Beer has long lifted the burdens of the working class, and so it is fitting that Karl Marx who toiled to relieve the working class’ burdens was oft to lift an ale himself .  However, back in my economic studies the link between ale and socialism was recklessly omitted.  Only when taking residence beside a great 19th century socialist haunt did this outrageous oversight come to my attention, and thus required inquiry, ale in hand.

It is very convenient that following expulsion from France, Marx settled with his family in leafy and gentile North London; a well-known shelter for thinkers and drinkers.  Its open parks encourage meandering walks and pontification while London’s finest pubs encircle the green spaces to convene in and carouse around with other great minds.  While living here, Marx with Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto.

Surely, drafting the ideology of Socialism and ultimately communism was hard work. Long solitary days writing in the reading rooms of the British Museum followed by late rowdy nights debating with sympathizers and entertaining benefactors.  Hard work necessitating a few of the restorative pints favoured by the very people he championed.

Whether the pubs were formally part of his research is unknown but we do know he was committed them – so much so in the late 1850’s he rallied fellow socialists to drink a glass of beer at every pub between Oxford Street and Hampstead.  The night apparently ended an impressive 18 pubs later, along with a spot of police trouble. With a more modest ambition and disinterest in police agitation I set off to audit the modern state of ale in a few Marx related pubs.

First is the well-presented Queens, stoically set on a corner overlooking Primrose Hill. The pub is the obvious starting point as it was frequented by socialist sympathizers (and state spies) and just a 15 pace stumble across the street to Marx’s friend, co-author, and benefactor Friedrich Engels’ home of 24 years.

Today, despite a slight corporate “gastro-ification” with over designed wallpaper and post war attic memorabilia, The Queens retains its Victorian pub feel.  Beside the typical macro beers seven-hand pull cask taps pump forth Young’s reliable bitter and a couple rotating companions like Bombardier or a seasonal.  Each unfussy pint holds a gorgeous deep golden colour, of balanced hops, and ambient cooled in the underground caverns, just as Marx would have enjoyed.

A mile Northeast to stubbornly gentrifying Kentish Town – the most recent outpost of the SOHO House Group’s bourgeois hobo-chic Pizza East and Dirty Burger – was Marx’s residence on Grafton Terrace. When not up for a stroll to Engels’ local pub he could pop over to his own at the end of the street.  The Lord Southampton is a proper dingy boozer, probably then too. Beer soaked carpets and weathered regulars on wobbly stools against an ambiance of blinking gaming terminals.

Musty hand pull taps spit out a beer that has never met a superior name: Courage.  A meek ale defying the might of its name that fails to cut though the chewable urinal sanitizer odors attacking from the men’s room.  Round and soft in flavour, hops hidden beneath its suds and bland bitters; courage takes courage.

Uphill a short way is the venerable Southampton Arms.  A cherished shrine dedicated to Britain’s finest ales and ciders.  The relatively young establishment is regularly named the finest alehouse in London, if not all of Britain.  Its brown wooden interior and drafty air feels of an indistinguishable era any time long before today.   It may well be just as a pub was back in Marx’s day right down to the fine selection of meat snacks.  No wine for the fussy here.

In recent years there has been a great “real ale” renaissance in Britain.  Championed by CAMRA and small producers pumping out local casks throughout the isles.  These are not brash over-hopped and over-branded American style “craft beers” but simple humble ales of finesse and nuance by regional beer makers who pour from the Southampton’s ten continually rotating taps.

Further uphill is the cinematically haunting Highgate Cemetery, home to a stoic headstone marking the man whose ideology once governed over one billion people.  Reportedly 11 of them attended his funeral; I presume they all drank ale.

Mucking North through Hampstead Heath – where Marx regularly walked with his family, as have many writers and thinkers over the years like Keats, Byron, T. S. Eliot, Bram Stoker and George Michael – you arrive at one of London’s oldest pubs: The Spaniard.

Crossing the road (they responsible paved it around the pub given its 1585 origin) wood fire smoke fills the crisp air.  A worn low-ceilinged, matte green, painted wood interior offers many nice nooks for a drink and a think.  Tragically limited in ale offerings as the gastro-ification of this pub’s menu hasn’t been slight.  The clientele walking in from their Range Rovers or the onsite dog wash with pure breed hounds aren’t typically the working class ale sort.

However, as one of the first pubs to embrace the return of a North London brewery, Camden Town Brewery, they deserve kudos for keeping it local.   On tap are the crisp Camden Lager and their punchy American style IPA.  Fine contemporary craft beers to relieve the burdens of the contemporary worker.

While a lot has changed for the working class since Marx’s day, beer remains refreshingly in hand.

Russians love tea more than vodka. Even though it is vodka, bears and Siberia that became the ubiquitous symbols of Russian culture in North America, for Russians it is the tea drinking that stands at the very core of their identity and culture.

Tea became a country-wide tradition only around 1919-1920 as a result of the Red Army’s military successes during the Civil War. The Red Army won over large tea storage warehouses in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Odessa. Later, they also won control over several giant tea warehouses in the Urals region. This allowed Bolsheviks to supply their soldiers and industrial workers with free tea, which up until that point was considered an upper class product. During the Civil War, tea became a working class food staple and actually replaced vodka as a daily drink. The British Trade Union delegation that visited Russia in November – December 1924, especially those who remembered Tsarist Russia, were shocked at the near absence of drunkards in Soviet industrial cities.

Current Russian tea drinking habits are very different from tea ceremonies and traditions of other cultures. For example, the Japanese tea ceremony teaches calm appreciation of the small details surrounding the tea ceremony: the tea room, the tea set, the natural environment, be it a garden or the moon light. The main purpose of the Japanese tea ceremony is to appreciate the beauty of a tea drinker’s inner world. The Chinese tea ceremony, on the other hand, celebrates the tea itself, allowing the participants to discover the ever-changing nuances of tea flavour and aroma. And the English tea celebrates tradition, pride about preserving that tradition, and to some extent represents the British colonial legacy with its estate fine china, pastries and other tea-related accessories.

Russians, however, never had any strict ceremonies regulating their tea drinking. Every family, every social class in every region has its own drinking habits, though there are several general tenets:

1.   Zavarka, a very strong tea concentrate is prepared in a separate tea pot. Boiled water is poured into a warm tea pot with several teaspoons of black tea, usually Indian or Sri Lankan. The pot is then covered with a clean kitchen towel for about 5 minutes.

In Central Asia it is customary to “marry the tea,” which means to pour out and pour back in an odd number of cups of zavarka. When it is ready, the host pours small amounts of tea concentrate into each guest’s cup and then dilutes it with hot water.

Zavarka has many advantages for Russian style drinking. It allows to adjust the tea strength according to individual preferences, but more importantly it allows the host to serve several rounds of tea to guests without having to constantly brew fresh tea. In the 1920s, when workers first acquired taste for tea, it was also considered a more economic way to make it last longer, though frugality is not a concern anymore.

2.  The Fancy Guest china. Almost every family has a special tea set “for guests”. During the Soviet era, a beautiful china set was an important marker of the owner’s social status. The best ones were considered to be made abroad, and they were especially hard to find. My grandmother, for example, bought a Hungarian tea set in the early 1980s for my mother, and it still stands proudly in the china cabinet of my childhood home in North Caucasus waiting for a special occasion to be taken out.

3.  Tea cup, saucer and a tea spoon. Every tea cup must sit on a saucer and must have its own special tea spoon to mix in the sugar, honey, or jam. Some people like to pour the hot tea from their cups into the saucer to cool it faster and then drink their tea directly from it.  It requires a certain balancing skill, and people are still debating whether it’s in bad taste to drink directly from a saucer or not.

4.  Food. When you’re invited for tea in Russia, you can almost always expect to eat. Guests are offered several types of jam, honey, cakes, pies, chocolates and other sweets. Often you also get bologna or smoked kolbasa sandwiches, light salads, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Everything is served on ornate plates and dishes.

It is almost an insult not to offer tea to someone who came by your house, as it is an insult to refuse it when offered.

In some parts of the former Soviet Union, especially in the North Caucasus region and Central Asia, the amount and quality of the food spread when drinking tea indicates a level of respect that a host has for a guest, and it’s not uncommon for relationships to go sour just because only jam and sugar were served during tea.

But the most important part of the Russian tea drinking is the company and the appreciation of an honest, uncensored conversation, the soul spilling, the confessions, the tears, the laughter and the sacred camaraderie. In fact, it is the so-called “kitchen conversations” that gave an early platform for the development of radical intellectual and political ideas of the Soviet dissident movement in the 1950s and 60s, allowing the dissidents to freely share their ideas and visions for a better country within the safe confines of a private intimate tea drinking parties in the kitchen.

Tea is one of the most significant parts of Russian history and culture. It is a right of passage for children, who learn many of their values and beliefs by listening to long conversations that adults have during tea. It is a therapeutic space, where friends and family talk over their problems and find moral support.  And it is even an important milieu for economic, political and cultural development of the entire country, as many business relationships, deals, and various collaborative projects are conceived, refined and agreed upon during tea. So, as far as cultural institutions go, it is tea, not vodka, that defines the Russian culture.

Sriracha is a name of a beach town in the province of Chonburi, a short road trip from Bangkok, Thailand. Many of you have been to Chonburi but didn’t realize it—it’s also the province of Pattaya, yes that infamous, greasy, red-light town. The original version of the hot sauce was created at the town of Sriracha over 60 years ago, and the sauce was  named “Sriracha Chilli Sauce” and it became extremely popular in Thailand. Thai people, till this day, when we say Sriracha we don’t actually mean the cock sauce, we mean the original. We were very proud of it.

Then one day, in the 80’s, Thai people living in America were aghast to discover the name of our chili sauce town written on a foreign bottle with no Thai written on it! (GASP!) Produced in California…what is going on!?!?! I’m projecting, of course, but that’s how I felt when I came to Canada in 2003 and saw the cock sauce for the first time. I felt like I needed to sue someone. My cousin went to school in Sriracha, and he’s still mad about it.

Here’s my evidence. Most cities, towns and provinces in Thailand have a cute little rhyming slogan that highlights their local specialties. The slogan of Sriracha starts out with “Delicious chili sauce….” I was most saddened when I started seeing Sriracha written as an improper noun, “sriracha” uncapitalized.

As I said, I am not the first Thai to rant about this, the famous California-based Thai blogger, Pim of chezpim.com, has apparently had a lengthy twitter discussion about it. Along with my bitter cousin, who still can’t get over it.

The picture above is the current packaging of the Sriracha sauce, notice the spelling is phonetically incorrect, just like all English signage in Thailand, proving that it’s real Thai people who made it!

FYI, Thai people love to use Sriracha sauce on fried eggs, not just any fried egg, but a Thai-style fried egg with crispy edges, here’s a little video I made on how to make it!

In my experience, diner criticism goes along these lines:

The service was terrible, the food wasn’t done with care and I felt ripped off. I was promised a great meal at a great price and instead I got a crappy meal at an okay price. Why wouldn’t I go some other time when the service and food will be better?

I’ve also heard complaints from chefs and servers, whose comments usually goes thusly:

Customers are greedy. We’re giving them a great deal, working our butts off and they repay us by being rude, demanding and then never coming back to our restaurant. Plus, they tip badly, which makes everyone grumpy.

These past two weeks I’ve been previewing the Dine Around menus for most of Dine Around Freddy’s participating restaurants (courtesy of the restaurants and Tourism Fredericton) with the delightful writer and Jill-of-all-trades Heather Allaby. As a result, I’ve had some revelations on what makes a great Dine Around experience. Thus:

The 10 Commandments of Dining Around

1) Restaurants: Thou shalt give excellent value.

Indeed, putting together a three-course menu for $29 is difficult from a food costing perspective. Chefs may be tempted to cut some corners by slashing protein portions, bulking up dishes with lots of cheap starches, not wasting time on thoughtful appetizers and desserts, or using obviously cheaper and easier pre-prepared ingredients or products. But they shouldn’t. Customers aren’t stupid. Dine Arounds are a chance to explore local restaurants and get a great deal. If you can really make people feel pampered and lucky, they’re going to come back. If diners can find delight in the details, they will most definitely come back.

With a generous portion of steak and a fist-sized "coin" of tarragon butter, this Sam Snead main is the perfect example of how to do a Dine Around dish well.

2) Customers: Thou shalt order wine or beer and tip generously.

Awesome! You’re getting a great deal on food! But that doesn’t mean you should be cheap, both when it comes to ordering alcohol or tipping fairly. You’ve decided to treat yourself to a nice meal out. Don’t be a Scrooge and disappoint your date by drinking tap water all night. That’s not fun, and it won’t complement the food. Some of the best meals I’ve had these past two weeks have been really complemented by wine or beer.

Secondly, when you’re tipping, DO NOT TIP ON THE AMOUNT OF THE BILL. That may seem strange, but do it this way: What was the value of the meal? How much would I normally pay for that meal? If they just gave me a $50-value meal and I ordered a bottle of wine for $30, then I’m going to tip my 18% on that amount. It’s just the right thing to do.

3) Restaurants: Thou shalt give lots of options.

We get it. It’s a fixed menu, and that’s fine. But appetites, tastes, and food sensitivities can run the gamut, and if you’re able to build a smart menu that accommodates those, then you are much more likely to appeal to everyone and get some repeat customers. For example, many of the Fredericton restaurants participating in Dine Around are offering vegetarian, gluten-free and picky-eater options. Plus, that will save you some time when serving people who tend to want more options, which speaks to my next Commandment.

While there wasn't a hint of truffle in sight, this "truffled" mushroom pasta dish from Brewbakers can be made with rice noodles to accommodate those with gluten sensitivities.

This is a well-done vegetarian apple/butternut squash soup from Catch. Minus the fluffy cheddar scone on the side, this dish would be vegan.

4) Customers: Thou shalt not be a pain in the ass when it comes to ordering.

The inverse of Commandment #3 applies here. In order to make money during Dine Arounds, a restaurant needs to be busy. Very busy. And if they’re busy, that means less time accommodating your incredibly specific requests, like to take ingredients out of a dish, or to substitute certain other ingredients. That takes time and energy from both the BOH (back of house ie. cooks ) and FOH (front of house ie. servers) and frankly, it’s energy that they may not have much of. Try to be considerate during Dine Around, and hopefully if a chef has built a great menu then you can just relax, trust the kitchen, and enjoy a delicious and affordable meal.

5) Restaurants: Thou shalt not take Dine Around customers for granted.

This may be a special event, and restaurants may get busy, particularly with lots of new faces. But you do not work on an iPhone assembly line. You are a cook, and should want to put out food that is well-plated and delicious. In a few Dine Around Freddy experiences, even with advance notice and nearly empty restaurants, some of the plating (one in particular) was terrible: food was practically slopped on the plate. This does not make anyone feel special. This makes them feel cheated, and like you’re taking them for granted. It’s like that guy who shows up at your apartment late at night and then doesn’t call the next day. It’s just rude. The upside of this is that when you do put out a beautiful plate, diners will sit up and take notice.

This is not your dad's beer-battered scallop appetizer. From a cozy locale like Sam Snead's, this dish, with smoked caper aoli and arugula oil, blew us away.

6) Customers: Thou must have reasonable expectations.

Just because this is a special event and you may be dining out more than you normally would doesn’t mean you should expect a $100 Michelin-starred meal for the low, low price of $29. Be reasonable. In any world, a three-course meal for the prices that some of these restaurants aim for is amazing. It’s a feat of strength, and of culinary intelligence. So don’t be a jerk about it. Maybe a restaurant won’t include shaved truffles on top. Maybe they won’t serve duck. Maybe they won’t even (God forbid!) fold your napkin for you while you’re in the bathroom. That said, smart restaurant chefs and managers will try to EXCEED your expectations.

Plating on this generous appetizer portion of gnocci at Catch was done with care, which made us love the chef 20% more.

7) Restaurants: Thou shalt try to showcase what you do best.

Dine Around is a great chance for restaurants to come up with some really interesting food that is on the menu for a short time. So chefs and cooks? Live a little! Use Dine Around as a showcase for the culinary predication of your establishment. Our meal at [catch] was a great example of this. Clearly they’re taking the chance to use Dine Around as a culinary labaratory and testing ground for some new dishes that suit and complement their current menu. The food, from fresh sprouts on the gnocci appetizer to the totally charming chai bubble tea served with a biscotti for dessert, had a kind of cohesion and charm that made me feel like Chef Chris Taylor and his whole team really knew which direction their ship is headed. That’s the kind of experience that makes one want to go back.

The Schnitzel Parlour features hearty, simple dishes that don't try too hard, like this schnitzel with caramelized onions and spaetzle.

8) Customers: Thou shalt be adventurous.

In some cities, diners can be very conservative. In Fredericton, I’ve noticed this is particularly true — I’ve met people who think cheese is too exotic. This is a short-term menu, and you’re getting the food for a great price. Sure, there is a time and a place for predictable comfort food, but I would argue that Dine Around or Dine Out events are a great time to try to spread your wings, little birdie, and try something new.

The creativity on Catch's well-executed chai mini-bubble tea was refreshing, literally and figuratively.

9) Restaurants: Thou shalt send them home with leftovers.

There have been times this week when I literally jumped with joy to find the leftovers from my Dine Around meals in my fridge. If you want diners to leave with happy memories, offer to send them home with some of the delicious food you cooked for them. This is another great reason to be generous with portion size.

10) Customers: Thou shalt tell thy friends!

This is where all your good deals and delicious meals translate into good karma. After all, these events are about promoting food traffic to local restaurants, and they’re hoping that you do them good by recommending the meal to your friends, family and the entire Internets. And let’s be real: running a restaurant, cooking at a restaurant and working at a restaurant is damn hard work. If you have a great meal, pay it forward and come back to pay full price some other day.

The Top 3!

(click on name for a link to their menus)

1) [catch]

This underdog, which is still getting the word out that it’s no longer a mediocre hotel restaurant, pulled into an early lead and held it. Every single dish was thoughtful and well-executed, service was quick and friendly, and portions were generous. At any price, this was an exquisite night out.

2) Sam Snead’s and The Blue Door (it’s a tie!)

This may be cheating, but I just couldn’t pick a favourite:

Sam Snead’s was a surprising standout with a beautiful scallop appetizer (pictured above, highly recommended), large mains that we were excited to take home as leftovers, and not-fancy but a very delicious chocolate raspberry trifle that’s actually just the world’s best brownie with raspberry coulis and whipped cream in a water glass. Ask for your salmon rosé and skip the coconut cream pudding: the “trifle” is really that good.

Not to be outdone, The Blue Door had the standout dish of the night, a cilantro, sake and black bean braised baby back ribs with fried rice and house-made kimchi. It’s gluten-free and totally addictive. In fact, it should probably be on the permanent menu. The curry-coconut mussel appetizer was a generous portion and the dessert, a dulce de leche cheesecake, is the only option but it’s a good one.

3) The Schnitzel Parlour

This may be a surprising choice, but Uwe and Beate have put together a menu that showcases their restaurant’s delicious and unpretentious comfort food, and do an excellent job of providing value and a warm dining experience. For a fun night out with schnitzel, spaetzle and a German beer in a stein, this is a night out. Plus, we were surprised that they get much of their meat and produce from Real Food Connections, not some scary-no-name meat provider, so kudos!

There are moments when you get slapped out of apathy and assumption-making that resonate a while. Meeting Elena was one such moment. In a few spoken words she shattered our first impression of her as merely the Korean female half of my talented and wacky recent VFS mentoree student. It was actually fellow Foodist Mark, and his ear for accents, that detected it first. “What accent is that?”, he asked, piqued by the unexpected cadence. “Nope,  it’s Russian.”, she says. Excuse me? 

A line of questioning ensued as the waitress brought on dish after dish of Korean fare. As it turns out, Russian Koreans are not all that rare. There’s a decent-size population of them. There’s a longer story there, but that’s for another day. Sure enough, conversation turned to food—notably, the mash up of distinct cultural cuisine for this unlikely hybrid. What could be better? How about the fact that Elena is a cultural historian of Russia and Central Asia currently working on her Ph.D at UBC. 

So, without further adieu, let me introduce our newest Foodists contributor, Elena Yugai:

Her eclectic recipe repertoire reflects her own complex heritage of Korean, Russian and Canadian cultures. She loves experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen, but her real culinary talent lays in crafting age-old traditional recipes from a world away. She spent a long time doing fieldwork in remote areas of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Far East, where she dug out rare archival documents and recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with elderly men and women of Russia’s diverse ethnic minorities: Koreans, Tatars, Armenians, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz.

Elena’s first article stems from the conversations had at our first meeting, making numerous toasts over plum wine and gaining deeper insights into the Russian tradition of making toasts with vodka. We’re as excited to have her join our collective of passionate food folk as she is thrilled to be able to share centuries old recipes, tricks and food philosophies from that part of the world with us. Here’s to many more in-depth food adventures from her perspective!

Ben Garfinkel, Co-Founder

Vodka Saves the Day

Vodka has long held an iconic status as the ultimate symbol of the mysterious Russian culture.  Strict rules and rituals regulate its consumption, like that it must be Russian, made from grain, not in a cocktail and always accompanied by food and a toast.  If fact, Russians love their vodka so much that they’ve come up with a million different ways to use it besides getting drunk and becoming comrades with strangers.  Here are the top ten (other) ways of how vodka can save the day:

1. For Better Yeast Dough: If you add 1 tablespoon of vodka when making yeast dough, it will improve dough’s taste and won’t let it dry out as fast.
2. Crispy Deep Fried Goodies:  When deep-frying stuff, add one or two tablespoons of vodka to batter to get a golden crispy coating on your food.
3. Soften Tough Beef: If the beef in your beef stew is too tough, add about a tablespoon of vodka for every 500 grams (1 lb) of beef and simmer on low heat.  There won’t be any “vodka” taste left in the end, but the meat will definitely soften up.
4. Honey—Organic or Not: To test whether your honey is organic or not, warm up about a tablespoon of it in a microwave and then try to dissolve it in a shot glass with vodka. If honey fully dissolves in vodka, congratulations, you bought high quality, organic honey. If vodka becomes murky or you can see sediment at the bottom, tough luck, your honey is not organic and is full of additives.
5. Long Lasting Fresh Flowers: Add a few drops of vodka and a teaspoon of sugar to your bouquet. Change water with vodka and sugar every day, periodically cutting the bottom of the stem to improve absorption. Your flowers will last for at least 30 days.
6. Home Remedy for High Fever: When suffering from high fever, soak several cotton balls with vodka and rub it over the sick person’s back and chest.  Alcohol evaporates quickly cooling the skin’s surface and helping bring the fever down. Don’t put the blankets over the sick person to allow more rapid evaporation.
7. Poison Ivy and Poison Oak: If you accidentally touch poison ivy or poison oak, immediately rinse your skin with vodka. Do not rub. Rinsing helps wash away urushiol, which causes skin rash.
8. Removing Bandages:  Soak a cotton ball with vodka and use it to dampen the bandage. Vodka will dissolve the glue on a bandage and soften the skin, allowing to painlessly remove the bandage.
9. Cleaning Glasses and Photo Lenses: Use a few drops of vodka on soft, micro fiber cloth to clean fingerprints from your photo lens or from your glasses. Make sure your cloth is only damp, not wet and use straight strokes in the same direction, do not rub.
10. Healthy Hair: Add 50 ml of vodka to your shampoo bottle. It will cleanse your head skin, remove toxins from your hair and stimulate hair growth.  To get rid of dandruff, soak 2 teaspoons of ground fresh rosemary in a glass of vodka.  Let stand for at least 2 days, then massage onto skin under your hair and let dry on its own. Repeat every other day for a month.

Cheers, Comrades!

I’ve had a few conversations regarding some customers wanting to customize their food to such an extent that it drives chefs up the wall and begs the question…who’s the chef here? In another part of the world, namely Thailand, there are some circumstances where this customization would actually be encouraged.

If you’ve been to Thailand you may have seen something like the above picture on the tables of some restaurants. This is what I like to call The Standard Thai Condiment Quartet. For some reason, these condiments are generally only used for noodle dishes—noodle soups, pan-fried noodles, whatever kind of noodles. The four members include:

1. Fish sauce & Chili (salty)

2. Vinegar & Chili (sour)

3. Chili powder (spicy)

4. White sugar (sweet)

Each of the members represents a flavour that can be added to customize your dish: salty, sour, spicy and sweet. Some variations of each condiment exist (sometimes the chili is blended with the vinegar, other times left in whole slices), but the four flavours are constant.

This gives diners the complete freedom to customize the flavour balance of their meal to exactly how they like it. In some ways this makes a lot of sense because the truth is, everybody has a different palate. So everyone gets a chance to be a chef at the table. Takes a bit of pressure off the actual chef, too! Some places even make the noodles a bit on the mild and neutral side to allow for these condiments.

Some noodle restaurants sometimes boast the fact that their food is so perfectly seasoned that it doesn’t need any seasoning adjustment. I’ve been to one noodle place in Bangkok where every table has a sign posted above the condiment set which reads: “Please taste before adjusting.” This warning was actually quite smart because most people have a standard way they add seasoning to a certain dish, and they will automatically add their usual condiments without tasting the original flavour first. For example, I always add fish sauce and sugar to my noodle soups, while my mom always adds the vinegar. So I never like her finished product and she never likes mine, but hey, that’s even better!

The fish sauce & chili is often available on its own when asked at any restaurant (even in Canada!) because we use it to season pretty much anything (the same way one would use salt and pepper). But the whole set is generally available only if you’re having noodles. As to why specifically noodles, I’m not sure. I suppose you could add it to anything you want, really!

Many revolutions start in the belly. Empty stomachs and bare cupboards feed rhetoric, ideals and slogans. Sparked by food prices too high or food stocks too low revolution hungry citizens rally to the streets toppling leaders, regimes and royalty.

In a democracy one must allow dissent and protest but how does France, one of the great nations of strikes and protest, avoid revolution in today’s unsettled times? This Foodist asserts – by pairing protest with the nation’s other great tradition: gastronomy.

Any given day Paris will host a handful of protests, as many as a dozen each weekend day.  Key marches and annual memorials will bring hundreds of thousands to the streets and every few years an issue will take hold of the nation galvanizing a million protesters or more.  Whatever the size, there are many mouths to feed.

Studying the culinary logistics from our 54 rue de Turbigo pied-à-terre near protest staging ground Place de la République, three sources of sustenance were identified keeping appetites and revolution at bay while allowing citizens to air their democratic voice.

Most simplistically, food source one is essentially “BYOB” – a picnic of standard fares including cheese, bread, meats procured from local shops, coffee and of course wine. Typical of smaller protests or annual passive marches such as a neighbourhood teachers unions making a humble reminder of their existence. Marked with a civilized toast to start and finish exercising one’s civil right.

But wine? Isn’t alcohol the root of all civil disobedience?  The combination of protest and alcohol must be a powder keg.  A fair point for debate but given the military’s elite crowd control  policing unit, les CRS, has half a litre of beer or a small carafe of wine for lunch written into their collective bargaining agreement, all sides are equally lubricated.

Union logistics in France are impressive – as is the livery of flags, balloons, banners and slogan blaring loudspeaker. Naturally this organizational might extends to the food provisions. Regularly spaced though out a long column of marchers are mobile food counters precariously teetering off the back of trucks.

A quick baguette with ham or pâté to keep protesters vocal but not angry. A tipple of wine – the rustic vin de pay’s colour varying by season – keeps vocal chords singing.  Modestly priced, possibly to avoid raising questions of where union dues go, surely not to grand meals by the grand leaders.

Most impressive are the informally coordinated logistics of the roving food counters. Wheeled carts of open fire grills and self-sufficient cookers provide hot meals. Typically middle Eastern or African in genre of top quality and taste, overflowing in volume as they wheel along protest routes.  One favourite is an Alsatian sort of sausage simmered in a cream, pepper or tomatoes based sauce served in baguettes with mushrooms, peppers or onions from a sort of open air crock pot.

Whether the food came first to the protesters or the protesters come for the food is a cheeky debate. The issues aired are often serious, of grave concern and worthy of national debate – but far from sparking a revolution, for there is far too much to eat.  

Mark directed his $1000 to the Museum of Vancouver and Ben sent $1,000 to BC Children's Hospital

The ‘heat’ referenced in the post title is as much about competition as it is about spice

At Foodists, we get a fair amount of attention from PR people pitching all manner of restaurants, products, etc. As a rule, we’re not given to gushing forth and shilling for companies, unless it’s something we would ourselves use or support.

So it was that fellow Foodist Mark Busse and I found ourselves one recent Monday evening ensconced in the lovely Dirty Apron Cooking School with a collection of invited food personalities sipping on wine and nibbling canapés. The impetus for our presence was to launch Blue Dragon Asian Cooking Sauces to Canada by way of a cooking competition for charity. Having just returned from an out of town business trip the week before, Mark and I were a little unprepared and just rolling with things, smiling and hoping to have some fun for a good cause.

The week before, we received a package of Blue Dragon Asian Cooking Sauces by AB World Foods, manufacturer of the well-known line of Patak’s sauces and other Southeast Asian products. The idea being that we’d have some time to familiarize ourselves with the product before competing against six other duos in an Iron Chef-like cooking competition, the winners getting to direct $2,000 to their charity of choice. Lots of companies use charities to gloss over their rather blatant marketing efforts, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with that if you are honest about it. Layer on some mystery, competitive spirit, awesome venue and lubricate with food and wine and, hell, you’ve got something!

That’s how I went from thinking “this could be interesting, but we’ll see” to “man, this is fun” in the course of under an hour.

If you are at all familiar with the Dirty Apron Cooking School, normally you and a partner are situated at one of the well-equipped cooking stations and the instructor chef is at the front of the room behind a long table. This night, Nathan Fong took the helm to emcee the function; the long table laden with a grocery store’s worth of vegetables, proteins and, of course, every available sauce from the Blue Dragon line. That was the catch: your dish had to use one or more of the products. We were to get 10 minutes to sort out what we planned to make and then 45 minutes to plate three of them for the judges: Barbara-Jo McIntosh, Stephanie Yuen and Vikram Verghese (of AB World Foods).

Neither Mark or I are much for pre-packaged sauces, though are always up for a challenge. Personally, aside from not really knowing what we were going to make (and NOT make) I felt prepared enough. The small tingle of nervousness was nicely offset with years of whipping open the fridge and seeing a meal where others only see scraps I guess.

The lack of affection for packaged sauces is a combination of preferring to make them from scratch when cooking, the historically poor quality and flavour of existing products, and the usual culprits of unhealthy and hard-to-pronounce additives. Turns out, Blue Dragon saw an opportunity here. In their words:

Unlike other popular Asian food brands, Blue Dragon uses only the highest quality natural and authentic ingredients with little to no additives. Remarkably, each sauce, seasoning, and paste is made with basics that can be found in your kitchen pantry — you can actually pronounce the ingredients!…

The line is entirely free of MSG and the sodium levels are also much lower than those found in competing brands. Now you can quickly recreate at home, some of the wonderful dishes you have experienced at your favourite Asian restaurant, be it Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese.

The line comprises a variety of Asian cooking staples like coconut milk, fish sauce, nuoc cham (vietnamese dipping sauce) and sesame oil, as well as ten definitive Stir-Fry pouches, cooking sauces, and curry pastes that are unique to the brand.

Okay, so to the main event. Unleashed into the arena, the teams spilled over the potential ingredients. Mark and I quickly decided that we did not want to do a traditional stir-fry, and  that we wanted to use some of the sauces to build on, not feature. Something about taking the idea of a brandade and doing an Asian version seemed both appropriate and unusual enough to be interesting. Problem was, there wasn’t a potato in sight. The solution: pre-fried rice and cooked rice noodles.

Our other selected ingredients were Shanghai Bok Choy, Pineapple, Cashews, Green Onion, Cod, Prawns, Eggs, Carrots, and Yellow Peppers. We used a good selection of Blue Dragon in the process, including: Chili Coconut Stir-Fry Sauce, Coconut Milk, Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce, and the Nuoc Cham Dipping Sauce.

After a scramble collecting ingredients, we were heads-down in banging out our mis en place and cooking simultaneously. Time really flew by too, and we were literally wiping the last drop off the plate edges when the allotted 55 minutes was up.

Here’s what we accomplished:

Cod Brandades in Chilli-Coconut Cream Sauce

Our Vietnamese-inspired “brandades” (see Note) were a mixture of cooked white rice, cooked/chopped rice noodles, egg, salt and pepper, chopped green onion, sautéed white onion and garlic, fresh ginger, cod poached in coconut milk and Blue Dragon Chilli Coconut Stir-Fry Sauce (save these combined liquids!). These were formed into patties in ring molds and baked at 400 deg. F. for 20 min.

We used prawns shelled and marinated for 30 min. in a mixture of Blue Dragon Vietnamese Nuoc Cham dipping sauce, Sweet Chilli Sauce, and pepper. They were then flash-grilled for 30 sec. per side.

Slicing pineapple into wedges, we marinated it with Blue Dragon Sweet Chilli Sauce and grilled it for 5 min. To accompany our dish, we sliced Shanghai bok choy in half, brushed it with a little oil seasoned with salt and pepper, and grilled it 5 min.

Reducing the reserved coconut-milk poaching liquid (above) with a little white wine, we blended it smooth before spooning it over the brandades. We finished the “brandades” with a flurry of roasted, chopped cashews and a sprinkling of julienned carrot and yellow pepper. A decent combination of spicy, sweet, salty, crunchy and soft.

Note: A traditional “brandade” is an emulsion of salt cod and and olive oil, originally from France. Our version is an interpretation of the traditional.

Since we had to make it up as we went, you can wing the quantities. Just do what feels right.

Mark & Ben with their winning Blue Dragon dish, Cod Brandades in Chili-Coconut Cream Sauce.

This was also an exercise in restraint to a degree. It was, in moments, tempting to mix in more sauces and ingredients. In the end, the complexity of the brandade and sauce was nicely balanced against the ungarnished bok choy and the simply grilled pineapple. Clearly the judges thought so too because we were awarded top choice!

A rather unexpected end to what was a surprisingly fun Monday evening, for us and BC Children’s Hospital and Museum of Vancouver, my and Mark’s respective charities.

What I took away from all this was not to be so jaded about all PR/Marketing coming from packaged goods companies, I really like cooking on the fly and while it’s unlikely most home cooks will use that many sauces to prepare one meal, you can! The Nuoc Cham and the Sweet Chili keep in the fridge for a while too.

Admittedly, I’ve yet to crack open a jar of the stir-fry sauce and just toss it into some noodles and veg, but plan to do so soon, just to test the stuff out in its ‘pure’ state. In the meantime, hopefully this inspires you to get a little creative in the kitchen. Even if that means just jazzing up a bottle of packaged sauce of some kind.

Congrats to Rick Green and Nicole Parton, who took second place with their Thai Coconut-Curry Salmon, and all the other competitors that evening. It was a blast.

Look for Blue Dragon at the following retailers: RCSS West, Walmart, Country Grocers and Fairway Markets, and we’re assured, more coming on board soon.

To the contrary we found Naples an authentic Italian experience and most excitingly pretty much free from mediocre tourist food.

We had booked an apartment through airbnb and upon arriving our hostess Gaia handed us a pile of business cards to restaurants where she said only the locals eat.

Since Naples is the birthplace of pizza our first stop was to a pizzeria. We went to a small unassuming place called Nu Murzill’ Sapurito. A large pizza, beer and refreshing Italian sparkling lemonades made with the famous Amalfi lemons, La Nostra Gazzosa, cost 6 euro each. Yup, that’s when you know you’ve left the tourist zone! The pizza dough and buffalo mozarella were chewy, fresh and topped with local tomatoes, prosciutto, basil and cooked in the wood fired oven. On our last night we did go to Brandi which is where the pizza margherita was invented in 1889. It’s in a higher price range and has a great atmosphere, but Naples is a relatively inexpensive place to eat and we found sticking to the smaller local places we never, ever had a bad meal.

Authentic wood fired pizza at it's best!

If you are in Italy you must try one of these. Refreshing and not too sweet.

Next we made our way up the noisy, crowded Via Toledo street where it seemed that the entire population of Naples had come out for a Thursday night stroll and shop. Following the suggestion from the Lonely Planet Naples book we went to Fantasia Gelato. Throughout this trip we were pretty much eating gelato daily but this was the freshest version of pistachio I’d had. It was the perfect balance between sweet gelato and salty pistachios. Another great gelato place was near our apartment where they had mini gelato cones that were small flavour explosions – just the right size after eating a multi-course Italian meal!

The best pistachio gelato in all of Naples.

Mini flavour filled gelato cones.

But Naples isn’t just about pizza and gelato. We also ate a lot of seafood. One of the best meals we had was when we got lost and ended up at a place where there was no English on the menu and the waiter could barely communicate with us. Which didn’t matter as we savoured the tastiest mussles, clams and freshly made pasta cooked pefectly al dente.

Fresh pasta with seafood.

And Naples isn’t just about the main meals. As I’m a sugar addict starting the day out with pastry and espresso was pretty much my idea of heaven. We were close to the 150 year old Cafe Gambrinus, a famous coffee house where Oscar Wilde used to eat. They offer freshly made gelato, brioche and sfogiatelle, a traditional Neapolitan desert – puffed pastry filled with sweetend ricotta cheese. I also tried the ‘frozen brioche’ which turned out to be a warmed bricohe filled with gelato. Decadent to say the least. Cafe Gambrinus is a great place to sit and watch daily Neapolitan life go by, but it also offers a far less expensive counter service where you can have your espresso and pastry standing at the bar, Italian style.

Sfogiatelle, a Neapolitan treat.

Ice cream sandwich, Italian style!

Our driver to the Amalfi coast described Naples as “a beautiful lady wearing a beautiful dress with dirty shoes.” And this is true – there’s fantastic architecture and art, but also plenty of garbage and graffiti. Layered into this is the soul of Naples, made up with the people and the food which are truly authentic. It’s a fabulous place to get lost (oh and you will get lost!) and wander down the gritty streets eating like a local.

I’ve got lots of Naples travel tips, e-mail me if you are heading there and need the down low. Has anyone else had any great Neapolitan eating adventures? Please share below.

Tailgating in Style! I get fancy with our offering - bison meatballs, crispy polenta and a poached egg.

Forget the presidential election noise, or the start of the school year. A crisp September Saturday in Iowa means only one thing to the entire state: It’s time to tailgate.

The thing about growing up in a state with no professional team – in any sport – is that the population is passionately devoted to the teams we do have. An entire community will not only follow the high school team but will Monday morning quarterback their performance in the local coffee shop. Super Bowl? Who cares, let’s talk about the Iowa recruiting class for next year.

So it goes without saying that the whole state stops for Iowa football on autumn Saturdays: malls are deserted, all bar TVs are tuned in, and if tumbleweed existed in farm country it’d be drifting across the highways. People travel from across the state – driving up to 7 hours! each weekend! – to park their RV, tigerhawk-decaled van or SUV as Iowa City’s population of 70,000 doubles in size ahead of game day.

Many don’t even have tickets to the actual game.

A tiny fraction of the tailgating scene

And naturally, when you have this many people flooding in several hours before the game, you’re going to see a fair bit of Americana (or at least Iowa-cana) on the black and gold paper plates and in the yellow solo cups spanning tens of city blocks.

Melrose Avenue Flooded with Black and Gold

The scale of tailgating operations is nothing short of astounding. For my family of 6 to make the pilgrimmage south we had to have a lengthy planning meeting: locating the Iowa-themed tent, bloody mary supplies, camping stove, coolers. Traffic and parking management strategy. Does the weather forecast mean sunscreen and layers, or two pairs of socks and a lap blanket? As we weighed the logistics, I wondered if someone should be taking minutes (and was grateful this particular meeting involved wine*).

*Enough wine to confirm the next day that, in fact, someone should have been taking minutes.

Saturday morning we roll into Iowa City, decked out in black and gold but bleary-eyed from the early start. I look out across the sea of people as they pitch tents, start grilling bratwurst or heating crock pots of chili. Families that have been doing this every home game for years have their one dish – Jane always makes brats, Connie brings her famous cookies. You even park next to the same people you’ve been parking next to for ages, reuniting for the first time in 9 months.

And it may be 8 am but a generous shot of vodka is poured into the cup to commence bloody mary mixing (when the weather turns that might become a seriously spiked hot cocoa).

Bloody Mary with Horseradish Pickles (In a yellow solo cup, of course)

I decided to get fancy with some prosecco, and, inspired by the bloody mary condiments, splashed a generous amount of vodka into it, hereby christening the “Hawk 75.”

When someone later said that was already a French 76, I patiently explained that a French 76 isn’t served in a yellow solo cup, is it??

But of course there’s also food for sale. The famous Big Ass Turkey Legs have been gracing the fists of many a frat bro for years.

Pork tenderloins are de rigueur for a culinary tour of Iowa, complete with white starchy bun, mustard and pickles – breaded only, please, grilled is just a waste of time.

So Many Entendres for One PIece of Pork. (What is a Pork Snake, you ask?)

A "pork snake" - naturally.

And a new discovery was something that one entrepreneurial food vendor calls the “Walking Taco” – basically mashed up Doritos in their foil packet with some taco condiments and served with a fork, hilarious for its simplicity but at the same time strangely compelling as a pre-game snack (or post-drinking/game filler).

Not a walking taco...but it does also describe Iowa's performance that day

Tens of thousands of people, coming together, drinking alcohol and eating the state’s copious pork products in varied form. And hopefully dancing the polka to In Heaven There Is No Beer after a Hawk victory. If that doesn’t scream community I don’t know what does.

And imagine my thrill, then, on moving to Seattle, when I discovered that a passionate group of Iowa fans congregate at a Queen Anne pub every Saturday morning, decked in as much black and gold as you’d see at Kinnick Stadium, and complete with a two-person brass band for the fight songs. Even several thousand miles away, I can commune (and occasionally commiserate) with my fellow fans over a bloody mary.

…now I just need to teach the bartender a Hawk 75.

Recipe – Hawk 75

Ingredients:

Prosecco

Vodka

Equipment:

Yellow Solo Cup.

Yes, it has to be yellow. You’re not an Ohio State fan are you??

Method:

Pour prosecco to the L. Top with vodka to the O. (Which part of each letter is entirely up to you.)

Pro: With the high heat that comes out of that Italian thoroughbred, all stainless steel and cast iron grates, breakfast can be ready in under 3 minutes flat. (For the uninitiated, it looks like this: Heat on, oil, ham on, ham off, eggs on, season, eggs off, tomatoes on, season, tomatoes off, skillet off, slightly stale baguette slices left in hot pan to soak up juices, serve.)

Con: After a late night of drinking pastis (a milky yellow anise liqueur the French adore) and Campari on a St. Remy patio, having the sudden realization that even when bleary-eyed, you are still a trained cook. If you burn your eggs while daydreaming about line-dancing in the street to a syrupy-sweet European pop trio — sparkle mini dresses,  coordinated dance moves, blonde lady playing the accordion and all — then all you have is burnt eggs and low self-esteem.

Luckily, breakfast turned out fine.

After a crazy few days at the Mas, a street party was just what the doctor ordered. While sipping my drink and listening to French pop, I realized that my last note didn’t give you much of a sense of what I’m actually doing here, so this missive is dedicated to painting a clearer picture of what this experience has been like so far:

The Mas is an inn and cooking school, in a huge converted farmhouse decorated to the nines with antique furniture and valuable rugs. It sometimes feels like hospitality from another century. There are six bedrooms, a salon with a bar, an office and a dining room, which is connected to our teaching kitchen via our dish area. There is a large pool beside my little “maisonette” and a rope swing out front of the house, which is protected from burglars by a code-protected front gate.

Guests at the inn are usually Europeans or North Americans (rooms at the inn start at 180 Euros a night, with a two-night minimum) and I have been put in charge of preparing and serving them an elaborate continental breakfast in the morning, with piles of fresh fruit from the garden, steaming pastries, and espresso coffees. (I just learned how to hold four plates or four wine glasses at once!! Former servers, please do not laugh.)

The cooking school offers tours of the St. Remy market and lunch and dinner classes, in which we (increasingly becoming I) do most of the prep work, and then a group of up to 20 hikers or cyclists will roll (literally or figuratively) into the front yard of the inn. They get recipe binders, information about the gardens and Provençal cuisine, and then drink rose immediately after they take all our careful mis en place and throw it together.

Now, the inn does offer private morning, afternoon and evening courses, and these classes are a pleasure to run, as they tend to be smaller and attract more serious cooks.

A day in the life…

Before dawn, even before the roosters have started, I’m making tea and scarfing down a breakfast of fresh figs and yogurt. By the time the rooster starts but the sun isn’t quite up, last night’s dishes are put away.

I run around preparing breakfast, which includes huge aforementioned freshly-cut fruit platter, and have everything on the table by 8am. Then comes distributing the vegetables, pastry components, starches and proteins that comprise each dish, which have been carefully measured and prepared the afternoon before. When the group arrives they are given their recipe folders, an apron, and a rundown of what the class will look like.

Once the class starts, it’s controlled chaos, as people wave knives around, pretend that they were actually paying attention to the instructions, and ask me what part of the United States I’m from. That then starts a whole conversation about how lovely Vancouver is (yes, I know), why I’m leaving it (have you ever heard of New Brunswick?) and what the heck I’m doing in France (um… long story?). It’s usually around this time I need to go help someone else, so I dash away, glad to not explain my lack of a concrete life plan to a total stranger.

Then the guests are shuttled outside for a snack and a glass of the Mas’s famous bottomless rose, at which point I actually cook the food, then they come inside, take credit along with a plate, and then take a seat at a glorious long table that is set out front of the inn. While they are eating I am elbow deep in dishes, until the point where I am invited outside for dessert. This is where I wipe the sweat off my face, lose my dirty apron, and proceed to make small talk, the same conversation over and over, about how yes, I am a journalist, and yes, wouldn’t it be swell if I considered writing for magazines about food, and no, they haven’t heard of Maclean’s but best of luck in all my endeavors.

After guests leave and the kitchen is clean, I usually dive into the pool until my body temperature is somewhat stable, take a short break (usually an hour or so) and then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening cooking and preparing for the next day’s class. Sometimes my evening task involves picking thousands of fresh grapes off of vines to be put onto a drying rack for raisins, that kind of thing. I’m lucky if I’m in bed before 11pm.

Some nights we’re up until the wee hours, de-seeding zucchini and pre-cooking tartlets, only to be up at 5am the next day to do it all again. It can be a gruelling schedule. But slowly and surely, I’m starting to reclaim a feeling I became addicted to in culinary school: you are drowning in work, in your growing list of urgent to-dos, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, time starts to slow down. You start moving faster relative to it. Your moves are more controlled, you start overtaking, taking charge of the feeling of controlled panic that pounds in a kitchen.

We have another hard week of classes coming up, but I’m slowly but surely getting my bearings in the kitchen, where dishes are jam-packed upon dishes, and special platters and linens are squirreled away in every cranny.

She says that by the time I leave, I may know where everything goes.

My parents met Chris at the Robert’s Creek farmer’s market, and after chatting with him and discovering he was headed for a PhD in the same departmentwhere I did my nutrition degree, bragged up their nutritionist daughter and said they’d bring me by when I was in town. Thus, a connection was made.

Chris and I chatted briefly at the market, and followed up with a more in depth conversation via email. I thought I’d share with you some of what I learned.

“The Flour Peddler is a family business dreamed up and maintained by the Hergesheimer family, who make their home in Roberts Creek, BC. The Flour Peddler’s overall goals are to provide small batch, high quality fresh flour milled from locally grown grain to interested customers through out North America. The bottom line of this operation is to educate about the lost art of community milling and to build strong and sustainable relationships between farmers, millers, bakers and eaters. We are convinced that these relationships will assist with the development of strong ecologically, socially and economically viable grain chains.” – www.theflourpeddler.com

There is a lot of talk these days about wheat having adverse effects on our health, and there is the Wheat Belly diet. What do you think about this? Have you found it is having an impact on your business?

Not really; the hype around the book and it’s findings are out there and certainly form a part of people’s conversation with me; however, my regular and supportive customers have always recognized the way that fresh whole grain flour works with their diets. Lets just say I haven’t lost any customers over it but there are some people who don’t buy, but want to discuss my thoughts on the matter. Although Davis claims that old white flour and fresh whole grain flour fall into the same camp, I disagree and I encourage people to eat less wheat products, made from whole grain flour first, and see how their bodies and minds react before giving up on wheat entirely. Grains have been a part of our diet for 20,000 years, and I agree with Davis’ claims about wheat being different due to breeding campaigns and modern processing. I think that as a weight loss strategy it might work, but there are any number of things that could be cut from people’s diets if they are concerned about weight. Healthy, fresh whole grain flour is foundational in so much of what we eat. I think a constant dialogue about our food choices is good and healthy, so I am always up for talking to people about it.

Do you think that BC is capable of growing enough grain to be self sufficient, grain wise?

If we didn’t ship all the grain grown in the northern regions out of the country and instead shipped it down to local mills throughout the province, we could move in that direction. If we ate less wheat and wasted less flour products, we could move closer to that as a goal as well. I would advocate for a bunch of smaller, mixed farmers down in the south that had grain farming as a part of their operations and machinery and processing collectives to help out on the harvest and post harvest front. A little bit at a time.

My mom wants me to ask you about your oats – she says people buy bags of your oats at the farmer’s market and walk away munching on raw oats right from the bag. Is this true? What makes them so special?

Do you have a favourite recipe or thing to do with your flour?

You have kids, right? Are they involved in the flour business? Do you think this foster an understanding of food systems and helps them become conscious eaters?

They are involved. Sometimes they complain, but they know more about grain and flour and bread than a lot of adults and they are barely in grade school. Everything is whole grain flour for them and they don’t know any different; Dad’s pancakes beat any restaurant white fluffy stack any day…

In today’s internationalized and air freighted culinary world can a cuisine go extinct?

A question raised by dinner at a small rural café in a tiny drive through town in an unremarkable region of southern France frequented by hearty locals and the odd Airbus expat.

After a day hosted in the pool and bottomless rose tap of our friend Tom, a wine merchant, he insistently badgered us to eat at Chez Anny for a simple “peasant meal.”

Dutifully and hungrily we followed his counsel.  Rarely are such recommendations in the countryside a disappointment.

In our time living and visiting France, the smaller the town the more tightly they hold onto century old traditions.

However, as anyone having read first hand accounts from the past couple centuries in France will note it is a country, who while continuing as the mother and queen of gastronomy, forever is vexed by the self diagnosed decay of its culinary traditions.

I experienced this tension profoundly last summer in Aubignan – a short drive south of Vacqueras & Gigondas at the foothills of Mount Ventoux.  The traditional town soupe au pistou (a minestrone with pesto) was now served out of the back of a service truck rather than the pots of townspeople pitching in together.

The town still came together as tradition dictates to celebrate summer, test the latest vintage and gossip, but the food had shifted a degree removed from their land arriving in cans, pre-heated and mixed atop four wheels to be served in plastic bowls with a wedge of cheese from an industrialized factory in Normandy.

Apart from Paris, France is a country of farmers and food artisans – hearty workers with hearty appetites.  Chez Anny is for them.

She is found in a typical stone building with simple pre-Haussmann construction on the village Cox’s central Rue Principale across from the town hall.

Not having reservations we were seated street side under the open air to our immense satisfaction, the locals knowing to book under the awning in case of an evening summer storm.

Within minutes of seating, a porcelain caldron of noodle soup was hefted onto our table.  Followed by the question of white, red or rosé wine.  No menu, no wine list; no doubt we were in Anny’s hands.

My wife ordered rosé and I chose red for variety.  Swiftly, out came two full 750ml swing top bottles, tasting as only a rustic village wine from that village can.

A self-ladled bowl of soup later, three for me actually, though there was enough for 10, the chamber of soup was replaced unprompted by smaller yet still formidable chalice of country pâté with a sturdy wood handled utilitarian knife jutting out.

We each sawed off a bread plate sized wedge and attacked the mountain of bread.  A mustard pot arrived to cut the savory full flavored pâté, which given its course texture was more truthfully a terrine.

Only after triple checking we’d had enough did the chalice depart.  In its place landed a robust salad of one-third lettuce, one-third tomatoes and the remaining third fresh sautéed lardons sitting aside three other styles of cured ham.  All coated in a simple, zingy vinaigrette.

It was an immense feast.  One fit for a glutton but given the careful attention and pleasure everyone else in the restaurant approached each spoon/hand/fork full we were in fact amongst gastronomes.

And so, after all that it was time for Anny to ask what we’d like for dinner.

We requested the poulet a la moutarde (chicken in mustard sauce with rice) and local specialty the Toulouse sausage with a large dome of frites.

The food was astounding in quantity and taste.  The skeptic in me arousing on the authenticity, quality and origins of the meal was silenced when seeing sacs of potatoes being cut manually to size while every other dish was made fresh upon order.

Upon consuming a week’s worth of calories in the main course alone a modest cheese wedge arrived with relief to indicate the cavalcade of courses was concluding.

On verge of conceding defeat, I accepted the lemon meringue for dessert while my wife took the crème brûlée that was as good as any we’ve had in various restaurants of various numbers of stars.  In fact, better than most.

Two espressos appeared to aid digestion and with it under mystery and suspense the bill, as no discussion or indication of cost was of yet initiated.

€14 each.

That’s about $17.25 CDN/USD at today’s rate.  All tax, tip, food, wine, coffee and a smile.

For the local French farm worker about half would be subsidized by the national food voucher program available to most French citizens of near all income levels.

The most honest meal for and from the most honest people imaginable.

Foods of the land physically and spiritually.

Served with humility, humanity and understated style rarely achieved at the finest restaurants.

A modest restaurant never designed with a “target” audience in mind.  Simply a way of being for how it has always been.

It can’t last.

It is impossible not to envision the great risk of extinction such a meal is threatened by.

Even simply due to the fact of mechanized of farm labour few people work physically exhaustive enough to justify such a meal regularly.

Where every town once had a restaurant like this, fewer do.

Subsequent generations of families no longer want to work hard enough to maintain the standard, as has befallen many such restaurants.

Culturally, economically, and spiritually it is not a meal that can travel such as haut-gastronomy or street food of any culture.  It is too close to the land, its people.

Yet, Chez Anny does exist.

When I worked in Paris over time I learned of similar humble one off restaurants that without fanfare hosted bankers, builders, architects, street cleaners and anyone else to a humble and honest meal.

Endangered, yet thankfully far from extinct.

We hear Anny has a son working in a stuffy kitchen in a distant urban centre, if we’re lucky he’s unhappy and will be drawn to the elegant life of a peasant chef.

When asked to become part of the Foodists community, I was flattered and somewhat surprised. Sure, my life is food, I know how to cook and I have strong opinions about food. But for most of my journalistic career I’ve been behind the scenes, either editing other writers or working as a journalist, which mostly involves purging prose of opinion, and most certainly of adjectives.

Most food writing online is the antithesis of my background, full of hyperbole, hysteria, freebie-influenced swooning, and uninformed speculation on the restaurant industry. After going to culinary school (Northwest Culinary Academy, if you really want to know) and wading through the murky trenches of freelance journalism (you can find my credentials here, if you really need to know them), I’ve bitten the bullet and decided to let the adjectives fly.

After, all some of the best writing ever (EVER!) has been created by the likes of MFK Fisher, Claudia Roden, Patricia Wells, and Ruth Reichl, and I’m heading towards France in the year of Julia Child’s 100 birthday. While I’d never dare to compare myself to those amazing women, at least I can aspire to follow in their footsteps.

For the next two months I’m staging (apprenticing) at an inn in Provence, and will be posting recipes, mediations and the occasional rave for your reading pleasure. My interests are food science, culture, gastronomy, DIY projects (especially charcuterie), foraging and food security, but you’ll hear more about that in the weeks to come.

For now, here’s an excerpt from an interview I did  with Foodtree so we can get to know each other a little better:

Has your relationship with food evolved over time? How?
Everyone’s has, I think. But I suppose working on an apple farm at such a young age had a profound impact on my preconceived notions of what our food system should look like. I took for granted that everyone could eat asparagus out of a garden, or knew how to forage for chanterelles. That kind of cheap self-sufficiency was a practical matter, not just a high-end luxury, so it’s strange for me to think about modern-day gourmand-ism as something that’s only accessible to the very rich. It’s mostly about doing something over buying something, which is something I think we’ve lost touch with as a society.

What is your earliest memory about food?
My earliest food memory is probably from the apple farm. I was probably about thirteen or so, and had taken a break from patrolling the orchard (it was pick-your-own, and many careless people would climb trees and break branches or throw apples). I picked a Jonagold apple, which were quite new at the time, that was nearly as large as my head, and laid back in the thigh-high grass. I remember munching on this huge apple, looking up through the trees, watching the fluffy white clouds drift across a Dutch-blue sky as apple juice ran down my cheeks.

What’s most important to you when it comes to buying food – local, organic, fair trade, GMO-free, etc?
Definitely local, and not factory-farmed. Local is important for changing how our food economy is structured, and supporting local entrepreneurs and farmers. However, good food doesn’t have to be “”organic”” to be good. Our apple farm wasn’t organic, but it was a manageable size, my grandfather practiced careful spraying and tree maintenance, and didn’t depend on irrigation to keep the trees alive.

For things we can’t get locally, I think fair-trade chocolate and coffee should be the default, but unfortunately capitalism doesn’t work that way. This makes the fair-trade label necessary, which is too bad. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could assume that trade was fair?

When it comes to GMOs, I think engineering seeds, animals or otherwise that can’t reproduce or support themselves should be outlawed. It’s a horrible, self-sabotaging practice that’s going to bite society in the butt in the long run.

What is the one thing you’d like to see change about the food system?
I’d love to see more grassroots community action around skills-sharing, like foraging, preserving, curing, cooking and otherwise. Right now cities aren’t doing a great job of supporting these movements through grants, etc., but I also don’t believe they should be expected to do all the heavy lifting. Food economy is really important as well; I’ve had friends tell me that it’s cheaper to eat out than to buy the base ingredients. This means they are either wasting too much, or don’t know how to freeze/save/use leftover food, which is a tragedy, and super wasteful.

Labour Day long weekend is around the corner, signalling the end of summer 2012. Vacations are ending, kids are back to school, and it’s time to get back into routines again. And for many that means reconsidering some eating habits picked up over the summer holidays. Enter Love Crunch, by organic cereals and granola producer Nature’s Path.

Having recently been redesigned with slick new packaging, the cereal inside is worth a closer look. According to the company, Love Crunch Granolas are USDA certified organic, containing no preservatives, additives or pesticides, as well as Non-GMO Project Verified. I think we can all agree this is healthy choice for breakfast or a snack.

We tried some samples here at Foodists HQ and liked them, although as a stand alone cereal, they leaned a little on the sweet side for our tastes. A full bowl seemed rather decadent, which makes sense if you consider that Nature’s Path markets the Love Crunch line as a “Premium Organic Granola” as opposed to a standard cereal. Sprinkled on yogurt or fruit, and Love Crunch is the perfect breakfast or healthy snack.

Win this gift basket filled with Love Crunch, granola bars, coupons and various swag from Nature's Path. Details below.

It’s been a hot summer for many of us, with lots of fun summer memories and food adventures, so let’s give away a big basket of Love Crunch.

HOW TO WIN(contest is open to residents of Canada only):

Comment on this post on tell us a story about your summer food adventures and/or tweet the following:

Spread the Love this summer! Tell your summer food adventure story to win a @NaturesPath gift basket from @Foodists http://foodists.ca/?p=15917

UPDATE: Congrats to Mojgan (@somethinglemon) who’s our winner of the @NaturesPath basket for her story of exploring food across Canada. Enjoy your yummy granola Mojgan!