed over six feet long at the touch of a button ( pillows, sheets and a duvet are in the overhead locker). There is shelf space for books or in this case the magazines I took from Heathrow’s first-class lounge – publications devoted to yachting, power boats, polo and gossip. The kind attendant brings a little parcel of cosmetics, some socks and slippers and a pair of black pyjamas sealed in a bag. One has only to whisper “Champagne” and a flute of Laurent-Perrier Brut Millésimé 2000 appears, the vintage chosen by Jancis Robinson herself. I have three windows through which to look (the Atlantic a plumbago blue, its surface textured like the skin on a mug of hot milk) but the in-flight entertainment lets the side down – only a dozen banal American films to choose from and a tiny screen the size of a wallet on which to watch them.

            Which lets me concentrate more on lunch. The menu reads well and I’m tempted by the char-grilled sirloin of Herefordhsire beef, if only to see how they can reheat that in an aeroplane galley without destroying its texture. Instead I settle for fish, starting with the Loch Fyne smoked salmon. It has been cut into small pieces and briefly marinated in lemon and lime juice before being lightly pressed into a tian. There’s a suggestion of onion but no binding agent to turn it into a tartare and the flavour is remarkably pure and simple, lifted nicely by a wreath of amaranth seedlings and a subtle lime crème fraîche. The attendant offers a good selection of breads, all warm and soft, light and moist, nothing at all like the clammy lump of putty we are used to from other flights in steerage.

            My main course is a trio of fish, each served hot and though they are cooked through and slightly crusted someone has figured out how to keep them juicy. The little cross-cut cutlet of salmon has a delicious flavour and a small salad of watercress, sorrel and crunchy, lightly pickled fennel to keep it company; the fluffy knob of monkfish comes with a warm orange and thyme cream like a hollandaise sauce that’s been on holiday somewhere exotic; the little fillet of gilt-head bream has a tangy, slightly piquant salsa of fire-roasted red pepper. A discreet amount of mashed potato is also present on the plate, presumably to mop up the precious sauces. A glass of complex, peachy, citrussy Catena Chardonnay from Mendoza is a fine accompaniment.

            Dessert? Peach melba with toasted almonds, perhaps, or dark chocolate fondant with almond brittle and white chocolate ice cream? I think not… Some cheese then – a wedge of young, fresh Cropwell Bishop Stilton, some mild Cornish goat’s milk Gevrik, delectably creamy Gubbeen and a piece of decent Camembert lest the French feel neglected. And with that, not the port but a glorious Australian sticky from D’Arenberg called The Noble Mud Pie 2008, a botrytis-affected Viognier with a dash of Pinot Gris and Marsanne that is all tangy pear, honey and ginger.

            Later there will be a proper tea with dainty sandwiches, scones and strawberry jam and clotted cream but for now I will settle back and simply enjoy the old-fashioned experience of being able to stretch out my legs on an aeroplane. That space, as much as the fine food and drink, is the luxury that travelling first class brings – but both are trumped by something I realize only halfway through the flight. Thanks to the angle of this ever-so-comfortable seat, I can’t see any of the other passengers without making an effort. And they can’t really see me. The secret joy of the elite traveller is the measure of privacy he can buy, even in an aeroplane filled to capacity. I doubt I will ever fly first class again in my life. At least I now know what I’m missing.

Mrs Amar Patel, chef and owner of Indian Rice Factory

It was with great sadness that I heard today that Mrs. Amar Patel, chef-owner of Indian Rice Factory for an astonishing 40 years and one of the great figures of  the Toronto restaurant scene, passed away early this morning, after a long battle with illness. Her devoted son, Aman, gave me the news, and to him I offer hearfelt condolences.

            The sadness and loss is acute just now but I hope it isn’t inappropriate to remember what Mrs. Patel contributed to this city in her elegant, graceful, quietly insistent way.

I wrote about her in The Man Who Ate Toronto, trying to explain the significant role she played in this city’s evolution…

There were only two Indian restaurants in Toronto in 1967 (India House and Rajput) when Mrs. Patel arrived in Canada, a young nurse from Bombay. One afternoon, she decided to have lunch at the Inn on the Park hotel, at Eglinton and Leslie. The hotel’s restaurant, Café de 1’Auberge, was famous for sophisticated French cuisine, but it was the buffet of the day that aroused her curiosity – a culinary event entitled “From the Chafing Dishes of India.” In those dishes were examples of the curious travesty of Moghlai cooking that European chefs were trained to prepare: chicken, shrimp, or beef in a sort of bechamel sauce coloured with curry powder. Mrs. Patel called the manager and gently tried to explain that this was a little less than authentic.

When the conversation moved into the kitchen, executive chef Georges Chaignet listened politely and then invited Mrs. Patel to come back next day and cook him a meal. She obliged; he was stunned. As Stratford Chefs School instructor Jacques Marie, then Chaignet’s sous-chef, recalled: “She showed us what curry is really about. It was a new world to me.”

To the kitchen’s eternal credit, Mrs. Patel was hired to teach the team all that she knew. After a year, she moved on, first to Julie’s Mansion on Jarvis, working her magic in the casual upstairs dining room called the Bombay Bicycle Club, more famous in those days for the lissom beauty of its sari-clad waitresses than its buffet, and then to the Hyatt Regency.

In 1970 she opened her own place on Dupont Street, called Indian Rice Factory. The tiny room would be considered avant-garde even today. It seated barely a dozen customers who sat around an open cooking station, choosing from a short and frequently changing list of dishes on a blackboard tied to the back of the fridge. Slender, beautiful and always elegantly dressed, Mrs. Patel radiated a soft-spoken confidence as she worked, preparing many items à la minute, and explaining her recipes to anyone who asked. It was the antithesis of generic cuisine, and it also cost rather more than curry-lovers expected to pay, which bothered a few of the customers.

It seemed as if Toronto had finally taken a liking to “curry.” Eleven more Indian restaurants opened in the next three years, some offering the new thrill of tandoor-baked dishes (you can’t go wrong in Canada if you serve chicken and shrimp), but none of them daring to follow Mrs. Patel’s example by breaking the mould of the old generic menu. There would be exceptions in the decades that lay ahead: Sarnina’s Tiffin Room, near the Art Gallery of Ontario, was by all accounts a place of notable cooking, and more than one nostalgic gourmand has mourned the absence of the partridge in cardamom cream once served at Mindra’s on Yorkville.

Only in the mid-1990s, however, did signs of a shift in the status quo begin to appear. Restaurants with regional menus sprang up throughout the city. Rashnaa offered simple Tamil cooking in an ungentrified old house on a Cabbagetown backstreet. On Gerrard Street East, where most eateries compete on price rather than quality, Gujurat Durbar specialized in Gujurat’s inventive vegetarian dishes. Most of the surviving pioneers remained nervous of innovation, but not Indian Rice Factory, still on Dupont, though in larger, less impromptu premises.

I ate there in 1995 and found Mrs. Patel was still cooking. Her son, Aman, was the manager, a tall, serious young lawyer who told me he found the popular image of the stereotypical curry house deeply frustrating. They bought their meat from the same suppliers as the most expensive Italian or French restaurants, but customers expected to pay Gerrard Street East bargain prices once it was cooked. He had assembled a fascinating list of wines that worked unexpectedly well with Indian spicing, and was more than happy to spend fifteen minutes at a table explaining such matchmaking, but customers still felt safer with beer. He encouraged the chefs who cooked beside his mother to put experimental Indian-Western Fusion dishes on the menu, but his clientele passed them by.

I asked Aman Patel to choose our meal. The dishes that arrived were the work of three different minds. His mother prepared the delicious fresh fenugreek greens with soft potatoes and chewy fried onions, and also the bowl of fiery little okra tossed with garlic, onion, and chilies. Debebrata Sana, who had worked at leading hotels in Delhi and Qatar before joining the Rice Factory, cooked the traditional Moghlai recipe of chicken chirurchi, a tender breast stuffed with almonds, raisins, and paneer cheese, in a sauce of yogurt, cardamom, and saffron as smooth and rich as cream. The lamb shank in dark, intense bhuna sauce was made by David Eaglesham, a young Canadian chef who had been cooking beside Mrs. Patel for a year. Learning her secrets and combining his new knowledge with past experience, it was he who created the Indian Fusion dishes of which Aman Patel was so proud: grilled sea bass marinated with kari leaf, ginger, and garlic, served with a green curry sauce; grilled salmon on a bed of uppama (like Indian polenta) with deep-fried ginger and a Goan sauce.

Yes, it was the best Indian meal I had ever eaten in Toronto. No, it was neither generic nor traditional. It was a glimpse of one of many possible futures for Indian restaurants, a future in which creative cooking at last finds a place…

Mrs. Patel continued to play an influential role in Toronto’s culinary culture. A couple of years ago, she was part of a panel convened at George Brown College to discuss ways of integrating South Asian cooking into the province’s gastronomic mainstream and into the College’s syllabus. In a room full of opinionated people, her voice was quietest and yet it commanded more respect than anyone’s. And I am very happy that she was honoured this spring at the Ontario Hostelry Institute for her lifelong contribution to Ontario’s culinary evolution, winning the 2010 Chef’s gold award.

Mrs Patel honoured with the Chef's gold award at the OHI gala, earlier this year

On a personal note, I learned a huge amount about Indian cuisine from Mrs. Patel, and about the Toronto restaurant scene in the 1970s. She was unfailingly generous with her knowledge, her recipes and her wise and inclusive views on her chosen profession. She was also a spectacularly good cook.

My deep condolences to her son, Aman, and my sympathies to the very many people who, like me, became her friends over Indian Rice Factory’s 40 fascinating years.

Careful with that saw, Eugene... A short back and sides for the holm oak

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few… September…

Not quite yet, but Maxwell Anderson knew what he was talking about.

Or did he? There is a way of prolonging summer, at least onto Labour Day Weekend. My friend the great wine guru David Lawrason and I are leading our Tour of Niagara again from September 3 to 5, sailing across Lake Ontario on glamorous 40-foot Hunter yachts on Friday morning (it takes about five hours and includes a scrumptious packed lunch) sailing back on Sunday evening. There is no better way of getting to Niagara and inevitably the captains turn it into a race. Acts of piracy are not unknown and those who share the adventure bond into a very happy crew.

            The actual weekend is a non-stop litany of delicious things to eat and drink. On Friday night, after we’ve got our land legs back and settled in to the hotel, David leads a short seminar on wine tasting, just to calibrate our palates and remind people how it’s done. Then we’re off to a spectacular wine-maker’s dinner at Treadwell in Port Dalhousie, tasting a lot of the hot new wines from the hot new boutique wineries, with winemakers present, while Stephen Treadwell provides an extraordinary sympatico banquet, commented upon by yours truly.

            Other exceptional experiences include a slap-up lunch on Saturday at the Good Earth cooking school and (now) winery, where the incomparable Nicolette Novak is facilitator of fun, and another specatcular dinner at Hillebrand. Chef Frank Dodd cooked for us there two years ago and the unanimous opinion of our sophisticated and well-travelled crowd was that it was one of the finest gastronomical dinners they had ever had. He has sent me his preliminary menu and it looks as though he may surpass himself again with an orchestration of Dingo Farm Berkshire pork, Lake Erie perch with wild spot prawns, and of course a fantasy on a theme of heritage tomatoes. Sunday lunch is at Ravine Vineyards – for my money one of the most exciting new culinary destinations on the peninsula. And throughout the weekend we’ll be experiencing the very best wines Niagara has to offer with private visits to top wineries. David has a way of getting winemakers and producers to open their most private cellars, producing treasures unavailable to ordinary civilians.

            That’s what we’ll be doing on Labour Day weekend. The good news is there are still a few places available. If you like the idea of joining us, please click on Coming Attractions (up there to the right) and you can find out how. A wonderful time is absolutely guaranteed.

            Meanwhile, I’m starting to pack up the house here in Corfu – always a sad moment – but I’m leaving before autumn is even a twinkle in summer’s eye, so I’m spared the melancholy of the dying year. Another day of gorging on the muscat grapes that are now yellow and heavy on the shade-vine, one more early morning swim when the beach is empty, a last long walk up and down the mountain in the white heat of the afternoon. And tonight, just after dark, the full moon will rise in its splendour from the ridge across the valley, bright enough to cast nocturnal shadows, illuminating parts of the mind and memory that other lights cannot reach.

Tonight I was invited to a lovely dinner at a restaurant I didn’t know, called Monolithi, in the hills behind Acharavi. My hosts were Richard Woods and his wife, the sculptor Katherine Wise, an English couple who moved here four years ago and have restored a stunning house across the valley from Monolithi. Richard is the guiding hand of a new enterprise, the Corfu Chamber Opera, which is seeking to re-establish the island as a centre for excellence in opera. It flourished here for two hundred years under the Venetians (Italian singers would include “applaudito in Corfu” on their resumés as an impressive credential) and on into the 20^th century, until a German bombing raid destroyed the opera house in 1942. The artistic director of this exciting venture is Corfu-born soprano Rosa Poulimenou and you can find out more about it and how to become a sponsor at www.corfuchamberopera.gr.

            Dinner was delightful – we all shared half a dozen mezethes: moist, lightly smoked trout with raw onions and tomato; an onion pie that was completely different from the one at Foros, open-faced and using a thin pizza-like crust instead of phyllo; a platter of sturdy lamb chops avec ses pommes frites; a big bowl of horiatiki salad (expertly dressed by Katherine) and some pretty good tzatziki. Crisp little deep-fried oyster mushrooms were the star attraction, needing no more than a quick squeeze of lemon. More than we could finish, as it turned out, but we certainly did the feast justice.

            We talked a lot about the opera company’s latest triumph, a most impressive evening staged last week in the Old Fortress of Corfu Town. My friend Thelma and I had decided it could not be missed. It took us an hour to drive to town and then almost as long to find parking as the traffic police had blocked off certain key downtown streets around the ’Spianada, causing appalling jams and bottlenecks. We finally left the car on the sidewalk a good mile away around Garitsa Bay and sped off on foot through the crowds that ambled along the old stone promenade at the water’s edge. We passed the occasional grilled corn-on-the-cob seller but were in too much of a hurry to pause. In the distance, the great limestone outcrop with its impregnable citadel loomed out of the placid waters. When the British ruled the island in the first half of the 19^th century they added quite a few touches to the old Venetian fortifications, including a church that looks (most incongruously) like the Parthenon. I had assumed the concert would be held there but instead the stage had been built in the open air on the vast parade ground in front of the church. The massive battlements rose up on every side, lined with opportunistic opera-lovers unwilling to pay the tiny price of 8 euros for a seat. By nine o’clock, the evening light was fading into night and stars were appearing overhead. Then the stage lights came up and the performance began.

            Over two thousand people had turned out and a murmur of appreciation went through the audience as the musicians took their seats. The players were the Mantzaros Philharmonic band, the beloved local ensemble of brass, woodwind, timpani and percussion under the baton of the dashing Spiros Dolianites – all of them, including the maestro, wearing their white military-style jackets with black and white lanyards swinging around one shoulder as if they were Napoleonic hussars. They opened the program with a selection from Verdi’s Nabucco – a familiar part of their repertoire judging by the satisfied smiles and approving nods of the crowd – then on into the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s tales of Hoffmann. Rosa Poulimenou and Greek-Canadian mezzo-soprano Ariana Chris sang most beautifully but no one could see them! Ah, wait! There they were up on the battlements, tiny spotlit figures in their glittering diva gowns, cunningly amplified. The sound system was the most impressive technical achievement of the entire night – exceptional clarity with just the faintest romantic echo from the towering cliff face beside us.

And so we were off on a three-hour program of best-loved arias and interludes, duets and ensembles from Mozart, Rossini, Mascagni, Verdi, Puccini and Bizet, plus a haunting work by P. Dierig for solo trumpet and band, brilliantly executed and once again taking advantage of the dramatic setting with the trumpeter high and far away on an outcrop of defensive masonry behind the audience. It was odd at first to hear the opera music played by a band rather than an orchestra – the absence of strings particularly noticeable in the Mozart – but our ears soon grew accustomed to it. Odd, too, to hear the audience singing and clapping along as baritone Akis Lalousis gave us the Toreador’s song from Carmen, but why not? This is Greece and we do not stand on ceremony here.

Dolianites conducted with just enough flamboyance to cause a flutter in the hearts of the ladies in the audience. At the end of each aria, in the old tradition, he left the podium to kiss the hand of the soloist (or embrace him if he were male) while the band, abandoned by his baton, found its way to the finish. The singing was uniformly excellent. Soprano Elpiniki Zervou closed the first half of the evening with favourite arias from la Traviata. Albanian tenor Armaldo Kllogjeri disdained the microphone (I could imagine the guys on the sound board pulling out their hair) but rose to the occasion as only a tenor can, closing the evening with (what else) Nessun dorma from Turandot, a rousing rather than contemplative rendering which was just what the crowd wanted.

For me, the performance that outshone all others was that of Ariana Chris, especially in her two songs from Carmen where a little subtle acting and sexy merriment took everything to a new level. The crowd stopped talking; cell phones went unanswered. All attention was on the gorgeous mezzo. I gather that she is now based in Toronto again after some years in New York. I shall be scanning the papers for news of any recital.

Walking back through the Fortress and across the deep moat that separates it from the world, we were pleased to see some of the younger members of the band embraced by their doting parents from the audience. The teenagers were playing it cool, but their faces were flushed with pride.

Next up for the Corfu Chamber Opera is the first ever performance in Greece of Mascagni’s little known opera, Silvano – “a Cavalleria Rusticana by the sea” according to Richard Woods – some of which found its way onto the soundtrack of the movie Raging Bull… The Apollonia Symphony orchestra from Albania will be playing and the production is designed by Mascagni’s grand-daughter. Sounds like great fun, but alas, I will not be here to see it.

This just in – a letter from Michael Stadtländer. As always, Michael’s vision is slightly wider and deeper than most.

 “My Dear Friends of Eigensinn Farm and Haisai,

It has been a very hot and sticky summer and I want to let you know that the harvest is growing very well. What I really want to say is that we are really doing well. The news about the disaster in Pakistan is making me realize how good we have it here. Even though as Canadians we think we have problems, they are nothing compared to the devastation that the Pakistani people are living through now. So what we are doing, very spontaneously, is organizing a dinner where Adam Colquhoun of Oyster Boy (Restaurant) is donating his restaurant and my friend colleagues are donating their creations and time to cook a multi-course tasting menu for you to enjoy. The fundraiser will be held on Monday, August 23^rd. Dinner starts at 7:30 at a cost of $150.00 plus taxes and wine. 100% of the money from the dinner will be going towards the relief efforts in Pakistan. There are forty seats available. Please call Oyster Boy at 416 534 3432 for reservations.

 P.S. I am organizing a Harvest Fest which will be held on Sunday, September 26^th at Eigensinn Farm. The event will be revisiting the sculptures of the Heaven on Earth Project. More details to come in the upcoming weeks.

 Thank you for your help

Michael Stadtlander”

honey and scrambled eggs

This is a jar of honey. Our neighbours, Yorgos and Kiki, keep bees and I’m proud to say they forage in our garden (the bees, not Y and K). So while I can’t claim to have produced this rich, dark meli with its complex floral, herbal, even malty character, I do see myself as its godfather, after a fashion. I don’t remember the name of the yellow and white flowers – I call them scrambled egg flowers, for obvious reasons – but they too have played their part.

            Our son Joseph was born on this island and spent his formative years in this garden. Durrell-like, he was fascinated by the insect life – he once considered becoming a myrmecologist – but in the end archaeology and then history claimed him and he embarks on his third MA next month. Baltic rather than Balkan studies are his passion now, including a research interest in the medieval Lithuanian beeswax and honey trade. Apparently it was the European hub in those times, thanks to the busy-as-bees Hanseatic merchants. What goes around comes around. I remember hurrying him indoors one day when the neighbours’ bees were swarming – the air thick with them, thousands of frenetic bees intent on some private business, the buzzing extraordinarily loud – to me, it was like a moment from a horror film, but it made a more favourable impression on Joe. An hour or so later, order was restored and we ventured back into the bright morning.

             Honey is magical. Always has been. In the Finnish epic, The Kalevala, Lemminkäinen’s mother manages to bring her heroic but dismembered son back to life with honey’s help. She summons a bee and sends the little guy away to gather it. You remember the moment:

“Tiny bee, thou honey-birdling,
Lord of all the forest flowers,
Fly away and gather honey,
Bring to me the forest-sweetness,
Found in Metsola’s rich gardens,
And in Tapio’s fragrant meadows,
From the petals of the flowers,
From the blooming herbs and grasses,
Thus to heal my hero’s anguish,
Thus to heal his wounds of evil.”

            The bee does his best but regular honey isn’t effective. So he flies off to fetch the magic honey from the Isles of the Blessed. Even that isn’t enough. It’s only when he flies all the way to the Seventh and highest Heaven of God (Ukko/Jumala) himself and brings back the ultimate honey that gives life to every living thing that Lemminkäinen is revived. Such a noble bee.

Now the mother well anointing,
Heals her son, the magic singer,
Eyes, and ears, and tongue, and temples,
Breaks, and cuts, and seams, anointing,
Touching well the life-blood centres,
Speaks these words of magic import
To the sleeping Lemminkäinen:
“Wake, arise from out thy slumber,
From the worst of low conditions,
From thy state of dire misfortune!”

            You’ll notice she speaks in mellifluous trochaic tetrameter, every Finnish rune-singer’s preferred metre. Honey-tongued Henry W. Longfellow borrowed it for The Song of Hiawatha after spending a summer in Sweden in 1835 and picking up a bit of Finnish. Or so Joe tells me.

            The point is, honey is good for you. Around here, in ancient times, the priestesses of Artemis and Demeter were referred to as melissae – bees – while the original Melissa was a gracious nymph, one of Zeus’s nannies, who taught the first humans how to turn honey into mead. Another reason to be grateful.

            Is the honey from my neighbours’ hives the best in the world? Well, there’s some serious competition out there. I still carry a torch for a certain organic Tasmanian Leatherwood honey that some kind soul imported into Toronto, circa 2003. It was sold in colourful little tins and I haven’t seen it for years but it was as pure as thought and heady with the aroma of tropical fruit.

            Lacking that, we have this. I stir some into my thick local yoghurt at breakfast-time and then slice up a peeled, juice-gravid, flavour-bomb of a peach over it. It certainly brings me back to life. Next week, in honour of Lemminkäinen’s doting mama, I shall take the jar in the photograph back to my mother in London.

Marinatos another (more conventional) way

I’ve lost track of the mayoral race in Toronto but it can’t be sillier than an ongoing situation that pertains in our corner of the island. Across the straits of Corfu on the Albanian mainland is the town of Saranda. I have watched it, through binoculars, grow in the last 30 years from a grim-looking seaside resort for Communist party members to a substantial city. And they, I am sure have watched Corfu. Our island is green; their hills are dun-coloured and parched. Countless boats, from hired skiffs to the vast floating, Bond-movie gin palaces of the Russian oligarchs (ironic, no?), crowd the waters around our coast but until the overthrow of the Communists it was forbidden for ordinary Albanians to own boats or even live by the coast. Back in the ’80s, defectors would try to float across on inner tubes (it’s only a mile or two away) and we would watch gunboats with searchlights hunt for them in the night. The would-be refugees had seen the island so tantalizingly close on the horizon, heard tales of jobs and political freedom and liberal attitudes – had even heard the music of the Kassiopi discotheques on nights when the wind was from the west.

            All that has changed now. Now Albania encourages visitors. It also wants to be seen as part of the modern world and to teach its own population that no one needs to envy Greece any more. To do this, a discotheque has been built in Saranda with immensely powerful speakers pointing outwards across the sea directly at Corfu. Disco music plays continuously, day and night, as a gesture of independence and cultural libertarianism. You can hear it quite clearly in Kassiopi. I can even hear it now as I sit on my terrace in the peace of this breathless afternoon – just the bass drum – so quietly it’s an almost subliminal murmur, as subtle and as unrelenting as my own pulse.

            The mayor of Thinalion, the district which includes this village and Kassiopi, has complained to the mayor of Saranda. The mayor of Saranda just gave him the finger and turned up the decibels. Now western tourists who come to Corfu will know that Saranda is cool too. Albania has disco.

            I can’t imagine how loud it must be for the citizens of Saranda itself! Unbelievable. I wonder if any of them ever wish for the silent curfews of the old regime?

             In other news, I ended up using those delightful fresh anchovies in another way entirely – a different version of Marinato that is popular in Corfu Town and much more conventionally Mediterranean. They do something very similar in Spain, and I’m sure in Italy, and probably in Turkey, too, and each cuisine will claim to have invented the technique.

First, butterfly the anchovies by twisting off their heads, pulling out their guts and running a finger along the spine to loosen it from the flesh. The bone picks out quite easily and leaves you with a perfect butterflied anchovy fillet. Rinse them in water then lay them in a dish and marinate them in wine vinegar for two hours. The flesh turns as white as a rollmop’s. Two hours is plenty of time, in my opinion. Some people suggest leaving them in the vinegar overnight – or even for 24 hours – but then you are left with an anchovy that tastes of nothing but vinegar. Think of this more as a miniature ceviche.

After the two hours, drain the anchovies and, to mitigate the vinegar a little more, rinse them once in cold water and let them dry on a clean tea towel. After that, there are options. I gave mine a second marinade in olive oil that also contained a tiny amount of finely minced garlic. Then I lifted them out onto a plate (they are incredibly slippery so you need patience and a slotted spoon) and sprinkled them with chopped up Mediterranean parsley and a squeeze of lemon juice before tucking in. Scrumptious. You can taste the actual fish but the vinegar is still there, deep down in the background.

There were far too many to eat in one sitting so I covered the remainder in oil and put them in the fridge. The oil solidified overnight but melted again with an hour out of the fridge. You can keep Marinato for days that way. Today, for lunch on day three, I managed to finish them off, heaping the last of them over a salad of tomato, onion and small-leafed basil from the bush in the courtyard. A glass of very cold fino sherry would have been an ideal accompaniment but I had to make do with equally chilly retsina. It proved a surprisingly effective understudy for the sherry, the resin in the wine holding its own against the onion and the latent vinegar in the fish. All enjoyed to the very faintest throb of Albanian pride.