Hungry In Hogtown

Lokum-motive: Turkish Delight, halva, dondurma and wondrous Istanbul

Of all the many ways to introduce newcomers to Istanbul, the drive into the city from Ataturk airport may well be the worst.

Short on beauty, at least the cab ride from the airport is a baptism by fire into one essential element of life in the metropolis on the Bosporus: traffic.

It's a half hour of cars swerving in and out of lanes, and aggressive drivers riding the horn and careening to their destinations with an urgency usually seen only in emergency workers.  We saw two accidents on that first taxi ride: one was a car flipped on its side on the median with the driver standing beside his wreck with his shirt dirtied and his pants ripped; minutes later, we watched two drivers arguing over their fender bender.

Then we got to experience the problem personally.  Just blocks from our hotel, our cab was lightly rear-ended by another cab.  No matter, our cabbie checked the damage using the passenger side mirror, muttered a few imprecations at the other driver under his breath, then zoomed on.

What compounds the terror is that not only does everyone drive like a maniac, but none of the backseats in the cabs have functioning seat belts.  The shoulder straps are there, but the buckles are buried under the backseats or are non-existent.

I survived the trip using a combination of white knuckles, closed eyes, and prayers to Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Ganesha, and L. Ron Hubbard.

 

Once safe and sound at our hotel, we gathered our wits, consulted our map, and hit the town -- on foot -- to sample a few of the local specialties.

Istiklal Caddesi is a glorious pedestrian boulevard in the heart of Istanbul's cosmopolitan Beyoglu neighbourhood.  On our first night, on the cusp of sundown in the middle of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, we entered Istiklal Caddesi off a tiny sidestreet and were immediately immersed into a hive of humanity that easily qualifies as the pedestrian equivalent of the automobile traffic we'd just escaped.

But whereas all those cars terrify, this street invigorates.  Between the buzz of the faithful lining up in front of restaurants to break their daily fast and the many restaurants and cafes, some Western, some Turk, eager to help them do it, it was hard for us to decide where to stop first.

Okay, maybe it wasn't that hard.

Ever since I read Harold McGee's article praising Turkish ice cream, I'd been craving a taste.  Dondurma, as it's known in Turkey, has a uniquely chewy texture, a quality it owes to two factors: first, it's made using powdered orchid bulbs, known as salep in Turkish (which translates to "fox testicle" in English); second, it's not so much churned as it is kneaded and stretched vigorously.

The two processes work hand-in-hand.  Salep contains glucomannan, a carbohydrate that, as McGee explains, "bind[s] up and block[s] the movement of water molecules."  Kneading the ice cream turns this "network into a dense elastic mass" so thick it can be pulled like taffy and sliced with a knife.

Several cafes along Istiklal Caddesi sell salep ice cream.  Some emphasize the more theatrical aspects of this dessert: they pull cylinders of dondurma out of their freezers using extended metal rods, then they stretch and pull it, showing off its amazing pliability.  The only thing I can compare it to is glass blowing, and the oozing fluidity of molten hot glass as it's being pulled from ferociously hot ovens and shaped by the glassmaker.

We stopped at a few places.  I'd read about Mado during some pre-trip research and then had it recommended again by Cenk, a native of Istanbul and the author of Cafe Fernando, a droolworthy food blog.  Some argue it is Istanbul's best ice cream maker, and they do serve a delightful dondurma with a mild taste and a slight chew.

At the cheaper stands on Istiklal Caddesi, teenage boys spin their ice creams this way and that, teasing the buyer by almost juggling them, before handing over cups of dondurma that are far chewier and less flavourful than the more refined product at Mado.  This version encapsulates Rachel's objection to dondurma: done poorly, it reminds her of the gummy gelatinous texture that is a hallmark of cheap industrial North American ice cream.

A little further down the street we stopped at Haci Bekir, Istanbul's most renowned candy shop, which is famous for its Turkish Delight and halva.  Unfortunately, I've never been a fan of Turkish Delight.  In Canada, the only exposure most of us get to "Turkish Delight," known as "lokum" in Turkey, is the vile Big Turk chocolate bar -- a sickly sweet ribbon of hyper-sweet, fruit flavoured jelly enrobed in cheap milk chocolate.  The real stuff, however, I now love.  The version at Haci Bekir is delicately sweet, and its most noticeable flavours are nuts and rose water or mastic. 

Halva, a slightly sweet, grainy, tahini-based dessert, was already one of my favourite childhood treats.  My father would purchase it occasionally, and I remember gorging on it without ever having any idea what it was.  We went for a brick of pistachio because it works so well in most sweets, and halva is no exception.  This halva distinguishes itself for its texture, which seemed both a little moister and much finer than the tinned product sold in most Toronto groceries.

Already stuffed to the gills on Turkish sweets on first night in the city, we were nonetheless lured into a little hole in the wall pastry shop by the constant stream of people lining up for a mystery food being scooped into bowls from a big baking dish and slathered with chocolate sauce.  Whatever it was, business was brisk.

Turns out that Inci does a brisk business in profiteroles.  Unfortunately, we have to give these treats a thumbs down.  The choux pastry was good but the filling was heavy and a little coarse and likely thickened with cornstarch.

I returned to Mado every day of our trip, some days more than once, for a cup of dondurma.  To this day, the only Turkish I've really mastered is "Merhaba!  Salepi dondurma, lutfen."  I'm not sure that "Hello, salep ice cream, please," made me a great tourist in the eyes of Mado's staff, but it did make me a very happy eater.

Of course, it's easy to bring home a little lokum and halva, but ice cream travels poorly.  I was determined, however, to try making dondurma at home, so I purchased small amounts of salep and mastic for a small ransom at Istanbul's Spice Bazaar and decided to try my luck in my own kitchen.

Let's just say I'm still trying.  I have now created reasonable versions of dondurma at home.  Unfortunately, I lack the equipment to properly work the ice cream and it shows in the final product.  My version of dondurma has a far more pronounced mastic flavour than the versions we ate in Istanbul, but it is also far less chewy, the quality I love most.

Mastic is also a challenging ingredient to use.  It comes in jagged crystals and is actually the resin of a tree native to the Greek island of Chios.  Not only does it apparently contribute to the chewy texture of dondurma -- we saw mastic chewing gum for sale in Turkey --  it adds a sharply resinous, almost piney flavour to dishes, even when used in minute quantities.  I used less than one gram in my first batch of dondurma, and decided to scale it back ever so slightly for my second.

I've played with the amount of salep I use too, but I don't think I can approximate the texture of the real deal until I make dondurma in my stand mixer with liquid nitrogen, something I don't intend to do until summer.  I'm betting that the paddle attachment on my KitchenAid will provide the kneading muscle it takes to make this ice cream behave, and the liquid nitrogen will give me the temperatures I need to keep it chilled while doing so.

That said, if you happen to get your hands on some salep, a product unavailable outside of Turkey as far as I know, and a little mastic, which is available in most Turkish or Greek groceries, including Greek House Food Market in Toronto (where one of the owners told me many Greeks chew nuggets of mastic like gum), do try the recipe at the end of this post.

And if you can't get your hands on the ingredients, visit Istanbul.  For all my complaining about the terror of the ride into the city, all I remember about the cab back to the airport was sadness at saying goodbye to a beautiful city and its incredible food.

Dondurma -- Turkish ice cream

This recipe is still a work in progress.  Texturally, it's not quite there yet, though the flavours are excellent.  In order to improve its texture, I suggest making this ice cream with liquid nitrogen in a stand mixer so it can be kneaded thoroughly.

500ml 35% whipping cream
500ml 3.25% whole milk
0.8g mastic (a piece about the size of a fingernail)
12g salep (approximately 3 tsp)
200g granulated sugar (approximately 1C)

1. Freeze the mastic.  When frozen, grind to a fine powder in a coffee grinder with 10 grams (approximately 2 tsp) of the granulated sugar.
2. Heat the remaining sugar, all of the cream, and 250ml of the whole milk over medium-low heat.  Sprinkle the sugar and mastic mixture and salep over the milk mixture, whisking vigorously.  Heat the mixture to 80C, whisking constantly.  Remove the mixture from the heat, and add the remaining milk.
3. Chill the mixture completely, preferably overnight.
4. Churn chilled mixture in ice cream maker as per maker's instructions.

Cryo-gem: liquid nitrogen ice cream and marshmallows Alaska

My most memorable experience with liquid nitrogen is not the first time I watched someone cook with it at Moto, nor is it the first time I used it to turn orange juice into sorbet; it's not even the first time I tasted my first batch of liquid nitrogen ice cream.

No, those are memorable, but not that memorable.  That honour goes undoubtedly to the ride home after my second fill up when, after driving less than a block with a freshly filled ten litre dewar, we hit a bump.  The force of the impact briefly lifted the lid off the dewar, sending a few tiny streams of liquid nitrogen skyward.  None of this is too particularly troubling unless, of course, the dewar just happens to be nestled between your legs while streams of unbelievably cold liquid nitrogen arc towards your crotch.

Unfortunately, that was precisely my situation.

In its liquid form, nitrogen reaches mind- (and body-) numbingly cold temperatures around -196C.  That's frigid enough to do horrific damage.  A minuscule amount in the eye can blind, and sufficient amounts elsewhere cause frostbite and 'burns' equivalent to hot frying fat.  This is nasty stuff.

So during that brief flicker of time between the liquid nitrogen escaping the dewar and it landing on the fabric covering my boys (I have a strict policy about never transporting liquid nitrogen while naked), two thoughts went through my mind: How much is this gonna hurt? and Will Rachel still love me if I were a eunuch?

Thank God we didn't have to find out.

The corollary to nitrogen being a liquid below -196C is that it turns into a gas -- that is it literally boils -- above it, so you can imagine what happened on this particular hot summer day.  Drops of liquid nitrogen splashed on my crotch and the seat beneath it, and those that hadn't evaporated during the flight to my nether regions promptly did so with a sizzle on my crotch (sadly, I can take no credit for my sizzling manhood.  This time.).

The whole episode took no more than a few seconds, if that, but it highlights just how volatile and dangerous liquid nitrogen can be.

Liquid nitrogen's incredibly low temperature make it dangerous, but it also makes it the ultimate medium for preparing ice cream.  That's because the texture of ice cream -- its creaminess and smoothness -- are directly related to how quickly it's frozen.  Longer freezing times encourage ice crystal growth, crystals that feel gritty on the tongue, which, at least in my opinion, doesn't make for enjoyable ice cream.

I didn't want to have to resort to using liquid nitrogen -- well, okay, the geek in me absolutely did -- but I was driven to it by conventional ice cream makers like my Cuisinart standby.  It hurts to bash it, because my in-laws gave it to me and because it's helped me make a lot of really great ice cream, but it's just not in the same league.

To prove it, I invited some friends over for a semi-blind taste test.  The best test was a Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream showdown for which I made a double batch of base frozen three ways: in my Cuisinart, in my friend's KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment, and with the paddle attachment of my KitchenAid stand mixer using liquid nitrogen.  I also added vanilla bean Haagen-Dazs and a cup of vanilla gelato from my local gelateria for good measure.

My friend's knew the five kinds of ice cream I'd be serving them, but they didn't know which was which.  They all agreed that the gelato was the worst of the five, not simply based on its overly sweet and largely non-existent vanilla taste, but also because of its weak, overly light texture.  I have no doubt this is because it had far more air beaten into it than any other ice cream in the tasting.

The Haagen-Dazs fared better but didn't stack up to the homemade versions.  Even the Cuisinart version, which ranked dead last among homemade ice creams, garnered more votes.  All three homemade ice creams shared a wonderful taste -- when it comes to ice creams, homemade equals unparalleled flavour regardless of how it's frozen -- but the Cuisinart ice cream had a noticeably icy texture.

The KitchenAid ice cream, on the hand, was excellent with almost no crystallization.  In fact, my only real complaint about it is that it left a thin film of greasy fat, likely butter, in the bowl of the attachment after churning.  That said, it produced ice cream so good that a couple of people made it their first choice, even over the ice cream prepared in liquid nitrogen.

The majority of the tasters still chose liquid nitrogen ice cream, and it finished no worse than second on anyone's ballot.  The fine line between those who preferred the KitchenAid over the liquid nitrogen seems to be that some of the tasters found the liquid nitrogen ice cream almost too dense and heavy.

That's precisely what I love about it.  Liquid nitrogen ice cream has a dense, custard-like mouthfeel; it's sort of what I imagine pudding would taste like were it frozen, and the effect is amplified when preparing egg-based (aka French-style) ice creams.

I say this from a position of experience.  The past two months have been a liquid nitrogen-induced fog of frozen goodness.  In addition to dairy-based vanilla, I've also made similar strawberry, chocolate, and chocolate and Guinness ice creams.  The list of egg-based ice creams I've made is even longer: panforte with strands of candied citrus peel that takes me back to our honeymoon in Siena; coffee, which makes for one helluva breakfast; toasted almond and cherry that sends Rachel over the moon with delight; and malted, my personal favourite, especially when I bite into a large spoonful with a crunchy Malteser, the best malted balls in creation.

Fellow ice cream aficionados may recognize that a number of the ice creams I mentioned come directly from David Lebovitz's book, The Perfect Scoop.  I've come to love that book over the past few months, and it's now my ice cream bible.  The fact that a book written by a former member of the Chez Panisse pastry kitchen is now my starting point when looking for recipes to freeze with liquid nitrogen is an irony that amuses me considerably.

Liquid nitrogen need not be used solely to make conventional ice cream.  As I wrote earlier, my first experiment with liquid nitrogen included plain orange juice, which becomes a refreshing, if slightly watery, sorbet.  To really take advantage of liquid nitrogen's freezing power, however, turn to the liquor cabinet.

Pure ethanol -- the happy juice in alcoholic drinks -- freezes at -114C.  Only those with a death wish drink pure ethanol, however, so we only have to worry about temperatures closer to 0C since the booze we consume is, literally, watered down to prevent an ugly death.  That said, 100 proof alcohol still requires temperatures of -32C to freeze, and no home ice cream maker can approach that.

It's child's play for liquid nitrogen, however.  Watermelon-infused vodka, for example, freezes into a refreshing sorbet that packs a huge wallop.  Bailey's turns into something magical.  Frozen, its texture is identical to incredibly smooth ice cream and it tastes delicious.  This is something of a problem given that eating a small scoop of Bailey's ice cream is the equivalent of drinking three or fours shots of liquor in just a couple of minutes.  Let's just say the Bailey's ice cream is the last frozen treat one makes during a session of liquid nitrogen experimentation.

There are uses beyond ice cream for liquid nitrogen.  I've not yet had a chance to experiment with some of the recipes from el Bulli, though I will soon, but even our less haute experiments produced intriguing results.  We 'cooked' Cheezies in liquid nitrogen and discovered that biting into one produces a rush of air that feels something like blowing into a balloon then releasing the air in it directly into the mouth.  The force was sometimes powerful enough to actually force our mouths open.

My favourite alternative preparation came from Rachel while we were experimenting with some friends.  Upon trying a frozen marshmallow, she suggested freezing one then scorching one end of it using our brulee torch.  It's the avant-garde version of baked Alaska and it's awesome because it produces a simple sugary treat with several distinct textures and flavours. The frozen end has a crispy exterior and a soft, chewy interior, while the bruleed side has that slightly oozy melted sugar texture along with a complex burnt sugar taste.  For a dish so simple in its conception and execution, I love how complex 'marshmallows Alaska' tastes and feels.  It's an experience I won't soon forget.

The key word is 'soon,' of course.  'Never' is a word I now reserve for an entirely different order of liquid nitrogen experiences.

Rise up! Donut soufflés, donut ice cream, and coffee and donut macarons

Over the course of the past several years I've spent countless late nights prepping obscure dishes, some wondrous, some wretched.  Just the other night, Rachel walked in on me, took one look at my goo-covered hands and gave me that "Oh, you're doing something crazy again" look she gets when I go off half-cocked well past my bedtime.  She then performed a quick about-face and marched off to slumberland.  She's the sensible one.

Me, I prefer to plumb the depths of my rich inner life over prep work, pondering questions that few people ever entertain.  The other night it was sperm. 

The story begins with the humble glazed donut, an endlessly ridiculed fried delicacy that most epicures dismiss with nary a thought, but I adore.  I'm not alone, however, as artisans like Mark Israel of New York's Doughnut Plant elevate everyday rings of dough to gourmet status, while chefs like Thomas Keller and Homaro Cantu take things one step further, plying donuts into service in the name of fine dining.  One of Keller's most famous dishes is his playful rendition of coffee and doughnuts in which he serves a fresh cinnamon sugar donut with a cup of cappuccino semifreddo.  Cantu's contribution is even more extraordinary: donut soup, a velvety concoction that distills the essence of donut into a demitasse cup of creamy goodness.

Unfortunately, after making Cantu's donut soup at home, I've become a little obsessed.  And it wasn't just over how to conceive new donut creations, it was also about how to improve on the one thing about homemade donut soup that still troubled me: texture.  As delicious as donut soup is -- and it is fantastic -- most straining devices fail to filter out the little grains of donut sediment that make it a flavour superstar and textural disappointment.  That's how I found myself milking away on a Superbag of donut purée long past midnight, trying to distract myself by ruminating about all creatures small and really small.

Superbags are marvels of kitchen technology that render sieves, chinoises, and cheesecloth obsolete.  These bags are made of flexible, non-reactive, heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe material.  Those characteristics make it home cook friendly, but what makes it extraordinary is how incredibly fine a filter it is.  I own two of them.  One is a 400 µm (that's a micrometre, or micron if you're old school) bag that puts any sieve to shame.  The other is only 100 µm.  How small is 100 µm?  Good question, because it's exactly what I was pondering late the other night.  The answer: it's only slightly greater than the width of a human hair and less than twice the length of guess what?  That's right, one human sperm.

I finally put Superbags to the test this week in an attempt to exorcise the donut demons that have dogged me.  Many months ago I attempted a macaron for the ages: a coffee-flavoured meringue biscuit filled with donut-flavoured pastry cream.  My experiment failed because both my cookies and my pastry cream bombed.  Macarons are notoriously finicky cookies, so I don't intend to dwell on that, but the donut pastry cream is another story entirely.  I hoped to use donut soup as a base to create a pastry cream.  A good idea, I thought, until I tried the pastry cream, which had an unappetizing texture on a scale somewhere between custard and mashed potatoes.  In the end, I had to abandon the coffee and donut macaron dream.

But visions of donuts still kept dancing through my head.

So I decided to try something new.  Precisely what, I wasn't sure.  After cooking and steeping eight small glazed donuts from my local grocery store in a mixture of milk and cream and then processing them into a purée with a hand blender, I filtered the resulting delectable gunk through the 400 µm Superbag.  Unlike my previous donut soup, this version didn't have any grittiness on the tongue whatsoever, but it did have a heaviness to it that I thought I could improve by using the 100 µm bag.  The difference stunned both me and Rachel.  The resulting purée still had body and impeccable glazed donut flavour, but this time it felt like an elegant cream soup on the tongue; the only drawback, of course, is that it took twenty minutes of constantly milking each Superbag in the middle of the night to extract the purée in the first place.

My first experiment with the new and improved purée was ice cream.  I'd done something similar with sticky toffee pudding and enjoyed the result.  The only drawback to that preparation was also texture.  The finished ice cream had some fine particles of cake in it that distracted from the flavour.  Donut ice cream is still a work in progress, unfortunately.  When frozen, the custard takes on too firm a texture; it's ice, for sure, but the cream part is a little iffy.  My hunch is that the starch in the donuts muddies the texture of my preparations, especially this and the pastry cream.  I just needed to find a way to overcome it or, better yet, make it work to my advantage.

So, back to the drawing board.  After making so much ice cream I have a freezer full of egg whites begging to be used, so I thought I would try soufflés.  My original plan was to drizzle them with a coffee glaze, but one taste of a preliminary powdered sugar and brewed coffee concoction turned me off of that idea quickly.  I opted for a sprinkle of ground espresso beans instead, a moderately flavoured accompaniment that complements the main attraction.  Much to my surprise, the donut flavour shines through nicely.  The recipe, which I've included below, still needs some work, however, so use it at your own risk.  The flavour may be good, but I'm having a hard time finding the right temperature at which to bake.  At 400F, the soufflé rises and gets a nice golden brown top, but the downside is that eggy flavours tend to develop.  At 350F, eggy flavours aren't a problem, but I can't get a delicious golden crust.  No matter what the temperature, these soufflés fall almost immediately after coming out of the oven.

I suppose I should look upon my experiments a little more positively now.  Thanks to the Superbag, I've almost figured out how to make a delightful donut soufflé, and I suppose I can give donut pastry cream one more chance.  What's more, I've jammed my head full of even more useless but entertaining knowledge for that next inevitable venture into late night cooking.  Did you know, for example, that one micrometre is but a mere one one-thousandth of a millimetre and that 100 µm (also known as a myriometre) is equivalent to the thickness of a layer of paint or the length of a dust particle?  Welcome to my world.

Donut Soufflés

This recipe is still very much a work in progress, so use it at your own risk and experiment with it, please, then let me know how to improve it.  Maybe the issue is temperature, maybe it's the lack of egg yolks.  I don't know right now.

I used a variation of this donut soup recipe, opting for cream instead of water, and then loosening it with more cream as necessary.  Straining it through both a 400 µm then a 100 µm Superbag makes for a huge improvement in texture, but I'm not sure it's necessary when making this dish.

135 g (4 large) egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
120 g (5 Tbsp) granulated sugar, plus more to prepare ramekins
200 g (200mL) donut soup
Espresso beans, ground
butter

Preheat oven to 400F.

Rub inside of ramekins (or small coffee cups) with just enough butter to coat.  Add approximately one teaspoon of granulated sugar and swirl to coat ramekin.  Tap out any excess sugar and set aside.

Combine egg whites and cream of tartar in stand mixer and whisk with whisk attachment until soft peaks form.  Add sugar and continue whisking until stiff peaks form.

Place donut soup in another large mixing bowl.  Add one third of the egg whites and stir into donut soup.  Add another third of the egg whites and fold in gently.  Repeat folding process with the remaining third of the egg whites.

Add mixture to ramekins, but do not fill to the top.  Leave 1 cm of clearance between the mixture and the rim of the baking dish.

Depending on the size of the baking dish, bake for 8-10 minutes, until the soufflés have risen and a light, brown crust has developed on top.

Serve immediately sprinkled with a little ground espresso bean.

Nutella, not just for the bedroom anymore, Part IV: Not just Nutella anymore

I am a bad flyer.  Just ask my wife.  Or my grandparents.  Or that poor man on his honeymoon who had to sit beside me while I turned green on a flight from London to Malta.  I'm better now than I used to be, but it hasn't come easy.  My pre-flight routine consists of Gravol, lorazepam, bargaining with God ("Please, just let me survive this flight, and I promise to never, ever fly again!") and long, meandering walks around departure terminals exorcising nervous energy.

Sometimes those strolls lead to interesting discoveries.  Last fall, for instance, as I frittered away a few hours at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport awaiting the first leg of our journey back to Toronto, I wandered into a Giorgio Armani boutique.  My eyes were quickly drawn away from the clothes to a little glass cabinet sparsely populated with jars of food.  Intrigued, I edged closer and noticed that one of the jars contained a chocolate spread.  Chocolate spread does not, in and of itself, interest me, but, deep in Nutella's heartland, I hoped this one stylish vessel implied the presence of the holy grail: chocolate-hazelnut spread.

Sadly, it does not.  The Armani Dolci line includes chocolates, chocolate spread, and jams, but not Giorgio's interpretation of my beloved Nutella.  Recent experience, however, has me wondering what's come over the world of spreadable indulgences.  As a child, chocolate plus hazelnut equaled Nutella, and that was that.  But over the past few years there's been an explosion in both high- and low-end pretenders to the throne.  As an adult, it's both rewarding and perplexing to have so many choices, so I decided to put the four options in my pantry to the test. 

I first wrote about Slitti's Riccosa chocolate-hazelnut spread for the Toronto Life Eating + Drinking Guide after stumbling upon it at Soma, one of Toronto's finest chocolatiers.  At $22 for a 370 gram jar, it's not cheap, but, for my money at least, it's the best chocolate-hazelnut spread in existence.  The secret is really no secret at all, as a quick look at the ingredients list reveals that piedmontese hazelnuts are the primary ingredient and that, unlike every other available spread, there's no vegetable oil or modified palm oil to be found; it's cocoa butter instead.  This probably explains Riccosa's only fault: it's a little stiff at room temperature.  The jar states that it must be served between 18 and 20 Celsius for this reason, but I've found that even that range is a little low.  It's all moot anyway, because when slathered on hot toast the rich, roasted hazelnut flavour of this product shines.  Soma also carries Gianera, a dark chocolate version of this spread, as well as Nocciolata, a milk chocolate version with crunchy bits of hazelnut.

If Riccosa comes first, then Nutella isn't far behind.  I've outlined my devotion to Nutella many times before, so it goes without saying that I think it's a wonderful product.  The best part of testing it against so many other chocolate-hazelnut spreads is that I now have a much better idea of its strengths and weaknesses.  After sitting down with four friends, four jars, and countless spoons and tasting back and forth for the better part of a half hour, it's now obvious to me that Nutella's biggest weakness is that it tastes very little of hazelnuts.  It compensates for this by loading up on sweetness and by having the finest consistency -- superbly creamy and luscious -- of any of these spreads.

Beyond Riccosa and Nutella, there's a noticeable decline in quality.  I bought a jar of President's Choice Chocolate Hazelnut Spread with low expectations.  This spread exceeds them, but it still fails to live up to the Nutella standard.  Though creamy, the mouthfeel is a little thin, and the taste, though certainly bigger on hazelnuts, seems a little off -- more hazelnut skins than hazelnuts.

The only unquestionable disappointment out of all four spreads is the version by Cacao Sampaka, the Barcelona-based chocolatier founded by Albert Adria, pastry chef of el Bulli.  Cacao Sampaka's version has an inescapable off-taste reminiscent of plastic, and a nasty tendency to separate such that every time I open the already vegetable oil soaked jar, a puddle of oil sits atop the spread waiting to be stirred back in.  Hardly appetizing.

Not that I've lost hope that my quest for newer and better chocolate spreads won't yield more wonderful surprises like Riccosa.  We plan to return to Italy and Spain later this year where, hopefully, we'll happen upon another artisanal chocolatier who can't shake memories of a favourite childhood treat.  And maybe, just maybe, that chance discovery will occur on another fruitful, nervous walk around a departure terminal.

Vive le Québec livre! Au Pied de Cochon's pouding chomeur and our Montreal road trip

Choosing travel destinations based on cookbooks can seem foolish -- until you find the right cookbook, that is.  For me, one of those cookbooks is Au Pied de Cochon -- The Album.  After ogling it for a month and preparing the wonderful foie gras poutine recipe, Rachel and I decided to make the pilgrimage to la belle province for a meal at the source.  We just needed to find the opportunity.  So when it found us, in the form of our friends Jill and Rob, we packed our bags and thanked The Fates for giving us friends who are perpetually willing to venture near and far for good food.

For a restaurant praised by the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Gourmet, Au Pied de Cochon's dishes are surprisingly unrefined, and gratifyingly so.  Most reflect the traditions of pure laine quebecois and their descendants:  rustic and bold, devoid of pretension, yet elevated by the quality of the ingredients and the care taken in their preparation.  As an Album junkie, I arrived with a list as long as my arm of things I wanted to try.

SHF #34, Nosh In My Backyard: Regan Daley's wild blueberry pie and el Bulli's rhubarb with sugar and pepper

The summer heat shimmers around me and I can hear the oscillating buzz of grasshoppers as I sit on my front steps.  Time is stretching out and slowing down the way it does only for children. I don’t even realize I’m hungry until my mother appears with a pile of vermilion stalks on a plate, with a little bowl next to it.  I dip a rhubarb piece into the sugar in the bowl and bite down, savouring the shock of the sharp juicy sour crunch.

Rhubarb grew in a shady corner of our backyard, looking like horizontal ruffled elephant ears.  We’d pick the stems before they got too thick and woody, and cook them in jams and pies, while the children would often eat them raw with sugar as a treat.  Even though I hated celery and complained about its strings, I’d tear into rhubarb stalks with relish and valued the stringy fibres that straggled behind for their ability to hold extra sugar when I swept the stem through the sugar dish.

Ferran Adria offers a more sophisticated version of this childhood treat in el Bulli: 2003-2004.  He takes tender young raw rhubarb, carefully trimmed to minimize the tough fibres, and rolls them in demerara sugar and black pepper.  It’s a sharp dish -- the crystals of the sugar and the pepper’s heat seem to emphasize the sour taste -- but the added flavours round it out as well.  It’s surprisingly elegant for such a simple preparation.

It's also a perfect dish for the latest edition of Sugar High Friday, hosted by the passionate cook, which is all about going local.  Not only does rhubarb grow like a weed in our home province, Ontario, but the rhubarb we used to make our version of this dish was given to us by our friend Jill, who harvested the stalks from her mother's garden.

My parents no longer live at that house, but their current home does have another crop in the backyard.  Wild blueberry bushes dot the rocky brush behind their house in Sudbury, and it was an easy task to step out for fifteen minutes and return with a small pail of sapphire-hued treasures.  I say "was."  Construction crews are building a new housing development right over the backyard berry patch.  Sudbury’s economic boom is bad news for my blueberry pancake habit, which my mom has indulged during every summertime visit.  At least the construction reduces the chance of hungry bears coming into the yard, lured by the berries.

And there is simply no comparison between wild and farmed blueberries -- one of the reasons I gorge myself on blueberries at my parents’ house.  Sure, the domestic ones are just as pretty and twice the size, but they’re completely flat in flavour.  The wild ones pack a whallop of acidity and sweetness into each tiny globe, worth every sunburn and mosquito bite and sore back from picking that I’ve endured in their pursuit.

Regan Daley agrees.  "There is one thing you must remember in order to make this pie:  YOU NEED WILD BERRIES!  Never use the cultivated ones.  They make lousy pies, and lousy everything else for that matter," she states in her book In The Sweet Kitchen.  Blueberry pie has never been a real favourite
of mine, but I’d picked and brought back several pints of berries from my last visit, Rob was eager to try it, and Regan had not yet steered us wrong.

Her track record is still perfect.  The crust, made with lard and butter, is phenomenal:  light and crisp and flaky, we chased the last bits around the plate with our forks, unwilling to let any crumb go uneaten.  And the filling!  Rather than the stodgy, almost solid gel of store-bought blueberry pie, this is a juicy confederation of berries in all their summer glory.

We ate an astounding amount of the pie when it was fresh from the oven, and an even more surprising amount the next morning.  The recipe specifically mentions that, being comprised of flour, egg, and fruit, blueberry pie is an "honourable" breakfast food.  And though it may not be my mom's pancakes, it extends the tradition of fashioning simple, delicious treats from the bounty in the backyard.

I believe I can fry: deep fried Oreos

I'm always amazed when I see a pearl of molecular gastronomy wisdom unintentionally applied to everyday cooking, doubly so when the dish just happens to be something most food snobs would shun, like industrially manufactured cookies.

Last month, I made Heston Blumenthal's fried fish.  In his efforts to build a better batter, Blumenthal uses two secret weapons: alcohol and carbonation.  The bubbles in carbonated liquids such as beer create batters that are lighter and crispier than batters made with water alone.  Blumenthal takes this idea to its logical extreme by not only adding beer to his batter, but by carbonating it all in an iSi siphon.  The use of beer in fish batter is hardly new, but it's exciting to see the underlying principle -- that carbonation enhances the texture of the final product -- applied elsewhere.  Enter Oreos.

Caramellow: el Bulli's cream and white coffee caramels

Who among us doesn't fondly recall the sheer joy of a trip to the local convenience store as a child?  Maybe your parents had just handed you a dollar, or maybe you'd found some spare change lying on the sidewalk.  If you were like me, you instantly converted whatever newfound pittance was burning a hole in your pocket into a small brown paper bag of your favourite treats: chips, chocolate bars, Freezies, maybe even licorice.

Forget change, I wanted to leave that store broke.  And that's where penny candy came in handy.  What good is three cents, especially when there are gummi bears, Swedish Berries, and, my personal favourite, Kraft Caramels to be had for just a penny apiece?

My childhood love affair with Kraft Caramels -- light only, thank you very much -- was intense.  This was candy that knew how to entice: the transparent wrapper is genius, the junk food equivalent of a beautiful woman wearing an outfit that reveals just a hint of décolletage.  Giddy with anticipation, I'd remove the wrapper, pop the candy in my mouth, and resist the urge to chew.  Some pleasures must be savoured slowly to be appreciated properly.  Then I'd wait for those sweet, creamy, and vanilla notes to wash over my palate.  With uncharacteristic discipline, I would occasionally consume an entire caramel without so much as a single bite -- the square of caramel would just dissolve away into nothing.  Ordinarily, however, I would abandon self control and rip into the candy with my teeth.

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.

Mmmmm... donuts: beignets, paczki, zeppole, and malasada

My most vivid memory of my first and only trip to New Orleans is of visiting a strip club in the French Quarter with my grandparents.  If I've ever had a more Fellini-esque moment in my life, I don't know what it might be.  There I was, seventeen years old, drink in hand, with my adorable, five-foot tall grandmother by my side watching half-naked women wrestle.  I wasn't sure whose eyes to cover, hers or mine.  Thankfully, the great state of Louisiana had the common sense to protect the wrestlers' modesty and the crowd's decency by mandating covered nipples.  In this dive that meant a pair of Band-Aids.  Voilà! Innocence preserved Big Easy style.

My second most vivid memory was my first plate of beignets smothered in icing sugar at Cafe du Monde.  Those beignets opened my eyes.  Up to that point in my life fried dough had meant only one thing: donuts from Tim Hortons, Country Style, or one of the independent donut joints that were ubiquitous in the days before Starbucks.  From that point forward, I recognized that the standard North American donut is really just the tip of a delicious, glazed iceberg, a mere johnny-come-lately of fried dough.

Cultures around the world, from South Korea to Argentina and dozens of points in between, celebrate homegrown variants of the donut.  In Okinawa, Japan, for example, they serve sata andagi, whereas in South Africa the fried dough of choice is a koeksuster.  Some cultures even use fried dough in savoury cooking.  Any lover of congee, Asian rice porridge, is probably familiar with youtiao, the dish's typical salted donut accompaniment.  Having a place in so many cuisines is the greatest testament to the universal appeal of fried dough.  The appeal extends into modern cuisine, as well: donut soup is one of the most recent incarnations of the beloved treat.

Living in multicural Toronto means not always having to travel the globe to taste regional delicacies.  Fried dough is no different.  I read last year that a Toronto bakery specializes in zeppole, an Italian donut traditionally eaten to celebrate St. Joseph's Day, March 19.  So what better way to celebrate the patron saint of Canada and confectioners than an expedition to sample a stomachful of donuts from different countries the weekend before the feast.  Our friends Rob and Jill, who writes a knitting blog of her own, joined us.  Recruiting people to spend a day eating donuts is, shockingly, not that hard to do.  Donut Day 2007 was born.