Soupstock 2012

Tags

A Food Gypsy, Bumpercrop, david suzuki, david suzuki foundation, environmental consequences, food, Lisa Kates, Mega-Quarry, Ravi Soups, restaurants, Soupstock, Woodbine Park

Last month, I helped my friend Lisa Kates (also known as A Food Gypsy) prepare for Soupalicious which was held at Wychwood Barns on September 30. Please see my blogpost: https://petervisima.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/soupalicious-the-show/ to see the whole story.

Lisa’s next soup event was to be Soupstock. This is an event sponsored by the Dr. David Suzuki Foundation to bring about awareness regarding the proposed mega-quarry in Melancthon Township. Some of the best farmland in Ontario is being purchased by the Highland Companies to strip the land of its soil and dig a massive pit to remove tons of limestone. This has huge environmental consequences and we have to ask ourselves, do we want roads and buildings, or food?

For more information about the mega-quarry, please visit these websites:

www.ndact.com

www.nomegaquarry.com

www.soupstock.ca

The scale of attendees at Soupstock was estimated to be about 40,000 people. This would be far greater than the attendance at Soupalicious. This meant that Lisa had to call upon many of her friends to help peel, chop and caramelize onions, and make much more soup than she did for Soupalicious. Of course I volunteered to help Lisa, and my first task was to pick up provisions for her at the Evergreen Brickworks. On a dreary rainy morning, I along with many other chefs and restaurants, drove to the Brickworks to pick up donations made by many farmers for this event.

My list of goodies included 100 pounds of onions, salt, olive oil, garlic, and food-safe pails. Members of the media were there and you can see me for a split second in this video: http://vimeo.com/51735358#

You can see Chef Michael Stadtländer (with the hat) in this photo:

More photos from pickup day:

And here are the provisions stuffed into my trunk:

Now that we had our provisions, Lisa had to enlist the help of several friends to transform these goods into soup. Lisa’s friend, Len Senator of The Depanneur, http://www.thedepanneur.ca/ provided Lisa with his kitchen facilities for the preparation of the soup. Lisa, Donna, Tiffany, Gail and Marla and I all converged at The Depanneur with knives and aprons in hand. In no time we were all flooded with tears due to the very strong onions.

Tiffany

Donna and Tiffany

Gail

Lisa, Gail and Marla

Lisa

Marla and Lisa

Lisa and Gail

Lisa, Tiffany, Marla, Gail and Donna. Too many cooks in the kitchen?

As a professional chef, Tiffany’s knife skills and culinary talents were so helpful in the kitchen

One of the many batches of caramelized onions that took us to today’s Soupstock

With all of the prep done, including making stock and assembling the final soup product, we are now at the big event—Soupstock.

It’s lucky for my wife, Nancy, and I that we live very close to the Coxwell bus line that took us to Soupstock in less than 15 minutes from our house. We arrived there early and the purchase of tickets took only a few minutes owing to a very small line-up:

There was no lack of information as to the reason for this significant event:

Rock Lobster was offering up Lobster Cappuccino which we did not try, but judging from the line-ups, it was probably pretty amazing:

Check out this outrageous lobster and these other images:

Here is Michael Stadtländer’s ginormous pumpkin with soup pot:

The main pavilion at Woodbine Park:

I had a brief “photography” exchange with this gentleman. He made a comment about my camera (Nikon) and I couldn’t help myself by sending a barb or two about his Canon camera. It was all in good fun and he was a terrific guy:

Nancy and I bought 9 tasting tickets and we shared each one of them. This was our first tasting of the day. We went for the second choice on the menu and it was delish:

Next up was Georgian College’s roasted parsnip pear purée:

Very tasty!

A great bunch of graduates/students

We didn’t sample Men With Knives but they had a great presentation:

There were numerous food trucks at Soupstock including Caplansky’s:

And finally, the main event, we found Lisa Kates—A Food Gypsy—and her amazing caramelized beer onion soup. And yes, it was fantastic due to all the hard work that went into making it:

Donna, Lisa, Joanna and Nancy

Lisa (A Food Gypsy) and Joanna (Bumpercrop)

Donna, Lisa and Joanne

Donna and Lisa

My friend Rachel Silva was representing Crème Fraîche which has a great shop at 639 Annette Street. You have to check them out: http://cremefraichemarket.com/ and their use of Monforte Dairy cheese products http://www.monfortedairy.com/ with their soup:

Next up was my friend Kristin Donovan from Hooked http://www.hookedinc.ca/HOOKEDinc/Home.html . Hooked is without a doubt the best fishmonger in Toronto. Kristin and her husband, Dan, are passionate about what they sell and they believe in selling only sustainable fish. Located at 888 Queen Street East and their just recently opened location in Kensington Market at 206 Baldwin Street, you have to visit them. Kristin was offering a superb Asian carp soup. My bad for not getting a photograph of this amazing soup. But here is Kristin preparing the dish:

Next up was a noodle soup from Fraser Café that was particularly good:

Le Sélect Bistro’s duck consommé was to die for:

Hall’s kitchen was serving a Bangkok curry, coconut and lime soup:

Here is Chef Susur Lee serving up his hot and sour soup:

And now we get to one of the most awesome soups of the day. Not to be outdone by his phenomenal presentation at Soupalicious, RaviSoups http://www.ravisoup.com/ made a corn chowder soup that was incredible. I met Ravi when we picked up our ingredients at Evergreen Brickworks and made a point of complimenting him on his soup from Soupalicious. As at Soupalicious, his soup was truly fantastic. Well done, Ravi:

We used our last tasting ticket for L’Est Catering and their potato and leek soup. The interesting thing about their presentation was the ability to add whatever toppings you wished to their soup. It made for a full and satisfying end to our soup tastings for the day:

Chef Ted Reader was also at this event:

Here is Emily wearing a soupbowl on her head to help raise funds for this worthy cause:

Kudos to the event organizers for providing wash/rinsing stations for your soupbowls:

And if you forgot to bring a bowl and/or spoon Nella was there to provide you with  them:

As we were making our way out of the park after two hours, this gives you an idea of how busy things were becoming:

There was no shortage of entertainment for the day and we left before Jesse Cook took the stage, but there were numerous other performers:

And thanks to my sharp-eyed wife, Nancy, she spotted some celebrities. And oddly enough both Leah Pinsent and Peter Keleghan were also at the Toronto Garlic Festival. I didn’t capture a great image of Leah (in the yellow coat), but Peter is in these images:

Leah Pinsent

Peter Keleghan

We had an absolutely fabulous day. The weather was perfect and the soups were incredible. My thanks go out to my friend Lisa Kates because I would have never been made aware of this event. Thank you, Lisa, Aaron, Tiffany, Donna, Gail, Marla and Nancy for helping make this such a successful event.

My apologies for the length of this blog; I hope you were able to make it to the end and enjoy all of my images.

Soupalicious–The Show

Tags

A Food Gypsy, Artscape Wychwood Barns, Christie Street, Lisa Kates, Soupalicious

As promised, this is part two of Soupalicious. If you read part one, you saw the dedicated and talented volunteers who got together at The Depanneur to help Lisa Kates (A Food Gypsy) prepare for Soupalicious.

https://petervisima.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/soupalicious-the-prep/

Since I helped in The Prep, I couldn’t miss The Show which happened today at a great venue, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie Street. This venue was originally a TTC streetcar repair barn, and kudos to the City of Toronto for turning it into a multi-use facility for artisans and special events:

http://torontoartscape.org/artscape-wychwood-barns

Soupalicious is a gathering of over 30 restaurants and chefs showcasing their soup-making and culinary talents.

For an advance ticket price of only $10 per person, we were given 10 tasting tickets. In addition, a visit to Cobs Bread entitled us to a free tote bag, a free bread item, and a coupon for a free loaf of bread. If you haven’t visited a Cobs Bread location, you must do so. Their Cape Seed loaf is our absolute favourite:

http://www.cobsbread.com/home/

My wife and I arrived shortly after they opened at 12:00 noon because we were warned that depending on the crowds, some vendors might run out of soup early! There was a good crowd by the time we arrived and our very first stop had to be A Food Gypsy, Lisa Kates:

https://www.facebook.com/Afoodgypsy

Twitter: @afoodgypsy

Lisa and her daughter Katie were already hard at work providing sample cups of Lisa’s incredible cabbage borscht soup:

Although I have a slight bias, and we tasted more than 10 different soups, Lisa’s was hands-down the best soup of the day! But we did taste some very delicious soups from other vendors. Of particular note my wife and I really enjoyed these soups:

• Dish Cooking Studio: roasted red pepper soup with goat’s cheese and basil pesto
• Globe Earth Restaurant: white chocolate parsnip soup with pistachio earth and sour cherry reduction
• Ravi Soups: curried apricot and red lentils with cilantro and lime fraîche

• Southern Accent: seafood gumbo
• Thai: coconut chicken soup
• Plant A Row: chicken soup

This is Alphonsa’s cream of kale and mushroom soup:

More photos from the event:

After two hours of wandering around and sampling soups, both my wife and I were thoroughly stuffed and satisfied with our soup adventure. You simply cannot beat the value that was offered today and the fresh Ontario-grown ingredients that were part of these tasty offerings made it all the better.

My thanks to Lisa for getting me involved in this project and I am already looking forward to next year’s event.

http://soupalicious.ca/

Soup and Bread

Tags

A Food Gypsy, BGE, Big Green Egg, bread, dutch oven bread, Lisa Kates, Michael Ruhlman, Ontario Gas BBQ, soup, Starfrit, Thermapen

With Summer shortly drawing to an end, the Fall has me thinking about some hearty and simple meals such as soup, cassoulet, and boeuf bourguignon to mention a few.

On my grocery list for today’s East York Civic Centre’s Farmers’ Market are leeks, carrots, celery, beets, green beans, corn and cherry tomatoes. I will be using only the first three items for today’s soup.

The base for any great soup is stock. I don’t have any vegetable stock (note to self: start a bag of veggie scraps to have in the freezer to make stock) but I have 6 – 1 litre containers of chicken stock. Each time I order my 20 pounds of chicken from the West Side Beef Company — yes, they sell chicken as well, they include 2 containers of chicken stock. The stock has zero salt added to it which is perfect since I can now control how salty it should be.

http://www.westsidebeef.com/faq.html

If you don’t have stock and need to buy it, I caution you about the salt content of most commercial broths in your local grocery store. Loblaws has under their Blue Menu two excellent broths. Both their Chicken Broth and Beef Broth have no salt added and are fat free. These can be used as the basis for any soup and I suggest cooking rice in the chicken broth for extra flavour.

But seeing as I had real stock I took two containers out of the freezer and dumped them into a large soup pot. I wondered about the stock being too “chickeny” in taste so I reached out to my friend Lisa Kates who really knows a thing or two about soup.

https://www.facebook.com/Afoodgypsy

Lisa suggested I dilute the stock with some water to reduce the strong chicken flavour. She also suggested to sauté the veggies first to bring out additional flavour before adding them to the soup pot.

I added the sautéed veggies to the soup pot along with some canned lentils we had left over plus some pearl barley. Salt and pepper were added to taste along with some fresh thyme, a bouquet garni and some shiitake mushroom stems that I had in the freezer. You normally don’t eat shiitake mushroom stems as they tend to be woody. But they are packed with nutrients so I bundled up the stems into a cheesecloth packet so I could fish them out of the soup once they had given up their goodness.

Two hours later, we had homemade soup:

Earlier in the day I started to make a batch of Michael Ruhlman’s Dutch Oven Bread. We have made this bread several times and the interesting thing is that it bakes in a dutch oven inside your regular oven. 450°F with the lid on for the first half hour, then down to 375°F with the lid off for the last half hour.

I didn’t want to turn the oven on so I thought about using my outdoor oven — The Big Green Egg. Anyone that knows me, understands my love for The Big Green Egg. It is a smoker, a grill, and an oven. It’s thick ceramic walls retain the heat and moisture of anything that you cook on it. So I thought it would be perfect to try baking bread in The Egg. We fanatics of The Big Green Egg are called Eggheads:

http://biggreenegghead.com/eggheads/

Michael Ruhlman has written many books but one of my favourites is his book called Twenty which contains the Dutch Oven Bread recipe:

http://www.amazon.com/Ruhlmans-Twenty-Techniques-Recipes-Manifesto/dp/0811876438

An interesting thing I have learned from reading Michael’s books is about measurements. Michael measures everything by weight, not volume. He recently posted in interesting example of how two different kosher salts yielded an almost 20% difference in weight when compared to measurement by volume. That could lead to a serious salt tragedy in a dish.

http://ruhlman.com/2010/02/what-salt-should-i-use/

The nice thing about Michael’s recipes is the fact that there are two versions: one by volume and one by weight. I bought a really inexpensive Starfrit digital scale online from Cayne’s when they were clearing out one model for $15!

http://www.cayneshousewares.com/home.php

All the ingredients including the flour, water, yeast and salt were all measured on the digital scale. The scale allows you to zero out the weight of the container you place on it which is a real nice feature.

Everything goes into my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook attached. Set to medium speed for 8-10 minutes and that’s it. Remove the dough hook and cover the bowl and let it rise for about 4 hours. You then punch it down to knead out any gas bubbles and let it rise a second time for about another hour.

Slash the top with a knife, rub some olive oil on the outside and sprinkle with a bit of kosher salt. Normally you place it in the Dutch Oven, but I put the dough on a peel covered with some flour and corn meal so I could transport it to The Big Green Egg:

Then onto a pre-heated 450°F pizza stone sprinkled with corn meal:

I closed the lid and after half an hour, turned The Egg down to 375°C. I also used a technique the French do when making crusty bread or baguettes: I had a spritzer with water in it and gave the bread a nice spritz water bath. It helps form a nice crust.

After a total cooking time of just over 45 minutes, the bread’s internal temperature was 200°F so it was done:

Served up with an excellent Brie-style cheese from Monforte Dairy, the bread, the soup and some white wine made for an awesome and extremely inexpensive dinner:

The Big Green Egg is one of the best culinary tools that I have ever owned. And yes, it’s old school because it uses lump charcoal. No briquettes or lighter fluid ever. She lights up easily using an electric starter for 10 minutes. You can be cooking on it within 15 minutes so it’s not much more work than heating up your gas grill.

The best barbecue supply store on the planet is Ontario Gas Barbecue:

http://www.bbqs.com/

They also sell my second best culinary tool, the Thermapen. It’s not just any ordinary digital thermometer, this is a calibrated scientific piece of equipment. You will see it used by chefs on television quite often. No more guessing if something is done, no poking to see how squishy it is. If you want a steak medium-rare trust the Thermapen to read 135°F and it’s guaranteed to be medium-rare:

http://www.bbqs.com/accessories-thermapen-c-16_241.html

So there you have it. A pretty simple and inexpensive meal not counting the cost of The Big Green Egg, the Thermapen, the KitchenAid, the digital scale… you get my point!