Hungry In Hogtown

Asparagustatory delight: wild asparagus two ways

My love for the St. Lawrence Market is boundless, but I'm the first to admit it has its faults.  Perhaps the most glaring is that, despite two floors of greengrocers, butchers, bakers, fishmongers, and other purveyors of delicious foods, there are few organics on offer.

I know this sounds odd coming from someone whose pantry includes such earthly delights as calcium chloride, but I'm really quite sincere.  Given the choice, I prefer using organic products.  I'd like to think there are countless others in Toronto who feel the same, but the dearth of organic vendors in the market leads me to think otherwise.

If you go to the market looking for organic produce, for example, there is only one option: Golden Orchard Find Foods.

As something of a regular, I've begun to develop a relationship with the people there.  That's important, and not because I'm looking for a discount.  What I'm really after is a chance to get my hands on their highest quality and rarest ingredients.  That's why the first thing I do after work every Friday is head to the market to see what special items are going to be available that weekend.

Sometimes it works out nicely.  Like the Friday a few weeks ago when I asked what interesting items were going to be available the next day and was promptly shown a large box of wild asparagus.  My eyes almost popped out of my head.  Here was an ingredient I'd never seen for sale in Toronto.  At almost ninety dollars per kilo it wasn't cheap, but I was quick to buy a large bag of it.

What to do with it was a dilemma.

Forza Italia! Homemade pizza margherita

For North American sports fans, the first taste of live Italian soccer can seem a little daunting.  We had spent only a few days in Rome when I dragged Rachel to the Stadio Olimpico for a match between AS Roma and Brescia.  Despite arriving an hour and a half before game time and being more than a block away from the stadium, we could already hear the unmistakable rumble of tens of thousands of Roma fans belting out the songs and chants any ultra can recite in their sleep.  The broad walkways leading to the stadium were lined with vendors selling posters, cards, banners, flares, and the ubiquitous scarves, or sciarpe, that are universal to soccer fans.

At the stadium gate, we were confronted by a line of Carabinieri with sub-machine guns.  This did not ease Rachel's already worried mind, nor did the helicopters hovering overhead.  Despite the fact that Roma was enjoying one of the best years in its history, a year that would culminate in winning lo scudetto, the tiny shield that signifies a Serie A championship, Roma's games had been marred by violence.  We're not talking drunken brawls either; no, 2001 included several spasms of violence the would eventually culminate in the stabbing of four opposing fans during Champions' League play near the end of the year.  The police were patting down fans before allowing them entry, but once they learned we were Canadian, we were allowed in immediately with approving nods at the scarves around our necks.

Once in the stands, we soaked up the environment around us.  This was calcio, "the kick," the beautiful game that drives untold millions of people to distraction.  Directly in front of us at the opposite end of the stadium lay the curva sud, home of the ultras that had created the cacophony of noise audible far beyond the stadium walls.  Though gametime was more than an hour away, this area was already a buzzing hive of banners, chants, and countless flares and other recreational incendiary devices.  To introduce Roma's starting lineup, the stadium announcer would first provide the player's number and first name, the huge crowd would then complete the introduction by roaring the player's last name with a single deafening voice.  The final show of devotion was the singing of the AS Roma anthem -- 80,000 people on their feet, scarves held high in a sea of maroon and orange, in a display of naked devotion (pardon my translation):

Roma Roma Roma,
core de stà città,
unico grande amore,
de tanta e tanta gente,
che fai sospirà.

Roma, Roma, Roma,
heart of this city,
single great love,
of so many, many people,
that you make breath.

To our right, behind a wall topped with large sheets of plexiglass, were the bresciani.  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would've never believed it, but these people were not only segregated from the rest of the stadium by a wall, they were also surrounded by a cordon of police in riot gear.  In broken Italian, I asked one of the Romans in front of me what would happen to those fans if there were no protection.  He responded by running his finger along his throat in a gesture that is as ominous as it is obvious.

From the Colosseum to the Stadio Olimpico, Romans have always enjoyed an unquenchable thirst for spectacle.  The type of spectacle may have changed over the past two thousand years, but Rome's thirst for it has not.  On that day, AS Roma delivered, handily beating Brescia by a score of 3-1. 

The most important outcome of that game, for me at least, is an abiding love of the game of soccer, AS Roma (Lazio merda!), and gli Azzurri, the Italian national soccer team.

Thus was born my love of soccer.  Canada is not an ideal place for a fan of the beautiful game, but the situation is slowly improving.  Toronto will soon have its own professional team, and the city is currently in the grip of World Cup fever.  Ours is a city of immigrants, so the flags of virtually every country competing in the tournament festoon along storefronts, or wave out car windows, or hang on front porches.

Amongst the larger immigrant communities -- I'm looking at you Italians and Portuguese -- a positive result leads to mayhem.  I can still remember when Italy won the World Cup in 1982.  The celebration was large enough to bring parts of Toronto to a halt.

I'm not Italian myself -- I just play one on my blog -- but I feel compelled to show my support for the Azzurri through food.  In this I'm not alone.  Ivonne, from Cream Puffs in Venice, has demonstrated her allegiance by preparing red, white, and green risotti.

Our dish, pizza margherita, seems particularly appropriate as a show of support given its history.  It was invented by Raffaele Esposito, a Neapolitan pizzaiolo, to commemorate a visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy.  The pizza was designed as an edible symbol, with the white of the mozzarella, the red of the tomato sauce, and the green of the basil representing the white, red, and green of the Italian flag.  The pizza was given its name after the queen expressed her love for it.

This pizza isn't just a symbol of Italy, it's also a microcosm of all that we love about its many cuisines: basic, fresh ingredients prepared simply.  Preparing simple dishes can be dangerous, however, if the ingredients aren't of the highest quality, and this pizza is no exception.  I made the pizza dough myself, proofing it the fridge for more than a day to ensure flavour.  For the tomato sauce I used salt, pepper, and a can of San Marzano tomatoes -- considered by Italians to be the finest tomatoes money can buy -- and reduced it to a loose sauce.

That leaves mozzarella.  Finding quality mozzarella is nearly impossible outside of southern Italy.  It is a cheese that must be eaten fresh, does not travel well, and ages not at all.  Unlike many of the world's most famous cheeses, mozzarella is best eaten the day it's made.  The finest mozzarella we've ever eaten was in a small hill town outside of Rome; it was moist, sweet, and delicate, and it is the standard against which I've judged every piece of mozzarella I've eaten since.  None have measured up.

It just so happened that one of our friends, Carlo, returned from his family's hometown in the Abruzzo last week.  Before catching his return flight, he visited Caseificio de Santis di Angelucci Marcello, a latteria in Sant'Eufemia, near Pescara, where he purchased many balls of fresh cow's milk mozzarella.  He very kindly shared a few of them with us, and do they ever make a difference.  Where North American grocery store mozzarella is plastic in both taste and texture, this mozzarella has a little sweetness and a delicate texture.  It also melts magnificently.

As a combination, the light, yeasty dough, sweet, melted cheese, anise-like basil, and acidic tomato sauce are a team with remarkable balance.  Here's hoping that the stingy defense of Fabio Cannavaro, the creativity of Francesco Totti, and the finishing touch of Luca Toni are the ingredients in yet another winning Italian combination.

Forza Italia!

Ramp-age! Our introduction to wild leeks

You can tell someone takes eating seriously when they measure the seasons in food.  You know the type (because you probably are the type).  To the food obsessed, spring isn't about snow melting or the Earth reaching a particular point in its orbit, nor should it be.  Nope, to the perpetually food aware the advent of spring is really about the arrival of baskets of wonderful produce in local markets.

Take me, for instance.  Come late April and early May, my eyes are peeled for asparagus.  Once I see local asparagus at the St. Lawrence Market, I know without doubt that it's spring.  Ladies and gentlemen, spring has arrived.

Gnocching on heaven's door: Boulud's braised short ribs with homemade potato gnocchi

We fell upon Italy and its food like a two-person swarm of locusts.  After five days in Malta -- the British started leaving in the 1960s, but apparently forgot to take 1960s British food with them -- we were ready to eat.  Malta is a beautiful country with a remarkable history and, for Rob, a deeply personal history too, given that his father was born there.  Nonetheless, after living on pastizzi, the delicious flaky pastry turnovers filled with ricotta or mushy peas, for the better part of a week, we approached Italy with eager appetites.

We arrived in Florence after several days of gluttony in Rome (to read a little about that, click here).  Not knowing a pesce from a pesca made eating well a challenge, but we wandered throughout the city and opened our minds and our stomachs to every tantalizing experience we could find.  I guess it's no surprise then, that we stumbled into an almost-empty restaurant at seven one evening, an unthinkable hour for any self-respecting Italian.  Thanks to the patience and kindness of our remarkable waiter, we eventually ordered a meal using a clumsy mix of broken English and heavily-accented pidgin-Italian.

But, oh, what a meal!  The highlight was a steaming plate of tiny potato dumplings sauced in a rich truffle cream that were like clouds on the tongue.  Our eyes met as I realized I was in gastronomic heaven.  Then I turned away from the waiter, and smiled at Rob.  We started laughing out loud -- it was that good.

Once back in Toronto, we put a lot of effort into recreating those lighter-than-air gnocchi.

IMBB #24: Nigella's lemon linguine, apple tarts, and the happy food dance

I have a "thing" for Nigella Lawson.  I know that sounds clichéd, and, for what it's worth, it is, but let me try to explain.  It all boils down to this: there's something magnetic about a woman who takes profound delight in the act of eating.  I don't mean this specifically about her, either.  It applies equally to all women, really.

My wife Rachel delights in good food.  Whenever she enjoys her first bite of something exceptional, she invariably does the "Happy Food Dance."  I believe it's a relic of her genetic heritage, because I've seen her mother perform the same seated hip wiggle.  If she especially loves what she's eating, Rachel has even been known to swing her shoulders a little, too.  The Happy Food Dance is so reliable I now use it as a barometer to measure the quality of any dish I prepare.

The flip side to my attraction to women who are passionate about food and cooking is a mistrust for people who don't enjoy or don't care about what they eat.  You know the type.  They view food as "fuel," or they refuse to try anything outside their comfort zone.  If a person can't open themselves up to the simple pleasures of a good meal, what else are they hiding?

The entrée and dessert we're presenting for the "Make it in 30 minutes" edition of Is My Blog Burning are not only quick and easy to prepare, they have both induced full body Happy Food Dances from Rachel.  That means quality, people.

See my cheese sandwich. Love my cheese sandwich.

For those currently unaware, there's a lot of rage in the food blogging world these days, rage so intense that a certain comment thread had to be shut down because a gentle discussion had devolved into a virtual shouting match.

What has some bloggers so mad?  This article from Food & Wine magazine.  The author, Pete Wells, tries to make the point -- and, as far I'm concerned, it's valid -- that too many food blogs offer precious little in the way of novelty, insight, and originality.  To make his point, however, Wells borrows a derogatory term for such sites, "cheese-sandwich blog," and then proceeds to quote from a few food blogs he deems worthy of the label.

That was a mistake.

At least it's not roadkill: Winterlicious at Romagna Mia

Going out to dinner with your beloved is one of life's great pleasures.  Last night, I put on some high heels and lipstick, Rob changed into his good Toronto Maple Leafs sweatshirt, and we headed off to another Winterlicious rendezvous at Romagna Mia.

Serving classic Italian cuisine in the style of Emilia-Romagna and located quite close to our apartment, this restaurant seems like a natural choice to be one of our favourites.  It's even won the Golden Spoon, an award recognizing Canada's best risotto -- and you know how we feel about risotto (we attended the last competition, at which Lino Collevecchio of Via Allegro triumphed for his duck risotto with foie gras and balsamic vinegar).  It had been a long time since we visited Romagna Mia, as we had tried a disastrous fixed-price meal there years before.  The food tasted as if it had been sitting on a steam tray and the waiter joked repeatedly that the venison was roadkill.  "Rudolph roadkill," if memory serves.

But we're young and optimistic and eager to find a place that might recreate some of the memorable meals we've had in Emilia-Romagna.  So we strolled over, hand in hand, in quiet anticipation of a good meal after a long day.

IMBB #22: The power of pasta

I believe in the power of pasta.   Yes, that sounds pretty corny, but stop for just a moment and think about it.  At its simplest, a noodle can be nothing more than flour (whether wheat, rice, or, well, pretty much any grain) and water, yet from that simple combination humans have derived a product that can be adapted to satisfy the appetites of a person from almost any culture in the world.  Top a wheat noodle with olive oil, hot pepper, and parmesan -- a condiment almost as simple as the noodle it dresses -- and you have an Italian classic, aglio, olio, e peperoncino.  Now travel halfway round the world, and sauce a rice noodle with tamarind water, fish sauce, bean curd, and a number of other spices and flavours, and you have a noodle dish of amazing complexity and taste, pat thai.

No matter our family background, our culinary roots are Italian, so we have made two lovely pasta dishes for this event.  They are quite different from each other in terms of ingredients, but they share an honesty in their respect for the components and for the eaters.  We had help, though.  Just last week I got my hands on a copy of 100 Ways To Be Pasta: Perfect Pasta Recipes from Gangivecchio, by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene, a mother and daughter who run a restaurant and inn in Sicily that is said to serve the best food on the island.  After a couple of days, much indecision, and a little analysis of the leftovers in our fridge, we chose the following two dishes:

Some Pig Blogging Weekend: The Boar Supremacy

Tough, stringy, and flavourless.  That was our first impression of boar.  We were in Siena on our honeymoon, and surrounded by the picturesque streets of that mediaeval Tuscan town, we had stumbled upon some of the worst food  Italy has to offer.  Never trust the recommendations of the tourist office, even when asking for typical fare (we soon learned to scout out good restaurants by asking the owners of food shops and students, and looking for lineups outside tiny places with their menu available only on chalkboard and only in one language -- the local one).

But we were intrigued enough by boar, a traditional Tuscan meat, to hunt down some recipes for boar ragu (aka: ragu di cinghiale) upon our return to Toronto.  The best ones seem to come from Mario Batali (like this one or this one), the patron saint of cooking in our household.  The following is an adaptation of one of his recipes.  It seemed only natural that we'd make it in honour of the Some Pig Blogging Weekend.

The world's best spaghetti alla carbonara (and lots of gratuitous sex)

If I were told I could eat but one thing for the rest of my days pasta would be it, yet it occurs to me I have yet to write even one word about it.  How the hell did that happen?  How could I have possibly neglected my favourite, if you had to pick your last meal, meal, to this point?  Beats me, but I guess I should explain how it all started.

As a university student, pasta was little more than a cheap, easy way to feed myself.  My pasta specialty -- I can't believe I'm admitting this -- was a concoction of overcooked penne drowning in a sauce of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and hot sauce.  ("Robert, for crimes against good taste you are hereby sentenced to a lifetime of Chef Boyardee.")  Did I enjoy it?  Much to my shame, I did, but I like to write it all off as typical college-age experimentation.