Happy Grilled Cheese Month!

April is my favorite month.  Yes it signals the start if Spring, by the end if it we are in full on warmer weather, flowers star blooming, we basically get out of the Winter funk.  But none of that is why April is my favorite, because the real reason is it' Grilled Cheese Month. A silly foodie holiday?  Absolutely! But it is one I will always recognize because grilled cheese is by far my favorite sandwich of all time.  Anything from bad for you whit bread and cheese slices to the mother (or should I say father) of all grilled cheese Croque Monsieur.

Because if this, you should be prepared to see lots of grilled cheese variations posted this month.  Lucky for me I'm back into a good workout routine, so I'm hoping my waistline won't suffer too much.  I'll likely amp it up even more to counterbalance all the delicious bread and cheese.  This first sandwich of the month was inspired by my love for French Onion Soup.

A Day with Trius Wines Part 2: All About the Food

The plates just before serving (left); Smoke filled bell jars ready to be served (center) ;
My final plate just waiting to be gobbled up (right)

Our day down at the Hillebrand estate with Trius Wines was alot about the wine, alot.  But there was so much fabulous food that I thought it deserved a post all it's own.  We started the day in the sparkling wine cellar with copious amounts of Trius Brut.  As we all gathered and enjoyed our glasses of sparkling wine we watched as Chef Frank Dodd plated our starters.  I was drawn into the gorgeous oyster and then noticed the salmon that sat under a little bell jar, that I soon learned was used to lightly smoke each piece of salmon.

Before I go too deeply into the food though, this day was as much about learning about Trius wines, but for me it was as much about learning how to cook with wine. Though we weren't specifically given a cooking class, each dish we had inspired me in some way to think of ways I could incorporate wine more into my cooking, as is evidenced by the fact that I came up with a recipe  go along with this post. Chef Dodd uses wine in such a thoughtful way in each dish.  It's inspiring.  I do cook with wine, it's in every tomato sauce I make and I use it often when roasting chicken too, but beyond that I don't think about it  other than as something to drink while I'm cooking.  This day and this event changed that for me.

A Day with Trius Wines Part 1: All About the Wine

Even covered in snow it's still beautiful

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited out to the Hillebrand Estate to spend the day learning about Trius Wines along side Winemaker Craig McDonald as well as eat some delicious local food from Chef Frank Dodd.  When I first received the invitation which came via messenger with a gorgeous Trius box filled with an empty 1.5L bottle.  I have to admit I felt quite fancy to receive such an invite.  When I learned that the invite was to learn about the Art of the Blend and blend our own wine AND that the event was taking place on my father's birthday I knew I had to ask if there was any way I could bring him along.  Lucky for me Melissa, my contact with Trius' PR company, was more than happy to accommodate.  And Dad was so excited at the prospect of the day that he did all he could to make sure he got up to Toronto for the day.

Friday morning rolled around and we waited excitedly, unsure what the day would hold.  My dad is a planner so he must have asked me 4 times if I had an itinerary for the day or knew anything about what was going on.  It never occurred to me to ask because I knew there'd be food and wine and they were picking us up so no need to worry about driving, for me that's all I needed to know.  Plus it made for a better birthday surprise for him. 

Judging Iron Cupcake Toronto

If you are friends with me or Piccante Dolce on Facebook or follow me on Twitter you may have seen me rabidly campaigning last week, with help from the Boy and my brother, to win a spot as a judge in the Iron Cupcake Toronto Competition.  Redpath Sugar was running a contest to get two judges for the competition where the secret ingredient was Chocolate.

I arrived to For the Love of Cake's Liberty Village location on Sunday afternoon and was directed across the hall and upstairs to a snazzy common room that was teeming with contestants and supporters.  I met Genevieve the Head Deisgner & Owner of the cupcake shop and the person running the competition.

Almost Famous Chef Competition & a Valentine's Day Recipe

Shots of the chef's cooking the Calphalon Kitchen

Early this week I attending the judging and tasting of San Pellgrino's Almost Famous Chef Regional Canada Competition at the Calphalon Culinary Center in Toronto.  The Almost Famous Chef Competition started nine years ago and gives culinary students all over the US and Canada the chance to compete and be judged by nationally renowned chefs at the final competition in Napa in March.   I brought Carole from The Yum Yum Factor and No reEATS with me and while neither of us really knew what to expect, but were excited to go.

After arrival and check in, we heading down to the reception to check our coats and were immediately handed a glass of bubbly.  Anyone who knows me knows that this is an instant way to win me over, I love champagne, cava, prosecco...if it's sparkling I generally like it.  So I was a happy girl. As members of the press we were then whisked up to the kitchen where some of the students were still cooking their dishes (they have staggered start times and 2 hours to prepare their dish for the 8 judges). To say that this kitchen was gorgeous is an understatement.  I don't know about Carole, but I was green with envy at the racks of beautiful pots and pans, the spotless counters and gorgeous appliances, it was perfect.  Once I got done ogling the kitchen, I watched the cooking.  I have never been in a competitive kitchen like this before and you could absolutely cut the tension with a knife.  That being said the chef students were very calm, periodically checking their time and moving through their respective dishes.   We hung out a little, watched them work and took some photos before heading back down to hear some of the dish presentations and taste the food.

Celebrating Mexican Cuisine at Frida

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited to a dinner at Frida Restaurant, here in Toronto, by the Mexico Tourism Board.  The dinner was held to celebrate the first ever gastronomy recognition by UNESCO for Traditional Mexican Cuisine. Acknowledged as an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of increasing globalization, Traditional Mexican cuisine - ancestral, ongoing community culture, the Michoacán paradigm is now part of UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, an elite list of traditions, practices and rituals that

encourage intercultural dialogue and shared identity. Mexican cuisine is one of the first cuisines or national food offering to be declared a part of UNESCO’s World Heritage and was officially recognized on November 16, 2010 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.*

Traditional Mexican cuisine reflects a comprehensive cultural model of farming, community and ancestral practices, and culinary techniques. Native ingredients such as tomatoes, squashes, avocados, cocoa and vanilla make up some of the basic staples of Mexican cuisine and help create many of the States regional and national identities.*

I felt honored to be asked to be a part of such a special celebration and was even happier that it was in honor of Mexican food, one of my favorite types of food.  This recognition of a traditional cuisine on a global level shows even how important food is to culture and how important it is to share these traditions with each generation.  It shows the impact that passing down recipes and stories can have and furthers my believe that food is as much about the story and experience as it is about filling your tummy.

Outstanding Meal at Pete's Greens

Over a week ago my new husband and I were fortunate enough to attend a meal thrown by Outstanding in the Field at Pete's Greens in Craftsbury, VT. While I have spent alot of time in VT due to my folks having a condo at Killington and even lived in Shelburne for a year when I was 5, I've never taken much interest in the food there. We generally cook at the house when we are up skiing, and aside from VT cheddar and Maple Syrup I admit to ignorance when it comes to VT grown and produced products. The boy, being Canadian, also knew next to nothing about food from VT except for our favorite Long Trail beer. As we headed out on our honeymoon 12 days before the dinner, I even noted that I thought there was a chance the dinner would be a beer dinner based on the large number of microbreweries in VT and having had no knowledge of VT based vineyards. All that being said we knew we were in for a great experience and meal and our lack of knowledge just increased our anticpation.

Our host farmer for the dinner was Pete Johnson of Pete's Greens. Pete's Greens is an organic farm located in Craftsbury, VT. Our chef was Eric Warnstedt from Hen of the Wood in Waterbury, VT. Upon first pulling into Pete's Greens we are greeted by the most whimsical sight a small shedlike building whose roof was covered by plants a border of green with the center part covered in this lovely deep purple leafy plants. We later found out the purple plants were amaranth and the plant covered roof topped their farm stand. A shed chock full of Pete's veggies and pastured raised chicken and eggs, as well as tons of other locavore products. From locally made jams and honeys to locally grown flour, some even from Quebec, which even though it's a different country is only 30 miles away from Pete's. It pained me to not be able to buy some of the gorgeous tomatoes and baby greens, but as we were traveling and literally had no more room in the car or cooler I settled for a Pear Honey jam from Elmore Roots, some local honey and some VT grown white flour. The farmstand is completely on the honor system,w here you write down what you've taken and make your own change. Coming from a big city, it was so refreshing to be somewhere where you could trust people like that and made the whole thing even more special, if that was possible.

A Fabulous Food Buzz Weekend Take #1

First off I'm so sorry for the delay of this write-up, catching up on real life after all of my travels of the past few months got the best of me. That being said I just had to share some of my experiences in San Francisco during the Food Buss First Annual Food Festival. I was fortunate enough to go to San Francisco for this event. Believe me when I say I was fortunate, not only did I get to visit this wonderful city and see my good friend Suz from You Can't Eat What but I got to spend the weekend with a bunch of other foodies eating and drinking twice our weight.

The weekend started on Friday evening, after registration and gift bag full of all kinds of swag, stay tuned for review of some of the products. We then went to the welcome cocktail party on the terrace at the Hotel Vitale, with a gorgeous view of the Bay Bridge and the Ferry Building. There were a few custom designed Sky Vodka cocktails, though I went straight for the bubbly. After some cocktails, Mac & Cheese with Bacon and meeting up with Jessica from A Fete for Food we headed on over to the Ferry Building for a fabulous Street Food Festival.

The Street Food Festival featured everything from delicious mini cupcakes (my fave was the horchata)
to deliciously rich and fresh organic vanilla ice cream,

to braised beef tacos, to delish cocktails. The favorite of the majority people of the night seemed to be the Porchetta Sandwiches and while they were great I was partial to the Kumamoto Oysters and The Pie Trucks Steak & Gruyere Pies.
I also had an awesome Basil Gimlet from the guys at Rye.

Filled to the brim and a bit jet lagged we decided to go to the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building for a cocktail I had a Ginger Limeade that was so perfectly balanced and exactly what I wanted. Of course me being me I completely knocked my own drink out of my hand, it hit the carpet and shattered! Big surprise to those who know me. The best and most surprising thing about it was that in 3 minutes flat the staff had cleaned the glass and gave me a brand new drink. Now I've drop alot of cocktails in my time and never once have I been brought a new one by the bar. Aside from how delicious the cocktails are, the Slanted Door is my new favorite spot, anywhere based on the graciousness of the staff. Did I mention that they use fresh and real cranberry juice too, not cocktail crap. That makes a real Cape Codder, deliciously ruby red and quite tasty according the Jessica who sampled one.

After a nice sleep, we were up and at it again on Saturday. First order of business was a trip to the Ferry Building Ferry Market. I'm a farmer's market junkie. This past summer the boy and I would take a different back road up north each weekend in order to discover a new hidden gem of a market. As much as we found some great markets, the Ferry Building Market put them all to shame.
From mounds of gorgeous multi-colored peppers to the St. Benoit freshly made Meyer Lemon yogurt, which I was too busy eating to photograph, to honey collected from hives strategically set up all over the region. The amount of delicious and farm fresh products was overwhelming especially considering in Toronto the Farmer's Market season has wound down.
This visit offered me my last fix before winter sets in. My one regret is that I wasn't staying somewhere with a kitchen to be able to by and use some of these fabulous products. The reality of having to pack anything I bought forced me to managed what I picked up, so I stuck to some posole, something I can't ever find in Toronto except at a specialty market, some honey collected from hives at the CIA in St. Helena and a jar of Strawberry & Ollalieberry Jam from Swanton Berry Farm.
The last thing for Saturday morning was getting to meet Pim from the Fabulous Chez Pim. I love her blog, her marmalade and jams and was very excited to meet here and have her sign my copy of her new book "The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy." She was so lovely and gracious and completely encouraged me to use my love of jam making and start making marmalade this winter. I read the book on the flight home and it's great too. Stay tuned for a review in the coming weeks.

I'll end this first part of my write-up here. Stay tuned for more of Saturday's events from a Farm-to-Table discussion to the amazing Tasting Pavilion and Outstanding in the Field dinner. I am still smiling thinking about the weekend and can't wait to share more with you.

Enjoy!

Food Buzz Festival Day 1

Well as many of my other fellow bloggers here in lovely San Fran this weekend, I had every intention of posting day by day updates of the food I ate and the goings on. That would have been great had the oh so intelligent Ms Piccante Dolce not left the memory card reader and cable for her camera at home in Toronto!

So you get one pic:


The only photo I have is one taken with my phone of an oh so delicious Ginger Limeade cocktail from the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building. It's not great because it was taken with my blackberry, but let me tell you it was one fabulous cocktail. Even better because I dropped my first one and not only did the staff clean it up in a timely manner but they, without question, brought me a new one! It was awesome. The Slanted Door is a clumsy girl's savior, if you are a clumsy girl like me who managed to throw her cocktail no matter how sober she may be!

All in all it was great first day, I'll post about the food when I'm back in TO and able to post pictures. But it was a pleasure to meet some great FoodBuzz peeps (Ryan, Alexa & Dorian) and put face to Twitter Friends (@EatitTweetit).

Enjoy!

What I learned at the Toronto Wine & Cheese Show

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Toronto Wine & Cheese Show at the International Center in Mississauga, sponsored by Metro and the Toronto Star. I was able to do this courtesy of Food Buzz. The show is billed as an event not only for wine & cheese lovers but chock full of gourmet foods as well. It was the cheese and gourmet foods that really made me want to attend the show. I love wines, but am admittedly far from an expert. It was great to try some new wines, some of which I've even bought since the show, but I was really hoping to use my time at the show to get some inspiration for some new recipes and write about some of my fabulous gourmet food finds. While my friend and I tasted a chickpea curry from a new family run business, Gourmantra ( a company that found a way to get their family recipe into an easy kit), had some fresh P.E.I. Malpeque Oysters and bought some tasty sausages for our boys at home, this Wine & Cheese show was much more about the wine than cheese or anything else. It was a bit disappointing, since I was craving some good cheese and to learn something during my time spent at the show. Luckily there was one cheese centered seminar, sponsored by the Dairy Farmer of Canada. The class promised to educate us on tasting cheese and how to put together a cheese tasting on our own. Exactly what I was looking for!

About 40 minutes before the demonstration was set to begin, there was already a line forming outside of the demo area, so my friend and I did another circle of the hall and got a bit more wine to have during the demo and got into the line-up. We ended up right in the second row of tables which was perfect to see and hear everything that our teacher, Anne-Marie Shubin, a teacher at the Cheese Education Guild in Toronto, said. The seminar started with a bit of Dairy Farmer's of Canada info. 2009 is their 75th anniversary and something that I never knew is that milk from Canada is one of the highest quality available. I liked this one because it means their cheese is of a higher quality. Definitely something that made me happy to be in Canada!

We then got into the meat of the seminar, Anne-Marie began by talking about the importance of keeping a cheese journal. A way to record the cheeses you've had and how much you liked or didn't like them. It could contain anything from a written description to a simple 1 to 10 rating system. I can't believe I never thought to do this before since the boy and I go to the cheese monger fairly regularly and while I love tasting the cheeses to pick the ones I like, it would be great to be able to go in and ask for the ones I know I've loved by name.

After reinforcing that cheese is always best served at or slightly below room temperature, Anne-Marie spent some time going of the order of cheese a service. You should start with the softer, more mellow and generally younger cheeses and gradually move through to the older, harder and more pungent cheeses. The only exception to this rule are the blue cheeses. They are a soft cheese that will almost always end a cheese service. Once you have your order of the cheese, for a true cheese service you should also have some very neutral crackers or baguette on hand to be used as a palate cleanser between cheeses. Then much like with wines, you should consider the appearance and smell of each cheese before tasting while also noticing how the taste compares to the smell.

We went on to try six different Canadian cheeses, all were excellent and I decided that rather than show and write about these cheese we had in the class that I would put together my own cheese tasting, putting to use all I learned from Anne-Marie. While the whole class was extremely informative and the best part of the entire day, the most interesting tidbit I took away from Anne-Marie was her suggesting to do a cheese tasting with beer or cider. This was something I had to try! I spoke with her after the class to find out which beers or ciders she suggests for a cheese tasting. She said the Du Minot sparkling cider or Strongbow cider and Hoegaarden for beer.

I walked away from the demonstration wanting to visit my local cheese monger picking out a few and setting up a little tasting for the boy and I at home. The boy and I met at The Art of Cheese, a cheese shop very close to our house that we had yet to try. We spent some time there tasting and carefully picking the cheeses for our own cheese tasting. And amazingly had the willpower to wait until the next night for our cheese adventure.

When we sat down of our tasting. I made sure we had some baguette as well as a nice cold Hoegaarden to try. Our first cheese was a Grey Owl goat cheese from Quebec. The rind has that interesting grey color because it's rolled in olive tree ash. Appearance wise, this cheese is nice and gooey near the rind and more chalky towards the center, something that denotes a younger cheese. It smells a bit like a goat cheese would, but not nearly as pungent. On tasting it, it tasted very fresh and milky, a symptom of it being a younger cheese. Overall it was very enjoy and went so well with the beer. I was fan. After some baguette, we moved onto the Le Migneron de Charlevoix an cow's milk cheese also out of Quebec, it is a nice semi firm cheese, with a complex aroma and a creamy, nutty taste. I could imagine making a grilled cheese with this one.

Our next cheese was also from Charlevoix but was the Hercule, an Oka-style raw cow's milk cheese, The one was more firm than the Migneron, but in retrospect should have been tasted first, as the Hercule was much more mellow in flavor than the Migneron. Thus far it was my least favorite cheese. Next up was a 3-year old organic cow's milk cheddar. When we tasted this at the cheese shop the boy asked for extra, he loved it so much and have to say trying it again during our tasting I am inclined to agree. The is a solid sharp cheddar, it's nice and firm, with a fabulously pungent smell and just the right amount of sharpness. It also paired perfectly with the slight sweetness of the Hoegaarden.

While we could have left it with the fabulous cheddar, both the boy and I are fans of blue cheese. When we were at the cheese shop we chose the Roaring Forties Blue Cheese, out of Australia. It was the only non-Canadian cheese we chose and while I had intended to get only Canadian cheeses in honer of the Dairy Farmers seminar I was inspired by, this one was too tasty to pass up. The beautiful yellow color comes from the Jersey cows milk that is used. I found this blue interesting because while it is definitely pungent in smell, it was much less in your face than the blue's I generally gravitate towards. On tasting it just melts in your mouth this delicious rich taste with a slightly sweet and nutty flavor. It just stays with you, with the most pleasant aftertaste. Even this one worked with the beer! This cheese is getting a 10 in my cheese journal, I love it.

So there you have it, what I learned at the Toronto Wine & Cheese show, while I tried a ton of wines and tasted some yummy treats, the Cheese seminar is what made it all worthwhile. I will very soon be hosting a beer and cheese party for some of our friends and family and promise to share the outcome. Enjoy!