Edible Tulip

For the Love of August

Pablo Neruda in his Ode to Tomatoes writes: "...the tomato, star of earth, recurrent and fertile star, displays its convolutions, its canals, its remarkable amplitude and abundance, no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns, the tomato offers its gift of fiery color and cool completeness."*

It has been a fertile summer for tomatoes in Ontario - hot with little rain. I tend to buy baskets of the small, vine-ripe tomatoes which I find have less chance than the big, beefsteak kind of being mealy. To be honest, I've never been a huge tomato fan. I've typically found them too acidic and oddly unsatisfying. The pasta dishes I prefer our often non-tomato based. But recently I've been exposed to the delicious simplicity of a straight-up pureed fresh tomato sauce tossed with fresh pasta and it was exquisite. I'm preparing my own fresh tomato pasta sauce and it's as simple as 1-2-3.

Adapted from Anna Thomas's The New Vegetarian Epicure:

Summer Tomato Sauce
Makes about 3 cups of sauce

3 lbs. ripe tomatoes
1 tbsp green olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Scald the tomatoes in boiling water for 45 seconds and slip off their skins. Trim their stems and process briefly in a blender or food processor until thick and not too thin and liquid-like.

Heat olive oil in a saucepan and add the garlic. Stir for about a minute, then pour in the tomatoes. Add the basil and a little salt and pepper and cook the sauce on medium for half an hour or until reduced by a third.

Use immediately or keep, covered, in the refrigerator for several days.

Another delicious bounty of late summer are BEETS! The thought, the smell, the taste of beets have induced my gag reflex since I was a child. About a year ago, I tried a co-worker's salad that her boyfriend had made for her and it included grated fresh beets and grated carrots. The combination is a common item in many salads in vegetarian/vegan restaurants because of the earthy combination of their flavours but for me it represented something beautifully vibrant, locally harvested, dirt cheap, and rich in vitamins and minerals to add some zip to my lunchtime salads. This Sunday salad included organic raw pumpkin seeds, Mexican queso fresca cheese, grated Ontario beets, avocado chunks, sunflower sprouts and romaine and baby spring lettuce tossed in a light oil and vinegar dressing.

*excerpted from Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda, University of California Press c. 1990

Toronto Tree Tour

When I lived on a river that backed onto hectares worth of forest, the trees were my backdrop so I didn't give them much notice. I woke to their leaves rustling, walked beneath their majestic canopy, and stalked my cats who in turn stalked every living thing smaller than them. I have a dozen tree books from second hand stores and as much as I tried to educate myself with bark identification tests and leaf diagrams I still felt confounded when I came upon a tree I thought I knew in new different season. Call me a tree geek or a wanna be arborist. In the city, I'm devoid of much exposure to trees, so when I came upon a chance for a free Tree Tour in Toronto I leapt at the chance. I knew it might be odd. Who goes on a tree tour in downtown Toronto on the Saturday of a long weekend? Well, me, and apparently a sold out crowd of other nature lovers.

The tour was led by a quirky, witty, urban arborist and we met on the steps of 401 Richmond (which I've written about before but if you haven't been you must, must check out this space!). We proceeded inside and into the courtyard full of chirping birds, climbing ivy, and splindly tall trees growing skyward in search of sunlight. There was a spiral staircase that led to the rooftop and we were encouraged to climb or take the elevator. I am afraid of heights especially when you can see through a grate many stories below to the ground. But nobody made a move to the elevator and I sort of got swept in the crowd like I was being carried on the top of a mosh pit of elders and I began the climb. Once I got climbing I couldn't really turn around so I kept climbing. Anyone else that is afraid of heights knows that the higher you get the more intense the vertigo becomes - you begin to vacillate between pulling yourself away from the edge and wanting to leap into it. We emerged onto the rooftop garden and were embraced by a variety of potted plants, a naturalized green roof, an apiary for budgies, a greenhouse and a humbling view of sky, skyscrapers, and canopy cover all through the lens of green.

Bicycle Basket Lunch

Such a yummy picnic lunch to pick up on your travels through chinatown in Toronto. Pho Hung on Spadina on the outskirts of Kensington Market has a selection of small packageable goodies to pack into a bag or place horizontally in a bicycle basket. It was late morning when I swung into the busy restaurant and there were lots of people seated in the exterior room where the windows can be rolled down for breezy days or pulled up tight with the blinds at half mast on hot summer days. They seemed to be slurping down soups and noodles and various pork dishes in great delight. I was looking for something refreshing to have a snack before I started out on my organized Tree Tour of Toronto and I only had 1/2 an hour to eat so I ordered the large vegetarian cold spring rolls to go. 3 minutes later and $6.95 broker I left. I found a park somewhere south of Queen Street and east of Spadina to sit at a picnic table and dip my perfectly wrapped lightly mint and coriander flavoured spring rolls in a delicious tamarind sauce. Of course, 2 hours later I was ravenous but it got me through 2 exquisite roof top garden tours and a bike ride home.

Olé for the "Little Bull" - Torito Tapas Bar

Veronica Laudes, owner of Torito Tapas Bar with partner Luis Iglesias, zips around the cantina with her hair in two cute buns coiled under her earlobes. She's got the laughter, the exhuberance, the energy associated with Spain* and tapas - the midnight eating, the flamenco clackety-clack, the romantically seedy back-alleys of cities like Madrid and Barcelona. And although the place gives off that European edge (narrow interior restaurant, warm brick walls, bullfighting posters, festive vibe, hot hot hot Spanish-speaking bartender), it's a perfect fit for the grime of Kensington Market's Augusta strip. Torito can be easy to miss, especially in winter when the front patio is absent, so I've taken a photo of the sign - follow the bull's nose ring.

I was out for dinner with my brother View this photo to enjoy some one-on-one sibling time before he departs for a 2 year teaching commitment in the caribbean. While listening to him talk about his ocean view and the scuba diving lessons he'll be giving in his role as Phys-ed Teacher, I drowned myself in the best tasting ceviche I think I may have ever had (I've been across Spain and up the entire coast of Portugal and tried many a rubber ceviche in T.O.). It's made with tender white bass, lime, and coriander and served with a combination of fresh corn niblets and cooked corn kernals that taste alternately sweet and smokey. We drank Spanish white wines and moved onto crab croquettes - delicately pan fried sweet breadcrumb engulfed bites of heaven served with parsley aioli; grilled sardines served over fava beans and chopped fresh herbs - the sardines were just a bit too small resulting in a make up of 75% bone to 25% flesh, look out!; and a salad of arugula, fresh parmesan, sugared roasted almonds and the subtlest of dressings tasting. I have been to Torito before and can also attest to the delicious qual glazed with a light pomegranate reduction and excellent lamb sausages. Last night was too hot, too sticky, too appetite stifling to order much more than a few fish dishes and a fresh salad but hey, that's why we went out for tapas. Popular dishes around us on the patio were braised beef tongue and cheek, garlic shrimp, and what I can only think was roasted piquillo peppers stuffed with something white like salted cod being thoroughly enjoyed until the only thing to do was sop up the flavours with bread.

Everything is so fresh, so tasty, so perfectly done at Torito that it's hard to think back to a few weeks ago when looking for a place to eat down by Harbourfront in advance of catching a concert I ate at Lusso and had just about the worst most excessively overpriced meal I've eaten out in a long time and sadly all I had was a salad with grilled chicken and bruschetta. I prefer to stay away from the throngs of tourists and stick to grotty old Kensington Market and the good stuff.

Torito Tapas Bar. 276 Augusta Ave. Toronto. No reservations. #647-436-5874.

* Most people associate tapas with Spain and Spanish cuisine, as do I. I realize the owners of Torito are not Spanish; I believe they are Chilean and the chef, if it's still Carlos Hernandes, is Ecuadorian. Apparently there's been an in-city restaurant brouhaha about this. I do not care. Their food is delicious. Their menu is a sincere and genuine celebration of tapas. Now if only a couple of Swedes would open a Mexican restaurant in Toronto.

Cucumis Melo

The mighty melon is indeed a member of the gourd family which includes cucumbers, pumpkins and squashes/zucchinis. Even though hard-skinned, strong-stemmed gourds are mostly New World plants, the origin of the melon is Africa.

A bewildering number of cultivars have evolved from the wild melon plants, among the more popular: cantaloups/summer muskmelons (bright orange flesh with a netted, scaly exterior), honeydew (celery-green flesh, hard smooth skin), Ambrosia (looks like a canteloup but flesh is softer, more fragrant), watermelon (bright pinkish-red, grainy, slightly sweet flesh with a green and white hard smooth skin).

I bought my melon (pictured) at Fiesta Farms (mentioned in NOW magazine as a good, cheaper alternative to big box store produce) on Christie Street north of Bloor where their extensive Ontario produce (huge heads of Ontario broccoli with their 'hoods' still on!) looks fresh and bountiful. I assumed it was a crenshaw melon but as I researched melons I realized it was probably a muskmelon. It has scallopped edges if you put it on its stem end and cut through its middle. The skin is carved into perfect melon slices if you cut it lengthwise. I picked a melon that wasn't too ripe so the flesh is still firm, slightly crisp and watery and less pungent and perfumey than one that has become soft to the touch.

Melon is wonderful served in an antipasto fashion with slices of cured meat; the sweet crisp flesh undercuts the saltiness of the meats. It is also delicious served after dinner with a digestif. But I like it simply cut up and doused in fresh lime juice as the start to my day.

The 8,000 Mile Meal

Many pieces of my meal - the heart and soul of the dish I might add - came from delectable places far from Toronto although I didn't import these items at great environmental cost. No. They were brought back to Toronto in a suitcase from the alleyways of Paris and the historic towns of Czech Republic. It's August and the only month I believe fit for eating vegetables and fruits from entirely local sources. You can't avoid local produce. It's everywhere in the grocery stores and farmers markets - budding cauliflowers heads, green string brings, the first of the peaches and cream corn crop, the last of the raspberries. Some people however are still confounded by what our local produce looks like. A recent conversational exchange in my kitchen: "oh hey, I bought a dozen apricots too today" "Um, those aren't apricots, those are ONTARIO PEACHES!!!". They may look diminutive compared to their southern obese cousins but they taste much, much better: sweeter, juicier, riper. Apples too get that same abuse. People think the average apple is supposed to be the size of an adult fist. When really, Ontario apples that are not crossbred and coated in insecticide are on average the size of large plums. I remember talking to apple growers up around Meaford and Thornbury summers ago and how they kept stating that the grocery stores wanted larger apples because the consumer had placed quality on size of fruit. And we all know, size doesn't really matter...

This meal is a combination of whole wheat fusili with sauteed fresh corn and cumin, chopped fresh parsley and mint, diced tomatoes, green mammoth olives whole, Pate d'Olive noire from Les Delices de France, salt encrusted capers, Cereal Terra pesto vegetale from the Czech Republic, crushed herbes de provence from Paris and some swirls of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. Diced pieces of a perfect avocado made its way into the mix as well.