Hungry In Hogtown

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.

I crumb in peace: deep fried rabbit ears and the politics of food

Some of you have seen the reaction to my post on el Bulli's deep fried rabbit ears.  Some of you even responded with insightful commentary of your own -- both for and against the dish -- and with expressions of support via comments and email, for which I'm extremely grateful.   Other comments were veiled threats and personal attacks.

You can imagine, then, how comforting it was to wake up Saturday morning to find my mother in law, our five year old niece, and three year old nephew baking chocolate chip cookies in our kitchen.  They used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking.  These cookies are outrageously good, especially warm from the oven with a glass of cold milk.

But what exactly is the connection between the cookies and milk in this post and the rabbit ears in the previous one?

Nutella, not just for the bedroom anymore, Part III: Nutella powder

Looking for a truly novel way to serve Nutella?  Tired of smearing it on a slice of bread, baking it in a cake, or swirling it in ice cream?  Well have I got a solution for you.  Sprinkle it.

Crazy, I know, but thanks to the alchemy of molecular gastronomy anyone can take a blob of Nutella and turn it into the powder you see here.  A powder so fine and dry you can grab a handful and watch it tumble through your fingers like sand from a tropical beach.  Eat it, however, and it quickly turns back into a paste that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

SHF #27: the el Bulli sampler

There's nothing like entering a quality chocolate shop.  Whoosh!  Open the door and, without even having to cross the threshold, an alluring panoply of scents reaches out to envelop you.  I always focus on that moment, inhaling every roasted, spicy, and sweet note I can before the sheer volume of sensation leaves me numb.

Cacao Sampaka is like that.  A short walk from the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, Cacao Sampaka is the brainchild of Albert Adria, Ferran's brother and the pastry chef at el Bulli.  Minimally decorated in shades that echo its product, Cacao Sampaka shows off its wares in display cases that call to mind a visit to Tiffany's or the Museum of Natural History rather than a chocolate shop.

Blog math: Susur's spice meringue cod + Moto = Froot Loops crème brûlée

Actually, the full formula is: 2/3 Susur's spice meringue black cod + Moto = Froot Loops crème brûlée + 2 * Caesar salad.

What the hell am I babbling about, and where do I get the balls to link two chefs as accomplished as Susur Lee and Homaro Cantu with candy masquerading as kids' cereal?

In a recent post, I described the marinated black cod baked in spice salt meringue recipe Rachel and I prepared from Susur: A Culinary Life.  The recipe calls for baking the cod in a meringue dome made from two and a half cups of egg whites.  That's a lot of egg whites -- I stopped after collecting one and three quarter cups of egg white from a dozen eggs.  That's when I had to figure out what to do with all those yolks.

I'm a man buffeted by fixations great and small, most of which involve my appetite.  After writing a post about our meal at one of Chicago's temples to molecular gastronomy, Moto, I often found myself mentally revisiting Cantu's dish of jalapeno, avocado, and lemon myrtle.  What did I love so much about this combination?  Why, its "inescapable essence of Froot Loops," of course.  (Now there's a sentence you don't read often, let alone as a quote.)  I wanted, nay, had, to experiment with that flavour.

Scooped again: raspberry white chocolate ice cream

Damn you, Judiaann Woo!  Sticky toffee pudding ice cream was, is, and forever will be my brilliant idea.  And yet I wake up one Sunday morning, flick on my computer, and discover that you've taken sticky toffee pudding ice cream, entered it in a competition on Food Network, and -- here's the kicker -- won!

That's right, and now Häagen-Dazs is releasing sticky toffee pudding as a limited edition ice cream available only until January.  I'm not bitter, oh no, though I have to admit some disappointment at the fact that Häagen-Dazs has released the flavour only in the United States.

In all fairness, her idea of sticky toffee pudding ice cream varies considerably from my own.  Whereas I created a custard infused with sticky toffee pudding, hers is basically a vanilla ice cream studded with hunks of sticky toffee pudding and "swirled with a sticky toffee sauce."  You know, that does sound good.

Now if I can just find a way to get my hands on some....

SHF #21: El Bulli's watermelon iced lollies and frozen watermelon shots

Watermelon does not generally inspire.  TS Elliot's famous line was not "Do I dare to eat a watermelon?" and the love-sick poet of the Song of Songs did not wish to be comforted by watermelon.  Need I remind you we're talking about a fruit that derives its name from the fact that it's mainly water?  The most exotic watermelon dish I've ever heard of is Nigella Lawson's watermelon, feta, and black olive salad.  Other than that, I see only a melonscape of refreshing blandness.

And yet it's a summer staple for many of us, including me, particularly on wretchedly hot days when sweat clings to skin and an ice-cold slice offers a moment's refuge from the unrelenting heat.  There's something keenly refreshing about watermelons, peaches, and other "chin-dribbling" summer fruits that I find irresistible.

That's why, when I saw the announcement for Sugar High Friday #21, Ice Ice Baby, hosted by The Delicious Life, I immediately thought of two frozen watermelon preparations I saw in my El Bulli cookbooks.  At last, a chance to have some fun with the humble watermelon.

Berried alive: a wild blueberry bonanza

"Do you mind if I go to Sudbury for a week to visit my parents?"

This sentence may be phrased as a question, but it's not; it's actually Rachel's way of telling me she's going up north.  It did provide an opening, however, so I seized the moment.

"No problem," I said, quickly raising my index finger to signal the seriousness of my next statement, "but you have to come back with blueberries."

Wild blueberries, to be precise, which grow in such abundance in Sudbury that the city hosts an annual Blueberry Festival.  It's no surprise, then, that wild blueberry bushes flourish within a pleasant summer's stroll of my in-laws' back door.  The trick, if there is one, is to get to them before the bears, those "godless killing machines without a soul," who happen to love them almost as much as we do.

Alright, perhaps I'm overstating the threat a bit, but the bears are just one of many reasons I'm not cut out for life in northern Ontario.  I'll never forget my first visit to Rachel's parents.  It was Christmas, 1998, and they lived in Timmins.  Timmins makes Sudbury look downright tropical; it's almost as far north of Sudbury as Sudbury is north of Toronto.  What I'm trying to say is that it's cold, really cold, colder than anything you've likely ever experienced: spit-freezing, skin-numbing, testicle-reascending cold.  I'm not sure the temperature ever got warmer than -40C (-40F) on that trip, and, with the windchill, it fell below -60C (-76F) one day.  As if that weren't enough, Timmins averages 3.5 metres of snowfall per year (thats 11.5 feet)!

It is, in short, the Canada many non-Canadians conjure up in their minds when they think of this country.  Not that Sudbury's much different, mind you, what with -20C (-4F) being a respectable winter temperature.

Nutella, not just for the bedroom anymore, Part II: Vanilla Nutella ice cream

We're not ones to ever miss something related to ice cream, but we missed the ice cream event.  I can't say I'm surprised.  We used to spend countless hours each week cooking, eating, writing posts, reading other blogs and offering comments.  That's changed lately -- some of you may have noticed that we've been posting and commenting far less than normal.  Now our time is consumed with lawyers, and insurance agents, and bankers.

After eight years in our two-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto, we wanted more: more space, more (hell, any) yard, and, of course, a kitchen big enough for two people to work in without literally stepping on one another's toes.  Angry spouses and sharp blades are a bad combo, wouldn't you agree?

It all sounded so simple.

So we entered the Toronto real estate market.  Ugly.  House prices have been rising for the better part of a decade now, and the playing field is tilted strongly in the vendor's favour.  Our least favourite selling tactic was the lowball price with a fixed date for offers.  The low price sucks in many, many buyers, who all present offers one after another at a set time.  Such fierce competition forces any interested party to make an unconditional offer that far exceeds the asking price if they hope to have a chance of getting the house.  Picture seven or eight groups of buyers with their agents, pacing in the street outside the house in question as their offers are weighed and the neighbours peek through their windows.

We got burned by this strategy more times than I'd care to remember, and it began to take its toll.  Where once we used to get excited about a property we wanted, after two years and almost a dozen unsuccessful offers, we began to approach houses with a fatalistic, "let's see how we'll lose this house" attitude.

Then one day we finally got the house -- an old Victorian in Little Italy -- and on Tuesday we took possession.  During the mere month in between, our lives were consumed with the seemingly endless number of tasks it takes to turn pages of signatures into a set of keys to our new home.

Going postal: El Bulli's chocolate with wasabi

There's something special about getting a package in the mail, don't you think?  In our age of instant communication and gratification, we have forgotten what a thrill it can be to wait, to anticipate.  That's why I love receiving packages in the mail, especially when the package contains a cookbook, kitchenware, or food.

The pattern never varies: I'm always at work when Canada Post attempts delivery, so every once in a while I come home to a delivery notification card.  If I'm really lucky, it tells me I can pick up the package after 5:00 PM that day.  If I'm unlucky, I'm stuck waiting until the next afternoon.  The wait is unbearable.

Package in hand, I often play a little game with myself: how long can I wait to open it?  I always fight the urge to open it in the middle of the post office.  With a little discipline, I usually make it back to my office desk.  I don't know that I've ever left a package sealed until I returned home.