Plating it up

In 2010, I came across a rather interesting video. It was produced by Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine, a couple who had left the hustle and bustle of NYC to start chronicling the lives of food producers in their home state of Minnesota. The name of their video series and website: The Perennial Plate. 

Their first video was a heck of an introduction - Daniel purchases a live turkey from a farmer, and dispatches it himself for Thanksgiving dinner. Mirra would soon become a vegetarian. 

Daniel and Mirra may have started telling stories from food producers all over Minnesota, but they soon expand to all over the United States, and eventually they started telling food stories from around the world. They learned about everything from  making noodles in Japan, to showcasing snippets of culinary life in Morocco.

They were nominated for, and won, multiple James Beard Awards for their work.  In 2017, they created a Kickstarter campaign called "Resistance Through Storytelling" to use social media - and the algorithms found therein - to tell and highlight the stories of immigrants in the United States.

And then in September of 2017, they came to Nova Scotia to tell stories about this part of the world.

Daniel and Mirra from The Perennial Plate framing up a shot.

While researching ideas for films based in this region, Daniel and Mirra approached me to see if I was interested in being a subject for one of their films. As someone who has a deep appreciation for the kind of work they do, I have to say I was incredibly flattered (and more than a little excited) to be a part of The Perennial Plate. Daniel and Mirra, as well as their friend and Perennial Plater Hunter, shot over three days in Halifax, at the Grand-Pré Historical Site, and down in Clare, where I grew up.  

Since Pantry and Palate has come out, it’s been interesting to be on the other side of the microphone. I’m the one used to asking questions, seeking out details, noticing things that are interesting that the subject of the interview may not notice.  Although Pantry and Palate was a chance to look at my own culture in a new and interesting manner, I’m always surprised as to what sticks out to other people, what speaks to them, and why.  No matter what your culture or your family situation, it’s liberating to see that certain things resonate with others: the feeling of comfort in certain foods, or the love found in family. I must admit that I may have gotten a little misty eyed at the shot where my parents and I get to share the screen.  

Thanks again to Daniel, Mirra, and Hunter for giving me a chance to tell a little bit of the story of Acadie. 

Cookbook Love

It’s no secret that I have a bit of a cookbook addiction. Every time I travel, I find myself in a bookstore perusing the shelves, looking for something interesting  - a classic book I have been told I should own, a name or title that sounds familiar, a look at a region or culture I am interested in. 

Over the past few years, I don’t think I have travelled without coming home with at least a few  new books in my suitcase. I remember the first time I ever went to New York City’s Kitchen Arts and Letters. I packed my suitcase and my carry-on full of books. I got to the airport and was told that my suitcase was overweight. “That’ll be $100 please,” said the agent. I dutifully paid, having learned a valuable lesson. Know your problem, face it, and bring an extra suitcase just for cookbooks. This has become my semi-usual mode of travel.

But as much as I love digging around everywhere from bookstores dedicated to cookery (hello KAL and Toronto's The Good Egg), second hand bookstores with well selected beauties (Hi Bonnie Slotnick and Balfour Books), and even random junk shops, I do have to say that there are a few books in my collection that I keep pulling out when I am unsure as to what I want to cook.  *

(*A tip: Even though these are books I pull out often, I have an extra trick up my sleeve. Every time I read a new cookbook, I make sure to have a pen and paper with me. As I go through the recipes and notice one that interests me , I write down it’s name and page number.  That little note will serve as a shorthand/reminder of what there is in the book that I have wanted to make before, saving me time instead of perusing throughout the whole book. )

These are the books that have shaped my pantry, the way that I shop, and have led me to dig even deeper into their respective cuisines. Thankfully most of these books are all still in print, and easily available from your local bookseller or online. (But really, do yourself a favour, and order it from your local bookseller. They’ll love you for it, and tend to want to help you find even better books. I’ve known many a bookstore to take suggestions on titles that their customers have suggested to them). 

To be fair to each of them, I am listing them alphabetically by author.

Washoku, Elizabeth Andoh

When most people think of Japanese food, they immediately go and think of sushi, tempura, teriyaki, or perhaps a bento lunch box special of all three. Although all three of these items are wonderful and thankfully easy to find, this is only a fraction of what there is to offer when it comes to Japanese foodstuffs. The real beauty of Japanese food comes in the breadth of foods known as washoku, or homestyle foods. Washoku literally means “food harmony” but for me, it means comfort.  

One of my first jobs in the food industry was in working at a Japanese restaurant. The menu wasn’t just sushi rolls and tempura lunch specials, it also had an extensive menu of washoku dishes, though they weren’t named as such. It was here that I fell in love with these comforting flavours.  It wasn’t a cuisine that relied on bombast - it opened my palate to the importance of subtlety, and to the many uses of its base flavours (and techniques) found in dashi (arguably the base note flavour in so much of Japanese cookery), mild rice vinegars for acidity, and umami-laden shiitake mushrooms.

Andoh’s book looks at recipes and ingredients in detail without being bogged down by them.  There is an extensive introduction explaining everything from the importance of washoku (U.N. designation) to the hows and whys of ingredients and how they are used in traditional japanese kitchens.  The food is approachable, and deeply satisfying.  I can’t tell you how many times I have made the oyako donburi, or how much I appreciate learning about how to use dash, which is now a staple in my cooking. Don’t know what to make for dinner? Make a dashi, steam some rice. While you’re waiting for the rice to steam, you have enough time to look into your cupboard and fridge, decide what needs to go into a pot/skillet and off you go. 

Home Baking, Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford

Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

I’ve gone on record in saying that Hot Sour Salty Sweet was in many ways the beginning of my interest in cooking and food writing. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s important to say that Naomi Duguid was kind enough to write the introduction to my book, Pantry and Palate.  But before that, Duguid and her former writing partner Jeffrey Alford were, to me at least, two of the best cookbook authors out there.

My copy of Hot Sour is well-loved, with stains on the pages for pho, pad thai, and som tam with long beans.  I learned to appreciate the funk of fish sauce that for a while I cooked almost every meal with it. So much so that my former partner once asked me to make a meal without it for a change. I found myself making pho on a regular basis, and asking friends to drive me to the one store in town that would carry green papaya.  Tamarind became a regular part of my pantry. I’ve been in bookstores and seen people pick up the book, and made a point to go over to them and tell them that if they want to cook southeast asian food, then they have to own that book. 

As for Home Baking, I was a very novice baker who was mildly afraid of kneading dough when I picked it up.  I didn’t know what a biga and a poolish were (pre-ferments of small amounts of dough that bring flavour to a finished yeasted baked good) at first, but now find myself making them without thinking every time I bake bread. Home Baking tells you all you need to know in it’s title - these are recipes and foodstuffs found in homes, not professional bakeries. These are things that mothers and fathers and grandparents and children have been making for generations. Tested, used, baked, eaten, and repeated. Although I have a respect for other baking books - specific and exhaustive like Rose Levy Berenbaum’s The Pie and Pastry Bible or uber-trendy like Chad Robertson’s Tartine books - this is a perfect introduction for a beginner who wants to learn the basics or the professional who wants to look at baking through a familial lens. It’s unfortunately out of print, but ask your second hand bookseller. I’ve seen copies in stores in Halifax, Toronto, and New York City. It’s worth the search.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison

Although we now live in a time where vegan food is no longer something that needs to be explained, and vegetarian cookbooks are (rightly) no longer relegated or designated as ‘granola’ cooking, they can still occasionally be a tough sell for your Average Joe.  

Deborah Madison’s book is smart in that it eliminates any possible barriers to its sale or usage by stating on the cover, “If you don't attach a title to your eating style, you can cook everything in this book with meat, fish, or fowl. This is Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.”  Smart move Madison (and your editors). She invites readers and users to not only embrace vegetables, but defeats every excuse you may have to not cook/use a vegetable by giving you tips on buying, storing, and cooking, as well as what kind of flavours and textures to expect. Too much squash sitting at the back of the fridge and tired of making soup? There is something in this book. Your farmer’s market has a stand selling salsify? Not a problem, it will explain what it is, and how to use it. Bored with carrots? Madison will help you out. I pull this book out at least every few weeks.

Breath of a Wok, Grace Young

I knew I had to have this book when I read a review that explained it’s title. The “breath” of a wok is that flavour, that subtle smoky kiss that comes from a well-seasoned wok that is transferred to the food cooked in it.  I had always been a fan of that flavour, but was unable to replicate it at home.  Now I knew how. I emailed Grace,  thanking her for this book, and how much I had learned from it, and her other books. Young is a consummate teacher through and through, ensuring that you can and will understand how to cook with a wok. She will help you develop more than just your skills behind the stove, but also the patina on your wok, ensuring that your food will also know the beautiful breath of a wok. My own copy of this book was so well used that the binding fell apart on me.  Thankfully, I now have a signed copy.  (Pro tip: if you’re looking for a signed copy, I hear that Bonnie Slotnick often has copies for sale, as Young is a regular at the store.)

New Things for Spring: A book, a tour, and a talk or two

After over two years of research, cooking, writing, editing - and a lovely photo session - Pantry and Palate is finally hitting bookshelves in May. 

Because I've spent so much time living within that book for so long, I will admit I am at a bit of a loss for words when it comes to tell you what it's like to live outside of it. The work is done. The book is being printed and bound as I type this.  I will have a copy in my hands in a couple weeks. Copies of it will be sent to pre-sale buyers in Canada after May 30th. You can pre-order your copy at Amazon.ca, over at Indigo.ca and via Nimbus Publishing. But for those of you who can wait until it's in stores, might I suggest you check out your local independent bookstore? It's always a good idea.

But the buzz has already started. Chatelaine magazine mentioned it in their 10 Cookbooks We Want This Spring and Amazon has listed it in their  Hot New Releases in Canadian Cookbooks.  And the book isn't even out on shelves yet. (Excuse me while someone helps me pick my jaw up off the floor.)

Now begins the promotional part of the book, and I'm headed to the Terroir Symposium in Toronto on May 29th at the Art Gallery Of Ontario. I'll be on a panel with other speakers reflecting on the origins of French-Canadian cuisine (and Acadian as well!) and its current path. It also looks like I'll be doing some interviews and a bit of promotional work while I am there.  

After that I am off to New York with the gang from Nimbus Publishing to  Book Expo  America where I'll be signing copies of Pantry and Palate. And if I know myself, I'll be heading to a few bookstores - namely Kitchen Arts And Letters and Bonnie Slotnick - to fill up my suitcase for the trip home. Last time I went, I kind of went overboard and ended up paying $100 at the airport because my luggage was over. But lesson learned: bring an empty carry-on just for books. 

But my favourite upcoming event is happening here in Halifax, with a book launch at the Halifax Public Library's Central Branch. I'll be talking about the process of how the book came to be, the importance of culinary history, documenting food ways, and of course, serving up a wee bit of grub. 

Now that the book is in the can - I should be holding a copy in my hands in the next week or so - expect to see more updates, more stories, and more info about Pantry and Palate and much more. Stay tuned!

Filling up the Pantry

It’s one thing to write about food: the making of, the context, the eating. But to capture it in the blink of an eye - or a shutter - is to see it in the way that we experience it. Visceral, pleasurable, and immediate. 

When I saw my blurred hands in the frame, it all strangely came into focus.

Image by Noah Fecks, Noahfecks.com

It was the first day of shooting for my upcoming book, Pantry and Palate. My photographer, Noah Fecks, had arrived the day before from New York, and we were settling in at the location for the shoot. Bags upon bags of fabrics, plates, utensils - and more paper towels than you would ever think you would need - were strewn about the kitchen. 

Noah and I were working on shots of ingredients for the book. I wanted people who may not be familiar with certain ingredients to know what they should look for, and I also wanted them to see a certain kind of beauty in the ingredients themselves. Even the most humble of ingredients can be well packaged, let alone quite striking on its own if you look at it in a new context. 

But we only had a few days to shoot. The list of shots was long, time was short. Today’s last ingredient shot was for salted onions, a condiment/seasoning used in a lot of Acadian cooking in southwestern Nova Scotia. “Tell me how you would make this, and what it would be used for,” said Noah. I explained how it was used to season soups and stews, and even went into the history of salting herbs throughout much of french-speaking Canada. “Yeah, but I want you to show me how it’s made.”

I had tested most of my recipes - and sent them to others for testing - but this was a recipe I had yet to make.  I grew up in a household where every summer, bunches upon bunches of green onions would be collected - either grown in the backyard, or occasionally bought - and the salting of the onions would begin.  When I was a kid, I thought it was a horrible smell, a harsh sulphuric haze that hung in the kitchen. My parents eyes would be slightly misty from the incessant chopping, and the windows would be open to air out the place. 

And then there would be salt. What seemed like an obscene amount of salt would be poured over the onions, covering them in a fine salty snow.  They would sit overnight in that dry brine, their moisture leaching slowly overnight and pooling at the bottom of the big tupperware containers that held them.  The next morning there would be more salt poured over them, and then they would be packed into jars, to be put up for the upcoming winter and fall.  Later in my life, my mother told me a secret that if I were to freeze the jars, that the onions inside would keep their vibrant colour. “It just looks better than the dull green that it turns into,” she would say.

And so here I was, chopping scallions, waiting for Noah to tell me when to stop and go so he could get the perfect shot. I joked that my knife skills are less than stellar, and he kept on clicking.  I grabbed a large wooden bowland scraped the chopped scallions into it. 

I had written down the recipe, as dictated to my father, as it had been told to him. “Add salt, and then more salt. And when you think you have enough, add some more.”  I called him once again, just to make sure. “Yup,” he said, “that’s the way to do it.”

Even though I had never done this, my nose told me what to do.  As he clicked away, Noah noted that I wasn’t joking when I'd said that I would be using almost the whole kilogram of salt for what seemed like a paltry amount of scallions. I repeated what my father and grandfather had said. “When you think you have enough, add some more.”

We started setting up another shot, this one of me tossing the mixture together. Noah stood over me slightly, holding the camera at an odd angle. “I’ll tell you when to start,” he said. My hands hovered over the bowl. I wanted people to see what this looked like. I wanted those who had never done this before to feel confident, and that they too could make this. And cook with it.

“Go.”

Image by Noah Fecks, noahfecks.com

When we were done, Noah pulled me aside to look at that day’s shots.  There were shots of  salted fish, molasses, a very large blood sausage, and even a pig’s head. But there was something about the tossing of those scallions. A little life. A little history A little pride. 

Pantry And Palate - a centuries old discussion

When it comes to food, it’s hard to say that any food culture is completely isolated from those that surround it, no matter how different the surrounding regions and populations may be. This is something which has become drilled into me in my work as a journalist and food writer. There are questions of colonisation, economics, geography, and so much more.

But when you start digging into these topics, you never know how far back in time or how far in terms of geography you will go. This is what I’ve discovered as I work on finishing my book, tentatively titled, Pantry and Palate. It will explore the history and food of my ancestors, the Acadians of Atlantic Canada, and examine those very qualities.

On my kitchen table is a small collection of little black notebooks. Handwritten notes in perfect cursive fill their tan pages. These are recipes written down by my grandmother, and by my great-great-aunt. But they resemble lists of ingredients, rather than what we would call a recipe today.  For example, a recipe for a Molasses Cake asks for :

1 1/2 cups molasses

1 1/2 tsp soda

1/2 cup of grease

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

That’s it. That’s all that either of these women needed to be able to make and bake this cake. No notes on how or in what order to add the ingredients. Not to mention temperatures or baking times. There was a hard-earned and encyclopedic knowledge behind these recipes, and it was located at the fingertips of these women. These lists were reminders of the necessary ratios necessary to execute a dish. It’s a confidence that most home bakers rarely possess these days, let alone on the scale that most women would have possessed when these notes were written.

And yet these notes are vital in my search for understanding the cookery of my ancestors.  They give me insight into the kind of knowledge that the people who cooked these meals had in their possession, as well as the necessities of cooking. There are variations on most recipes, with names of people long gone. “Zita’s molasses cookies” could be found next to a recipe for a “Golden Cake.” It didn’t take me long to realize that this cake was referring to the flour company that used to exist and distribute its wares in the first few decades of the 20th century, and not to the colour of the cake. That recipe didn’t make it to the book, but it still told me what and how people were cooking, and sharing cooking knowledge. Even the stuff that doesn’t immediately fit the the mold, has a place, somewhere, somehow. It’s all important.

This recipe for Scalloped Cabbage assumes that the home cook knows how to make a white sauce. Luckily, my grandmother had gone to finishing school and knew how to make one without thinking. Today, however, that white sauce would have its own recipe, written underneath.

There is a recipe for doughnuts, written directly below a recipe for making boudin, or blood sausage. At first glance, this seemed to be a strange, yet arbitrary placement. It wasn’t until I spoke with a few people did I realize that this was no coincidence. Boudin was often made on the same day that pigs were slaughtered, due to the freshness of the main ingredient, pig’s blood. But there was another abundant and fresh ingredient on days of the boucherie, or slaughter. Fat. Creamy, white, pure back fat, perfect for deep frying. Acadians were fans of salted pork fat, as it was a major part of their pantries in the days before refrigeration and supermarkets filled with shelf-stable fats.  But fresh fat could almost be considered a rarity, since boucheries were often only held in the fall. So why not treat yourself to a hot and tasty treat after all that hard work? 

But this is only the beginning of what I found in digging into my ancestry’s culinary past. One of the recipes I found in those same notebooks was for a molasses and cornmeal bread.  Funny enough, I also found a recipe for the same bread in a community cookbook, published by a nearby church group in a neighbouring english community. This community is also populated by descendants of former Loyalists, both black and white. Many of these loyalists came from parts of the American south, where cornmeal is king. My ancestors spoke mostly french, were catholic, and white. Yet here was an english speaking, protestant, and black community, not far from my own, and our pantries and bellies were filled with the same food. Just goes to show that food is food, and good food is contagious. It travels from mouth to mouth, from community to community. It creates dialogues that last centuries and connect cultures.

The first draft of Pantry and Palate is due at the start of next month, and I am furiously finishing recipes, writing up the last of my interviews, and remembering all the little details I wanted to include. This act of writing may be one of solitude, but the recipes and information found within show that when it comes to food, no one is alone.