Andrea the Gastronaut

I arrived at Samovar with my stomach still full from a chanukah brunch consisting of latkes, bagels, lox, cream cheese and more.  I arrived to tables piled with baked goods, a big crowd, lots of noise, lots of noise, lots to see. Almost sensory overload. I pushed my way through the crowd and surveyed the offerings. My favourite of the evening was one of the first things I tried. Here’s the menu for reference.

My favourite:

Sticky date cake with beer-caramel sauce with a side of pomegranate compote and ice cream. The tang of the pomegranate took away from the sweetness of everything else and made it less cloying.

After a few tastings I realized that the best thing to do was share. More items to taste, less eating. There was usually someone willing to take a taste off my napkin or plate and I was usually willing to help someone out with eating theirs.

My two favourites in the visual category:

1. St. Lawrence Market White Velvet Cake from Cake or Death:

You can’t tell from the photo but the cake was huge. Read her event recap. I think Rannie recommended that I try it. Or maybe that was the cupcakes below. Or both.

2. Pina Colada cupcakes and Ferraro Rocher cupcakes from Sugar Baking.

The decorations were made with fondant and the fondant palm trees were held up with straws. Beautiful and delicious!

Bonita’s black sesame & white chocolate wasabi cupcakes were among the many unique offerings. At the end of the event I took her last 2 dozen home with me along with her chocolate & brandied chestnut cupcakes. They survived the streetcar, subway and bus but got jostled up the narrow staircase to my apartment as I juggled large box of cupcakes & keys. They were taken to the office next day and devoured. I like that cupcake box. It’s certainly not the kind of box that cupcakes came in when I was a child, and parents brought cupcakes to school for their child’s birthdays. Memories of cupcakes from kosher bakeries, chocolate with chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles. Those, these were not (and all the bacon brownies and Joel’s maple frosted almond shortbread with pig candy would NOT have been acceptable then, to state the obvious).

Event wrap ups:

• Behind the scenes: Lavender French Butter Cookies [The Nervous Chef].
• Official wrap up on the Foodiemeet website, and recipe from the winner. [Foodiemeet website]
• Post-Bake Off summary, photos and links from the organizers, more comprehensive than the one I originally came up with. [Foodiemeet website]

If you blogged it feel free to add your link in the comments.

Take a look at the FoodieMeet Flickr group. I’ve added mine.

Uncategorized, events foodiemeet

Once upon a time ago, not even a year, a couple of Twitter users passionate for food and some journalistic experience in that area (Spotlight Toronto) organized a food-related activity for Twitter users. A one-off. What started as one activity with few people grew and grew quickly, as happens with social media (you know, this “Web 2.0” thing). A hashtag was created and “foodiemeets” began to happen regularly, bringing together people who like food in a change to bond, share, build experiences together and network. I have some friends that I’ve met through these and businesses that I’m now a fan of. Meeting people online and then offline has been a regular occurrence for me for the last 15 years but food makes the experience special in a whole other way.

I’ve been to and blogged about two FoodieMeets that I’ve been to: A big patio meet up last spring at which I met some great people and a wine tasting at Cafe Taste.

They now have a website and email newsletter as well as more volunteers and participants. Coming up this Sunday is a very special foodiemeet: The Bake Off Edition, with all proceeds going to charity.

Check their website for more information.

I won’t be baking – when the call for bakers went out I couldn’t think of anything to bake – but I will be there buying extra tasting tickets ($2 each) and bringing non-perishable food items for The Stop, which holds a special place in my heart now that I’ve moved into The Stop’s neighbourhood and I’m big on the concept of community. I’ll show up full from a chanukah celebration but there’s always room for baked goods, especially when they’re for a good cause.

At the last FoodieMeet I went to I won a door prize. I’ll be thrilled if this happens again. I suspect that there will be some awesome prizes as there always are.

For all the inanity of Twitter, for all the drivel that gets posted (of which I’m an offender) and for all those who criticize it, I’ve seen Twitter mobilize people for great causes. HoHoTO and Twestival come to mind, the former which has their second annual winter event next week (forgive me for jumping to a secondary topic here). My favourite uses for Twitter include social bonds/networking and philanthropy.

Come to Sunday’s FoodieMeet and help The Stop.

Update: As I’ve been composing this post they’ve put up a list of who’s baking what. Awesome.

Uncategorized foodiemeet

…Continued from here.

Course #4: Bring on the livestock. My least favourite course of all.
Alright, I can definitively say that I don’t like Malbec, until someone tells me that “this Malbec is different”. Regarding Legends Estates Malbec I wrote the words “smoke” and “tobacco” and, my favourite descriptor of the evening, “Like drinking a pipe”.

Malbec, meet “Clandestin” cheese, a sheep and cow milk cheese. The lady serving it called it her favourite but it was too pungent for me. You can find information about the cheese here and here. I noted that it tastes like an animal. When Sarah declared it to be “barnyardy”, I agreed. The flavour was musty. This cheese reminded me of the smell of rotting hay (some might say “herbal”), like waking through Riverdale Farm’s petting zoo. I might be the first person ever to say that the cheese tasted like a petting zoo. I didn’t like it. Sarah, however, proclaimed, “I like barnyardy cheeses” (one of my favourite quotes of the evening and immediately tweeted).

When at first I tasted the wine and cheese together they mellowed each other out, but then I found that I had two strong tastes in my mouth. I finished the wine, spit out the cheese.

So, a petting zoo-tasting cheese and a wine that tasted like pipe. The next and final course was like heaven in my mouth.

Final wine and cheese combination:  Baco Noir and cheddar

I don’t know if it’s because I disliked the previous course so emphatically or if it was just that good but I was pleased when we concluded with Sandbanks Winery Baco Noir (2007) and Jensen 2 year old cheddar. Who doesn’t like cheddar? The baco noir, from Prince Edward County, was light. I tasted orange and strawberry. I recall that baco noir is characteristically peppery but I didn’t overtly detect that. The high salt content of the cheese might have been responsible for making the wine taste a little bit sweeter but not cloyingly so.

Gamay revisited

Those of us who paid for the full experience then had a chance to revisit some of the five wines. I had another few glasses and noted a change in the taste of the Chateau des Charmes gamay. Whereas earlier I’d only noticed the predominantly cherry taste, my second experience resulted in a honey aroma and the taste of brown sugar. Someone pointed out a petrol smell, which I also caught a whiff of after it was pointed out (I think that wine tasting is in many ways psychological). I tasted more sweetness than previously and wondered if it was my perception of the wine that changed or if the flavour itself had changed as a result of the bottle being open longer.

It wasn’t all wine

Other happenings:

• Author Kathryn Borel read from her soon-to-be-released book Corked: A Memoir. I can’t decide if I want to read the book or not. The content sounds interesting but at times the use of adjectives seemed contrived as if she was trying too hard to paint a picture. It was too adjective heavy for my taste. I commend her for writing the book.

• I won the first raffle prize! Three books courtesy of Simon and Schuster (I almost typed “Wayne and Schuster”): Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler and Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto.

Interestingly, yesterday’s National Post has an article titled “Eat some cheese: Canadians are much more than cheddar people”.

If you’re interested in future events like this and are on Twitter you can watch for the hashtag #foodiemeet. If you’re not, I’ll try to remember to post upcoming events here. Cafe Taste runs a number of events and are looking to fill a bus for a road trip to Prince Edward County on Labour Day weekend. Reserve your spot now and get information about other upcoming events at Cafe Taste at their website. If Jeremy’s on board you know it’ll be a good time and educational. He knows his stuff.

Update: Read Sarah’s review at Toronto Tasting Notes. We were hanging out at the event together so it’s interesting to see which opinions we share and where we differ.

Uncategorized, events cheese, events, foodiemeet, Twitter, wine, Wine tasting

Sensory Adventure and Foodie Show & Tell

On Wednesday I attended the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals ) Toronto Grassroots Event, Sensory Adventure and Foodie Show & Tell, hosted by Arlene Stein and Dana McCauley.

Cheese from About Cheese

After some wine and schmoozing, Cole Snell from About Cheese started us out with a little presentation of cheese followed by a tasting. Liking what I was hearing while the cheeses were being presented, I turned to my friend David and joked (well, half joked) that I was having a “cheesegasm”. I enjoyed most of what I tasted but what stood out was the sweet butter (from Thunder Bay?), an aged cheddar, the Figaro and the Celtic Blue- if that’s the cheese I’m thinking of, brie-like with a blue vein.  There was no Red Leicester, Red Windsor, Camembert or Venezuelan Beaver Cheese (in case you didn’t pick up on it, that’s Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch).

I wish I’d taken notes because there was a lot of interesting information presented. For example, which cheese you’re not allowed to transport from Quebec to Ontario, artisan cheese makers in Ontario and Quebenc, and pasteurized milk cheeses vs. unpasteurized milk.

Charcuterie

Lots of cheese later, we were schooled on charcuterie by Mario Pingue of Niagara Specialty Meats (Pingue Prosciutti). In an article at Gremolata, Carlos Fuenmayor referrs to Pingue as the “go-to guy for local prosciutto”. Beautiful prosciutto was wrapped around thin bread sticks, and small rounds of three types of salami lay a plate. I didn’t take notes on the varieties, but there were two that I liked, one that I wasn’t crazy about. All three were better than those kosher salamis I ate as a child. Incidentally, I told someone about the prosciutto in an email yesterday and when it ran the spell check, Outlook didn’t recognize “prosciutto” and instead suggested “prostitute”.

Local, fresh ingredients

I had some great conversation and felt inspired. It was great to finally meet Arlene – who I’d exchanged emails with in the past – and Dana. Wish I’d had more time to talk to Dana but she had to fly off to Winnipeg for a day. Met and briefly chatted with Dana’s husband, chef Martin Kouprie of Pangea Restaurant. It’s one of those restaurants that’s close to where I live – about 4 blocks away – but I’ve never been. I guess I should now.

Also chatted with Peter of kalofagas.ca, who brought out a small sample of …?, a thin meat product that had a sheen to it and tasted of cumin, curry, allspice and other spices. “Kalofagas” is greek for “gourmet”.

Cookbook author Margaret Webb told my friends and I (well, mostly my friends) about her new book Apples To Oysters, and made us guess which farmed food product she associated with which Canadian province in her book. Jodi scored admirably. I had recently read something about the book.

The lovely Rebecca LeHeup-Bucknell told me about her organization, The Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance. What a fantastic organization. Reading the organizaton’s website made me giddy because it is so inline with my interests and speaks to the Ontario government employee in me and the former non-profit professional/professional advocate in me.

As I said, I left inspired. (And with cheese and bread.)

Foodie Tweetup

Oh, the many uses of Twitter. One of my favourite uses is for the planning of social events.

@spotlightcity (Suresh Doss) of Spotlight Toronto and @TOfoodie (Andrea Chiu) recently had the idea for a “foodiemeetup”. What was an idea grew into something big (search “#foodiemeetup” on Twitter). Nearly 100 people, mostly Twitter users, gathered on the patio of Brassaii on what turned out to be a gorgeous day.

Beer tickets were handed out for pints of Steamwhistle beer and raffle prizes were up for grabs: A Day At Elbulli signed by Ferran Adria, two Tea Emporium prize packs, a Nikon digital camera, and a gift basket from Pantry. I was two numbers away from winning that and it’s the prize that I really wanted, filled with fleur de sel, maple syrup, maple vinegar (an upgrade replacement from the cider vinegar), and two other items that I’m forgetting. Suzanne was the lucky winner.

I spoke to Pantry owner Greg Bolton for awhile over at the wine table and promised to come over to his end of College Street some time. It’s an easy streetcar ride away, but it feels far. I’ve been aware of Pantry for awhile and see them represented at food events, where they sometimes sample their products. Greg and I spoke of food blogs, food writing, food writers, running a store and more.

“Wine table”? Oh yes. There was a wine tasting courtesy of @liffordwine & Craggy Range Winery. I tried a half dozen wines- 2 whites and four reds (?) and liked the Sauvignon Blanc the best. A light wine with notes of straw and citrus.

But the food! How about the food?! (Or, this is a food blog, isn’t it?)

I opted for the “pre-theatre” prix fixe menu. Choice of daily soup or Brassaii Salad, choice of main course, choice of White Chocolate Orange Crème Brûlée or flourless chocolate torte.

The soup was a Moroccan chickpea with crème fraiche (at least, I think it was creme fraiche). The Brassai Salad, a lovely mixture of mixed greens, pear, stilton, walnut, and honey lemon vinaigrette.  Among the entree options: The “vegetarian special of the day”, which was mushroom risotto,  seared salmon with lemon crème fraiche with green beans and fingerling potatoes, roasted chicken with piri piri sauce, basmati rice and green beans, and brassaii bistro steak with shallot jus and fries.

Moroccan chickpea soup

I chose the soup and the risotto, although I also considered the salad and the salmon. The risotto came with greens (arugala? I forget) on tops, which is why I chose the soup. Both were excellent. Nice, earthy mushrooms in a creamy risotto. I tasted the salmon. It was cooked more than seared and looked dry but it tasted really good.

The highlight of the meal? The Crème Brûlée. I could smell the burnt sugar before I tasted it, which made it more of a sensory experience. The torched topping always looks beautiful. And then the perfectly creamy interior that contrasts with the crunch of the burnt sugar layer. I’m getting excited thinking about it.

Crème Brûlée

The food was outstanding and the service impeccable. My server, Drew, managed to find me most of the time even though I was flitting about.  Even when there were slight mixed ups with orders they were taken care of promptly and with a smile and sense of humour. No one seemed to mind when the wrong plate was set in front of them.

The restaurant isn’t cheap, with appetizers running from $8 for the soup to $13 for the Crispy Shrimp (though they gave a special price for this event) and mains starting at $13 (for mussels and fries) to $39 for the ribeye. It couldn’t become a regular habit for me. However, as a special treat it was worth it and for those who can afford to go regularly, I say do it.

More photos:

Crab cake

beef tartare

flourless chocolate torte

I look forward to more food events like these.

Eat well, be well.

Food, Uncategorized, events events, foodiemeet