It’s
easy to be dismayed by the stuff people are eating these days.
Junk-food consumption is reaching epidemic proportions, but folks who
eat their fruits and veggies are hearing lots of bad news about
what’s in (or on) the imported produce on the market. China and
California have recently been tarred with that brush, leaving diehard
herbivores to look for other secure sources for healthy foods.
Thanks
to NAFTA, the US and Mexico seem to get the lion’s share of imports
into Canada. It’s worked out well for us, providing reliable
goodies, for the most part, on the shelf. Who grows sweeter
watermelons than Mexico? And if you prefer your fruit seedless, no
problem. Those varieties are regularly supplied by producers in
Arizona and Texas.
When it comes to Tuscany’s “liquid gold,” Carpineto has olive it.
Long held in high esteem for its superb quality vino,
Tuscany’s Carpineto winery has
recently begun mining a different type of “liquid gold” from the
soils around Gaville, Chianciano e Montepulciano and Gavorrano. Three
distinctive single-grove olive oils are now being marketed as part of
the firm’s Appodiati estate collection (which also includes
single-vineyard wines), a move that is sure to intrigue gastronomes
who think they’ve seen (or tasted) everything.
“The average consumer has become much more knowledgeable about wine
and food,” reports Carpineto winemaker and partner Giovanni Carlo
Sacchet. “Since each of our estates … produces an olive oil that
is markedly different from the other, however still in the typically
Tuscan style, we’ve decided to bottle them separately to show that
differences in terroir are as prevalent in olive oil as in wine.”
Although
money doesn’t grow on trees, chocolate does. Named Theobroma
(which translates as “food of the gods”) by Swedish botanist
Carolus Linnaeus, cacao trees do more than thrive in tropical
climates and nurture pods the size of papayas that are full of seeds.
They live deep in the minds of all gourmets.
The seeds, or beans, are roasted and fermented to develop flavour.
Dark chocolate not only offers rich, satiating flavours to the
connoisseur, it has also emerged as a super-food. It is so loaded
with antioxidant phenol compounds that a cardiac surgeon told me
consuming it might prevent heart disease. Like I need incentive to
eat more!
A
family legend has it that I invented Aglio
Olio. This was back in the early 1960s when most kids were
eating bologna sandwiches with processed cheese on white bread.
Tidingsmag.com now has over 50 recipes in 30 different categories. Visit the Tidings Eats section and you'll be able to search your favorite ingredients and cooking styles. Eat up!
When
you’re a food writer, it’s sort of embarrassing to get caught
loading a frozen dinner into the microwave. Such was the case when an
angry mob of colleagues descended on me in the company cafeteria
while I was reading the directions on the back of a Lean Cuisine box.
“I thought you were a cook,” one of them said, as the crowd eyed
me suspiciously.
The
truth of the matter is that even food writers take a break from time
to time.
The miraculous thing about bread
is that it really is incredibly easy to make. Given the number
of perilous cooking challenges that are presented to us, a loaf of
bread is simpler to make than just about anything in the kitchen —
really.
Not
only is bread easy to make but each step along the doughy way that
leads to crispy crusts and slices of the world’s most delicious
taste is a plateau of pure delight. Once you have made bread — not
in a fancy machine, but with the muscle and warmth of your own hands
— it will be difficult to ever again buy it from a store. First,
because whatever you pay, you are being ridiculously overcharged and,
second, because you know that your version is infinitely better, a
magical gift of hands, heart and soul.
Anyone who has ever dined with me knows that I love to share recipes. I share, even if my dinner partner isn’t remotely interested in cooking. That’s because I have appointed myself as the recalcitrant Knight Templar of cooking — it is my duty to reveal the guarded secrets of the kitchen. I am happy to impart the combined culinary knowledge of generations, retrieved from the slightly dented recipe box in my brain. To me, the Holy Grail of a recipe always begins with a secret — some seductive and mysterious ingredient or culinary technique that elevates a dish from the merely mundane to the infinitely sublime.
Eats 
