Hungry In Hogtown

What's black and white and read all over? el Bulli's cantaloupe caviar (and me!)

What can I say?  Word gets around.

First, Toronto Life asks me to do some writing for them.  I say sure.  Then, out of the blue, I get a request to participate in a Globe and Mail article by Beppi Crosariol on molecular gastronomy for the home cook after being referred by Clement of A La Cuisine.  It's all pretty damn cool, and I just can't refuse.

I even prepared some refreshing cantaloupe caviar to be photographed for the piece.  Seeing as I spend most of my mornings in a daze, I was oblivious to the fact that the article was in yesterday's paper until Rachel emailed me.   A quick sprint to the newsstand revealed that a photo of my cantaloupe caviar even made the front page of Canada's newspaper of record, right above the banner.  Sweet!

Welcome to those of you visiting for the first time after reading the Globe article.  If you'd like more information about molecular gastronomy in general, click here, and for a quick tour of my molecular gastronomy pantry check out this post.  I also encourage you to explore frozen chocolate air, Nutella powder, and the the dish that kick-started my interest in molecular gastronomy, white chocolate and caviar.  For a whiff of controversy, nothing beats el Bulli's deep fried rabbit ears.  If you'd like to experiment with molecular gastronomy at home and are looking for an easy to prepare, delicious, familiar flavour, look no further than Moto's donut soup.  For those whose interests veer towards liquid spheres (aka liquid ravioli), we've written about liquid pea ravioli, mango ravioli with coconut cream and ground rice, or you can just keep on reading this post about melon caviar.  We also write extensively about cooking and dining in Toronto, as well as a host of other food-related topics.  Molecular gastronomy is much, but not all of what we do.

These melon caviar are my third kick at the spherification can, so I'm beginning to feel like something of an old pro by now.  Even so, the caviar are, in many ways, easier to make than full-sized spheres, which have a nasty tendency to burst during the "cooking" process.  If anything, caviar are subject to the opposite problem: they need so little time in the calcium chloride solution that they sometimes completely solidify.

Dying to make them?  The melon caviar recipe is available here.  To make cantaloupe juice, simply dice a cantaloupe, drop it in your blender, and liquefy.  It's all very straightforward from there.  By the way, the photo of me hunched over that tiny bowl in the Globe article is partially for show.  Yes, I made perfectly good caviar that way, but it is easier -- assuming you're not making them as part of a photo shoot -- to use a bigger vessel.  Also, if playing with two syringes is not your cup of tea, there are devices made specifically for mass producing these caviar.  There's even an el Bulli demonstration video that comes with a recipe for apple caviar.

The final dish is garnished with passion fruit seeds and a sprig of mint.  Visually, these delicate pearls are stunning -- a light, vaguely translucent shade of coral (click here to view the el Bulli catalogue photo).  The taste is straightforward melon and, when "cooked" properly, that taste explodes onto the palate as each caviar bursts in the mouth.  Rachel and I had some leftover prosciutto, so we tried a molecular gastronomy version of an Italian staple, melon and prosciutto.  The combination loses nothing in translation, as long as the melon is sweet enough to contrast the ham's saltiness, though this is an issue with this dish whatever the preparation.

My plan to conquer all media is unfolding nicely.  Internet.  Check.  Magazines.  Check.  Newspapers.  Check.  I believe television is next. Food Network, make me an offer, and it better not involve Unwrapped.

Drool Britannia, Part II: fish and quips

After listening to a Frenchman talk about the superiority of French cuisine, the Englishman responds by saying, "Yes, but what about your dreadful lavatories?"  To which the Frenchman replies, "Alors, in France one eats well, in England one shits well, it's all a question of priorities."
- Leon Rappoport, How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food

One of my favourite sidetrips whenever I travel abroad is a visit to the grocery store.  Yes, proper markets -- La Boqueria in Barcelona springs immediately to mind -- dazzle, but to really feel the culinary pulse of a culture in the modern age, there's no substitute for a Megamart.  A dozen rows of shelves packed with a society's culinary inventory is a cultural anthropology primer from heaven.  These stores are designed, after all, to cater to popular taste quickly and conveniently.

That's why Rachel and I happily accompanied our friends Katy and Steve on a grocery shopping expedition during our visit to London six years ago.  Once I got over the sticker shock, I started surveying the food.  I was unable to resist two items novel to me: Marmite, as English as a stiff upper lip; and frozen pizzas topped with baked beans, which Steve labeled "British fusion cuisine."

Marmite was a disaster.  Having never tasted it, I treated it like peanut butter and smeared it thickly over my toast.  That was a mistake.  "Who spreads this shit on their toast every day?" I ranted after disgorging the offending toast and leaping to the sink to vigorously wash out my mouth.  "It tastes like cheap instant beef bouillon cubes."  And it does.  Yet it remains remarkably popular in some quarters.  Aussies even have their own equally loved and loathed equivalent, Vegemite.  This leads me to believe that Australia's sizable republican movement is actually a covert anti-yeast spread crusade motivated by broad-based resentment over the devastating colonial inheritance that is Vegemite worship.

We shall not dwell upon baked bean pizza.

English food is not without its triumphs, however.  Last year, for example, I made stupendous sticky toffee pudding (and sticky toffee pudding ice cream) for the St. George's Day event.  When I learned that Sam from Becks & Posh planned to hold a Fish & Quips event this year to prove that English food is no laughing matter, I began searching for another classic English dish.

Inspiration came in two forms.  The first is a memory of our aforementioned trip to London.  Rachel and I wanted to visit a proper "chippy," so Katy and Steve took us to their local haunt, the Sea Shell, rated among the best fish and chips shops in London.  Our haddock and chips were superb.  The haddock was lightly battered and served with its skin still attached.  The net effect was fish that tasted like fish, not deep fried batter.

When I read Harold McGee's article about Heston Blumenthal's efforts to fry a better fish, I finally had the means and the method to celebrate one of England's most laudable contributions to cuisine, and I mean that seriously.  It also gave me a chance to see whether Blumenthal's not-so-secret ingredient really resulted in a crust that lived up to its light and crunchy billing.

The key ingredient is alcohol, lots and lots of it.  Yes, there's beer, but that's not nearly enough.  In addition to approximately three hundred millilitres of lager, Blumenthal adds a further three hundred millilitres of vodka.  That's more than ten shots of hard liquor, in case you're wondering.  Alcohol's chief advantage over water is that it evaporates faster, which means it's ready sooner, so the star of the dish, the fish, isn't overcooked.  But it doesn't stop there.  Water is better than alcohol at developing glutens in flour, therefore substituting alcohol results in a lighter batter that stays crispier longer.  After thirty minutes, for example, our fish was still almost as crispy as when it emerged from the oil.

There are two ways to make this dish.  Since we don't own a soda siphon, I used Harold McGee's adapted recipe from the New York Times (click here to read a copy of the article and view the recipe), rather than Heston Blumenthal's original recipe.  For those familiar with beer batters, the logic for carbonation should be clear: bubbles mean a lighter batter.  Carbonating the batter just takes this idea to its logical conclusion.

The fish was almost an unqualified success.  Our eyes lit up after our first bite.  The batter came as advertised, a feather-light and shatteringly crisp crust enrobing the tender white flesh of lemon sole.  At first blush, I was thinking it was the finest fried fish I'd ever tasted.  Rachel felt similarly.  My only problem -- and the problem really is mine -- is that the batter covering the thickest parts of the fish, though crispy, tasted powerfully of vodka.  Mea culpa, I'm sure, since that likely indicates I didn't cook the fish long enough.  Of course, if you'd like to blame one of the finest chefs in the world instead of me, please do.

Fried fish just will not do by itself, of course.  Fish and chips is the de facto standard around the globe.  We didn't include them here, but we'll be featuring chips soon in their own post.  As odd as this may sound, we're waiting for a special ingredient.  Besides, french fries deserve their own post, and the accompaniments we made, mushy peas and tartare sauce, deserve a little respect.

I've always had an issue with mushy peas.  Why anyone would take a perfectly good vegetable and turn it into pablum, I don't know, though I suppose I'm in no position to criticize, since my culinary repertoire includes turning perfectly good peas into liquid ravioli.  My tastes are changing slowly, however, and I've now begun to recognize some of its charm.  Mushy peas are excellent comfort food -- Rachel fondly remembers eating creamed peas on toast as a child -- and the soft texture also provides a foil for the crunch of a well fried piece of fish.  English mushy peas are traditionally made with marrowfat peas, and are related to the pease porridge of nursery rhyme fame, but Blumenthal offers a fairly sophisticated version using frozen garden peas and mint.  The herb punctuates the fresh flavour of the peas, which somehow makes you forget the large amount of butter that makes it such a luscious accompaniment.

Likewise, Blumenthal's tartare sauce has a freshness to it that outclasses any of its peers.  Capers give it salt and acidity, as do cornichons, which also complement the herbal punch of tarragon, chive, and parsley.   A bit of whipping cream and a hard boiled egg round out and extend the flavours.  Zesty and creamy, this tartare sauce combines with the peas to counterpoint the delicately crisp fish without being cloying.  Recipes for all the elements of this dish are available here.

England once forged a reputation based on its mastery of the sea, not seafood.  Today, England is forging a new reputation, this time for superlative cuisine.  Chefs like Heston Blumenthal, at The Fat Duck, and Fergus Henderson, at St. John, are doing this by enhancing, not rejecting, traditional English dishes like fish and chips. England, it seems, is now making food a priority over lavatories.  Even the unspeakable baked bean pizzas seem to have disappeared thanks to market apathy.  Challenges remain, however, though I'm sure Marmite will one day be a distant memory, too. 

Can TV, cookbooks, and a line of signature frozen entrées be far behind?

"I've been reading your blog and like what you do. Do you have any interest in writing for the magazine?"

This email query -- which I rescued from my junk mail folder (thanks, Hotmail) -- was from the food editor of Toronto Life, Chris Nuttall-Smith. Would I be interested?  Of course I'd be interested.  Toronto Life is a prominent magazine, with a monthly readership of almost 900,000 and a reputation as perhaps the preeminent resource for information about food and dining in Toronto.  Toronto Life's focus on food, fashion, nightlife, arts, and investigative journalism makes it roughly analogous to New York Magazine, a city-based magazine with a broad mandate.

I pondered my response carefully.  My email had to sound eager, not desperate.  I settled on, "Writing for Toronto Life sounds like an amazing opportunity, so I would definitely be interested."  This is a restrained version of the truth, but it seemed inappropriate to reply: "I would slave over a keyboard for you."

We met for lunch, a nerve-jangling experience on par with a first date.  I even approached it with the same mixture of nerves and planning: What should I say?  What will he think of me?  What should I wear?  Much to Rachel's chagrin, these are questions I hadn't asked myself in years.  Our meal went well, nonetheless, and, to borrow Chris' words, I'm now a "Toronto Life contributor."  My first assignment just hit newsstands this week in the May 2007 issue.

The Queen of Spices: homemade cardamom-vanilla ice cream and Xacutti's cardamom biscuits

Ah, cardamom.  Is there anything it can't do?

Once found primarily in Indian dishes and the occasional Scandinavian baked treat, cardamom has emerged from its shell in recent years to claim a place in the wider world of cuisine.  And why not?  It has an ineffable vibrancy, equally capable of carrying both sweet and savoury dishes.  There aren't many flavours that can star in both a duck curry and an ice cream, but it's no problem for the Queen of Spices.  A diva it's not, though.  It can play a supporting role as well, providing an unmistakable but hard to place background note, the kind that leaves you asking, "What is that flavour?"

We were introduced to cardamom-vanilla ice cream by Kensington Market Organic Ice Cream, one of Toronto's best and, sadly, most elusive producers of artisanal ice cream.  We were infrequent visitors two summers ago when Bruce Kurtenbach, the company's founder, set up shop in the Kensington and began selling his wild assortment of flavours to the public: from rose petal and blue cheese to blueberry-lavender and, well, cardamom-vanilla.  The ice creams are still available in some stores -- The Healthy Butcher on Queen West comes to mind -- but the shop in the Kensington appears to be no more.

What's a cardamom-vanilla ice cream lover to do?  Make his own, of course.  And so I did.  But thanks to a tip from Rachel, I didn't stop there.  She suggested adding a little texture to the ice cream with pistachio praline, which I did by adapting a hazelnut praline recipe from Regan Daley's, In the Sweet Kitchen.