I’ve never seen a more thoroughly bewildered person in my life, than that farmer right then.

This book is actually five of her early titles, bound into one, so I will count it as five — a welcome loophole, as I was falling behind schedule and this put me back on track.

M.F.K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher was a locavore and proponent of nose-to-tail eating before either of those concepts became gastro-fashionable. She is from a different era, when cooks used all parts of their groceries because it made fiscal, not moral or ethical, sense.

My favourite of the bunch was “Consider the Oyster.” There are two kinds of people in this world: those that love to eat oysters, and those who would gag to the point of vomiting from the slippy, cool, salty texture. It is a love letter to the most beautiful food we eat alive.

The cookbook/memoir is a breezy read, one that can be finished in a single sitting — unless you are inspired to get up and walk to your nearest fishmonger because the sound of Oysters a la Bazeine is too much to resist:

Oysters a la Bazeine, or Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense [ed's note: translated means "Evil to him who evil thinks."]

• Have on hand adequate supplies of sauce Béchamel, sauce Soubise, and velouté. (Recipes can be found in Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire, in Dumas’ Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine, or even in Andre Simon’s French Cook Book.)
• Prepare a roux of chopped chives, butter and rice-flour, and set it aside.
• Slice truffles paper-thin, and cut into the shapes of dolphins, crabs, and other sea-monsters. Set them aside.
• Poach brook trout, preferably alive, in a court-bouillon made with a good dry champagne instead of ordinary wine and water. Set them aside.
• Make a marinade, using fine instead of wine-vinegar, and in it marinate small cubes of Parma ham for several hours, or until a faint iridescence appears. Drain, and set aside.
• Prepare croutes by browning thick slices of fine white bread in Strasbourg goose-fat, and do not set aside.
• Instead, place them quickly on heated plates. Spread each tranche with Béchamel and then the roux. Set a trout carefully upon it, and coat with Soubise. Over this, sprinkle the cubes of Parma ham, and then a thin layer of velouté. Decorate lavishly with the truffle-silhouettes, and serve at once under bells with a modest but well-bred Sainte-Croix du Chateau Pinardino ‘08.
• Or fry oysters and serve with ale.

Hahaha! Like I said, Fisher was an antithesis to the Chowhound-esque gourmand, happily mocking fussy, molecular gastronomers before that was a thing, too.

I love fruit. I also love fruit-picking, and I especially love it when both of these things are free. It’s my second year as a volunteer for Not Far From the Tree, a wonderful group that seeks to share the bounty of the many backyard fruit trees within downtown Toronto. My experience with them has shown me how expensive and narrow our produce choices are in a grocery store. To wit, most everything at a Metro, Sobeys or Loblaw comes from outside Canada, often even at the peak of our local produce season. Peaches and cream corn is in full swing now, and yet I’ve see “Product of U.S.A.” on more than one basket of ‘em.

Once you’ve tasted a cherry clafoutis made from cherries picked that same day locally (as in, from a backyard in the city’s east end), it’s hard to go back to buying tasteless, mushy, scarily huge black cherry imports from Argentina. You pay nothing for the former, and though they are smaller, they are vastly superior in taste to the latter, and pesticide-free to boot. Once I had that revelation, I started seeing the telltale signs of urban fruit trees (stained sidewalks, wasps and flies, that sweet smell) everywhere, and I couldn’t turn off my radar: Saskatoon berry bushes on Ryerson’s campus; a mulberry tree in the parking lot across from my yoga studio; the crabapple tree at the bus stop near my boyfriend’s work.

Both mulberries and saskatoon berries were in season in early July. My friend Chantal was kind enough to share a goldmine of a mulberry tree with me, and we picked everything our arms could reach. I ended up culling about 5 or 6 cups of berries, which I froze until I found a recipe that fit. Mulberries are sweet on their own, but lack that berry tartness or deep flavour that makes them good candidates for snacking on. They reportedly do well in baked things, or situations where you can add a bit of lemon juice to give it that bit of needed oomph.

Then, I remembered Smitten Kitchen’s wonderfully adaptable Boy Bait recipe — so named because of its reported effect on the guys. I wouldn’t know — I bake all kinds of fruity stuff during the summer, but my boyfriend seems to hate everything except for bananas and apples. But I love this cake something fierce, especially because of its dense, finely crumbed texture. Ontario freestone peaches are in season, and I would eat those all day for the rest of my life if someone would pay me, so why not? Peach and mulberry boy bait it is.

Recipe after the cut.

I’ve adapted Deb’s recipe just a smidge: added some almond flavour here, doubled or tripled the fruit there. Certain fruits could benefit from some lemon zest, others from cinnamon. But it is addictively good, just as she lays it out. I halved this (using two eggs) and filled a 12″ round pan nicely.

Peach-Mulberry Boy Bait
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Cook’s Country

2 cups plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 tsp pure almond extract (or vanilla, if you prefer)
1 cup milk or buttermilk, if you have it
2/3 cup diced peaches, about the same size as your berries (I left skin on because I’m lazy)
2/3 cup mulberries, fresh or frozen (do not defrost)
* You could also substitute with blueberries, raspberries, almost anything your little heart desires.

For the cake: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour 13 x 9 baking pan.

Whisk two cups flour, baking powder, and salt together in medium bowl. With electric mixer, beat butter and sugars on medium-high speed until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated and scraping down bowl. Reduce speed to medium and beat in one-third of flour mixture until incorporated; beat in half of milk. Beat in half of remaining flour mixture, then remaining milk, and finally remaining flour mixture. Toss fruit with remaining one teaspoon flour (you do this so it won’t sink in the batter while it bakes). Using spatula, gently fold in fruit. Spread batter into prepared pan.

Bake in middle of oven until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes if you’re going to slide it out of the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Cake can be stored in airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.)

———-

With good reason, many berry pickers (like mushroom foragers) keep their best locations a well-guarded secret. Besides, part of the fun is tracking down your own spots, but here are some resources to get you prepared for next July:

• Unusual Fruits of North America
• Veg.ca — Foraging for wild berries in the city
• Now Toronto — City ripe for picking
• urbantoronto.com discussion on mulberry trees
• Toronto’s messy mulberry sidewalks

I’m not much of a baker — I’m constantly fucking up even basic cookie recipes. Luckily for me, I have mastered the recipe for the only cookie that matters, a.k.a Pierre Hermes’ fleur de sel and chocolate sables from foodbeam. Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve picked up his macaronage expertise, but I digress.

I signed up to bake foodbeam’s so horribly fluffy s’more cupcakes for the second annual CupcakeCampTO, which happened yesterday. Aside from getting to stuff your face, the proceeds go to the Daily Bread Food Bank, so it’s win-win-win (except for this morning, when I struggled to button up my jeans). Most camp bakers tend to be professional ones, and I thought I’d be outmatched in technique and taste. But lo and behold, I won in the “Best Twist on a Classic” category, so there’s hope for my pathetic not-baker ass yet. Thanks judges!

For those that feel inclined to recreate that campfire goodness in their own kitchen, my adaptation of Franny’s recipe is after the jump: a sweet-salty graham cracker crust and cinnamon-scented, brown-sugary cake, piled high with Italian meringue and a just-right amount of gooey chocolate.

This recipe is weight-based. Since I have been converted to this more accurate, consistent method, I refuse to offer measurement alternatives but instead beseech you to buy a food scale:

S’more Cupcakes
Makes 12 regulars or 24 minis

Graham crust:
1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp fleur de sel

Mix everything together.
Spoon mixture into cupcake liners in pan — a heaping teaspoon for minis, a heaping tablespoon or more for regular-sized.
Press evenly into bottom of pan — I used a small rolling pin that resembles a drink muddler. A shot glass would be dandy too.

Cake batter:
160g flour
3/4 tsp fleur de sel
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp cinnamon
60g butter, at room temperature
85g light brown sugar
one egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
160g milk

Preheat oven to 170°C/340°F.
Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon in a bowl.
Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in egg, until fully incorporated; then add the vanilla extract. Add flour mixture in three parts, each time alternating with the milk, until mixed.
Divide batter evenly among the paper cups (fill below the top of the pan — you want a relatively flat, slightly domed cake to allow for lots and lots of delicious fluff, right? For minis, I found an even tablespoon was the perfect amount). Bake for 20 minutes (13 for minis), or until a toothpick inserted into centre of the cupcakes comes out clean.
Cool on wire rack before frosting.

Italian meringue:
one egg white
75g caster sugar (though granulated worked fine for me as well)
2 tbsp water

Beat the egg white with a pinch of salt at low speed until it foam throughout. Gradually increase the speed to high, and beat to soft peaks. Turn the machine to slow as you complete the sugar syrup.
Bring the sugar and water to 115°C/240°F. (My burner maxed out at 200°F, but I had no problems with “cooking” the whites adequately.)
With the mixer at medium speed, pour the boiling syrup into the whites in a thin, steady stream. Increase the speed to high, and beat until the bowl is no longer hot (it should still feel slightly warm).
Pipe the meringue onto the cupcakes with a round tip. From here, you can keep the swirl, or smooth it into a neat dome with a spatula. Chill while you make the ganache.

Ganache coating:
150g double cream
150g dark chocolate

Bring cream to a boil on the stove.
Pour over chocolate in a big bowl and stir until smooth.
Dip cupcakes. I had to double-dip these suckers, because it was quite thin and the meringue was showing through.

A few notes about the coating: You’ll have extra ganache — use it as a dip, whip it into a frosting, or make truffles. In retrospect I would have used a ratio closer to 2:1 or even 3:1 of chocolate to cream. As delightful as it is to recreate the texture of melted chocolate, it was far too runny and sticky, and never hardened in the slightest. Next time, I even might try a tempered chocolate coating instead of a ganache dip — I think a crisp coating would be really nice.

In a test batch a few weeks ago, so as to be completely authentic, I tried adding wheat germ and bran to the recipe, in the proportions called for in graham flour. Do not do this. You end up with whole wheat muffins with meringue and chocolate.

Thanks again to Michelle and Monica for all the fun, and the sugar coma. Can’t wait to try another recipe for next year’s.

Eating local is expensive and time-consuming, which is why this consumerist movement will not easily trickle down into mass society. It requires a willful abstinence from convenience and plenty, a core promise of the modern world. Our bountiful era is predicated on the division of labor: We don’t sew our own clothes, we don’t build our own houses—and we certainly don’t farm—because we’re too busy doing whatever it is we do for everyone else.

—”My Empire of Dirt” in New York magazine

I don’t get it, but I LOL’ed:

Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them breaks and splinters. That is the “loser,” and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3×5 card reading, “Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.”

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this “grant money.” I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.

There can be only one.

By this logic, I guess plain chocolate M&M’s really are the superior product. Take that, peanut eaters! From Roger Ebert’s blog.

I feel infinitely less cranky, less stagnant, now that I have time in the kitchen to myself to make a proper meal. The kind made with real ingredients, the stuff that existed 100 years ago before food processing, and will exist 100 years from now. And now that it’s summer, I have a burning desire to eat local as often as I can — an ambition made easier now that I can avail myself of the farmer’s market that sets up shop every Wednesday morning at Nathan Phillips’ Square (in my backyard). So, I can eat well again. And it is glorious. To celebrate that, I made a Niçoise salad, a traditional French dish and perhaps the perfect summer dinner, one-pot and all that.

Ingredients

• One cob of corn, steamed and cut into kernels
• 5 or 6 baby red potatoes, skins on and still firmish
• French green beans, blanched
• Tomatoes (I like heirloom types, miniature plums, etc. Anything but grape tomatoes — they’re too sweet. If you can, avoid cutting them because it will make the whole dish wet)
• Asparagus spears, blanched (Okay, these aren’t in a traditional Niçoise, but I love them and I have a whole bunch in the fridge.)
• Hard-boiled egg, halved
• Handful of black olives
• Anchovies optional

Dressing

• Fresh tarragon
• Fresh chives
• (Actually now that I think about, just throw in all the fines herbes)
• 1 large clove of garlic, smashed and minced
• Handful of finely chopped onions
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

The potatoes should still be warm when you serve it. Toss everything into a bowl. Oh, and no lettuce or cheese. Just, no.

I am not of the fish-eating variety, but if you’d like, sear a tuna steak and throw it on top. There is some debate as to whether they are supposed to come with meat anyway, but I imagine this is very good.

Not only is this actually filling, but seriously how glad am I to eat a salad that doesn’t have spring mix or some citrusy-sweet-basil-suck dressing on it.

(Also, can I talk about how much I love the “Diamond Shreddies” ad campaign for this deliciously waffled whole wheat delight? An intern came up with the whole concept. Sometimes I think about going over to the dark side. Olgilvy & Mather probably gave that intern a sweet, sweet bonus.)

Rayman’s Rabid Rabbids: This game is so awesome. If you are amused by the following:

• shooting toilet plungers at rabid, wild-eyed bunnies
• dancing a la Dance Dance Revolution to a bunny-sung rendition of such classics as “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” “Rapper’s Delight,” and “La Bamba”
• frantically milk cows
• racing a giant spotted warthog around an abandoned ocean island
• playing dentist by pulling worms from the rotten teeth of a rabbit, or
• listening to fart noises

…then you will probably like this game.

Basically, if you’re as schizophrenically-interested in video games as I am, have my (i.e. a five year old’s) level of maturity, or have a sick twisted sense of humour (e.g. me), there’s no way you will ever have to spend $70 on another Wii game.

I also like Danone’s Silhouette “spring water-based beverage” made with “natural flavours” and is “sugar free”. It’s kinda wack that a yogurt company is bottling water, and I can only assume by the label, which indicates it’s bottled by “DNW,” that it probably means Dasani (a.k.a. Coke’s successful campaign to sell a de-ionized version of our own tap water back to us for ridiculous mark-up) is behind it, so the morality is kinda sketch. But, it’s addictive. I can’t vouch for any flavour other than the Pink Grapefruit Green Tea, but my god, finally a drink that isn’t sickly-sweet. For $1.29 you get one litre of delicious, 0 calorie, subtle deliciousness.

Still, so many questions: how can it be naturally-flavoured green tea with no green hue? Is there any actual juice in it? Does Danone actually think anyone is going to implement a full Silhouette-approved diet lifestyle and subsist entirely on unappetizing, saccharine, fat-free yogurt and “water beverage”?

These questions are yet to be answered.

Speaking of horrible cliches, here are some
Things I Don’t Like

Token Journalism-Related Rant: I hate newscasters, especially sportscasters with a horrifyingly low regard for journalistic worth, using the following phrases:

• remains to be seen
• has yet to answer
• the question remains
• it’s still unclear whether

The Dollar: As if I didn’t need another reason to hate Bush and his insane economically-driven-plundering-of-the-Middle-East-disguised-as-democratic-zeal, my paycheques are now worth approximately 60% of what they used to be when I started last July (then, $1 USD = $1.4 CDN; now, we are beyond parity… two cents over, to be exact). I work for a San-Francisco-based small press company. Thus, I am paid in American dollars. When I was hired on, I was being paid the equivalent of $14 an hour as a publishing intern, an unheard-of rate in an industry as rampantly cheap as book publishing. Now, almost 16 months later, I’m making less than I did as a shopgirl at H&M. Thanks a lot, asshole.

The worst part of this is, not a single business has adjusted their consumer product prices to match the dollars’ values. Until this stops, I’m not buying anything that is a) not on American eBay, or b) has more than a 5% difference in MSRP. Here’s a guy that agrees with me.

You knew it was coming. There are few Torontonians more paradoxically in love/hate with their hometown than me, but nevertheless I maintain a sense of pride for Hogtown/the alternatingly best-worst city in Canada. When I travel, I inexplicably and annoyingly constantly refer back to the virtues of my city, while ironically, at home I do nothing but bitch about how badly I want to be traveling instead.

Escapism aside, there are really only three reasons why I travel:
1) photography (check)
2) clothes (check)
3) food

After falling in love with The Cupcake Shoppe in Toronto earlier this year, I was anxious quell my inner foodster once more and try Magnolia’s version to see how it stacked up (like the rest of the world, Lazy Sunday was my introduction).

 

Here are the Cupcake Shoppe’s versions:

Magnolia’s:

So even if Toronto stands in as a second-rate facsimile for New York in film production, culture, music, art, education and atmosphere, at least we can say we have better cupcakes.

PS: Maybe I’m just being a sourpuss because I walked 30 mins in hot-as-balls weather to get to this place and built it up in my head. Whatevs.