For Christmas a couple of years ago I got Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy. I wanted to start off really easy. So it looked like I would be making his version of scrambled eggs, which is more of a creamed egg dish and was the easiest recipe in the book.

Except that it called for crème fraîche.

“Bloody hell,” I said in my best North County-cum-Glaswegian accent. “Maybe it’s easy for those who stock crème fraîche for our everyday-bacon-and-eggs needs, but what about the rest of us?” At that point I’d never even seen it in a store. For novice cooks, this can put the brakes on full. And for the record, it can’t be replaced with sour cream, I’ve tried and the results aren’t good.

Continue reading Crème Fraîche Isn’t French Sour Cream »

La Fromagerie
868 College Street
416-516-4278

Robert Burns’ shop is tailored toward a nice hike in the mountains of France where he was once married. Not the correct footwear and walking stick one may need, but rather the food. Take several types of cheese, a couple of baguettes and several French saucission. He doesn’t sell the other integral ingredient, red wine, but that can be purchased on the way to the hillside.

Yet La Fromagerie is in fact near no French mountains, or mountains at all for that matter. This is College Street and the red streetcar going by clearly indicates this is Toronto. The hike required is only the one back home. And it’s probably only a block or two away, as this cozy cheese shop has a neighbourhood feel to it. Instead of laying out a picnic gazing across lush valleys, the reality is more like gazing across the living room floor at the television. Continue reading From the Mountains of College & Ossington »

“Where the M***F*** cheese go?”

So went the Ween lyrics to a proposed Pizza Hut commercial jingle, which, though ultimately declined, is the perfect theme song to my quest for cheese fondue.

What I want is a gently bubbling pot of kirsch-kissed Swiss cheeses, melting but slightly chewy gooey to the bite - (think mozzarella on pizza just out of the oven), soaked up by stiff cubes of baguette. Raclette, or Swiss style cheese fondue, is something I thought would be easily found in Toronto – don’t we have everything?

Continue reading Fondue Finds »

When I was little, I was all about the grilled cheese. In particular, my grandma’s grilled cheese. Every visit to her house meant gooey goodness in the form of heavily buttered Wonder Bread and cheddar (the real stuff - not a Kraft Single in sight), paired with Heinz and baby dills. Even though she never makes them for me anymore, my memories of those childhood lunches are warm and fuzzy. So when I noticed some gourmet grilled cheese offerings around town, I was tempted to see if they could become a grown up version of my favourite comfort food. The tasting began!

Continue reading Grilled Cheese Goes Gourmet »

Cheese Boutique
45 Ripley Avenue
416-762-6292

“Quality is our bottom line,” says Fatos Pristine while he displays the effects of aging on cheese. Fatos, as the owner of the Cheese Boutique, is largely responsible for how people in Toronto view not only cheese, but also gourmet food in general. With wire-rimmed glasses, a high hairline, and expressive hand gestures, Pristine could easily pass for an eccentric professor instead of a local cultural icon.

Continue reading A Dedication to Quality at the Cheese Boutique »

Thin Blue Line
93B Roncesvalles Avenue
416-840-6966

The old saying goes that “good things come in small packages”. Nowhere is that more true than the tiny little cheese boutique that opened on Roncesvalles Avenue last fall. Taking up half of a standard storefront and with maybe 100 square feet of space for customers, it’s a tiny little jewel box of carefully chosen items.

Continue reading The Cheese is Fine, I Walk the Line »

Everything, I should say. Especially if it is gorgeous artisan cheese found less than a 5 minute walk away from one’s doorstep. In the beginning of my Toronto life I was bemoaning the sad lack of decent cheeses in the neighbourhood. Little did I know that with my unerring foodie’s instinct I would very soon succeed in renting an apartment right beside a new-born local cheese heaven! Nancy Peppler opened her cheese stall at Harbord Bakery only this February. She is there in person four days a week and she also provides cheese-trays and catering service on request. So every time I come for the cheese I notice plenty of regulars queuing up and trying Nancy’s cheeses - usually more than a dozen of them, both local artisanal ones and great international varieties.

Continue reading What’s in a Cheese? »

Global Cheese
76 Kensington Avenue
415-593-9251

When I was twenty and still throwing my garbage off the balcony, my room-mate Max and I made our first trip to the grocery store together. We were young and poor and uneducated. He picked up a piece of havarti and exclaimed, “Wow, cheese is expensive!” and I didn’t really keep cheese in the house for the next five years. Then I found Global Cheese. Now I believe that cheese might release endorphins or make me a little high because if my stock runs down to one piece of cheese I start detoxing (dear dairy industry, I am not actually claiming that cheese is a narcotic).

No disrespect to Cheese Magic which, as my pal Natalie puts it, has the cutest boys, or Cheese Boutique which imports price-prohibitive rounds of artisanal cheese, but Global has the best selection, prices, and service.

Continue reading Cheesology 101 »

My highly anticipated visit started rather inauspiciously with high spirits slowly dampening under a cold drizzle as I waited for the complimentary shuttle to the show. I turned up at Kipling station at 3:10pm, found no indications of the special shuttle stop and spent some time asking around for the way to the stop (being secure with the website information of the next shuttle leaving at 3:30pm). By 3:50 I was chilled to the bone waiting at the curb of the road (as advised by staff) and boy, was I not alone! I hope all these people didn’t develop heavy head colds the next morning as I did. Finally by ten past four the shuttle came and took off to our great relief. Frankly, spending an hour of any day, let alone Saturday, like this is pretty lame. And isn’t it all about propagating the “Don’t drink and drive” program? OK, rant-time over.

The queue to the entrance moves quickly but as a proud owner of a complimentary ticket (thanks, organizers!) I get into the show hall even quicker, get a complimentary glass and bag and start exploring – or trying to explore! The hall churns with people, there is a deafening babble of voices mixed with live jazz music, and there is absolutely no exhibitors’ map I could follow, so I join the random waves of people pushing by the booths for cocktails, travel agencies, ostrich and sauerkraut hot-dogs (I had some later, it was really good!) and other food joints.

Continue reading Toronto Wine and Cheese Show 2007 »

Local turophiles have a pair a great events to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.

This Friday, March 23rd, the Ontario Cheese Society is holding their 3rd annual conference at the International Centre in Mississauga. This all-day cheese love-in will feature a keynote from Dr. Paul Kindstedt of the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese, sessions and panels on such topics as promoting local artisan cheese in restaurants and trends in organic dairying, and of course, cheese tastings. Attendees will also receive complimentary admission to the Toronto Wine & Cheese Show which will be taking place in the same location on Friday through Sunday.

And then on Saturday, March 31st, the very cool and mysterious sounding Confrérie des chevaliers du Taste Fromage de France (who I can’t help but picture as a French cheese lovers’ version of the Stonecutters) will be holding an induction ceremony at Cheese Boutique (45 Ripley Avenue). It’s very rare for them to hold this event outside of France, and it’s sure to be a great honour for those being inducted into their ranks: Chef Mark McEwan (North 44), Linda Haynes (Ace Bakery), James Chatto (Toronto Life), Michael Bonacini (Oliver Bonacini Restaurants), Chef Lynn Crawford (Four Seasons), Jacob Richler (National Post), Afrim Pristine (Cheese Boutique), Brian Langley (Longos) and John Louie Coppa (Highland Farms). The investiture will be taking place between 3:00 and 5:00 PM, but the whole day will be filled with French-themed entertainment and events, and presumably lots of cheese eating.

I have a cheesy confession to make. I love cheese, but while I enjoy French cheeses, not to mention Spanish, Greek, Georgian and so on, my heart is first and foremost given to the Italian ones. And so when I saw a familiar sight – loads of bocconcini swimming in whey and twinkling at me from Dominion’s cheese counter – I gleefully pounced and brought them home with me, looking forward to a treat. I tasted quite a few supermarket Italian cheese imitations back in Europe and some of them were quite good, so my hopes were high.

I didn’t even bother to check whether I had any tomatoes for Caprese salad, sure that my bocconcini woudn’t last till dinner-time. I was in for a big surprise though. Their texture proved to be rubbery and unexciting, their flavour – almost completely neutral, well described by the French word fade. In fact they were incredibly boring. Bocconcini stayed in the fridge for three days and were gone only because nothing edible can last long with two full-grown males in the house.

Continue reading In Search of Real Cheese »