I grew up on Lebanese food.

I’m not Lebanese. But growing up in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, I might as well have been. The Island has, for its population, a sizable Lebanese community. A lot of the merchants on the Island are Lebanese, one of Charlottetown’s city councilors is, and PEI has now had two premiers of Lebanese decent.

My grandmother’s bridge parties consisted of her and five Lebanese ladies.

Now, the how and the why so many people from that area of the world ended up on PEI remains a mystery to me (although I’m pretty sure there is a book or two explaining it), all I know is I love Lebanese food. Not Israeli, Syrian, Cypriot or whatever. No, it’s Lebanese I love. One of the best restaurants in Charlottetown is Lebanese, Cedar’s Eatery, and I grew up eating there and eventually ended up running their upstairs bar.

I shit falafel.

Ever since leaving the Island to come to Toronto we have yet to find a restaurant, Middle Eastern in general, Lebanese specifically (but you knew that already), that has yet to match the wonder that is Cedar’s.

Continue reading In Search of the Perfect Hommous »

The pre-packaged take-out salad is a fickle beast, typified by soggy iceberg lettuce with a well-loved grilled chicken breast, a few nuts or slices of red pepper, and a choice of any number of healthy and not-so-healthy dressings. At price points above most other menu items, fast food salads are not the ideal choice for the food-lover in search of a lunch that is wholesome, fresh and fast. Nonetheless, there are a few options that combine grab-and-go convenience with finer food quality. Between the mainstream and high-end supermarket salad bars, and the new “build-your-own” salad restaurants, the exacting herbivore need not compromise on value and freshness. Looking at the variety and quality of the goods, the bang for your buck and the grab-and-go factor, it’s clear that there is now a lot of choice for greens on the go. But how do the competitors stack up?

Continue reading The Great Salad Toss-Up »

My co-worker loves congee and thinks it’s great comfort food. Although I agree, I’ve never heard of anyone actually having a craving for it, let alone who wasn’t raised on it.

Congee, a rice porridge typically eaten for breakfast in many Asian cultures, can be of various styles and consistencies that can be accompanied with a variety of ingredients. Like chicken soup, it’s served as therapeutic nourishment for those under the weather as it’s light, and easy to digest. It’s also an inexpensive meal in a bowl that’s tasty and sating.

Continue reading Comforting Congee »

Taramosalata, sometimes spelled taramasalata, is a classic Greek appetizer that is a tongue-tinglingly salty, creamy, sensual and sunny-bright delight, harbouring a complex taste and texture resulting from the intimate mixture of a few ordinary elements. Taramosalata’s basic components are red fish roe (usually cod or carp), bread or potatoes, lemon juice, and olive oil. These are whipped together resulting in a smooth-ish paste usually served with pita for dipping or, in my case, scooping. Perfect with a glass of resin-y retsina.

Continue reading The Drama of Taramosalata (or Caviar Emptor) »

My first encounter with escargots wasn’t a very good one. I was about seven at the time. Rather than being repulsed by the thought of eating a creature that left a trail of slime as it crawled around the back garden, I was quite keen on the idea. My mother had been given a “kit” comprising a tin of snails, a dozen or so snail shells, and four double-pronged forks. Mom set to work preparing the dish, stuffing the wee snails into their shells, sealing them inside with cold garlic butter, and then popping them under the broiler until the butter was melted and bubbling. Unfortunately some vital step in the preparation had been overlooked (I still don’t know which one it was), and the snails, once dug from their shells with those special pointy forks, had the taste and texture of large pencil erasers that had been stewed in a puddle of buttery mud.

Yet for some reason, that first experience with escargots left me undeterred. Which is a good thing, otherwise I would have missed out on a few delightful gastropodous experiences in our fair city.

Continue reading On the Trail of the Snail »

While its origins are still a matter of mild controversy (New York City?Or Omaha?), the basic Reuben is essentially a grilled or toasted sandwich made with rye bread, corned beef or pastrami, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and either Russian or Thousand Island dressing. It’s comfortingly uncomplicated, but the combination of its relatively simple ingredients elevates it to the level of sandwich that causes those experienced in Reuben magic to crave one the moment its name is mentioned. That’s what happened to me when a friend shared his recent memory of a wonderful Reuben he had enjoyed during a visit to Montreal. I immediately decided that my next mission in life was to check out a few places in our own fair city to see if I could find the tastiest real deli deal.

Continue reading A Quest for the Reubenesque »

As a kid bread used to mean symmetrical square slices of white bread to me - I didn’t know any better. It was just seen as a carrier for the better things in life, like meat and spreads. Nowadays, artisanal breads are giving the white loaf a run for their money, with so many bakeries popping up in our city providing us with lovely bread varieties. The best part is the availability in both independent food shops and the big chain grocery stores. As I enjoy doing product comparisons, I did a head-to-head among several baguettes in town to see who can live up to the “Parisienne standard” of the ideal baguette. This was a dream for my husband (a big bread snob), as that meant he could devour artisanal bread galore for several days sequentially.

Continue reading Baguette Bounty »

A sudden craving came recently to mind one day, but there was a problem. I only knew it as ke le bin in Chinese. But it’s neither Chinese, nor for that matter originally Japanese as I later found out. A twist on the French croquette, korokke, is typically made with mashed potato or a thickened white sauce base. Eaten as a snack or an accompaniment to curry and rice, it is found in bakeries, supermarkets, and restaurants all over Tokyo.

Continue reading Craving Korokke »

“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 »

The ready-to-go (a.k.a home meal replacement) market has become all the rage, where you can pick up almost anything for dinner on a run-through in a food store of some sort. The meal is on the table fast, and it takes the worry out of what to cook up for dinner. Sure, it isn’t the same as a homemade, slow-cooked meal, but admit it – there are times where this is the alternative for those time-pressed days. My curious mind wanted to put a popular home meal replacement product to the test – the rotisserie/roasted chicken. So who makes an acceptable rotisserie chicken? Since there was only so much chicken I could consume without becoming one, I narrowed down the choices to three outlets that have their unique advantage in attracting the consumer:

My husband was my fellow designated eater for this taste test. We tried the products all within one week, and maintained the same side dishes of rice and corn. Plain yes, but the focus was on our poultry companions. Here are the results…

Continue reading Battle of the Rotisserie Chickens »

As I mentioned last week when discussing sandwiches, there are a number of food trends that have taken off south of the border that just never got a footing here. Cupcake bakeries or boutiques – shops dedicated solely to cupcakes – is one of those trends that seems to have passed us by.

It looked like Toronto might ride the waves of buttercream frosting when The Cupcake Shoppe opened a few years ago, but no real competition stepped up. Sure there were plenty of bakeries that started offering the tasty treats in addition to their regular selection of pastries, but none willing to deal exclusively in the little, sweetly decorated cakes.

Which leaves anyone jonesing for a cupcake fix with no choice but to run around searching for good ones. Because not all cupcakes are created equal.

Continue reading Who You Calling Cupcake? »

If there is nothing more American than apple pie, then the one food that screams “North America” is peanut butter. Aussies and Europeans cannot fathom our infatuation, beginning with George Washington Carver and lasting through to present-day. The idea of grinding up nuts, seeds, and grains into pastes is hardly new, but peanut butter casts a long, sticky, delicious shadow on this continent.

However, as other nut butters become less obscured by this ubiquitous legume, their availability increases. I have even spied almond butter at Dominion a time or two, but for a real selection, I stopped by The Big Carrot and picked up six varieties.

Continue reading Oh, Nuts! »

Somehow during Chinese New Year celebrations last month, I missed out on the sesame balls. I had Dragon’s Beard candy and dumplings and many other traditional foods, but no sesame balls. As deep-fried sesame balls are one of my favourite treats, regardless of the time of year, I set off to Chinatown one day last week to rectify the situation. But I was curious – who had the best sesame balls? In recent years, I swore by Furama Cake and Desserts Garden on Spadina Avenue, mostly because it was the place I passed most often, yet my husband Greg frequented Yung Sing Pastry on Baldwin Street, as it was close to his office, and was adamant that the best sesame balls could be found there. So, we did a taste test – each of our favourites plus two others thrown in for good measure. I did my taste test knowing which ball was which, but Greg tasted each dessert “blind”, not knowing which ball came from which bakery. Our results were the same.

Continue reading Have You Got the Balls? »