And I'll be posting to the National Post's Appetizer blog only from England and France......

Au revoir....

For the true butter connoissieur nothing less than the best, the great cultured butters from France with the AOC label will do -- the crown going to 84 per cent butter fat Echire.

We can't usually get Echire - or any foreign butters - here because of the quota system. But now online cheesemonger Andy  Shay  has broken the great butter barrier and is offering Echire (unsalted)  in his mother's day cheese collection ($80).  http://www.shaycheese.ca, or mail him at ashay@shay.ca

It's legal too - unlike some of the foreign butters that do pop up here and there. Andy's getting it from a Quebec importer.

Canadian butter is only just butter - 80% butter fat (the minimum for something called butter)  which means it has 19% water in it and when melted puddles water. By comparison, Echire is 84% butterfat with 15% water. The percentage sounds small, but in taste terms it's big.

Echire, which is made from pasteurized milk, is also cultured - a starter is added to the milk to turn it into something like creme fraiche, giving the eventual butter a very subtle sour taste. The lactic acid produced is also what makes pastry great.

The drama uncoils as we arrive at 55 Mill Street in the Distillery District expecting to walk into a restaurant called Perigee. Instead we’re in a staircase well, have to walk up a steel staircase. We can see ahead a low-ceilinged restaurant glittering with candles, the tables grouped around three sides of a glassed-in kitchen. Then we’re in the thick of it: we’re seated at a table within a couple of yards of a chef in whites and black skull cap with a huge knife as sharp as Sweeney Todd’s open blade, and a cook wielding a blow torch on meringue.   more »

On May 10 in Bologna, Norman Lofts' documentary Michael Schmidt - Organic Hero or Bioterrorist opens at the Slow Food on Film Festival and international foodies will learn how one of the most basic organic foods is banned in Ontario (Canada). .

Michael Schmidt is an Ontario farmer who sells raw milk from his own cows to a list of subscribers. They love the taste. Raw milk is a food, it is rich in nutrients and tastes of flowers and grass, the cow's food.  But the sale of raw milk is illegal in Ontario (and Canada) and Schmidt is being prosecuted by the Ontario government on  a variety of non criminal charges. His trial starts in Newmarket on May 23, 2008.

That's the tip of a huge iceberg - enough for a whole chapter The Last  Brie in my book Last Chance to Eat. Raw milk is the basis for one of the world's greatest foods -- raw milk cheese, cheeses like Parmigianno, Roquefort, Brie, Epoisse, Livarot, Camembert, Munster, Comte, Gruyere, Vacherin Mont d'or and hundreds of others, including a growing number of excellent raw milk cheeses in North America.

The ostensible reason for banning raw milk is that it isn't 100% safe and may contain pathogens like e coli bacteria that could kill you.

That's why all commercial milk is pasteurized, a heating process that kills all pathogens -  but it also kills the good bacteria that give milk its taste and nutrition.  

That's why people people all over the world, including Europe and 28 states in the US, prefer raw milk.

Raw milk dairies like Schmidt's are squeaky clean, routinely inspected, the milk comes from his own cows that he keeps healthy.  

So why doesn't Ontario (Canada) say fine: the risk is minuscule and the buyers are aware of it and still want the milk.

Because the government is protecting Ontario's millionaire dairy farmers.

The farmers have  a lockhold on the milk we drink: no variety is allowed. The reason we can't get richer cream and butter (which is essential for making light pastry) is because the dairy farms don't want to make better dairy because it isn't as profitable as inferior dairy. I've asked individual farmers whether they would make say a 48% butterfat cream and they all said no, unless there was a big market for it. That's why the rich milk from Jersey cows isn't sold any more. The farmers don't want ANY competition.

How different it is down South. There a revival of individual creameries, selling rich products and raw milk, which  is being greeted by ecstatic consumers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/dining/20dairy.html?sq=marian%20burros&st=nyt&scp=2&pagewanted=print  

Schmidt is getting alot of support from his customers, from Jamie Kennedy, and others. He's facing five prosecutors.  Originally he was to have been defended by Clayton Ruby but money's run out. http://www.foodrightsalliance.ca/

A reader, Tony Asrilen really nails the issue of Torontonian's lack of outrage over restaurant wine charges - and he asks why when you bring your own wine, is there a corkage charge at all? There isn't a corkage charge in Montreal.


"I am mystified about why Torontonians aren't more outraged about restaurant
wine charges.  You mentioned that restaurant costs double when wine is
included, and that Alice's Restaurant allowed you to bring your own
wine - at a charge of $20!  That's $20 for bringing your own wine!  And
in my experience this charge is typical in Toronto, if they allow you
to bring your own wine at all.

I'm often in Montreal, where hundreds of restaurants, if not thousands,
encourage you to bring your own wine - at no charge whatsoever!  They
put big signs to that effect all over the front of the restaurant.
Their costs can't be much different from Toronto's.  The only
difference seems to be the greed factor.  I don't know of a single
Toronto restaurant that allows you to bring your own wine for free.  I
would love to see food writers make more of an issue about this, but so
far I've seen almost nothing."

What do you think?

boulud        rebuchon      Vong      kennedy    ramsey    Mcewan       white


Vancouver is crowing over its ability to attract New York superstars Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud to open restaurants there.

just a minute, these restaurants are gonna be the equivalent of Mcdonald franchises, tonier of course and far more expensive.  Ronald McDonald's sent out to scout new venues and does a little tap dancing to get the folks in and then buzzes off to find more venues. Ditto star chefs. Or rather, staf chefs' companies.

I want to eat the real thing not a canny replica. I can't believe all the Atelier Rebuchons now opened round the world keep up their standards after the star has come and gone. In London, Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White have slapped their name on what are becoming chains of restaurants, and in Toronto, Mark McEwan's restaurants include N44, Bymark, and One , Jamie Kennedy has JK Winebar and JK at the Gardiner,and another opening at the Brickworks.

Chefs franchise themselves to make money. Fair enough. The star brand name pulls in the customers. But it also diverts money from local restaurants and saps energy out of new ones struggling to be recognized in an increasingly competitive scene.

I'm a locavore when it comes to chefs.

After looking all over town, I finally find the real thing at Tundra :wienerschitzel made with veal, the veal fillet rather than wavy kind, that comes with a superb marinated cucumber salad and sauteed fingerlings.

Savingtheplanet.org is now a religion. Any skepticism about the terminal state of the planet, any criticism of  Greenpeace or as many call it Greenwar, any doubts expressed about "going green" -- all are now regarded as heresy. Any moment now I expect to see a large green brussel sprout anointed as head of the United Nations or as it will now be called United Church for the Planet.

Today I'm just going to focus on two  issues that the earthhood would rather we didn't know about.  

Today in an WSJ editorial Why I Left Greenpeace, Scientist Patrick Moore describes how he co-founded Greenpeace in 1971 and how subsequently he became disillusioned.  Money quote:
 
"The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.



this kid's drinking safe water because there's chlorine in it.
 
My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.
 
Opposition to the use of chemicals such as chlorine is part of a broader hostility to the use of industrial chemicals. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, "Silent Spring," had a significant impact on many pioneers of the green movement. The book raised concerns, many rooted in science, about the risks and negative environmental impact associated with the overuse of chemicals. But the initial healthy skepticism hardened into a mindset that treats virtually all industrial use of chemicals with suspicion."

To read the whole article go to WSJ.comEditors<access@interactive.wsj.com>

Second issue also concerns industrial chemical hysteria. In Mother Nature's Pesticides, the NYT's John Tierney posted research by biochemists Bruce Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold showing that humans ingest a lot more natural pesticides than industrial pesticides.

"Dr. Ames was one of the early heroes of environmentalism. He invented the widely used Ames Test, which is a quick way to screen for potential carcinogens by seeing if a chemical causes mutations in bacteria. After he discovered that Tris, a flame-retardant in children’s pajamas, caused mutations in the Ames Test, he helped environmentalists three decades ago in their successful campaign to ban Tris — one of the early victories against synthetic chemicals.

But Dr. Ames began rethinking this war against synthetic chemicals after thousands of chemicals had been subjected to his test. He noticed that plenty of natural chemicals flunked the Ames test. He and Dr. Gold took a systematic look at the chemicals that had been tested on rodents. They found that about half of natural chemicals tested positive for carcinogencity, the same proportion as the synthetic chemicals. Fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices contained their own pesticides that caused cancer in rodents. The toxins were found in apples, bananas, beets, Brussel sprouts, collard greens, grapes, melons, oranges, parsley, peaches — the list went on and on.



these are organic pesticides.....and there are many more....

Then Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold estimated the prevalence of these natural pesticides in the typical diet. In a paper published in 2000 in Mutation Research, they conclude:

    About 99.9 percent of the chemicals humans ingest are natural. The amounts of synthetic pesticide residues in plant food are insignificant compared to the amount of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves. Of all dietary pesticides that humans eat, 99.99 percent are natural: they are chemicals produced by plants to defend themselves against fungi, insects, and other animal predators.

    We have estimated that on average Americans ingest roughly 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides and their breakdown products. Americans eat about 1,500 mg of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than the 0.09 mg they consume of synthetic pesticide residues.

Even though these natural chemicals are as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones, it doesn’t follow that they’re killing us. Just because natural pesticides make up 99.99 percent of the pesticides in our diet, it doesn’t follow that they’re causing human cancer — or that the .01 percent of of synthetic pesticides are causing cancer either. Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold believe most of these carcinogenic pesticides, natural or synthetic, don’t present problems because the human exposures are low and because the high doses given to rodents may not be relevant to humans. " For more discussion go to

 http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/synthetic-v-natural-pesticides/#more-93

New Chip off the old block… There’s a surge, a small but significant one, in the neighbourhood bistros in Toronto. Usually the bistro adheres to the French model, onion soup, seafood bisque, escargots, mussels, steak frites, apple tart. But now young Torontonians are refashioning the genre in their own image, adding and subtracting ingredients at will, putting their own spin on familiar dishes. The price is good, coming in under $100 for two - as long as you forget the wine (the albatross around Toronto’s neck) which can easily double the food bill.   more »

Lobster bisque, Chicken Veronique, Coffee ricotta mousse, Patatas Arequipa (made with McCain’s frozen potato wedges), Dhal Curry, No-Panic Hollandaise – are among the doable cheats. Many recipes do require tweaking with substitutes for British cheats. Problem is that British supermarkets (according to industry analysts) are about five years ahead of us in terms of innovation and nuanced marketing. Not only is there a far greater variety of processed food but the packaging is more flexible. When I went looking for a small (167 ML) can of coconut milk, I could only find one standard – 400 grams.

I found lots of applicable cheats, fresh pinapple and mango chunks, Thai curry paste, fresh pesto sauce but some of the most significant were unavailable. I had to go to an upscale grocery for canned lobster bisque, but I couldn’t find fresh dressed crab, frozen chargrilled aubergine slices, half-fat crème fraiche,  frozen squid,ready- prepared diced mixed carrot and swede, canned fried onions, buttermilk pancakes (For delicious-sounding Kaiser’s pancakes I’ll have to make my own). It was galling to discover that while I can only get McCain’s wedges and fries here, British supermarkets stock other kinds, including rosti. I could’nt find frozen mashed potatoes which cancelled my plans to make Delia’s famous/infamous chocolate cupcakes and wild salmon fishcakes both requiring Aunt Bessie’s discs of frozen mash. Cultural differences explain why I couldn’t find such English passions as toffee sauce and edible commercial meringues for Eton Mess.

Cheat’s value is as much inspirational as practical. There are enough adaptable ideas in the book to keep collage at bay a little longer.

Last year I fulfilled a long ambition: I made an authentic lobster bisque. I dusted off Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, II, and embarked on a marathon requiring strength, endurance, persistent attention to detail, not to mention dropping a wad on ingredients. Didn’t matter. The bisque was bliss. Only problem, I was exhausted and almost fell asleep before I served it. This year I turned to the lobster bisque in Delia’s How To Cheat At Cooking. A can of lobster bisque, coconut milk, lemongrass, ginger, Thai fish sauce, a few coriander leaves, and I was done in twenty minutes. And it was delish. So why I wonder is Cheat a cause celebre in Britain? Why are cries of betrayal and treachery filling the air?   more »

Apart from The Escoffier CookBook and Delia's How To Cheat At Cooking (which I review in this Saturday's Post)  - which cover the gamut of twentieth century cuisine, I have a pared down shelf of cookbooks. Cookbooks have been so plentiful that I found my shelves crammed with books i'd never read let alone used. So I started weeding. First to go the coffee table books because I don't have a coffee table - anyway I want information not pictures. Well not too much info -- I decided I never referred to the Cambridge World History of Food and out it went. I saved the Oxford Companion to Food out of respect to its author, the late Alan Davidson, but the book is after only a few years, literally falling apart so it will have to go soon. Then I dumped the global cookbooks like Joy of Cooking and Gourmet. I want small specific cookbooks.  I began to  weigh books: I found the thinner books and soft covers had more information in them -- with the exception of the bible which taught me how to cook,  Julia Child's hefty Mastering the Art of Cooking I and the far less used II.




And at one point i said to hell with chef's books, they're vanity. But then I realized this wasn't always true and in particular, I have found plenty of use in the delectably modest  Simply French by Patricia Wells/Joel Rebuchon, not only Rebuchon's Roast Chicken Grandmere but his Aromatic shrimp bouillon.





I saved the books which really opened my eyes to foods I'd never tried to cook -- Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food and Elizabeth Luard's Old World Kitchen.

And books that are fun to read not only once but twice -   Kettner's Book of the Table, a wonderfully wry and informative dictionary of food/cooking. Lady: If thou be indeed a lady, remember thou art by name a cook, or atleast a baker. La-mean a loaf of bread; -dy means a maid; and lady means the breadmaid."

And another, Roy Andries de Groot's In Search of the Perfect Meal which  includes the recipe for Troisgros Brothers' effulgent scalloped potatoes.

And of course - Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.  What a relief to read a book that doesn't kiss the hem of cooking's skirt.


More favourites....






I still can't do without Cooking with the New American Chefs (1986) which is now in tatters. I call it early Delia. It's simple, breezy and unpretentious and the recipes are foolproof. Wolfgang Puck's Wild Mushroom Soup has never been surpassed nor Jimmy Schmidt's Caramel ice cream and barquette of chocolate pralinee made in litre milk carton, Patrick O'Connell's rhubarb mousse, Barbara Tropp's grilled chinese chicken wings with orange peel and garlic, Anne Greer's roasted corn soup.

French cooking in Ten minutes by Edouard de Pomiane, slim enough to slip in the pocket and fast food by any other name:   scrambled eggs to hollandaise sauce in a trice.

Susanna Foo's Chinese Cuisine. Where I learned to Tea Smoke and ever since I've never failed making a smoked leg of lamb. Amazing pineapple salsa for deep fried curried chicken dumplings.

Cooking With Master Chefs for two terrific recipes, Lidia Bastianich's wild mushroom risotto and Roberto del Grande's filet steaks in Pasilla Chile Sauce.

Foie gras recipes are everywhere. I was inspired however to try a mi-cuit foie gras by Peter Graham's Mourjou, the Life and Food of an Auvergne Village. I love this kind of book which entwines cooking, food and the culture of a specific small region. I like The Year at Les Fougeres - the esteemed restaurant outside Ottawa -  by  Charles Part and Jennifer Warren Part for the same reason. Also, Graham is an amateur like me. 

Back in 2002, lawyer Petra Cooper had a dream of making cheese. Now she's the powerhouse of Ontario artisanal cheese. Not bad for six years hard work.

Cooper's first move was to start the  Ontario Cheese Society, a clearing house for all cheese matters. On Monday, April 28, the OCS has its fourth Annual Meeting at Hart House 8.30am to 6.30 pm. Keynote speaker is Dr. Catherine Donnelly of the Vermont Institute for Artisanal Cheese, the first such institute in the U.S. Dr. Donnelley is going to talk about the viability or raw milk cheese. Anyone interested in the future of raw milk cheesemaking (and raw milk cheese eating)  in North America MUST hear Dr. Donnelly. For info, go to www.ontariocheese.org/conference/

Then on May 19, Cooper opens Fifth Hill Artisan Cheesemakers in Prince Edward County. Fifth Hill's cheesemaker Stephanie Diamant, a great goat cheesemaker in her own right, is heading the team making goat and sheep's cheeses. The first batch were cooked up off premises while the splendid Fifth Hill premises were being completed, and Torontonians,  if you're quick you can still pick up FT's zippy Bagel Chevre from Pusateri's at Avenue Road and Yorkville.
Email: petrac@fifthtown.ca

In Prince Edward County:

Fifth Town Artisan Cheese
4309 County Road #8
R. R. #4
Picton, ON
K0K 2T0

Phone: 613-476-5755
Fax: 613-476-5855
Toll Free: 1-800-5th-Town (1-800-584-8696) 

Not so long ago, gastrophobes,  critics of our industrial food system were saying things like we should have to PAY more for food then we'd respect it more or eat less of it or point to some other moral designed to make us feel guilty about eating at all....

But as food prices continue to rise all over the world and the price of rice -  the staple food for 4 billion of the 6 billion people on the planet - doubling in the past year, the gastrophobes have been blessedly silent.   Maybe they're realizing that ANY food is better than NO food.

Didn't think it was possible to capture the blood orange's fugitive taste in a cake, but All the Best  manages it in a palely rusty pound cake with a transparent pink glaze. A transient delight to be sampled before blood oranges vanish....

Stripped down dining, l0 diners at a counter, reservations day of dining, $85 prix fixe....Is David Chang the future? He sounds like Delia Smith on steroids. Both are committed to disappearing cooking...

Last week, New York Mag's Adam Platt gave David Chang's new eatery Momofuku Ko four stars....

I was glad to see the notion that a critic had to go more than once to every resto to know if it was good. Most times, a visit is enough to ascertain a restaurant's range and depth. Good restos however are worth a revisit as are big names...

Anyway, it's so tough to get into Momofuku Ko that all you're likely to get is a single visit....

But now to Platt's absorbing review...


According to the exacting code laid down by the original food mandarins at Michelin (and normally adhered to by this critic), a reviewer isn’t supposed to pass judgment on a restaurant after just one visit. But then the newest addition to David Chang’s white-hot East Village dining empire, Momofuku Ko, isn’t a restaurant in the normal sense of the word. You could call it a semi-exclusive dining club, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate either. The murmuring, deferential patrons who manage to find a spot at the modest, twelve-seat bar are chosen at random, by a computerized system that seems designed not to entice people to dine at Momofuku Ko but to drive them away. These seats can be booked only a week in advance, and only by logging on to the Momofuku Website. The computer begins taking reservations each morning at ten o’clock, and thanks to the legions of devoted and increasingly frantic Chang groupies (the 30-year-old chef was just nominated for his third James Beard award, and has been the subject of many glowing profiles in many glossy magazines), they’re gone not in minutes but in seconds. Under these trying conditions, getting in the door once, let alone the three times most critics prefer, could take months or even years.

So how do you crack this fiendishly egalitarian, New Age reservation system? It helps to have the services of many diligent assistants willing to peck at their keyboards like gaming zombies for an entire week. Is it worth the aggravation? This depends, I suppose, on your point of view. One reason Chang is regarded as a revolutionary by a new generation of diners and cooks is his gleeful willingness to take the old-line, haute cuisine restaurant conceits and smash them to bits, while still cooking inventive, high-quality food. The name of this willfully anonymous anti-restaurant is barely visible on the door, and the façade is sheathed in what looks like high-tech chicken wire. Inside, there are no waiters, no decorations on the plain butcher-block walls, and no printed menu. Chang’s inspiration is the classic Japanese bar-dining model practiced, most notably in New York, by Masa Takayama at his uptown restaurant, Masa. But the price of a single omakase meal at Masa is $400. At Momofuku Ko, my leisurely, inventive, often wickedly delicious ten-course dinner cost $85.

“We charge cook’s prices” is how Chang puts it to one of the patrons at the bar. He is standing with the rest of his cooks, who look the way top-line restaurant cooks usually do, which is to say pallid and harried, with assorted random baseball caps on their heads and their sleeves rolled up to give their burn marks full display. The first impression you get at Momofuku Ko, in fact, is that this is a kind of kitchen slave’s revolt, an operation run by hypergifted line cooks for the benefit of their downtrodden, misunderstood, back-of-the-house brethren. A loop of up-tempo kitchen tunes (Led Zeppelin, the Clash, Iggy Pop) plays over the stereo, and many of the pale, observant, food-obsessed patrons look like they’ve been working over hot stoves themselves.

The first amuse item is Chang’s calling card (and that beloved kitchen favorite), a crackly, feathery curl of pork rind. The second is a candy-size “housemade” English muffin slathered with more salty pork fat. The grateful food geek next to me pops it into his mouth. “I’ll eat that for breakfast any day,” he says. Chang’s somewhat outsize reputation has been based, until now, on his gift for taking these kinds of humble dishes (bowls of ramen at Momofuku Noodle Bar, or the famous pork butt at Momofuku Ssäm Bar) and imbuing them with the finest ingredients, and topflight technique. But Momofuku Ko (ko means “son of” in Japanese) is the chef’s first attempt at ambitious, haute cuisine cooking, and as the big dishes appear, the meal picks up steam. A tangle of gummy fluke is overwhelmed by too much yuzu and hot Sriracha pepper. But after that comes a classic Changian creation, a bowl of technically perfect French consommé cut with a hint of kimchee purée (“Korean consommé,” the chef calls it) and garnished with a square of frizzled, gently melting pork belly and a briny oyster from Cape Cod. A soft-cooked egg is next, only this egg has been smoked and then cut open so that the smoky-sweet yolk runs into a pleasing mix of caviar (from Tennessee), tangy sweet-potato vinegar (from Japan), and a pile of crunchy, nickel-size potato chips.

Chang and his cooks personally serve these dishes, giving dour, somewhat perfunctory descriptions of them, the way waiters at fancy restaurants are supposed to do. After the egg come two buttery, salty, perfectly seared scallops that have been foraged (the cooks wish me to know) off the New Jersey coast. They’re scattered with peanuts, among other things, and their sweetness is enhanced by a smoky vinaigrette infused with more bacon. Next up is the foie gras course, which doesn’t look like any foie gras course I or the increasingly convivial food geeks at the bar have ever seen. It looks like a heaping pile of bread crumbs, only the bread crumbs turn out to be shavings of a pink foie gras torchon, which has been salted and frozen overnight. Underneath are spoonfuls of White Riesling gelée, bits of pine-nut brittle, and segments of litchi, all of which dissolve in a rainbow of textures and flavor, as the cool foie gras dissolves in your mouth.

Am I sounding like a worshipful food geek myself? Maybe it’s the madcap, quixotic nature of Chang’s new enterprise (most chefs in his position cash out in Vegas; they don’t open high-minded twelve-seat restaurants). Or maybe it’s the final savory course, a hunk of short rib braised for several days, the way Chang’s Korean mother does, in soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, then deep-fried, like some dense, trencherman’s version of that great regional specialty the fried Snickers bar. Or maybe it’s the desserts, designed by an anonymous technician Chang refers to obliquely as “our dessert fairy.” One is a deep-fried apple pie (an homage to the McDonald’s classic, but about a thousand times better, served with a scoop of sour-cream ice cream), the other is something called “Cereal Milk Panna Cotta.” This ingenious dish is made with the milk from a bowl of corn flakes (which enriches the panna cotta) and plated with a purée of avocado (which cuts the sweetness). One of the cooks watched me as I took one curious bite, then another. “I know, it’s weird,” he said. “It actually works.”


Momofuku Ko
Address: 163 First Ave., nr 10th St.; momofuku.com
Hours: Wednesday through Monday 6 to 10:20 p.m.
Prices: Ten-course prix fixe, $85.
Ideal Meal: The fixed-price menu is constantly evolving. Our favorites so far: kimchee purée, foie gras, deep-fried short rib, cereal-milk panna cotta.
Note: Reservations are gone by 10:05, but cancellations occur throughout the day. Hang over the computer, and you might get lucky.
Scratchpad: Should we subtract a star for the absurd reservation system? But then we’d have to add it right back because the price is so good. And then there’s the food, which Chang, already a multi-star chef, takes to another level.

the Observer has a revelatory story about the overreach of nutritionists regarding toddlers' diets....

For years nutritionists have recommended a diet high in fibre and low in fat, with plenty of fruit and vegetables. Now, however, nurseries are being told the food they serve in accordance with these guidelines is unsuitable for toddlers and could lead to vitamin deficiencies and even stunted growth.

'Nurseries are applying the principles of adult healthy eating to the food they are supplying to young children,' said Sarah Almond, a consultant specialist paediatric dietician who has analysed the results of a trading standards study into nursery food.

'We expected the study to show nurseries were serving children food that was too high in calories, fat, saturated fat and salt, and low in vegetables and fruit. Instead, we found that the majority of nurseries had gone to the other extreme and appeared to be providing food that was too low in calories, fat and saturated fat and too high in fruit and vegetables.' This situation was putting children at the risk of developing nutritional deficiencies, she said.

The research also found that four out of five nurseries were giving children portions that were too small and only three in 10 provided them with meals containing enough calories. According to Almond, the under-five age group has different and specific nutritional requirements to those children of school age: pre-school children have a high energy and nutrient requirement. Because they have a small stomach and a relatively under-developed gut, they cannot consume large quantities of food at a time but need frequent small meals and snacks throughout the day.

In addition, too much fibre - such as that absorbed through over-consumption of fruit and vegetables - can result in insufficient intake of other food groups and inhibit the absorption of key minerals. 'Because a significant number of children attend nurseries from 7am until 7pm, the food and nutrition they receive there are key to their health,' said Almond. 'Nurseries are applying requirements of healthy eating for school-age children and adults to the one-to-four age group, who have entirely different requirements.'

In contrast to school meals, there are no government regulations for the provision of toddlers' meals. Guidelines from Ofsted and the government on healthy food for young children offer nurseries only general advice, with a suggestion that childcare agencies refer to the Food Standards Agency's advice on food and nutrition for young children. Experts say the lack of national legislation means the trading standards study, which analysed samples from one week's worth of breakfast, snacks, lunch and supper from every nursery in East Sussex, is likely to be an accurate reflection of the national picture.

'The majority of nurseries are confused or misinformed about what entails healthy eating for the under-five age group,' said Neil Leitch, campaign director of the Feeding Young Imaginations at the Pre-School Learning Alliance. 'They are over-focusing on the message about eating five portions of fruit and vegetable a day and forgetting that it is completely inappropriate to simply purée a meal that would be healthy for a four-year-old and feed it to a two-year-old.

'The nutritional content of toddlers' meals is a proper science and nurseries are simply not aware of vital calories, fats, carbohydrate, sugars, fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals.'

Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries' Association, agreed: 'Nationally, nurseries face conflicting advice about food. Consistent advice from Ofsted and other bodies about nutritional requirements for this age group are badly needed.'

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Last week I decided it was time to overcome my provincialism and take seriously the New York Times’ claim that Lai Wah Heen makes the best dim sum in North America. I wonder what kind of achievement that might mean. When Marco Polo hung out in Hangchow, he said one teahouse prepared l,000 varieties of dim sum. But then Marco was a bit of a Pinocchio. So I don’t expect lots of dim sum, but I do expect, because I’ve seen a picture of it, a rubberducky of a dumpling stuffed with foie gras. I am overwhelmed with curiosity how the chef Terrance Chan is going to bring this off.   more »

This is all Toronto, already battered by falling tourism, needs.  A stoning of a tarot reader.

The Toronto Sun revealed that  Stephanie Conover, an actor, singer, dancer, and current Miss Canada Plus 2007, was asked  if she would be interested in judging the 2008 Miss Toronto Tourism contest . She accepted, and sent along a brief bio detailing some of her interests, including knitting, reading, yoga, reiki, and tarot card reading. A letter came back from pageant organizers revoking her invitation because the latter two practices constitute "the occult" and "witchcraft." Reiki is a Japanese art that seeks to heal the body with energy, while Tarot cards are an ancient way of seeking spiritual guidance or entertaining friends when the cable goes out. She is a practising Wiccan.

The  letter noted that reiki and Tarot are not only unacceptable to "Jews, Muslims, or Christians," but to God Himself who said in Leviticus 20.6

 "I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums or spiritists to prostitute himself by following them...A man or a woman who is a medium...shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones."

Whew! The Miss Toronto Tourism pageant has no any apparent affiliation with the Toronto Convention & Visitors Association or other quasi-official tourism organization.

Organic cod farm shut down after losing £40m
Severin Carrell in Shetland
guardian.co.uk, Friday April 11 2008

Cod being farmed in Vidlin Voe in the Shetland Islands by Johnson Seafarms Ltd, the company behind the ill-fated 'No Catch' brand. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

A revolutionary scheme to grow organic cod in Scottish fish farms, touted as the ethical answer to a global crisis in fish stocks, has been shut down after it lost £40m in three years.

The world's first attempt to farm organic cod, "No Catch" fish was sold as a breakthrough in sustainable fisheries. Its costly marketing campaign boasted it would "save the planet" and claimed celebrities such as Demi Moore had savoured its ethically-conscious produce.

"Not too high a price to pay for a clear conscience," its adverts said.
But the administrators Grant Thornton, brought in earlier this year to rescue the Shetland-based business from total collapse, admitted that organic cod farming had been a financial disaster and had no realistic chance of succeeding.

It has sold the firm's fish- farming business to two Norwegian-owned companies, who will instead begin producing organic salmon in Shetland's coastal waters. Its last supplies of cod – totalling about 3,400 tonnes - would now be sold off at knock-down prices, less than a tenth of its original cost in the shops.

Nothing's perfect, certainly not organic food, but this story in the April l0 Guardian is one more example of organic issues...

· Danger to skin and lungs from mould spores in bins
· Families in Germany told to wear facemasks

Kate Connolly in Berlin
The Guardian, Thursday April 10 2008

German scientists are warning householders of the health dangers posed by storing organic waste, saying exposure to it, particularly to the moulds that develop as the material decays, can cause skin problems and even breathing difficulties.

Harald Morr, a leading pneumologist, who is also chairman of the German Lung Foundation, said studies showed that airborne mould spores from organic waste could lead to allergic reactions, asthma attacks, hayfever-like symptoms and itchy skin lesions.

"Even just opening the lid of a bin containing organic waste can cause mould spores to be stirred up which, if breathed in, can damage the lungs," said Morr. "The more spores breathed in, the worse the repercussions on one's health can be."

The British government wants kosher and halal meat to be labelled so customers know what they're buying -- animals that have had their throats slit and have bled to death and, according to government advisors, in significant pain.

More than 100 million animals a year are killed for kosher and halal meat in Britain. The animals are killed according to Jewish and Islamic law, and religious slaughter is exempt from the provisions of the British Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995, which insist that creatures such as cows, goats and chicken be stunned first.

In Canada where kosher food sales are rising, kosher meat must be labelled, there as yet no comparable law about halal.

Now let's have the same tolerance extended to foie gras. Animal activists actually threaten eaters and restaurateurs who serve the fabled goose/duck liver which is made by stuffing the animal. If bleeding an animal to death is ok as long as labelled, why can't foie gras too simply be labelled.

Those who don't like the method of slaughter can then not buy the meat.

I sat appalled last night watching TVO's The Agenda fall on its face as it tried to tackle the problem of attracting tourists to Ontario.

If I was someone planning a vist to Toronto, I'd have cancelled my tickets.

The focus was the culture of Ontario. On hand was a flannelmouthed pol Greg Sorbara, a satrap of the liberal govt, who's doing a study entitled something like Whither Ontario. Sorbara wasted little time showing he knew zero about culture by declaring the Stratford Festival was the greatest Shakespearean festival in North America -- funny it does so little Shakespeare!. In fact for the past twenty five years Stratford has been regarded as summer stock with a repertoire of hick productions of great American musicals.

Sorbara went on to boast that Toronto had the best the greatest restaurants ...before he was cut off. I wish he'd continued and then been questioned by Steve Paikin but alas, Paikin appeared to be on tranks.

Toronto restaurants are very good but to Americans they are also expensive, especially the wine. Restaurants need a break from Sorbara's tax mad government. It's not enough to bounce up and down with enthusiasm -- do something constructive.

Why is it taking so long for new restaurants to get liquor licenses?

Sorbara in full flow gushed about the little restaurants - "nooks" he called them. He is no doubt referring to the ethnic restaurants but Toronto is hardly alone in having scores of ethnic restos. Perhaps Sorbara hasn't heard of the rest of the world.

The show opened with the recent government ad for Ontario. A slick chick promoting sex against a background of water sports. Looks like Miami to me. It is Miami! The current Toronto tourism director was so successful in promoting South Beach as sex'n'sand that the liberal govt begged him to do the same for the glum beauty of Ontario. Wonder if anyone realizes that for most of the year you have to wear a wetsuit to swim in a lake?

For no sane reason The Agenda focussed on culture as a draw. The panel included William Thorsell of the ROM, Matthew Teitel of the AGO and Lisa Rochon, the architecture critic of the Globe. They showed immediately that they knew nothing about tourism. They talked the way self-congratulatory articrats talk -- as if above such vulgar things as money.

Well atleast we might have been told how the institutions which have just received a big whack of cash from Sorbara's government, are doing.

Since the Rom extension, locally called The Excresence, opened have visitors increased or decreased?

Are more people coming to Toronto just to see The Excresence? Or are they staying away because of it?

Is the Excresence paid off or are Excresence debts lingering on the ROM ledger? Considering Rochon smacked down The Excresence, wonder why she didn't ask the question. I seem to remember she recommended pulling the place down.

The AGO has been closed while it's latest do-over runs months behind. What does closing down like this do to its visibility? to its would-be patrons? Or don't people notice because they don't know what's in the collection.

What nobody discussed is whether it's a new building or What's IN a new building that draws tourists?

Fact is neither the ROM or AGO have buzz. They have mushroom exhibits. If I lived in Cleveland, a smaller city than Toronto, I would go not once but again and again to the art museum because it has a superb collection, five amazing Memlings alone and so much more besides. . I can't think of any reason to go to the AGO again because nothing wowed me. The last time I went to the AGO was to the touring exhibition from the Barnes Collection and that was years ago.

What puzzles me further is why David Mirvish and the Toronto Film Festival weren't represented on any panel about culture. Does Ontario not consider theatre and movies culture? Or isn't the culture snobbish enough?

I imagine Mirvish's Broadway tours and the Film Festival's roster of new movies pull far greater audiences than the ROM and AGO combined.

Saddest of all the program was successful only in one thing: it made Ontario culture seem deadly dull.

Jamie Cahill has wonderful article in this weekend's Financial Post called Let them eat leopard-fur éclairs



Boulanger Bruno Solques is a renegade. The lopsided, squashed berry tarts at his Paris boulangerie defy the rigid standards of traditional French pastry, where symmetry and presentation are of utmost importance.

“It’s sad to have a row of identical cakes,” he says. “It’s boring.” On the conventions of patisserie establishments, he says: “I know all the rules by heart, but I don’t want to follow them.”

Solques isn’t alone. A wave of classically trained patissiers are rejecting tradition and infusing creativity into one of France’s most revered gastronomic institutions. Whether it’s decidedly unfussy tarts, international influences or unexpected ingredients, these chefs are putting personal stamps on their pastries – and on the profession.

A few blocks away from Solques’ free-form cakes, the pastries at Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki are, by contrast, feats of geometric precision. They may look conventional but hardly taste that way. A fusion master, Aoki’s melding of Japanese art with French tradition has won over Parisians, starting with their beloved millefeuille. To build his version of the vanilla slice classic, he whips macha (green tea powder) into pastry cream, creating the millefeuille macha, one of his most popular items. Aoki adds Asian flavours to other creations, like sesame in flans or sweet red bean paste layered on feuilleté pastry.

For the truly adventurous, Right Bank patisserie Pain de Sucre specialises in offbeat sweets. Owners Didier Mathray and Nathalie Robert delight in surprising customers with new tastes such as their amertume, a brioche with endive and orange marmalade, beer mousse and crumbed candied chestnuts, or their tatigala, an almond pastry crust with praline cream, quince pulp, caramelised apple and rosemary.

The shop has a cult following for its marshmallows, prominently displayed in tall glass jars in the window. These bear no resemblance to the crusty, stale variety you may remember from childhood: instead they are melt-in-your-mouth clouds of delicate flavours such as fleur d’oranger, chestnut and honey, or saffron and green tea.

Perhaps no one is pushing boundaries more than 38-year-old pastry chef Sébastien Gaudard at Delicabar café in the chic Bon Marché department store. Gaudard turns the concept of a traditional French meal on its head, giving desserts prominence on his menu and mixing savoury and sweet selections. He pairs a savoury green vegetable consommé, for example, with a sweet soup of chocolate and spiced apples. Diners can also indulge in a creamy egg custard sabayon au chocolat or rich sabayon gratiné with Comté cheese and potatoes.

For the rest of the article go to FT Weekend Arts and Letters....

BB, before blogging, the print restaurant critic was the pioneer who fork in hand speared the big names then scouted for promising minnows. Now, we’re the rearguard action. By the time I get to a restaurant it’s already been picked over by the bloggers who are chowing down before a place is officially open. I love it. It’s not so
much the reviews – it’s the back story, I wouldn’t have gone to Sidecar (March 30) unless I’d tracked it for weeks on the web, the Aha moment coming when a blogger mentioned the $20 prix fixe on Tuesdays. My news peg.

The blogosphere isn’t always so beneficial. When I decide to go to Eight, the wine bar which has replaced Doku 15 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel on Colborne Street, I find bloggers making contradictory noises about the nibble-heavy menu and its sommelier, Zoltan Szabo, who offers an extensive list for discerning winiacs.   more »

This is why I'm a cynic. For more than fifty years, the public has been told by doctors etc to drink MORE water, to drink atleast 8 glasses of water a day. But the advice is worthless and worse could be harmful.

A University of Pennsylvania study now reveals that NOT A SINGLE study has recommended eating 8 glasses of water a day. So we've been wasting the world's dwindling water supply for nothing!

In fact you can drink too MUCH water --resulting in water intoxication, hyponatraemia (low salt levels) and even death. The obsession with maintaining hydration has led to an increasing rate of collapse among distance runners in the last decade who drink so much they suffer water intoxication.

Exception --The benefits of drinking a pint of water before bed after a night's drinking to ward off a hangover are, separately, well established.

That to me is the money quote in Bryan Burt's post yesterday. He is of course right, convenience and fast foods have removed the need to cook - which is why they were invented in the first place. One thing that seems to be forgotten in all the arguments about food and cooking today is WHO was expected to keep up the standards?

Women.

But anecdotal evidence now suggests women got dead bored with feeding a family that took mum's good cooking for granted. Moreover they could do little else. When I hear food snobs, and yes, despite Bryan's argument, I still call them that , complain about supermarkets and processed foods I hear an ancient patriarchal voice saying women's place is in the stove (thanks Mort Sahl, a comedian so much funnier than any today).

And that's why the food snobs will ultimately lose. Few women want to become kitchen slaves again now they've seen how much more interesting it is to work with people who aren't dependent relations.

Bryan Burt, a speech researcher at Queen's University, has been reading my comments on the organic food movement and now he's replying......

"For the last few years I've lived in Kingston, Ontario. There's a
pretty stark class divide here, and there are lots of poor people. I
live and shop in a neighbourhood that is primarily poor, and with some
interest I've observed the food culture that exists amongst the poor &
working class. Which is to say: there is no food culture. The problem
for these people is not that they're being hectored by elitist snobs.
The problem is that there is a shocking lack of basic education about
nutrition and food preparation.

You're quite right to say that 'cooking makes food good'. I don't
really care so much about the organics movement (though I feel there
is a lot more to it than buying food in order to make ourselves feel
smug). However, the important thing about the organics movement is
that it stresses food consciousness. The rising tide of convenience
foods and fast food is slowly eroding our knowledge of the basics of
food preparation. It's gotten to the point that most people don't know
how to cook at all.

You've suggested in the past that processed food is a social good
because it's all that the poorest among us can afford. In fact,
processed food is only affordable when it's compared to the most
boutique-y whole foods. Conventionally grown vegetables, rice and
legumes are incredibly cheap at supermarkets like Food Basics, No
Frills or Price Choppers. If poor people knew how to cook, they could
eat very cheaply - much more cheaply (and much more healthfully) than
a diet of Kraft Dinner, wieners and chicken nuggets.

I expect that the foodie scene in Toronto (and in the blogosphere)
sometimes feels like there's a consensus on organic and local foods,
and that by rebutting it, you're fighting the power. But in fact, the
movement for good food for ordinary people has a long, long way to go.

I welcome all updates on noisy restaurants.....

William Edwards reports: The food at Bistro Tati is truly worth the trip; noise level, NOT!
Thursday Marc 28 9.00p reservation - seated 9.20 but unable to carry on a conversation until dessert, when the restaurant emptied and background music was toned down.

Suggestion.
Reservations are usually made during the day, when there is no background noise.
Try calling back around the time of your desired reservation and the difference may be night and day - and you may avoid an unpleasant evening.