Best meals (out) of 2013

As we head into 2014 with great enthusiasm, let's look back at some of the best meals we had in 2013. It was a year filled with trials and tribulations, no doubt, but also some really great food.

 Locanda Verde, New York City

We went during Legal Tech in February with some work friends. Jennifer came down from T.O. to spend a couple of days.We tried practically everything on the menu.  Meatballs so good you couldn't even believe it. Pasta fantastic. Atmosphere was super hip (a bit overwhelming for me, but I managed). Not very poetic, this is why I'm not a restaurant reviewer.

Topolopambo, Chicago

Rick Bayliss has been the inspiration for my Mexican cooking fetish. From him I have learned so much about flavours and textures as well as styles of cooking. Have wanted to eat at one of his restaurants for years and this year on my birthday, we did it.  The service was absolutely spectacular and as I'd been sick all day, the gentle touch went a long way with me. We had the tasting menu (which changes every few months) but the flavours, combinations, and textures of the beautifully presented food absolutely lived up to expectation. We will be going back (and here's the post about that adventure).

East Indies, Eighth Bastion Hotel, Cochin, India

The food during our trip to India got better every day. Eating in the state of Kerala in the south provided new tastes and adventures. The seafood, especially the giant blue prawns, was prepared simply and deliciously. It proved to me, that yes, I could eat Indian food every day. On our last day in India we went to East Indies in Cochin. The food was Dutch-Indian fusion providing a modern and artistic twist on the local cuisine. Just absolutely fantastic and a great way to end our adventure.

 

Taqueria El Farolito, San Francisco

I am all about the high-end restaurants but give me a dive with cheap food and off-the-charts delicious food, and nothing makes me happier. I was in San Francisco for a conference and wanted to have a Mission Burrito. There is much debate over the best burrito in SF but I landed on El Farolito. Outstanding. I had a tongue/steak burrito (no beans, sadly) with a horchata. Sat with a really interesting young chef who was off to see a concert with some friends. Enjoyed the whole experience of being human that night.

Now don't think that we didn't also have some great food at home in Toronto. We sure did!

Hopgoods Foodliner 

This was Jennifer's choice for her birthday. A bit of Atlantic Canada in west end Toronto. Go there, it's fun. Try the crab dip with triscuits. Also the Halifax Donairs (with sweet sauce), Digby scallops, and the Cape Breton snow crab (served cold on a tower with ice). All dishes made for sharing, so go with lots of people as you'll want to try many things and having pals with you means you won't leave so full you don't know what to do with yourself!  Again, another place with great service, which made the evening despite the cranky pants fella at the table next to us. 

Union

I have a great fondness for the charcuterie and it's quite the rage all over the place these days. So I have had quite a few, some good some not so great. Union's was probably the best I had this year. All made in-house (including the smoked meats). Definitely enough for a meal - hearty and delicious. Lots of comfort food and great drinks in this very small restaurant.

The Chase

I have a lot of business lunches and the food is often expensive and generally pretty decent. I'm not one to hop on the bus of trendy and "it" places (which this apparently is) but I am going to say that I had one of the best lunches I've ever had here. As a starter I had the avocado stuffed with a shrimp salad - who knew you could slice avocado so beautifully thin?! My main was scallops with quinoa, a pea puree and a soft poached egg. I can't describe the sweet, velvety deliciousness of this emerald green dish. I can taste it now just writing about it. I am actually afraid to go back because I don't believe it'll ever be that good again and who needs the disappointment.

 

Richmond Station

This downtown spot hidden away beside the ramp to the Bay Adelaide parking garage. Perhaps J's favourite of the year. Top choices: the suprisingly delicious quinoa salad and the best halibut in town. We were repeat offenders here (although not as frequent as our pal Sarah!).  

Of course, lot of great food made at home but that's another story altogether. We didn't actually eat out as much, or at least eat out at "fancy" places, as in past years. But usually we ended up at totally worthwhile places. There are always lots of great places to discover in Toronto, and we will continue our urban adventuring in 2014. Happy New Year.

Pride and Remembrance Run.

This morning, I ran in the Pride and Remembrance Run (5K).  I had a personal best of 32:37 and my goal was a sub-35min, so yippie for me.  (My *real* goal was sub-33, so you can imagine my elation.)  The race had a great energy despite the INCREDIBLE heat.  Thank heavens for low humidity, but it was a scorcher! 

Oh yeah!  Action shot baby!  That's me cranking it up at the end... I am really proud of myself. 

They had a TON of food after... bananas, apples, yogurt, OJ, pasta salad, and CUPCAKES!!!!!!

Yummmmmmmy!  Thanks Dufflets! 

So all in all, it was a good run.  I have been a bit slack with my training lately, just really tired.  I find the heat really stifling when I run, but this was a great run, lots of fun, and really motivated me to step up my training for the half.  And honestly, running in races is just good times. 

Wine & chocolate & extraordinary women

G here again . . . feeling the need to share on the nibblies front.

Last week I was invited by a law firm to it's "5th annual extraordinary women's wine and chocolate extravaganza." I'm supposing it's because I'm so extraordinary that I made it on to the invite list . . . hmm.

Anywho, walked in the door and was met with a glass of champagne with a little raspberry in the bottom and really, that's the way to start off any event. In fact, I think each workday should begin in that fashion and it would all just be so much more pleasant.

The chocolates on offer were from Stubbe Chocolates and choclatier Daniel Stubbe was on hand to chat about his creations. There were six chocolates paired with wines. Now I will say that I tried all the chocolates but not all the wines, although I did give a couple a go.

First up (and I did not take any photos) and because I may have mentioned that I'm on a chili binge, I had the rasampatti chili with bittersweet chocolate. This was a ganache filled offering made with a not-too-hot Indian chili that gave a sweet first taste then gradually left you with a bit of the chili heat. It was paired with Ricossa Moscato D'Asti, a sweet dessert wine that really added a depth and roundness to the chocolate. I had a few tastes of this one! It was my favourite. Daniel said he had spent quite a lot of time using different chilis to get one that worked with this and that it's always a bit of a challenge using chilis which get spicier as the days go by. This was still fairly mild as he said they'd only been made a few days before.

Secondly I tried the solid pink peppercorns on dark semisweet chocolate, which was also delicious. It was paired with the Muskoka Lakes Windery Red Maple, a dessert wine made with cranberries and maple syrup. Again a nice sweet wine against the spicy chocolate. Liked this one as well. The chocolatier again said he'd experimented with different types of peppercorns and finds the pink ones to be the best for the chocolate as it is more delicate than black or white.

The most unusual one I tried was the hard lemongrass in bittersweet chocolate, which actually had a really refreshing taste to it, just as you would imagine lemongrass would. Nice and light. The third and last of the hard chocolates was a wild fennel in semisweet chocolate, which was not too licorice-tasting and really quite pleasant.

There were two other ganache-filled options: Tanzania dark chocolate, which was a straight-up deliciously deep chocolate and balsamic vinegar in dark chocolate, a taste sensation. The trick to the balsamic filling is using a vinegar that's about 5 years old, nothing to dense or fancy, apparently. You need to have a bit of the tartness and if you use well-aged balsamic it's too sweet and often too viscous.

All in all a really fun evening chatting about chocolate and ingredients. And we got a little box of treats to take home.

Calphalon Cooking Class -- Day 1.

Last night, I finished my four week fundamentals of cooking course at Calphalon. It was an absolutely amazing experience, and I highly recommend it if you live near a culinary centre (which are apparently only exist in Toronto and Chicago). It was an early birthday present, and worth every penny!!!

The class went through a series of cooking techniques, letting us cook several things in each class, trying out new methods (and new Calphalon cookware!). The ingredients were tops, the instructor Ian was fantastic, and the class participants were really ridiculously nice people.

Here's the instructors...Ian and Donna...


(This was at the end of a very hot and sweaty class! Tired, I am sure, but look how happy they were!!! Ian really had a great way of explaining things, and Donna was super great walking around and showing us how to do things correctly!)

When you show up for class, you are given a little "chef's creation" plate of food, and you sit at a work station and zen out. Here's my work station...


The first picture shows the set-up when we arrived. There's an apron, blue towel for clean-ups, and a tea towel to put on our apron strap to use for hot things, etc. The plate of food is that week's creation, which was a marinated eggplant and little salad. I forgot to take a picture, I was so nervous about the class!!! The second picture is the top of my binder and the burner. We had a series of bowls to use for mixing, trash bowls, etc. We each had two burners of our own, and our own pots, pans, and plates.

The way the class was set up really worked! Ian would talk about the thing we were about to prepare, and then we would bring a cafeteria tray up to the front of the room where our ingredients would be given to us to take back to our work stations. At that time, we'd drop off any used cutlery, knives, bowls, etc.

Our first task was fruit salad. We were learning knife skills.


There's our "fixings". Pineapple, melon, papaya, orange, kiwi, apple, honey, mint, and coconut. We started chopping and stuck it all in a bowl. We then served up as much as we wanted, stored the rest, and had our snack while the stir-fry was being set-up.


And there she is. Fruit salad. Ooh. Ahhh. In reality, it was a fun exercise. We had to section clementines!!! ACK!

From there we moved on to our shrimp and chicken stir-fry. It may sound crazy to you, but I have never made shrimp before!!! I was so nervous that I was going to ruin it! Here's our tray for that...


That's allota stuff! There was bok choy, chicken, shrimp, ginger, chili, soy sauce, chicken broth, veggies... and it was back to a chopping exercise. We used the wok, which was good, the Calphalon woks are really nice (but really expensive!). We marinated meat...


And then we chopped veg for what felt like hours...


And voila! Dinner!!!


Terrific!

And here's just a fun shot of Ian in action...


There are an army of pots and pans at the front of the room!

So this was the first class. We get little places at the front of the room where we can bring our dinner and eat while Ian and Donna straighten up the room. There's wine, beer and soft drinks available to order for a small fee (especially considering the very generous pours!), and everyone sat around and ate the fruits of our labours. I even ate some of the shrimp!!!

I was really excited about the next class... more to come...

The CNE.

G and I went to the CNE to see Bill Clinton speak. Which was excellent. Loads of fun. Dream come true. Etc. Etc. All good.

So with the Bill Clinton ticket came the opportunity to attend the Canadian National Exhibition. We had such a great time! G. had lots of fun playing a few midway games, looking at the rides, eating the food... and for her, no trip to the CNE is complete without a ....


CANDY APPLE! She bought it from a nice guy by the bridge to Ontario Place. G was quite excited and really enjoyed about half of it. The other half came home for a bit.

Before the candy apple, we had a big dinner... it was one of those blow-out fried food dinners that you know is about to go bad because you've just met with your cardiologist and you are starting on a diet the following Monday... but it was an amazing dinner! Absolutely amazing...


SCHNITZEL! Okay, I don't know why there are so many exclamation points, just deal with it.

The schnitzel had lots of cabbage on it, fried onions and peppers, and these absolutely amazing potato wedges. I enjoyed every single bite of it and although I felt ready to bust when I had finished, I was glad to have had the chance to eaten in the famous "Food Building".

50th Soiree.

G's brother turned 50 recently and in his honour, his wife threw a lovely afternoon brunch at the Angus Glen Golf Club in Markham. It was attended by family and friends and we all had a really great time.

The food was plentiful. When we came in, there were mimosas by the glassful. They hit the spot after everything that had been going on the week before. (As an aside, I had been really sick the week before, requiring a trip to the hospital. It was a bit crazy, but all seems to be on the mend.) ANYWAY, the brunch started with some amazing cold salads including meats, green salads, pasta salads, and the like. Here's my plate...


I had a bunch of caeser salad, cheeses, meats, and tuna salad. It was fantastic!

For the main courses, there was a bit of breakfast and a bit of lunch. Eggs florentine, hash browns, bacon, sausage, roast beef, lasagna, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. I wasn't in the mood for breakfast and so went whole-heartedly for the lunch...


The meat was fantastic. Really soft and perfectly cooked. The mashed potatoes were totally amazing and I couldn't resist also grabbing some hashed browns. I also tried some of the lasagna. It was pretty meh. The tops of the lasagna were really stodgy and seemingly uncooked, but the underneath of the kind of not so good layer was fantastic. I seemed to have jumped over the veggies, but had a delicious lunch all the same.

Meals fit for a kid.

Yeah, sometimes you just need to have a junky dinner that hits the spot. This meal last week was one of those.

It is exactly what you see. We ate hot dogs (all beef, healthier version cooked in the oven) on multi-grain hot dog rolls, with aged cheddar and tomato chutney. On the side, we had oven baked fries with US Heinz ketchup.

It's not something that I would eat often, but on a cold stressful day, it really hit the spot.

Tacos!!!

One of the best things about living in Toronto is that there are people living here from all over the world, many of whom bring parts of their culture with them.

I was reminded of this recently when making a visit to the Kensington Market. I was buying peppers and whatnot for my Latin inspired US Thanksgiving dinner, and we stopped into Perola's to buy the goods.

Perola's is a specialty food store with a great little twist, a table in the back where there are always ladies making some delicious food. They used to make papusas, but have since moved onto tacos. G and I poopooed the tacos the first time we went. Please, we smugly said, TACOS? No, thanks. Well, jokes on us and we now fully admit that we are dumber than we look.

On our trip to buy fresh chilis of different varieties, we decided that our stomachs growling was not conducive to a day of food shopping, so we headed back to the back to see what was on order. A woman dressing her tacos began telling us to order these, that they would be some of the best food we'd ever had. She went into a story telling us about how this was how she ate in Mexico and that there's nothing better than these tacos covered in the onion and cilantro mix then drizzled with lime. We were convinced.

I ordered three tacos and a tamale.

It didn't seem like a lot of food. But it was. And it wasn't cheap (about $13) but it was more than worth it...So we placed an order (in the wrong place, but what can you do?!), pulled up a chair next to the canned goods (there are no tables or proper places to sit and eat in this establishment), so it's a fight for the chairs near the ice cooler, but it's all good. The food is fast and the folks are friendly.

First up, the tamale...


Wow. It was amazing. The filling was tender, the tamale coating was savory, the salsa was spciy and the white cheese/sour cream sauce was really unbelievably good.

Then came out my tacos. The woman who was fixing her tacos told us that we had to get the pork because they were the best... and so I did. G got the chicken. The pork tacos looked amazing...


They are soft corn tortillas, filled with just meat and cheese, and then grilled for a few minutes per side. The pork was tender, and really wet, I had sauce dripping down my hand, soaking the four little napkins I had, making me beg for some of G's. But man alive, it was a most amazing lunch!!! I absolutely loved my tacos and can't wait to go back!

Cabbagetown Festival.

One of the greatest things about living in my neighborhood is that this 'hood really is a microcosm of living in Toronto.

Last weekend (I think) was the Cabbagetown Festival. G and I decided to walk over and see what all of the hub bub was about. Little did I know that I was going to be given the opportunity to take part in an amazing street treat. As we were walking around, I hear someone calling out to me while cooking sounds fill the air.

I turn...

Hello Sir!!! Yes! I would love to have a plate of your delicious smelling chicken kottu roti.

And so for $5, I got this...


Oh yeah!!!!!!! The joys of living near the Sri Lankan part of town! This was absolutely delicious. G and I shared it and I still could not finish this mountain of chicken-y roti. I love it!!!

The rest of the Festival? I didn't really get it. There was just a bunch of people selling weird stuff and some food vendors. Oh, and the ubiquitous Pizza Pizza booth. But whatever, it was nice to be out and about, and the kottu roti was fabulous. G orders this alot from Rashnaa, but this was my first full order of it. I really enjoyed it, and the guy cooking it up was quite proud of this vittles.

Pancake Day at the Market.

The St. Lawrence Market had a HoeDown recently. And while we didn't partake in the dancing, we did of course indulge in the Toonie Pancake Breakfast!

That's right, folks. For $2 you got two lovely pancakes with butter and syrup and two grilled sausages! Grilled right before your very eyes and served up by the auxiliary police.

Ah. Bringing the community closer together...

They were going to have a food tasting thing later on, and you had to buy tickets...

And people were rarin' to go. We didn't stay for that part, but we did snap some shots of people milling about the crafts...

The market is really nice, and lots of fun. And by one of the cheese stalls, we found a visitor, who really stood out because he was making a spectacle of himself!

And, he was crazy blue!

(I guess this beemster cow was a she, since Beemster is a cheese company...and dairy comes from girl cows not boy cows... I did pay some attention in science class...)

I've said it before and I will say it again, the St. Lawrence is a fun market. But it's overly crowded some times and the prices can be a bit dear. We used to go almost every weekend, and in the summer, we do go more frequently, but it can be quite expensive.