Volume 1, Number 7 | Toronto, Ontario| A Malcolm Jolley website | News & features from the good food revolution

And This Little
Piggy Had Pinot

Photo: Noelle Munaretto

How do you pair wine with pork? Master Sommelier, John Szabo, suggests matching wines with piggy dishes. More>>

In Season Now:
Hardneck Garlic

Stratford area garlic farmer Warren Ham of August Harvest Farm, tells Culinarium's Kathleen Mackintosh that his 'Northern Porcine Hardneck' variety of the alluvium is best tasting in the world, with it's own flavour, distinct (though accompanying) typical garlic heat and bite. Good thing, as the Kazakhstani variety loves our cold winters.

Culinarium, Ontario's Locavore Store, generously sponsors GFR's weekly seasonal produce report.

James Beard Award winner David Leite is best known for his recipe heavy food site, leitesculinaria.com. Fans of the website know he is a passionate defender of Lusitanian cuisine and the 250-odd pages of The New Portuguese Table may well give the West Coast of the Iberian Peninsula its deserved place in the Pantheon of European cuisine. More>>

ON Rosé Under $15
 

Pinot Noir rosé is quickly becoming a Niagara and Prince Edward County signature wine, as vintners use the grapes not quite up to their top labels for easy drinking pink wine. And so it should be. At $14.95, we love the  Flat Rock Cellars' 2008 Pinot Noir Rosé (LCBO# 39974) which blends typical pink wine strawberry notes with typical Pinot cherry ones. There's just a hint of cedar too. A sort of PN light, which works when chilled well and paired with a simple pasta of seasonal vegetables, garlic and olive oil. ON PN News: Jancis lauds Closson Chase and Clos Jordanne.

Chef John Lee blogs from Barcelona's Michelin-starred restaurants, GFR's gourmet media round-up (food stories from around the world) and More>>

Best Tanzanian in Toronto?

Lorette C. Luzajic gives
The Real Dish

Refreshing Rosé Under $15

The best bottle of rosé I ever had in my life was on the patio of a Bistrot attached to a Relais & Chateau  Hotel in the Dordogne (the wine was a Bergerac), and it cost 13 Euros. Rosé shouldn't be expensive. $19.95 for a proper Tavel is just barely excusable, but even so... The 2008 Mas des Bressades Cuveé Tradition Rosé (LCBO# 950576) is $13.95 and when Billy Munnely says this rosé is "always the best deal in Rosé from the south of France," we nod in agreement and hope he won't mind the further theft of his review: "Creamy rich with delicious berry flavours and a ton of charm," because it is worth reporting. Strawberries, with a refreshing raspberry-twangy lift at the finish, says our panel of experts, (er - me and Mrs. GFR and our hosts at dinner recently) in a pathetic attempt to bolster our legal defence at "fair use" copyright protocol. It's also $14 and really good out of the fridge on a (finally) hot summer night with juMalcolm Jolley

BREAKING NEWS: RONCESVALLES TO FINALLY GET LCBO.

Ivy Knight Eats Stratford

Photo: John Gundy

Ivy Knight heads to her "Ontario Culinary Mecca" with a mission to eat well, and shows a few kids how to cook. More>>

Why a 1973 French Haute Cuisine Odyssey and Photography Exhibition, Inspires Toronto Chefs

l’Oasis in La Napoule, France, 1973. Photo: R. Harting

Why top Toronto Chefs are dropping everything to cook around these photos, Plus: Arlene Stein explains why the Harting's journey through Michelin-starred-France matters now. More >>

Bufala in Ontario

Finalmente. Local buffalo mozzarella is being produced in Ontario, reports cheese guru Andy Shay, with delicious results just in time for Caprese salad season. More>>

Le Grand Prix Fixe

2009 will surely go down in Toronto fine dining circles as the year of the prix fixe. This month Scaramouche announced their high-end Champagne inspired bargain menu, while Mildred's Temple Kitchen is enticing time-starved Liberty Village loft-office lunchers with their "Quickie Menu". But the greatest (benevolent) prix fixe conspiracy goes to Crosstown Kitchens and friends who have designated August as a month-long Stop For Food PF bargain in aid of the innovative food charity, The Stop. More>>

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All The Best Fine Foods

In the summer of 1973, Toronto photographer Toni Harting and his wife Ria flew to their native Holland, rented a VW camper van, drove it to Paris and onwards to the Cote d'Azure on a mission to spend a modest inheritance from his mother on ten three-Michelin-star meals in 20 days. In the summer of 2009, Toronto gallery owners Johanna Reynolds and Zack Kellum are mounting an exhibition of Harting's photos from the trip with the help of some of the city's best and brightest chefs and sommelier Jamie Drummond.  More>>

Ontario Watermelon

Watermelon may not seem like the quintessential Upper Canadian treat, but locavore store owner Kathleen Mackintosh
reports that Culinarium has just received their first Ontario watermelons from the Mennonite HOPE Co-op in, near Aylmer. The naturally raised fruits are a modest four to six pounds and come in seedless as well as golden varieties. The size is just enough melon for one sitting, and a few hours from field to store to table means they have a bright, tip of the tongue fresh sweetness that stale imports can't ever match.

Wine Under $15: White Rioja

The Spanish love oak, and no more so than in Rioja. But while the region is famous for its reds, 'The Charge' from La Bascula (LCBO# 103440 - $14.25), is wonderfully smooth and complex white wine from the region and made with the rather obscure varietal Viura. It's full of barrel-fermented richness, without the cloying sweetness a lot of oak can impart on clumsily made wines. The wine is fresh and deep at the same time: lemon with a hint of honey and vanilla. This is a perfect match for the acidity of raw tomatoes in a Caprese salad, for instance. At $14.25 it's an absolute steal. Click here for LCBO stores stocking it now.

What would this man barbecue?

Locavore maven and Culinarium proprietor Kathleen Mackintosh
figures Ontario's founder Sir John Graves Simcoe would opt for Angelo Bean's all-Ontario Salsiccia Ubriaca: pasture-raised Berkshire pork sausages infused with Henry of Pelham's Riesling or Baco Noir wine, using Bean's secret concentrating method. Perfect for Monday's holiday, bearing Simcoe's name. Bean markets his sausages under the moniker 'Ontalia' in homage to the traditional foodways of his native Italy and his insistence on using high quality local ingredients from his adopted home, Ontario. His sausages are available at Culinarium and All The Best Fine Foods.

Food Day Canada

Food activist and Canadian culinary chronicler Anita Stewart has declared August 1st "Food Day Canada". An extension of her annual 'Longest BBQ' project, Stewart wants Canadians to cook something and local and tell each other about it. Visit flavoursofcanada.ca to register and read the stories.

Is Canada in the Weeds?

Phaidon is publishing a book this fall called COCO featuring the world's 100 top young chefs and not one is Canadian. Why? A super-chef selection panel, which included Mario Batali, Gordon Ramsay and Alice Waters, did not deem a single Canadian chef worthy. Toronto Food writer Shaun Smith has learned that there's still one spot open in the book and is trying to reach Phaidon with a campaign to nominate a young Canadian chef. Visit ShaunSmith.ca to join the movement. As of Thursday afternoon, Smith reported support from Susur Lee, Guy Rubino, Marc Thuet, Karen Barnaby and Naomi Duguid as well as noted food writer James Chatto and OHI Chair and local chef advocate Charles Grieco.

GoodFoodRevBlog

Photo: Tawfik Shehata

Writer, cook and now broadcaster: Ivy Knight is on the radio with her summer show Swallow. In this exclusive piece, she gives Good Food Revelation readers the inside scoop on how Toronto's multi-food-media-darling got on the air and what she's up to on it. more>>

Next week at GoodFoodRev.com: Two Transformations...
Wine seller Paul DeCampo manages the Good food Box at FoodShare and fine dining chef Chris Brown moves kitchens to The Stop Community Food Centre. Each tells GFR how their new jobs have changed and inspired them.

Andy Shay on Cheese

GFR's Cheese Guru, Andy Shay looks for new artisanal cheeses and travels to a strip mall for Kajmak a fresh-made Serbian cheese... more>>

Truly New Potatoes

IN SEASON IN ONTARIO

Gourmet News: see GFR's Blog for links from the world's gourmet media.