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Anchovy marinato

13 Aug

our rosemary hedge, now officially declared out-of-control

Just before two o’clock this afternoon, when the village was silently settling into its afternoon siesta, I heard the faint noise of a vehicle and a man shouting. It sounded like he was yelling at a bunch of badly behaved children who had thrown things at his car and were now running gleefully away, but in fact he was proclaiming to the world that he had fish to sell. I went outside (the heat hitting me as if I had leaned over a kiln) and climbed the path to the road. It was the fishmonger from the coastal town of Kassiopi in his small white refrigerated van coming to the end of his morning’s work. Normally he doesn’t drive this far – the track ends at our rosemary hedge and doing a u-turn is always tricky – but I guess business isn’t so good for him these days, with so many villas unrented.

            He climbed out of the van and pulled open the rear door.

            “Gavros,” he said in his gruff, hoarse-voiced way and pointed at a white polystyrene box of fresh anchovies – slender, handsome black and silver fish, each about as long as my middle finger. That’s all he had – everything else sold – or perhaps that was all the fish that the last remaining Kassiopi boats could find in our exhausted Ionian.

            I bought half a kilo for 2.5 euros and watched him weigh them in his scales then tip them into a plastic bag.

            Nine times out of ten, I would do what everyone around here does with gavros – toss them in flour, salt and mild red paprika and deep fry them, scrunching them whole, heads and all, with no adornment but a twist of lemon. But walking back to the house past our rosemary hedge I was stricken with guilt. Rosemary grows like topsy in this climate. You plant six-inch shoots of it about three feet apart and in a year or two you have an impenetrable, delightfully fragrant hedge, five or six feet high, that is smothered in blue flowers, come July. You also have more rosemary than you could ever need in a lifetime of cooking. I have some favourite rosemary recipes – with lamb, obviously, and also chopped up and sprinkled on a very buttery open-faced apple tart before it goes into the oven (if there’s time, I make a rosemary syrup to further gild the lily) – but it isn’t something the Greeks use very much, at least not on this island.

            They do have one old recipe, however, that evolved as a way of preserving fish before there was refrigeration. It’s known as marinato (which suggests an Italian origin) and it involves frying the fish as mentioned above and then smothering them in a sauce that is sharp and sweet, the sugar and acid acting as a preservative for up to a week. You can snack on it at any time or eat the lot for lunch – it’s a versatile treat.

Back in the ’80s, when my wife and I were writing our book, A Kitchen In Corfu, we did some serious research into the details of the recipe and found that every household had their own variation – some leaving out the tomatoes or the raisins or substituting fennel tops instead of dill. We ended up using the one we liked best in the book, though I’ve never cooked it since. Here it is – but you’ll need three times as many fresh gavros as I’m looking at right now.

To make Marinato for six, take 1½ kilos of fish (smelt would be an ideal alternative to fresh anchovies), the juice of ½ a lemon, some plain flour, salt and pepper, 75 mL of olive oil, two tomatoes, 4 cloves of garlic, 50 mL of wine vinegar, 100 mL of dry white wine, two big sprigs of rosemary, 3 bay leaves, a generous pinch of fresh dill, 10 mL of white sugar, and a scant handful of raisins.

Clean and wash the fish, let them drain. Dip them in the lemon juice, season with salt and pepper then roll them lightly in the flour. Peel and sieve the tomatoes, chop the garlic coarsely and set them aside. Put the olive oil into a pan and fry two level tablespoons of flour, stirring until it turns yellow and makes a smooth paste. Add the tomatoes, garlic and everything else except the fish, stirring away and letting it all simmer nicely for about ten minutes. Meanwhile fry the floured fish in more olive oil until they are golden and crisp. Lay them close together in a shallow bowl and drown them with the sauce.

That’s how they do marinato in these parts. Some people might gag when I say that it’s just as delicious eaten cold as hot, but if, like me, you enjoy cold pizza for breakfast, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

 
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A little too close for comfort

09 Aug

Yesterday's conflagration

 

Two wild fires in the last week have kept the municipal fire truck from the coast rather busy. Yesterday’s conflagration was on an uninhabited ridge about halfway between our house and the sea. I could hear the crackle of the flames but the wind was blowing towards the east and there was never any danger. Two aeroplanes dropped sea water onto the fire, repeating the show about sixteen times, until there was nothing left but a whisp of smoke. Walking down there today the ground is black, all the undergrowth burned off, but the larger trees – mostly arbutus and oleaster – will survive. Ants are busy in the grey ash. There’s a fire on this particular slope almost every year. Grim-faced neighbours point out that it’s easier for someone than clearing the land with a scythe or strimmer. The owner of the property is away right now. I believe the penalty for arson is now 40 years, after last year’s appalling fires.

            I went up to Ano Peritheia last night to have dinner in the ancient town. It’s a stunning place – a Renaissance village with houses built of grey stone in the Venetian style. They owned Corfu for 400 years and would spend the hot summer months up in this high valley, away from the heat and the malarial mosquitoes. There are about a hundred houses, a schoolhouse and at least a dozen churches. A couple of people still live here – one a beekeeper, the other a shepherd – and there are now four restaurants catering to tourists and locals from this part of the island.

The owner's table at Foros taverna, Ano Peritheia

            Foros is my favourite. It used to be called Capricorn and when my son was a baby we would bring him up here. Now it’s Foros, owned by Thomas Siriotis. His wife, Vasso, does the cooking in a kitchen upstairs from the tiny dining room. The building must be 400 years old and has a flagstone floor and a low beam ceiling but in the summer the tables are set outside in the tiny piazza that was once the centre of town. Last night there were a number of posh English families behaving very politiely, but you never know who might show up. Last month it was a dozen famous Athenian thespians (try saying that quickly). Once, years ago, it was a travelling youth circus from Ireland who put on an impromptu show with fire-eating, acrobatics, juggling, dancing and songs. The outdoor tables stand on gravel so none of them is exactly level, but that only adds to the charm.

            Thomas introduces me to Papous (“grandfather”), a very old brown hound-dog with a grey muzzle and tired eyes. He appeared at the restaurant 20 days ago, all skin and bone, and Thomas has been nursing him back to health. “He’s too old to hunt now,” explains Thomas, “so I guess his master took him up here into the mountains and then left him to die.” Luckily gentle, well-mannered old Papous was smarter than that and found his way to Foros. He won’t go into the building but he does insist on lying across the doorway, so Thomas and his waiter have to step over him when carrying food out to customers. The dog ignores them.

            British chef Rick Stein came here on another occasion to film one of his tv shows, leaning over Chef Vasso’s shoulder. Stein specializes in fish but Vasso puts very little fish on her menu (we’re too far from the sea, she argues (about 20 minutes by car)). She’s great on the grill but her specialities come from the oven – an awesome briyam of baked aubergines, or chicken braised in red wine with olives and red peppers, or rabbit stifatho. I order the lamb shank, slow-roasted and finished with a glossy sauce sharpened with lemon juice, garlic, mint and oregano. The lamb is local, never frozen, so it’s quite firm-fleshed though by no means tough and has a glorious garrigue-scented flavour. But first, some of her other irresistible treats. Onion pie is a flat square of golden phyllo with a filling of onions cooked so long and so slowly they are almost a jelly. Vasso includes finely sliced bacon in the recipe which adds its own fat to bring weight to the trace of olive oil. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that that is the secret to the dish.

            I also order her scrumptious zucchini fritters – grated zucchini and finely sliced onion mixed up with feta, mint, dill, lots of black pepper and a little flour. Deep-fried, they are golden brown, crisp on the outside, lushly soft inside, like a Greek version of an Indian onion bhaji. A squeeze of lemon is all they need.

            Vasso’s and Thomas’s nights are long in the summer. Greek families often show up after midnight expecting dinner. Thomas relaxes in quiet moments drawing tiny sketches of Foros on the back of business cards. Every table gets one when the bill comes – a unique souvenir. My bill, including a couple of glasses of the fresh, simple local rosé and one of a better red for the lamb, is about thirty bucks.

 
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Campari Time

05 Aug

The view from the terrace

Sitting here on the high terrace of our old Greek house, enjoying the view of the Ionian and the hazy brown mountains of Albania, delighted by the excellent condition of the garden (cherished in my absence by Angeliki, our treasure), relishing the entirely selfish epidermal pleasure of a clean white shirt after a forceful shower after a salty plunge into the aforementioned Ionian, I sense one final detail might complete my happiness. There is no clock in the olive groves but the heat and the lengthening shadows confirm the whispered suggestion in my mind that it must be getting on for Campari Time.

            How did the old actor put it when the waiter finally reached our table…?

“One thing alone can slake my summer thirst. Find you some water that splashing from a virgin spring is unsuspecting caught by winter’s breath and clenched to crystal, transfixèd by the cold. Tumble four cubes like clumsy dice into a glass. This is your alpha. Then seek that red elixir that the Romans call Campari – scarlet as Satan’s tights and sweet as nectar, bitter as Iscariot’s kiss. Pour on and listen to the ice protest, cracking and squeaking in that thick embrace: incarnadine, the frozen water drowns! So swiftly reinforce the element, add other water now wherein the air itself does seethe and fret at its confinement. And last, in case the battle swings too surely to the wet, take thou thy knife and cut an orange slice to lie upon the top. This is your omega. Can you do this?”

            “Yes, sir. One Campari soda.”

            “Stout fellow.”

            I have always tried to order mine in just such a fashion. A Campari soda is impossible in winter, unheard of in autumn and inappropriate in spring. But when summer clasps this island in its hot embrace and the house martins appear at sundown, darting and dipping down across the valley in aerobatic genius, nothing else will do.

 
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St. John’s Burger

01 Aug

Here I am in England for a few days to see family and friends – and to join one of Charlie Burger’s mysterious dinners. This is the first one he has organized in Europe and he could scarcely have chosen a more interesting location – St. John, the restaurant opened close to Smithfield meat market by English chef Fergus Henderson in 1995.

 I’m intrigued to find out who Burger really is. I’m even more excited to eat at St. John. This is the food that changed the way the world thought about English food – changed the way the English thought about English food, come to that. Scrupulously honest cooking, using up every part of the animal, not at all fancy, substantial and satisfying, deeply unpretentious. As is the building where the restaurant is located, right across the road from the meat market, along a short passageway. Famously, it was an old smokehouse and equally famously Fergus Henderson and his partner did very little to it. One enters the bar – like a covered alleyway with a big zinc bar and some tables and chairs. Lots of people in shirtsleeves and jeans having a pint or glass of wine. I realize that I am, as so often, overdressed and quietly slip off my pencil-thin tangerine-and-cream-striped Jaeger tie, quickly rolling it and concealing it in the pocket of my off-white Brunello Cucinelli trousers.

 I’m very early (London traffic is not what it was in my day). I climb the iron steps and into the odd-shaped room – the dining room. The greeting is pleasant, humane, not remotely fawning. The servers – and there are many of them – have the discreet self-confidence you would expect at one of the 50 best restaurants in the world. Even if the room looks a bit like a works canteen with its high ceiling, white walls, painted but scuffed wooden floorboards. A line of coat pegs runs all round the room about seven feet off the ground (the right height given the height of the ceiling, but oddly high). They remind me of my prep school – as does the lack of any art on the walls and the reinforced glass in the windows. On the tables, white paper covers white linen; glassware and cutlery are very ordinary, the hard wooden bentwood chairs as plain as can be. The whole place, indeed, is very plain and under-decorated – aggressively so, or passively so?

 That question is very much at the heart of Fergus Henderson’s position in gastronomy these days. Anthony Bourdain addresses it in the introduction to the 2004 reprint of Henderson’s seminal 1999 cookbook, Nose to Tail Eating. When he first ate at St. John, Bourdain was so overwhelmed and impressed by the simple integrity of the food that he read all sorts of political motivation into it. “I saw his simple, honest, traditional English country fare as a thumb in the eye to the establishment,” says Bourdain, “an outrageously timed head butt to the growing hordes of politically correct, the PETA people, the European Union, practitioners of arch, ironic Fusion Cuisine and all those chefs who were fussing about with tall, overly sculpted entrées of little substance and less soul.” Having come to know Henderson, he now sees there is no hidden manifesto, just a respectful homage to good food. I’m sure he’s right about the place Henderson is coming from. But that doesn’t make his first reaction wrong. This food, and the cookbooks Henderson has written about it, have been incredibly influential, the influence felt in New York, Toronto, even Paris and Sydney.

 The answer perhaps is in the mood of the restaurant-goers tonight. They are merry, casual, unpretentious – just people having dinner, not people making a socio-gastronomic statement. It is all very democratic but not archly so, not cocky or defiant.

 Charlie Burger and the other guests arrive. Our table is positioned right in front of the open kitchen. Burger and Henderson have devised the menu between them – six courses featuring some of the chef’s most iconic dishes.

 The bread comes – thick slices of the crunchy-crusted, fragrant brown and white sourdough loaves that are baked at Henderson’s other place, St. John Bread & Wine. A square of ordinary salted butter on a saucer.

 The first course is devilled crab, served cold – huge bowls of Portland (Dorset) crab broken into large pieces, the shells partially cracked but not removed, cooked in a sauce of olive oil, garlic, ginger, chopped spring onions, fresh coriander leaves, lemon and lime juice and very finely julienned red chilies. We are all given hooks and pliers and a spare napkin. I decide discretion is the better part of fashion and remove my beige Bugatti blazer. Charlie Burger and I consider the snowy expanses of each other’s white shirts and weigh up the merits of tucking a napkin into the collar. Neither of us do it. Let the sauce fall where it may.

 It’s a delicious dish. The chilies are a subtle warmth behind the more obvious citrus and ginger tang. The crab meat is juicy but not watery (because they were boiled in water as salty as the sea). The wine, Domaine Francois Crochet 2009 Sancerre, is an elegant match, undaunted by the sauce. It takes us almost an hour to do justice to the generous helping and there is no possibility of daintiness as we crack claws, lick fingers and pry the treasured flesh from the chitinous chambers of the crabs’ bodies. Several fingerbowls and napkins later, the social ice has been broken and melted away. My shirt and Charlie’s are pristine.

 The second course is another Henderson trademark – trotter gear and quail’s egg. Trotter gear is awesome stuff. To make it, you must blanche pig’s trotters then braise them for at least three hours with onions, carrots, celery, leeks, garlic, thyme, peppercorns, chicken stock and half a bottle of Madeira until they are, in Henderson’s words, “totally giving.” Drain off the liquid and reserve it. Then pick and shred all the flesh, fat and skin off the trotters, add it to the reserved liquid and keep it in a jar until you need it. “You now have Trotter Gear,” writes Henderson in his second book, Beyond Nose to Tail, “nuduals of giving, wobbly trotter captured in a splendid jelly.”

 Tonight we each receive a ramekin of warm trotter gear with a couple of quail’s eggs cooked in it. It’s rich, unctuous, the many subtle textures of the semi-solid gear slipping about in the looser melted-jelly cooking liquid. The eggs are cooked through and provide an island of substance. We all use chunks of bread to mop our ramekins clean. The wine takes a friendly back seat to the experience – a Domaine Jean-Claude Lapalu 2008 Brouilly Vielles Vignes.

 Onto the main course – tripe and onions slow-cooked in milk with mashed potatoes. I have a checkered past where this dish is concerned. My grandmother used to cook the identical recipe for my dad. She was brought up on a farm in North Devon and this was something of a staple in those parts. It was my father’s favourite dish but to me, as a child, it always looked terrifying – the yellowish sponge-like flubber trembling in the gently moving milk. The thought of eating it nauseated me. It was only as an adult that I learned to love the stuff.

Henderson’s recipe couldn’t be simpler. He thickens the milk with a roux of butter and flour, adds chicken stock and a little mace then poaches the tripe and thinly sliced onions. Where his mastery is apparent is the timing. The beige tripe (from Irish cattle) is incredibly tender – I cut it with a fork – but still has that faint soft crunch that you also find in Cantonese jellyfish dishes. Here it is more like eating a giant morel than a sea creature, a morel bathing in chicken stock and bechamel. The firm mashed potatoes are more of a sop for the sauce than anything else.

And the wine? My ideal match for this dish is a dry cider from Somerset or Brittany. We receive Domaine JP Matrot 2007 Meursault Rouge.

 The fourth course is intended to keep scurvy at bay, according to Charlie Burger – a salad of watercress and soft roasted purple shallots, heaped on a platter and wet with a vinaigrette dressing spiked with crushed capers. It’s tangy, rich, moist, delicious – and just refreshing enough to be welcome.

 Onto the savoury – a classic buck rarebit. Melt strong Cheddar into a bubbling pan of butter, flour, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, Guinness and Worcestershire sauce. Let it cool into a paste then spread the paste as needed onto a slice of toast and put under the grill until bubbly. That’s a Welsh rarebit of course. Turn it into a buck rabbit by putting a poached egg on top. Tonight, it makes an ideal contribution – spicy, rich, the crunchy toast beneath the piquant molten cheese a substantial presence. This time the wine pairing is brilliant – Fonseca 1977 vintage port, as rich and spicy in its own way as the rarebit.

 The finale is Dr Henderson ice cream and it splits the party neatly into lovers and haters. This is an ice cream made from two parts Fernet Branca and one part crème de menthe, a drink that the chef’s father enjoyed as a hangover cure. It is certainly a peculiar ice cream – bitter, herbal, minty, sweet, medicinal… Most of our group agrees that crème de menthe is one of the very few alcoholic beverages we hate. Burger points out that the other mass-market French mint liqueurs Jet 27 (clear) and Jet 31 (green – or is it the other way around?) are even more vile and toothpaste-like. As an ice cream, however, the combination works for me, the bitters ruling the roost. A shot of Vieille Prune cuts through it nicely.

 With the bill (an extremely reasonable 145 pounds (Charlie Burger’s events are not-for-profit)) come some freshly made, hot-from-the-oven madeleines. In the kitchen, head chef Chris Gillaud, who cooked for us tonight, is busy shaving a piglet for tomorrow’s service.

 We conclude at midnight – four and a half hours after we began. The tireless Burger leads a group to a drinking establishment he favours in Covent Garden. I head home, extremely pleased with the evening, clutching my copy of Beyond Nose to Tail, signed by Fergus Henderson with a handwritten promise that he will come to Toronto “some day” and cook a Charlie Burger event. That will be a home-and-home I won’t want to miss.

 
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Eager Beavers

28 Jul

Three well-refreshed judges: Anthony Walsh, john Higgins and me.

It was a night of good humour, excellent food, intense competition and the start of something that will benefit Canadian gastronomy in a unique way, if all goes according to plan. Last Monday, Michael Stadtländer and friends took over the Drake hotel’s bar and restaurant to raise funds for his Eager Beaver scholarship project. The idea is that a lucky graduate culinary student from George Brown College and another from B.C.’s Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts will be given an extraordinary apprenticeship, spending a month with a star chef in every province and territory in Canada. They will document this 13-month process on video for the benefit of other students and they will emerge with an unprecedented awareness of the foodways of our vast country. I think it’s a brilliant idea, though the students will have to be chosen very carefully if they are to take full advantage of such an opportunity.

Meanwhile, we had the fundraiser to enjoy – an industry-only affair that included a black box cooking contest between four chefs – Steve Gonzales, sous chef at Origin, Nick Liu, chef at the Niagara Street Café, Kevin McKenna, chef at Globe and Earth, and Alida Solomon, owner-chef of Tutti Matti. Three of us were judging them – George Brown College’s own chef John Higgins, chef Anthony Walsh (who is incredibly busy right now as Oliver Bonacini prepares to open its three restaurants in the TIFF Lightbox building) and me.

Before the contest, however, there was ample time to party and enjoy the delectable treats of a number of other superstar chefs who came to show their support for Stadtländer and the Chefs’ Congress he organizes. Here are some of the highlights…

Michael Stadtländer himself brought a whole pig (one of his own from Eigensinn Farm) slow roasted in his wood-fired oven until the skin was crisp and the colour of mahogany. He served it with delicate ravioli filled with peach and ginger in a lemon basil butter sauce. Southbrook 2006 Cabernet-Merlot was the inspired wine match.

Daisuke Sakura of Kaiseki Sakura marinated fingers of lake trout in a fish broth with soy sauce and lime then plated them alongside crunchy zucchini. He put delicately crunchy deep-fried noodles over the top and scattered flower petals and shredded red and green shiso leaves from his garden. As each bowl was handed out, he spooned a little warm fish broth over the top which softened some of the noodles and released the heavenly fragrance from the ingredients. Another great wine match with Malivoire 2008 Chardonnay.

Ravine Vineyards provided the wine match for the Dairy Farmers of Canada who cut four cheeses – a deliciously earthy, creamy, Chardonnay-washed Rosehaus and a Tomme-style Quinte Crest, both from Fifth Town Artisan Cheese in Picton, down in Prince Edward County; a semi-soft Fleur-en-Lait from Glengarry Fine Cheese in Lancaster, Ontario, and Le Rassembleu, a firm, woodsy blue cheese from Québec’s Les Fromagiers de la Table Ronde.

Chef Chris Aerni came all the way from New Brunswick’s Rossmount Inn, where he is chef and co-owner, bringing a suitcase full of perfect mushrooms picked from the Inn’s 75 acres – golden chanterelles and coral-coloured lobster mushrooms, to be precise. He cooked them up with baby NB scallops until they were soft as silk, dusting the scallops with powdered dried sea lettuce (such a salty, tangy marine flavour), a nasturtium coulis and a rich chanterelle butter. It tasted as heavenly as it sounds and was beautifully matched with spicy, complex Stratus 2006 White.

Jeremy Charles flew in from St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he is poised to open a new restaurant called Raymond’s in the fall. He made a ravioli of moose meat and mashed potato sauced with chicken stock and a brunoise of vegetables and finished with a little grated parmesan. A yummy dish, nicely paired with Mission Hill 2008 Five Vineyards Pinot Noir.

Oyster Boy Adam Colqhoun was a jovial presence behind the Drake’s sushi station, shucking huge, heavy-shelled beauties from Colville Bay, P.E.I. that he had personally harvested. Creemore Springs beer was the perfect accompaniment.

Anthony Walsh and two of his team made gorgeous, sticky steamed buns folded around incredibly tender Wellington County beef brisket, nam prik vegetables and “forever leaf” which is the pretty name for wild purslane, a fleshy plant that regenerates easily in the woodlands of our country. Henry of Pelham 2008 Baco Noir was an inspired pour with the brisket.

So, all told, I was pretty full already when I slid onto my judging stool beside Higgins and Walsh while master of ceremonies Sheldon Jaffine thanked sponsors All Clad kitchenware and Creemore Springs brewery. Then the competition began. The black box ingredients were interesting… two cuts of Eigensinn Farm pork; a cornucopia of David Cohlmeyer’s Cookstown beets, tomatoes, Asian greens and other vegetables; some cold-pressed hemp oil; some of Chris Aerni’s awesome mushrooms; a bottle of Creemore beer (for cooking not chugging) and the secret ingredient, a jar of raw pig’s brains. Each chef had 25 minutes.

The time passed quickly with pig-brain jokes coming thick and fast – lots of zombie wisecracks and references to Young Frankenstein’s Abbie Normal. We tasted Steve Gonzalez’s offering first – a sort of vegetable ceviche using the beer instead of an acid full of interesting textures and flavours with the sweet-tart green tomatoes and zucchini flowers most prominent. He had sautéed the pork bacon and braised off the pork belly but there was no sign of the brains.

Nick Liu surrounded his slices of pork with a garland of vegetables, using the oil as a final drizzle. He had roasted the pork and the bacon with maple syrup and chanterelle butter and set it over a salad of inely shaved fennel and beet. The brains had defeated him and were still in their jar.

Kevin McKenna roasted off his beautifully seasoned pork to tender perfection, slicing it over dark leafy greens, awesome chanterelles and crunchy julienne of fennel. The judges agreed his pig-brain and beer sauce would make him a fortune if he could bottle and sell it.

Alida Solomon combined larger elements – the whole onion flowers, the whole zucchini blossoms, stalks and all – cooked her beets just so and pan-seared her pork to give it a great crust before cooking it off in a covered pan. She too made a brains sauce using the bacon as scrumptious lardons. Her textures were distinct, her flavours bold and the food reached the judges piping hot. We were unanimous in giving her the victory.

All told, it was a super evening and a fine preliminary to the second Canadian Chefs’ Congress that will take place on Vancouver Island around September 11, 2010. In 2011, the third Congress is scheduled for St. John’s Newfoundland. Both gatherings promise to be epic parties and gastronomic exchanges of true significance.

One final date to note down: on October 3, Michael Stadtländer is holding his Harvest Festival up at Eigensinn Farm, reviving all the outdoor sculpture and cooking stations featured a couple of years ago for his Heaven on Earth project. It’s going to be amazing!

Judges three, all well refreshed: Anthony Walsh, John Higgins and me, with Christian Morrison, Canadian Chefs Congress, steering committee.

 
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Hello godello

24 Jul

Fanny bay oysters and pimentos de padron

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that albariño was being feted as the unknown great white grape from Galicia. Now that savvy sommeliers have brought it so delightfully to the world’s attention it’s time for a new uva desconocida. Say hello to godello. And while we’re about it, let’s open our arms to a Galician red called mencía. Both introductions were made earlier this week by Luis Nuñez of Losada Vinos de Finca and his agents here, The Wine Coaches, over a seriously delicious dinner at Cava. Chef Chris McDonald is himself a sommelier and his wine-pairing dinners on those long-ago, shining, stimulating nights at Avalon were always revelatory (I remember one occasion built around Oregon pinot noirs that changed the way I thought about food-and-wine matching, not to mention north-western pinot). He and his co-owner and co-chef at Cava, Doug Penfold (who looks more and more like Chris with the passing years) performed brilliantly this time around, much to the delight of the crowd.

Godello turned out to be a total delight. It grows in a single mountain valley in Galicia, about 250 kilometres from the sea, on very slatey soils that contribute a vibrant minerality to the wine. In 1885, the proprietor of Bodegas Valdesil planted a vineyard called Pedrouzos exclusively to godello. His neighbours said it was financial suicide as the variety is notoriously delicate and easily over-ripens but our champion stuck to his intentions. Today, that vineyard still exists and the godello clone that originates there is recognized for its superior structure and complexity.

 The first version we tried was 2008 Val de Sil, made from vines that are 20-30 years old. It’s fermented and aged on its lees in steel – clean and concentrated, minerally with a hint of citrus – reminiscent of a Rousanne or a good Chablis. The chefs paired it with two divinely creamy Fanny Bay oysters from Vancouver Island that they had subjected to a mild escabeche treatment for a couple of hours, leaving the oyster flesh slightly denser than normal and with a subtle prickle of vinegar. With them were two pimentos de padron, those pinkie-sized green peppers that let you play Russian roulette – due to a genetic fluke, one in every dozen or so is not mild and sweet like its brethren but searingly hot. Pan-fried in olive oil and scattered with salt, my two were safe. Crunchy cucumber threads and some fresh dill flowers completed the dish, the flavours resonating in several different keys with the wine.

Smoked albacore tuna sashimi with tonnato sauce and garden beans

Godello number two was 2007 Pezas de Portela. This wine is fermented and aged for six months in oak barriques before moving into steel where it rests on its lees until bottling. The hint of oak was altogether charming but don’t take my word for it. Robert Parker declared this wine the second best white in all of Spain. McDonald and Penfold’s dish played brilliantly to the smoky oak – a salad of split yellow and green beans with an olive oil dressing, three slices of rare, lightly smoked albacore tuna sashimi and a stunning tonnato sauce made of crushed tuna, egg yolk and olive oil, as smooth as satin.

The third godello 2007 Pedrouzos, was the evening’s star in my opinion, a wine made from vines grown in the original 1885 vineyard. The production is tiny from such ancient plants – only 500 magnums a year, the winemaking method identical to Pezas de Portela. Knowing where it came from added extra concentration to the tasting – as did the understanding that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Again, the accompanying dish was designed to shine a light into the wine’s interior, illuminating all sorts of aromatic echoes. Subtly flavourful quenelles of pike and lobster were set over a slice of fried lion’s mane mushroom, its texture not unlike eggplant, with a vibrant, very pure green pea sauce.

Then it was on to the red wines, three iterations of the mencía grape made by Finca Losada. The project is a new one, started only in 2005, but the vines are ancient – 60 to 70 year-old bush vines growing on clay just to the north of the godello area. We started with 2007 Losada – a big, robust red, rich and dense with dark fruit tannins and as much acidity as a Baco Noir, spiced by 10 to 12 months in French and American oak. The chefs met the acidity head on with a soft crimson piquillo pepper surrounded by a pulpy, tangy, chipotle-spiked tomatillo sauce. There were fried chickpeas for substance and the pepper was stuffed with a gorgeously loose, almost liquid house-made morcilla blood sausage, rich enough to take on the muscular wine.

2006 Altos de Losada was also big and bold though the extra year and a purely French oak regime added a measure of elegance. Lean slices of red deer leg volunteered to dance with the wine’s tannins; crunchy poached Asian greens and a compote of peach and red currant answered the challenge of acidity; a glorious slab of gamay-poached foie gras, soft as butter, quietly stole the show.

The final red, 2007 Altos de Losada, La Bienquerida, is a single vineyard production and one step further along the path to ultimate sophistication. The chefs decided to balance its power with voluptuously tender braised Texel lamb shoulder in a rich gravy with favas, tomato and grilled baby fennel. Another triumph.

In case anyone was still hungry, we finished with a slice of marcona almond cake, some bing cherry ice cream and a sour cherry compote, pleasantly paired with a Spanish sticky, Moscatel Oro Floralis from Torres.

It was a very fine evening, by universal consensus, and a treat to discover two grape varieties and so many wines we had never tasted before.

 
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Scarpetta

22 Jul

So it’s finally happened. Toronto has scored a big-time foreign chef. The rumours have been flitting about for years – Gordon Ramsey was coming to the condo tower at One Bloor Street; Jean-Georges Vongerichten was seriously thinking about building a bridgehead in one of the new boutique hotels; Nobu had been checking out fish wholesalers in J-Town… None of those came to pass. What we did get is Scott Conant, one of New York’s finest, chef of L’Impero (2002, James Beard Best New Restaurant in the US), and of Alto, and of Scarpetta (2008) in New York and later Miami Beach, and now of Toronto, Ont.

Our Scarpetta is the lobby-level restaurant in the new Thompson Toronto boutique hotel at the corner of Bathurst and Wellington West and it opened on Wednesday night with a very typical Toronto fanfare of fire trucks and fire alarms (called in error, but talk about a baptism by fire (alarm)) and – you guessed it – no liquor licence. Guests who wished to wander into the restaurant from the lobby carrying a glass of wine were told it was verboten. Welcome to Toronto, Mr Conant. Yes, it’s true that the restaurant and hospitality industry is the most important economic sector in Ontario, the number one employer in the province, and that we’re trying to bring back American tourists to the benefit of all, but you must understand that the powers that pertain in our city have made it their mission to throw every kind of obfuscation and problem in front of anyone who seeks to enhance our gastronomic reputation by opening a new restaurant in Toronto. Or you could look at it another way, pointed out Amy Rosen, also at the party: why do these places open before they get all their licences and paperwork in order? Why not wait a couple of extra days?

But I digress…

Scott Conant, chef, and our newest immigrant (kind-of – he still lives in NYC but will drop by here from time to time) has written an open letter to Toronto and published it on the revered American blog, the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-conant/an-open-letter-to-toronto_b_651231.html It’s a friendly message, full of flattery of Niagara produce, Ontario salumi, et alia. He seems to think we call our city “T.dot” (don’t know where he picked that one up – not from Toronto, obviously) and it’s written as if he’s talking to children in the second grade. But in all other respects it is far less condescending than it might have been. The tone is almost apologetic – as if he senses a potential resentment against big-shot New York chefs barging in and teaching us how to eat Italian. Heaven forfend.

Conant has a TV smile and a baseball player’s gift for the apropos summation and he did his duty by us on Wednesday night. In the end, however, it will all come down to the food on the Scarpetta plate. The bite-sized treats and chafing-dish pastas at the debut were intended to showcase the actual menu and while everything was yummy, nothing was OMGwhere’smynotebook amazing. But you can’t judge a cook by his canapés. I’m going to wait until September to dine there properly and make up my mind.

But consider this… Wouldn’t it be interesting if Toronto (half the city is Italian – or so we have always been told) were to find that we had been missing out on Italian food until now… That Conant and Scarpetta were to open our eyes to what New World-Italian food can be!

On the other hand, what if we all went to Scarpetta with an open mind, tasted it, pondered it (in a true state of superhuman objectivity) and decided it was actually pretty simple stuff, no better than anything we are already used to eating at Via Allegro or Il Mulino or Zucca or Biagio – or even Local Kitchen? What then?

Conant’s signature dishes were front and centre on Wednesday night – spaghetti with basil-scented tomato sauce; calamarata of pasta cuffs with tender mussels and baby squid in a sort of chicken broth; crostini with marinated eggplant and lardo (which really were scrumptious); super-tender braised short ribs with farro risotto; creamy polenta with a fricassee of truffled mushrooms… The jury is out. One thing, though: it really is good to have some new blood in the city! I can’t wait to read what our local media make of Scarpetta. Some will love it; others will not. That goes without saying. And I dare say we can all guess who will kiss and who will diss, who will drool and who’s too-cool-for-school…

Meanwhile, Counter, the diner that is also part of the new Thompson hotel, has already changed chefs – after only a week. There’s another place I have to try.

 
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Tastes of Thailand

18 Jul

A cook from New Thai Food's station at Tastes of Thailand prepares spicy papaya salad (Som Tam) with her pestle and mortar. Easy for her; searing pleasure/pain for this one.

Living in downtown Toronto, we know it happens every year. The prettiest weekend of the summer, when everyone should be outside on deck or patio or puttering about the backyard, is blighted and spoiled. A persistent noise fills the warm, aestival air, pitched somewhere between a buzz and a whine, like hornets swarming in the eaves or the ceaseless chorus of 10,000 soprano vuvuzelas – the Honda Indy. It’s amazing how far the sound travels. When we lived in the Annex, north of Bloor, it would wake us at 8:00 am on the Sunday in question, as if our neighbours were renovating their basement with a jig saw. These days we live farther south and the sound of the racing cars ceaselessly chasing each other around their walled circuit is even more obtrusive, driving us indoors and making the cat nervous and bad-tempered.

In the great scheme of things, however, all this is more than balanced by the treats that accumulate for the downtown urbanite – interesting events within easy walking distance – from burning police cars to fez-headed Shriners on the march to maniacal Spanish soccer fans to this weekend’s other gathering, the Tastes of Thailand in Nathan Phillips Square. Okay, it isn’t a major festival. The GTA’s tiny Thai community seems to have no budget for advertising and the word-of-mouth head of steam that seemed to be building a few years ago has since dissipated. I only heard about it through my son, who works in a Thai restaurant on the Danforth. So, yesterday, down we went for a pleasant hour to listen to Thai music from performers on the scaffold stage instead of Danika Patrick’s transmission.

It was all very low-key (the energy, not the music). There are booths where one can buy a few minutes of Thai massage – a particular style in which the victim’s limbs are twisted into knots. There are stalls selling trinkets and scarves and one tent where a woman is patiently and skillfully carving fruit into spectacular floral sculptures. It’s one of the most ephemeral art forms imaginable but taken very seriously in Thailand, where the king himself employs a royal fruit carver to provide decorative centrepieces for his dinner table.

As for food, there are half a dozen restaurants represented at Tastes of Thailand, each offering a buffet selection of dishes for a few bucks. The cooks in question are aware that most of their audience this weekend will be Thai so the treats have a pleasing authenticity in terms of flavour intensity. We didn’t try everything but several items stood out. At Pi-Tom’s stall, we tasted beautifully fluffy moist tilapia fried in a crisp batter and dressed with a tart tamarind sauce. At the Thai Senses booth I was most impressed by very tender, grilled baby octopus on a stick and by plump, heavy pork sausages also impaled on bamboo. They are sweetish and garlicky with a soft, fine texture and my son told me they taste exactly like Toronto’s finest Thai sausages, the ones that are made in her home by P’ Tum, a familiar member of the community who supplies several high-quality restaurants and is also a fortune teller.

Best of all was a spicy papaya salad, freshly made to order at the stall operated by New Thai Food, a restaurant at 2450 Lakeshore Road West in Oakville (www.thaisenses.ca). Two years of staff meals at Mong Kut Thai have given my son a taste for lethal chili heat so he asked for the salad to be made properly spicy. We watched as the cook began by crushing a handful of scarlet chilies in a huge black mortar, wielding the pestle like a hefty muddler. She added chewy dried shrimp and a good quantity of grated white papaya, then roasted peanuts, crunchy green beans snapped into one-inch lengths, and a ladleful of a dressing made with lime juice, tamarind juice, sugar and garlic. My son and I carried the dish away to a table and tucked in, relishing the variety of textures, the fresh flavours, the swift onset of delectably agonizing pain as the chili oil attacked the inside of our mouths. “In Thailand,” my son told me, “children start eating raw chilies when they’re about five years old.”

Two minutes later I was back at the New Thai Food stall to buy ice-cold drinks, much to the amusement of the young women manning the concession. But that salad needed the chili heat. Thai food is all about the balance of extremes – sweetness, acidity, saltiness, chili heat. Diminish one or two of those components – as so many Thai restaurants do in deference to Western palates – and the whole thing is suddenly out of whack, too sweet, too bland and generally unsatisfactory. It’s good to taste the real thing from time to time.

Tastes of Thailand runs again today at Nathan Phillips Square. A fine place to escape the Indy buzz.

 
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The BarChef Nationals

15 Jul

Wild goings-on last night at BarChef on Queen West where six of the country’s finest mixologists duked it out at the second National Bar Chef Competition. It was the idea of BarChef’s co-owners Frankie Solarik and Brent VanderVeen, though Frankie was not competing, preferring to serve as one of the three judges. Alongside him were Kevin Brauch (the tough but genial, sometimes manic, secretly sentimental host of the excellent Chef Off! Television extravaganza) and Catherine Santos from Diageo, representing the evening’s revered sponsor, Ketel One vodka. The prize is a trip to Amsterdam, including a visit to Ketel One’s family distillery and two nights in the red light district.

Nishantha Nepulangoda pouring Ketel One vodka (he thinks)

I arrived early, as is my wont, and enjoyed a refreshing White Orchid, a fabulous cocktail for a hot summer night, served in a flute and created by Frankie. Appropriately, it starred Ketel One, the vodka embraced by a heady cardamom and cumin syrup, sweetened with cassis, acidulated with a grapefruit-infused dry white vermouth and topped up with sparkling wine.

Wandering to the back of the long room (Frankie usually keeps the lights so dim that I hadn’t seen the rear wall since it was the Opal Jazz Lounge, years ago) I came upon David Wolowidnyk from West in Vancouver preparing his mise-en-place. His principal ingredients were Szechuan Buttons – spherical, bright orange flower buds about the size of a large garden pea, each with a wiry green stalk. Their real name is Acmella oleracea, also known as spilanthes, and they are native to Brazil though they are grown in many parts of the world these days. What makes them so special is the strong analgesic in the plant, a substance called splianthol, which has the same effect on a person’s mouth as Szechuan pepper. The Chinese call that sensation ma la, meaning “numb heat,” the tingling cold-hot anaesthesia you get when you lick a 9-volt battery. It also makes you salivate. Wolowidnyk cut one of the wee buds in half and gave it to me to eat… The effects lasted for hours! He used them in his cocktail (he called it Sichuan Punch) by muddling a handful of the buds and then infusing them in vodka for two weeks. Meanwhile, he brewed a delectable green tea flavoured with cherry blossom and sweetened with sugar (it is served to first-class passengers on Singapore Airlines, the lucky dogs). To these ingredients he added fresh lemon juice and a dash of Scrappy’s cardamom bitters from Seattle. “Shake hard to chill,” he suggested, “then strain it into an Old-fashioned glass over new ice, top it up with [his own house-made] ginger beer and garnish it with a whole Szechuan button.”

Wolowidnyk was full of lore. Did you know the term “punch” in the sense of a bowl of drink comes from the Indian word for “five,” which is punj, because a true punch has five ingredients. I didn’t know that, and I am horrified by the omission. I always assumed I knew absolutely everything.

Another useful fact: as of June 3, 2010, it is now legal in British Columbia for a barman to make his own infusions.

And another: In British Columbia, bitters has always been classed as a herbal extract in order to exempt it from liquor tax. I can see that. Yes, that one I can see.

Anyway, Wolowidnyk’s Sichuan Punch is pretty delicious and very interesting. I taste the tart lemon juice first, then the cherry sweetness of the tea syrup, then a faint tingle of the Button, coming in like a ghostly echo of ouzo and pepper.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The competition has not yet begun and there are canapés to negotiate and people to talk to, ears straining over the shouted conversation and the steady thump of the DJ’s contribution.

David Wolowidnyk and his amazing Szrchuan Buttons

At last we begin and first up is Lauren Mote, once a server at Le Sélect, now a writer, mixologist and general manager/sommelier of downtown Vancouver’s hot hot spot, The Refinery, where she has created a formidable and persuasive cocktail program. Tonight, her competition drink is called the Nolet Prat and it begins with three remarkable tinctures – home-made vermouth “van Kersen” (macerated cherries and cocoa nibs in vodka), home-made “Smaak van Noyaux” (made from taking the white membrane on the inside of apricot kernels which tastes like bitter almonds and infusing it in vodka) and home-made orgeat syrup. To these she adds a dash of quince vinegar and garnishes the rose-pink drink with a twist of lemon peel. The Ketel One vodka should be added almost at the end of the process but – horreur! – there is none to hand. A bottle is quickly grabbed from the display behind the bar and the cocktail completed.

As a prelude to the experience, she freezes quenelles of lemon curd in liquid nitrogen and these are passed among the crowd as a palate cleanser. It is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. OMG. Makes me want to dash out and buy a bottle of liquid nitrogen and set to work with the old egg yolks and lemons… Wow.

Kevin Brauch lets me sample his cocktail. The Nolet Pratt is pretty good, but it lacks pizzazz and definition. Only later do I find out why…
David Wolowidnyk goes next, followed by Wes Galloway, who has won a string of major competitions and is currently bar manager and mixologist at Black Beans Steakhouse and Lounge in Port Hope, Ontario. He takes a much more conventional approach to cocktail building – so solid, so old school, in the best sense. His drink is the Jade Crown – vodka, Lillet Blanc, Domaine de Canton, Strega, a dash of Fee Bros. grapefruit bitters, a drop of roasted black peppercorn tincture, all stirred together with plenty of ice. Before straining this into the glass, he spritzes the glass with tobacco-infused Navan. It tastes spicy, like ginger, but then the black pepper kicks in, and the bittersweet suggestion of tobacco, the citrus, the herbal Strega… It’s fascinating but surprisingly insipid considering it contains so many powerful ingredients.

Next up is Nishantha Nepulangoda, cocktail guru of Blowfish in Toronto, renowned for the complexity of his achievements. His Snowbird does not disappoint his many fans. The drink itself is tall and bright green, a mixture of vodka, ginger liqueur, yuzu-infused sake, home-made ginger beer, nelli cordial, fresh lime juice, Nisha’s own bitters, five fresh nelli fruits and a whole yuzu. The glass is rimmed with a powder of sugar, dried ginger and citric acid. The drink is presented on a tray together with three other elements – a flaming cube of camphor; a glass cloche of fresh fruits (nelli, yuzu, vodka-steeped grapes); a wonton spoon containing a Ketel One pearl, an ice wine pearl with cucumber, a yuzu sake pearl, some wasabi seaweed paper and some jalapeno olives with cucumber.
So… Quite the presentation. And Nisha added to the theatre by freestyling vodka from a great height into each of the three cocktails he was preparing and then into his mouth. That’s when it happened. Nisha stopped dead in his tracks, turned to the crowd and announced that the bottle of Ketel one contained not vodka but water. It was a prop bottle from the back of the bar!
Scandal and consternation! No wonder those early cocktails had lacked a certain je ne sais quoi!

The judges go into a huddle, but meanwhile, on with the show… Next to step up is Fabien Maillard, once a French chef, now owner of the Lab, Comptoir à Cocktails, a modern speakeasy in Montreal. Maillard, too, has a showman’s touch, juggling and spinning bottles behind his back like Bryan Brown in the movie, Cocktail. His Martini de Provence is the only savoury cocktail in the competition and to me it is the most delectable, the simplest, and probably the only one I will one day make at home myself. First he tastes the vodka. Okay. It’s really Ketel One. Then he halves cherry tomatoes and drops them into the glass. He takes fresh oregano sprigs, crushes and slaps them and drops them in. Some Worcestershire sauce. Some lavender-infused sea salt. A hefty slug of Pernod. It looks amazing with the scarlet tomatoes shining in the lights. Then he muddles it all together, adds ice, stirs and strains the now coral-coloured liquid into a glass which he garnishes with a whole cherry tomato.

Again, I nab Brauch’s cocktail. It’s a beauty. The sweet-tart tomato water, the perfumed salt, the forthright hit of Pernod – very good balance. A real cocktail.

The last contender is Rob Montgomery of Toronto’s The Miller Tavern. He uses a chemist’s flask and two cut crystal mixing jugs to prepare a drink he calls To The Five Boroughs a.k.a. Voltron Cocktail. To make one you’d have to combine Vodka, Tanqueray No. Ten gin, Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, green Chartreuse and fresh lime juice in a glass of ice, stirring well. Rinse a new, chilled glass with Lillet Blanc vermouth then strain the cocktail into it. Garnish with orange zest (spritz, wipe, discard) and a pickled cherry. “First sip the drink then bite the cherry!” That is the instruction. Yum. The overall impression is of fruit – kind of a delicious blur – or is that because it’s getting on for midnight by now?

Lauren Mote and her liquid nitrogen

The judges retire to a backroom and are gone for the longest time… 45 minutes… tasting the early water cocktails remade with vodka. Then the grand announcement.

Sharing third place are Nishantha Nepulangoda and Fabian Maillard. In second place is Lauren Mote. And the national bar chef champion 2010 is David Wolowidnyk – he of the Szechuan Button that I can still taste, walking home up Spadina, along Cecil, holding my loot bag of Fee Bros. aztec chocolate bitters, yuzu juice and tissue paper, counting my echoing footsteps in the breathless Toronto night.

 
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Chefs Congress Industry Night

09 Jul

This will be fun! They’ve asked me to be one of the judges and I can’t wait. See you there!

 
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