Butter is the new cheese

I'm working on a trends piece for a magazine so I'm out in the shops a fair amount these days, trying to sort out the crap from the treasures. Man, there is a shitload of garbage in jars and bottles and packets. "Pizza dough mix" in a box...which is flour, dry yeast and salt. Way to go brainiac: you still have to add the water, olive oil and elbow grease. Meanwhile, every imaginable variety of jam/ condiment/ spread/ barbeque rub/ flavoured vinegar/ $25 olive oil continues to fill immeasurable real estate on the shelves of our city's food boutiques. Nothing seems to cost less than $7 and everything contains either lavender, smoked paprika or organic cane juice. I have a funny feeling that were I to purchase one of these pricey jars I would use one tablespoon then relegate the sucker to The Back of The Fridge.

Not to worry, though, there is still much to wonder at and salivate over. These treasures usually appear in the fresh section. Today at a cute catering take-away I found a foil-wrapped parcel of artisanal butter ($8 for 250g); I caught another one later in the day at the city's premier cheese and provisions shop. [A side note: the first recipe in Jen McLagan's new book, Fat, is for homemade butter. Oh you can bet I'll be on that one asap.] It seems that a few enterprising cheeseries are taking the initiative to lure foodies with a new form of hand-hewn fat.

My opinion on this? I left the bread and knife on the board all afternoon, to where I returned at regular intervals to slice, toast and slather. As darling James Beard said, "Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts."

Mm.

Chefstock

We had our inaugural national chefs' congress this past Sunday-Monday. I continue to bask in the afterglow of the most inspiring, awesome food-related event of my career. I'll try to be brief, but I'm yet barely able to express my inspiration in words. I'll start with the food and see where that goes.

In brief: the engine on this train is Michael Stadtländer, our country's head chef; he's at the forefront of the craft. He initiates trends -- but on principle, not on pretension. He moved to a huge farm 2 hours north of the city and lives and works on a mostly self-sustaining farm. Nightly, he serves 8 people a dinner that comes from his pens, gardens and woods. He's an artist; he's a genius; he's our leader. This whole cabal was his initiative (not that he didn't have a wee army of helpers). He's about 7 feet tall and wears a feather in his cap.

So about 250 chefs (barely any media and absolutely no wannabes or socialites) congregated at Stadtländer's farm midday Sunday. We sang the national anthem. Then 13 chefs from each of the country's provinces cooked a regional speciality in cast iron pans over open fires. This all happened in a huge open field. There was the most buttery gravlax; musky, peppery muskox tartare; whitefish caviar and YES, diced raw whale blubber (exquisite, like lardo) from the North; scallops with oyster nectar, pickled herrings and an unfortunate lobster risotto from the East; Berkshire pork, duck ballotine and braised lamb from the middle; bison pierogies with bison bresaola and berkshire pork in a broth of very gently smoked pike chowder from the West.

But the hands-down scene stealer was the fish and brews from Newfoundland. This dish of cod cheeks and tongues, battered, shallow fried and served over "brews" (kind of a mash made of salt cod and hard bread) topped with addictive pork scruncheons stole the heart of every chef at the show.



We hung out, drank lovely wines and beers and just chatted. There was absolutely not a whiff of competition; I think this was because there were no non-chefs there. Although we had all stuffed ourselves at lunch, by 9pm all were ready for round 2, prepared by the heavy-hitting chefs from The Big City. They showed their muscles with elk rib eyes; 18-month-cured hams; fire-roasted lamb; handmade charcuterie and artisanal cheese; raw oysters, scallops and clams cooked on an open fire. We gorged on those shellfish then pocketed the hot shells (it was freezing by sundown). The epic bonfire was lit.

We returned for another day, another meal (breakfast cooked by culinary students. Lovely pigs). Then sessions where chefs spoke passionately about their crafts. Sustainable aquaculture; living off the land; making cheese. All these conversations were elevated way beyond the usual food pap served up by the non-food media. This is why we guests found the fires beneath our asses lit with a vengeance.

This is by far the last you've heard of this.

A few words upon having found a zucchini in the crisper

It's been a particularly embarrassing week for me as the home cook (see list of other meals from the week to the right). Suffice to explain that after roasting a chicken last Saturday night I haven't turned on the oven or stove once. Tonight (one of those luxurious Saturday nights at home by myself) I have returned to my old ways and cooked up a plain old pot of pasta for supper. But something wonderful happened: as I was digging through the wilting-to-manky produce in the fridge there appeared a perfectly fine small zucchini.

While penne is boiling, heat some olive oil and a small pat of butter over medium low. Add a coarsely chopped clove of garlic and a small dried hot pepper and get them all fragrant. Increase the heat to medium high and add a chopped zucchini*. Once tender throw in a big handful of chopped parsley, a splash of white wine and a generous dose of Parm. Now I'm all proud and feeling chef-y.

* Jamie Oliver helped my get over my dislike of zucchini, which I'd always found wet and blah. Cut it into long quarters then deftly slice out the seed layer. This removes the spongy layer that never cooks out its moisture, leaving behind a rather tasty remainder.

D.O.P pizza

One of the easiest things to spot in a restaurant is pretension. There's a forced-ness that anyone who just loves to eat can simply feel. It's the feeling you get walking into a glitzed-up restaurant where the music is so cool you don't recognize it and the hostess (wearing more eyeliner than apparel) lets you see an almost imperceptible sneer as you doff your coat and reveal a less-than-uber cool outfit. The menu reads right -- these days it'll be "sharing plates", lots of pork and a whole lot more words in non-English languages -- but the food doesn't deliver.

By happy contrast, authenticity is also pretty easy to spot. When we stepped into what's billed as our city's only truly Neapolitan pizzeria, my Italian swain exclaimed that this would not be out of place in Naples. Right down to the exposed white cedar bar, the pizzeria's owners are attempting to bring the entire authentic Neapolitan pizza experience to this city.

They even have an ideology page on their website where they quote from the EU and the Vera Pizza Napoletana code. Just to begin, a true pizza must be circularly shaped, 0.3 cm thick at its centre and 1 to 2 cm thick at its crust.

YES, THERE'S AN ASSOCIATION WHICH GOVERNS THE AUTHENTICITY OF PIZZA. (And people wonder why I worship the Italians.)

I would travel days, pay a princess's ransom, abide boring conversation and even sleep in a tent to experience this kind of passionate food-related authenticity. So sitting too far across a long communal table from my beau seems a paltry compromise because the first item on the pizza list stops me cold: Margherita D.O.P.

Denominazione di origine controllata is beautiful Italian for the Protected Designation of Origin laws which guard the names of regional foods. Champagne was one of the first winners (you can't call any old bubbly champers anymore), so are prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's a way of keeping safe the actual words we use to name foods, keeping their original meaning in tact. Kind of like a food dictionary in application, in order to be named Parmigiano-Reggiano, it must be made in a small region of Northen Italy to specific standards inspected by the Parm-Regg cheese consortium. I have a fierce passion for dictionaries, grammar and language, so no surprise that I dig this kind of thing.

As we eat the D.O.P Margherita, we can only smile. It is perfect and simple and delicious, the San Marzano tomato sauce slightly more sweet than acid, the fior di latte mozzarella creamy and pale, the basil wilted, the crust exceptional in its simultaneous crispy-chewiness. We pull on $5 tumblers of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo and bawl at each other over the extraordinary din.

I have long lived by the motto that pizza is like sex: even when it's bad it's still good. Pizza does get slutted around rather a lot (this city also boasts an Afghan pizzeria, a Turkish pizzeria, and many varieties of BBQ chicken pizza), and that's not always a bad thing, particularly at 3am on the way home from the pub. It's just comforting to know that someone cares enough to make this pizza according to these rules. And that deserves respect.

A single girl and a flank steak

It was either James Beard or Mrs Rombauer who said that eternity is defined as a ham between 2 people. That quotation played in my head this week. I barbequed one of Elvis' lovely flank steaks on Monday night (marinated in a motley combination of soy, hoisin, maple syrup, chili flakes, Dijon and balsamic) and sliced it thinly. My stars, I just finished the last of it on Friday! It lasted me 4 meals. I'll have to revert to tofu and quinoa this week.

I've poached a new element from Carol Blymire's wonderful, inspiring French Laundry at Home blog. She lists "what else I've eaten this week" and it's always fun to read. I'm hoping the contents of my own list won't be too scary to admit.

Preserving madness

When like-minded people engage in an activity which all are mildly obsessed with, excess is just a stone's-throw away. That's why last night at about 8pm, my canning partners and I decided there was nothing for it: we had to preserve what remained of our bushel of tomatoes.

Ok, let me back up. Last year Sean and Jane and I had 3 magnificent weekends of preserving, ending up with chutney, chili sauce, 2 types of jam and several litres of preserved peaches. We were determined to increase our results this year, but between their new baby and my apartment move, we had so far preserved doodlysquat and the season was waning. I was starting to feel a bit desperate, and that's when the madness set in. We met at the market and goaded each other into not just doubling the quantity of peaches we preserved last year but TRIPLING it. And we knew we needed a triple batch of chili sauce. But that doesn't sound like too much, right? Alas, it was just twenty minutes later while negotiating with a very young farmer's daughter for 36 plum tomatoes that she uttered the fateful phrase, "why don't you just buy a bushel? It's only $12."


Now, gentle reader, how am I, an occasionally insane, type-A, stay-up-all-night personality, to respond to that? Not to mention that at 9am on a Saturday I was besieged by rolling buggies, strollers, Golden Retrievers and oversized backpacks full of corn and cauliflower, and there was neither time nor space to think rationally about this decision. The next thing I knew, we were hauling a BUSHEL of plum tomatoes on top of THREE FLATS of peaches.



Ah, preserving day. When madness takes hold of you lock stock and barrel. And just when you think you have blanched, quartered and skinned as many peaches as possible, there is still another sinkful to conquer. Once appropriately prepped, we shoved the sweet, juicy beauties into jars, topped up with thin sugar syrup, wiped rims, snapped on lids and rings and lovingly simmered them for 20 minutes. There is nothing quite so satisfying as hearing the dull >snap< of the lids sealing.

But there was no rest for us (just a fortifying turkey and cranberry sandwich). After chopping the onions and peppers for chili sauce Sean removed the 36 tomatoes required. He then looked at what remained of the bushel, looked over at me and remarked "you've got to be kidding me". Yeah, those 36 tomatoes made up about a sixth of the bushel. We didn't say much for a long while after that. But then we agreed that it would be criminal to toss the tomatoes -- there was no way we could eat through them in a week. We looked at each other and understood: this was going to be a long evening. We consulted books and the web, then simply blanched, skinned, quartered, packed into jars with water and sealed the jars. Results to follow in another post, no doubt.

Each year we forget how very long it takes to bring a canner to a boil; how long the chili sauce simmers before it's right; how much ice we'll need for the blanching stages; how sticky the kitchen floor gets mid-way through the day. But we don't forget the sublime pleasure of snapping open a litre of the sweetest sunshiney peaches on a snow day in January, or of the perfect flavour match between our chili sauce and a wedge of tourtiere on Christmas Eve.