What The Fork?

Week 4: Curry in a hurry

(photo to come)

I remember a conversation I had with a grower one time at the Ottawa Street Farmers' Market. I asked if there were any veggies that people often asked about. He said snap peas. Some food newbies don't know what to make of them at first, he said, but then they realize they're fun.

And it is fun to snap them open and dump out the peas. I like any food preparation, no matter how simple, that you can do with your hands.

I put the peas in a curried rice salad. I'm not posting a recipe this week because curry is one of those things that's impossible to do wrong -- it's all about your preferences and what you have in the fridge. I threw in celery and green onions and apples; other options in season now include broccoli and cauliflower.

Week 3: Green onion salad dressing

I love green onions because they add just the right kick to anything. But they're also a CSA food box staple this time of year, so sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the gangly green limbs spreading across my fridge. So I decided to kill two culinary birds with one stone -- use up some green onions and make a salad dressing for those times when my go-to balsalmic vinaigrette won't work.

I adapted this easy recipe from the Food Network Canada. The recipe calls for separating the white and green parts of the onion and grilling the white parts; I skipped that for the sake of convenience. I also found the finshed product a little strong so I added more sour cream and a dollop more olive oil than they called for.

- 1 cup chopped green onion
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 small garlic clove, chopped
- 1 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- 3 tbsp sour cream
- salt and pepper

Chop the green onions. Add them to a blender with olive oil, garlic, vinegar and mustard and blend. Remove and stir in sour cream and salt and pepper.

The original recipe pairs the green onion dressing with pasta salad. I had mine with mixed greens, steamed asparagus and strawberries. It made a great fresh spring salad.

This week, a friend brought over a huge basket of snap peas from her parents' garden. I'm looking for any suggestions on how to use those.

Week 2: Time to abandon baking and go back to basics

After all the progress I made last year learning how to improvise with the new local food I was trying, I guess I got a little cocky. Or else I forgot the crucial difference between baking and cooking: You can improvise when you cook; not so much when you bake.

I cobbled together a couple of rhubarb-strawberry crisp recipes in hopes of coming up with a simple, effective way to make this dessert. Simple? Yes. Effective? No. The water I added (instructions from a rhubarb-only recipe) ended up mixing with the moister strawberries to create a goopy, sticky mess. I also underestimated the need for rolled oats – sounds silly in hindsight, but I figured slivered almonds would do almost the same thing. That might have been the case if I put more of them in, or compensated with more flour. But I did neither, and paid for it.

I'm not going to bother posting the recipe I used because it was so disastrous, but if you want to try a better one, I'd recommend looking up The Rhubarb Compendium or searching on one of the fine food sites in the Links list on the right.

So for this week's mission, I'm dialling it back down to basics, and trying to use up the piles of beautiful lettuce I'm picking up. It's time for salad, and I'm looking for dressing or vinaigrette recipes using local, seasonal ingredients. Send your best tips.

In the meantime, I'm going to spoon my rhub-strawb-almond melange out of the baking dish, and perhaps try again with last week's recommended recipe from Shedah when I've overcome my fear of the oven.

A few of my favourite fruits

A friend of mine was lamenting last month that rhubarb, which grew like a weed in her mother's garden back home, had suddenly become something she had to go to the grocery store and pay for.

Luckily, we've hit rhubarb season, and it seems to be everywhere. I've had two delicious rhubarb coffee cakes in the last week and it sprung up in my first CSA share box of the season last week. (Thank you, Plan B!)

But if strawberries are more your style, they're being celebrated today at the Beamsville Strawberry Festival, and at fields and markets all over the place. (I've had great luck with Uncle Scott's farm at Appleby Line and Derry Road.)

Strawberries and rhubarb make a classic combination. I'm not much of a baker, so my goal for this week is to put together a dessert with them that's tasty and easy. What's your best recipe?

UPDATE: According to the sign outside Scott's, they won't be selling strawberrie for a few more weeks. But lots of other places are -- see Hamilton Eat Local's food directory for information.

Welcome back

It’s been hard for me to start writing about food this year.

I came back from three weeks in Europe with a serious case of market envy. In Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Split, I was struck by the massive open-air markets right in the centre of town. There was row after row of fruits and vegetables and home-made bread, and indoor market halls where the smell of fresh cheese and smoked meat would smack you in the face as soon as you walked in.

More impressive, there were hordes of people there every day, doing their daily shopping. I wondered if it could ever become part of the culture here, as it is there, to buy fresh food from a local market in the morning for the dinner you’re making that evening.

Hence my lack of excitement over a farmers’ market in Jackson Square — the temporary home of the under-renovation Hamilton Farmers’ Market.

But I put my euro-snobbery on the shelf last week and ventured into the mall ... and those happy farmers’ market feelings came flooding back.

Sure, it’s in a mall, but the vendors are all familiar. It’s early in the season so there are lots of imports rounding out the produce, but there’s still plenty of locally grown stuff — apples and root veg from last season, tomatoes and other greenhouse produce, asparagus and other early-growers.

The whole thing swept away my mall misgivings. But I might not be the only one who has them. The woman working at Buttrum’s told me they’ve had a lot fewer people since the move from the old market. Lots of regulars haven’t been able to find them, she said. But she was optimistic that things would pick up once the summer gets here and more people figure out where they are.

With the weather finally warming up and the whole season ahead of us, I’m feeling that optimism, too.

I got baby potatoes from Buttrum’s and grape tomatoes from a Simcoe greenhouse and used them for breakfast the next morning — the tomatoes in a frittata and the potatoes as homefries.

It was a good start to the season.

In honour of the U.S. election

From Slate Magazine:

Why Sarah Palin is a locavore
By Michael Agger

" When Palin was running for governor in 2006, she told USA Today, "We hunt as much as we can, and I'm proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska." And if you look twice at the reasons why Palin hunts, they resemble an ideal cherished by city-dwelling, New York Times-reading folks. Sarah Palin is a locavore, harvesting meat from her local "foodshed." "

Read the full story here.

Should cities be responsible for serving local food?

Just got back from a trip to Halifax, where I was struck by the number of restaurants and cafes of all sizes touting the local produce on their menus. They also have a bustling Saturday morning farmers' market right next to the Alexander Keith brewery downtown.

But while most places offering local food are private shops and restaurants, a group in Toronto is asking the city to buy local first for the food it serves in city-run facilities such as shelters, daycares or seniors' residences. This story was in today's Toronto Star.

City urged to spend cash on local food
Vanessa Lu             
City Hall Bureau Chief

Activists would like bolder action than city hall's go-slow approach to buying more locally grown food as a climate-change initiative.

"The message should be (we're) going to 30 per cent to 50 per cent local," said Jamie Reaume, executive director of the Holland Marsh Growers Association. "They've limited themselves to 37 daycare centres in the first year."

Councillors yesterday endorsed a policy to "progressively increase" the percentage of local produce served at city-owned venues.

It stops well short of the proposal floated last spring to commit $100,000 to boost the local content of food served in its shelters, daycare centres and long-term-care facilities.

Instead, the government management committee pledged $15,000 to enable 37 city daycares to use more local tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and lettuce.

Reaume said people need to be educated on the importance of eating food that's in season.

"We can feed not just the city of Toronto, but the province of Ontario," he said. "But people want their blueberries in December. That's not realistic."

                                                                                                                                                       

Is this something that Hamilton should look at? Is $15,000 for local food, as the Toronto committee agreed to, enough? Is it a city's responsibility to help local growers?

Roasted veggies

For me, autumn and roasted vegetables go hand-in-hand. There's something really comforting about eating a bunch of roasted, starchy food from right out of the oven when the weather starts to get cold. And it's the easiest thing you can do with all those root veggies (turnips, beets, potatoes, parsnips, carrots) that are piling up these days. You can just chop them up and put them in the oven with a bit of olive oil and the herbs of your choice. I'm partial to rosemary.

Then there's this recipe I adapted from the most recent Air Miles magazine, of all places, from Chatelaine food editor Monda Rosenberg. The twist is the maple-ginger glaze added at the end.

Autumn vegetables with maple-ginger dressing

The recipe calls for 5 large carrots, 4 large parsnips, 2 red peppers, 1 yellow pepper and 1 large sweet onion, but the exact veggies and proportions can easily be altered

Olive oil
Salt and pepper
4 tsp maple syrup
1 tbsp red wine vinegar (I used balsalmic)
1 tsp finely grated fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tbsp olive oil

Preheat oven to 450F. Spread sliced vegetables on baking sheet, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast on the top rack in oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until tender and slightly charred around the edges.

As veggies roast, whisk maple syrup with vinegar, ginger, garlic and pinches of salt and pepper. Slowly whisk in oil. When veggies are cooked, turn into bowl and toss with dressing.

Localicious, pt. 2

I'm confused. Two of my attempts to go to Localicious restaurants for lunch in the last couple weeks were thwarted because the restaurants were closed until dinner. Was it just bad luck or is there something I'm missing? If people don't go for lunch in downtown Hamilton, I totally didn't get the memo...

Anyway. I ended up at Capri on John Street North yesterday and managed to finagle a Localicious menu on request (the local offerings only applied to the dinner menu but the lunch dishes were the same -- just smaller portions). The tomato salad and fettucini florencia were both  simple but magnificently well-seasoned, and the portions were fantastic value for the price.

I've been really pleased by the food at the participating Localicious restaurants I've been to, in spite of the confusion of getting to them and trying to figure out what the local dishes were once I got there. (I might have had better luck for dinner, but I work nights so it's not really an option for me.) And it's also been a great excuse to get to know some new places downtown.

Has anyone else been eating out at Localicious places? I'm interested to hear other people's impressions.

Downtown Localicious continues until Sunday.

Localicious, pt. 1

I've been to the Pepper Jack Cafe on King William for live music, but I didn't think of it as a restaurant until it was billed on the Localicious lineup this year.

So I ended up there for lunch last week with a friend, and I asked the server what they were doing for Localicious, the downtown Hamilton local food event that's happening this month. He told me he didn't think they were doing anything, which seemed a little odd.

But then at the end of the lovely meal on the patio (I had bruschetta and a baked brie salad, my friend had a bean salad), he came back and told us they were taking part in Localicious, but not doing anything out of the ordinary because they already use as much fresh, local produce as they can on a regular basis. Their produce is purchased from the downtown farmers' market, and they always aim to buy local first. (Meaning the mango chutney on my salad probably wasn't local, but the greens probably were.)

It's really nice to see restaurants put so much effort into choosing local food. I sometimes wonder why you don't see more of them do more to promote their efforts, so I'm glad this festival is bringing that into focus.