I’m Making Pancakes.

This is a great video I found while wandering around youtube.  It has some sassy language so I wouldn’t blare it at work.  Mac Lethal, spits some mad rhymes while flipping flapjacks.   Tight lyrics and perfect pancakes; a win  both ways. Enjoy.

You can find more Mac Leathal at facebook.com/maclethal.

The Fat Map.

Reuters new service has put out a pretty nifty interactive map of the world showing the planets fattest countries.  The added bonus is the FDA research which indicates the projected trillion dollar+ sales of obesity related drugs.  Drugs used to make people thiner.  I guess popping a pill is much easier then making healthy lifestyle choices about exercise and diet.   Another boom market for big pharma.

Click here for the fat facts.

 

 

Birthday Round Up: Food saftey fail.

This post always makes me laugh. People are amazing.

badfoodThis is amazing. The following is taken from a facebook post.

Fail for a) fail for eating raw chicken or b) fail for understanding what treats lie ahead for eating raw chicken breast.

-Just finished eating a raw chicken breast, no sweat.  Looks like somebody owes me $20

-You’re gonna die dude, salmonella for sure

-I ate chicken, not salmon, dude.

The full post can be found here.

Toronto Underground Market [TUM]

Saturday,  was the second edition of the Toronto Underground Market. We bought our tickets back in September and we were quite anxious to go! We are thankful we bought our tickets so early because they sold out very quickly. It is difficult to determine how many people actually attended this event but let’s just say that some line-ups were over 2hrs long and by 9pm, some vendors/exhibitors were completely sold out.

When the doors opened, we rushed over to the famous and elitist La Carnita stand as we wanted to experience the hype.

For those who do not know, La Carnita… the concept was started by a marketer, who ventured to see the effects of social media, especially Twitter. The concept is simple: set-up a pop-up kitchen but only warn your clientele via twitter the day of; this creates a sentiment of exclusivity which has proven to grow La Carnita’s business exponentially. At the time selling food (aside from street meat) was prohibited in Toronto, so they thought of selling art pieces and as a token of appreciation for your purchase, you could receive 2 tacos… the so-called best tacos you’ve ever tasted…

After waiting for 30 minutes or so at La Carnita, we sent out missionaries (we could as a group of 4) to get an overview of the event’s installations and to bring back some food (we were hungry!!!). Another 20 minutes later, we were finally served our cochinita and the celebrity Voltron fish tacos ($4 each), along with our post-card-sized artwork. The Voltron fish taco was served with a spicy sauce and purple cabbage… good for those who enjoy battered deep fried fish (à la English fish and chips), not so great in our opinion, although the tortilla itself was one of the best – ever. The cochinita taco was essentially pulled pork dressed with a mango-apple salsa and marinated onion. This taco was definitely better tasting although the pork could have used more seasoning (the sweet salsa was overpowering the pork flavour). To be honest, we were expecting more from La Carnita… Guess that’s the double-edged sword of celebrity status, people (like us) fantasize about that first encounter… and it wasn’t quite the hot steamy costarricense experience that I knew, once upon a time…

While waiting for these famous tacos, one of our missionaries brought back a chou-paste gougère stuffed with porketta and beignets composed with goat cheese, fig and walnut from Popover Girl. The porketta flavours were interesting and the gougère slightly too big ($5). The beignet was a good idea and had the potential to taste nice if it were more flavourful (4 pieces/$5). The Popover Girl experience was a satisfying nibble before La Carnita.
Once we devoured our tacos, we headed back to the main of the event where hundreds (>thousand?) more people were now crowding the space.

We lined up at La Comida del Mundo for a good 2hrs… while in line we missioned to obtain other goodies… we first tried Mama Nashi’s Indian-style chicken, ground beef and vegetarian samosas (3/$5). It is unfortunate that the samosas were deep-fried as they were very oily and a lot of the flavours were ‘washed out’. We tried Hawaiian lager which was awful!!! Sweet beers are not a given for everyone, fine… but there are some combinations like apricot or apple beer that are good… pineapple is not one of those great combinations! We also tried the flying monkey beers which were decent, nothing special but definitely a better choice over the pineapple beer. At West Side Beef company, we got pulled pork (tiny portion for the bun!) sliders with an apple coleslaw ($5 portion). These sliders were not bad but could have been more generous for the price.

Finally, at La Comida del Mundo’s stand, we ordered one of each item on the menu: jalapeño corn bread grilled cheese topped with a swirl of bland guacamole and a tinier swirl of sour cream, a super sweet water buffalo empanada, an unpleasant deep-fried sweet and spicy banana-cream dessert (for which we didn’t get the name). With all this food, we grew thirsty and caved in to the Picnic Society’s watermelon-basil lemonade which was hyper-diluted and tasted terrible (no sugar, barely any lemon…) ($5/glass).
To finish off our savoury journey, we decided to try pan-fried mushroom risotto balls stuffed with mozzarella served with a bit of tomato sauce by a group of highschool students ($4/plate). This was by far the most respectful stand in our professional opinion. Seeing highschoolers devoted to making and serving fresh pasta, made to the order, for a few hundred people was an impressive show… their goal was to fundraise for a trip to Italy but their passion and hard work is an encouragement for our industry.

Sadly, the end of our evening was dedicated to the only two sweets stands present… A macaron stand, which were a lame excuse for a specialty as they were hard, chunky, and did not contain very much filling (3/$6). Then, a cupcake stand with cupcakes so stiff, we wished we hadn’t drank all of that awful watermelon-basil lemonade just so we could wash these down (2/$4).

We did not visit all the exhibitors present at TUM, such as the Romanian, Pilipino, Caribbean and Indian food stands (although we should have gone to the Indian one which smelled soooooo yummy!!!!), or the multiple coffee stands, spice vendors and many other brewers. Contrary to the event’s advertisement, there weren’t any home cooks present… maybe next time!  We’ll definitely give it another try!

Cost of the evening for 3 people: $130 all included.
Old brick factory – interesting architecture

Poppver girl’s pork in a gougère
La Carnita’s exhibit

One of the bosses, making tacos for the growing line-up

La cochinita taco
Voltron fish taco

The crowd

Mushroom Risotto

Cookies and cream, Oreo, and Smores cupcakes

Happy Birthday To Us.

November marks our second anniversary. Thank you to all our readers and to those that have made this blog possible. A special thanks to everyone who has contributed to Notes On A Meal over the last two years. Its been fun so far and we look forward to another great year of great food posts.

To celebrate, for the next month, we will be reposting some of our favorite posts from the last two years.  Enjoy.

 

 

Ma Maison enters a gingerbread competition

Just in time for the holidays, the Ma Maison team decided to enter a fierce but fun gingerbread competition. The rules were simple, make “something” out of gingerbread was basically all we were told. The construction had to be 2x2x2 feet and everything except the base had to be edible. Ma Maison came up with the idea of a bakery and although our results didn’t win the prize, a few great lessons were learned in the process. Here is what was created and some of the competitiors

Beautiful custom knives in Brooklyn

It  is pretty much fact that cooks love knives. Of all the gear in kitchens, we love knives the most.  We covet them, baby them and cut stuff up with them.  I am no exception. I am constantly on the prowl for new knives, innovative knives; knives that speak to me.  Thats when I came across this video about Cut Brooklyn, I was instantly taken in.

There is no doubt in my mind that these knives are very functional works of art and worth every penny.  I was also moved by the story of their creation and feel a bond with the artist who makes them.  Hats off to Cut Brooklyn and Joel Bukiewicz who makes the amazing blades.

You can find the site here: Cut Brooklyn

The movie is from Made by Hand films which is also worth exploring.

 

Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

 

Foodstock Pt. 2

Thanks to Rodney and Jess for this great write up about Foodstock.  More to follow.

 

Yesterday, we headed up north near the town of Honeywood to join the estimated 25,000 guests of the 2011 Foodstock. This event was promoted by celebrity chef Michael Stadtländer and was designed as a fundraiser and manifestation against the creation of a 2,300 acre limestone mega-quarry on prime agricultural grounds by the Highland companies.  A hundred Canadian chefs and their respective teams demonstrated their support by setting up mini pop-up kitchens. Samples of foods prepared from donated produce originating from Ontario farms. Participants paid what they could in the form of donations to the organization.

After an hour and a half drive from west Mississauga, we arrived at the end of a huge car line-up waiting to be ushered into the already packed parking area. Armed with rubber boots, winter jackets, plastic plates and forks (this is a green event), we set out to the muddy trail into a little forest. Archaic little stands were scattered throughout the trails. The people line-ups were quickly growing as more participants arrived and joined to grab their food samples. Many popular Toronto restaurants (Marben, Torito, Splendido, Pizzeria Libretto, Pagaea, Oliver & Bonaccini, Sakora, Hiro, Globe, etc.) and culinary schools (Georgian, George Brown) were present and carried the longest lines. There was no running water or electricity available for the chef teams to use on site, which seemed to make things difficult for cooking. Many resolved to cook over fire or used smokers or barbecues. It was impossible for us to eat at every stand but we averaged around 30 stops or so. All sorts of foods were served. Unfortunately the event layout was not too great as sweet and savory foods were mixed.

We tasted various types of cooking and food pairings from pulled-pork on house-made pita, to artisanal ice cream with handmade chocolates, to phyllo filled with goat cheese and apple compote with granola, to sushi, to steamed pork belly with kimchi on steam buns, to fennel and apple salad on a potato-beet rösti, to apple cider beef hip taco, to house-cured prosciutto served on goats’ cheese and artisan bread, to hay-smoked arctic char on soya-marinated daikon,  to smoked trout with caramelized beet on potato chip, to Georgian bay smoked white fish dip with homemade potato chips, to heirloom tomato soup, to parmesan and lobster risotto, to bean and tomato gnocchi with olive oil and parmesan, to fire-roasted pork belly with sweet and sour cabbage salad, to braised rabbit sandwich, to mustard-grain rabbit with white polenta and kelp, pork and potato bomb with American mustard and bacon, to the adult peanut-butter and jam (with bacon) sandwich, to cabbage soup served in a cabbage leaf, to raw potato pizza with smoked trout in arugula, to spicy meatballs.

The working conditions being primal and the weather conditions not being optimal, it is difficult to properly critique the event and the food. On a general trend, pairings of some ingredients was very courageous and some compositions were not up to par with the standards of their source restaurants. Based on our pallets and on the panel of dishes available, Marben and its team provided the tastiest sample. There were many stands we did not choose to line up for as their food was not appealing. By the same token, it was not possible to clearly identify which of the samples we tried as the worst as there were too many that fit into this category. We also felt that some teams invested in pricy bamboo decorations and utensils rather than investing in better quality ingredients or compositions. It was disappointing to see restaurants use this opportunity as a publicity stunt rather than advertising the beauty, versatility and malleability of Ontario produce. Again, we understand that the working conditions are very precarious compared to the luxury of a restaurant kitchen.

Albeit our last comments, it was a great experience and we strongly believe the underlying idea is fantastic. The event definitely merited better weather and ultimately, we wish that the goal for this chefs’ congress was achieved.


Sugar flowers

Since baking in general is not dangerous enough, I’ve taken on a new challenge…. sugar pulling. For those not familiar with this concept, well, it’s pretty much what it sounds like, hot sugar being shaped and pulled into diverse “artistic” shapes. The sugar is warmed, dyed (any colour of the rainbow) and once it’s the right temperature, it is pulled to aerate the surface and add a phenomenal sheen. Afterwards, under a heat lamp in order to keep it hot, the sugar is formed into whatever shape you want and allowed to cool (to set).