Canadian - trends, cookbooks, beloved ingredients
Why these chefs chose to set up restaurant on paths less travelled
Impossible is a word often used to describe chef Magnus Nilsson's dream to operate a world-class restaurant in Jarpen, Sweden, a northern locality on the 63rd parallel – think Frobisher Bay or Davis Strait in Canada. But Faviken, the restaurant whose name rolls off the tongue like butter among food lovers, wasn't in the plans when he left Stockholm to travel north to his childhood home in the subarctic terrain. The rugged landscape and sparse population were a tonic. Weary of city living and disenchanted with a career spent parroting dishes and techniques he'd learned in France, he was initially hired to oversee the restaurant's wine cellar. In time, he took over the kitchen. But the restaurant as it is today didn't manifest itself overnight. He and the space evolved together. Faviken was Nilsson's homecoming. "I wouldn't have said yes to someone who proposed this kind of project," he says. "I wasn't supposed to stay."
Joe Beef is Cooking for the End of the World
The second cookbook, like their first, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, published in 2011, defies categorization. It’s a quirky, charming culinary journal of sorts with recipes. “Even we don’t know how to classify it,” McMillan admits. “Some people want to put it in the apocalypse section,” he jokes. There are photos of family, beloved friends, and employees, recipes from their restaurants, and thoughtfully written interludes on wildly diverse topics like “A Note on the Seventies’ Health Food Store,” and “Are You There God, It’s Me, David,” an elegy to the wines of Burgundy.
In his back-cover endorsement, Bourdain christened McMillan and Morin “the rogue princes of Canadian cuisine.” “I understand Tony’s point: A lot of Americans see Canada as a thing,” McMillan says. “Our scope is much smaller—we’re the rogue princes of this neighborhood.” Given their fierce pride in their Quebecois roots, it’s no surprise that the pair shrug off the nationalist sentiment. When they look outward, it’s toward a more immediate horizon. “We cook with the ingredients of the Atlantic Northeast,” says McMillan. “The Canadian cuisine of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the saltwater coast of Maine and Massachusetts.” Joe Beef’s chalkboard menu changes often, but it always includes oysters, a crisp, golden croquette of smoked meat or fish, and the classic lobster spaghetti for two.
In his back-cover endorsement, Bourdain christened McMillan and Morin “the rogue princes of Canadian cuisine.” “I understand Tony’s point: A lot of Americans see Canada as a thing,” McMillan says. “Our scope is much smaller—we’re the rogue princes of this neighborhood.” Given their fierce pride in their Quebecois roots, it’s no surprise that the pair shrug off the nationalist sentiment. When they look outward, it’s toward a more immediate horizon. “We cook with the ingredients of the Atlantic Northeast,” says McMillan. “The Canadian cuisine of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the saltwater coast of Maine and Massachusetts.” Joe Beef’s chalkboard menu changes often, but it always includes oysters, a crisp, golden croquette of smoked meat or fish, and the classic lobster spaghetti for two.
Newfoundland’s Salt Fish and Cream Crackers Are Purely Canadian
You’d be hard-pressed to find a kitchen cupboard from Corner Brook to St. John’s that didn’t have a box of cream crackers in it. Purity has long made products to suit local tastes. Partridgeberry & Apple Jam is made with a wild acidic red berry, related to cranberry (called lingonberry in Scandinavia). There’s also tinned Salt Fish, Bull’s Eyes candy made with molasses, and cookies with nursery-school names like Jam Jams and Tea Vees.
For almost 70 years they’ve been the only source of Hard Bread on the island, a biscuit made with flour, salt, and water that’s an ancient staple of fishermen. It’s a key ingredient, along with salt cod, in the rustic local stew, “Fish ‘N’ Brewis,” served with “scruncheons,” crisp, golden lardons of fried salt pork, and a spoonful of the rendered fat. In her book Snacks: A Canadian Food History, Janis Thiessen writes, “Hard Bread is also ground by Purity and sold to locals who use it to make moose sausages.”
For almost 70 years they’ve been the only source of Hard Bread on the island, a biscuit made with flour, salt, and water that’s an ancient staple of fishermen. It’s a key ingredient, along with salt cod, in the rustic local stew, “Fish ‘N’ Brewis,” served with “scruncheons,” crisp, golden lardons of fried salt pork, and a spoonful of the rendered fat. In her book Snacks: A Canadian Food History, Janis Thiessen writes, “Hard Bread is also ground by Purity and sold to locals who use it to make moose sausages.”
American - ingredients, travel, cookbooks
Quince evokes mystery and magic as heat turns the fruit from woody to luscious
Quince is ginkgo-leaf yellow when ripe, and the pome is sensual to the eye and in hand — all Rubenesque curves and dimples. It was a symbol of love, happiness and fertility for the ancient Greeks. But its sauterne scent is the real seduction: honey, ripe pineapple and antique roses.
“In the orchard, the ripe fruit is so fragrant it’s a challenge to evaluate individual varieties for aroma,” says Joseph Postman, retired curator and plant pathologist at the U.S. Agriculture Department’s National Clonal Germplasm Repository.
Cutting into the fruit the first time is a strange experience. The flesh is dense, dry, a little woody even. The core has an almond-like shape, and the membrane containing the tiny mahogany seeds — the endocarp — is thick and tough. Slice the fruit into wedges and then carefully cut out the core by making a deepish V with a paring knife or using a melon baller. For kitchen tool geeks, a peach pitting spoon works a charm.
“In the orchard, the ripe fruit is so fragrant it’s a challenge to evaluate individual varieties for aroma,” says Joseph Postman, retired curator and plant pathologist at the U.S. Agriculture Department’s National Clonal Germplasm Repository.
Cutting into the fruit the first time is a strange experience. The flesh is dense, dry, a little woody even. The core has an almond-like shape, and the membrane containing the tiny mahogany seeds — the endocarp — is thick and tough. Slice the fruit into wedges and then carefully cut out the core by making a deepish V with a paring knife or using a melon baller. For kitchen tool geeks, a peach pitting spoon works a charm.
How acclaimed Chicago chef Iliana Regan found her bliss in the woods
Chef Iliana Regan drives the last nine miles into the Milkweed Inn like a teenager, with reckless abandon. She jerks the steering wheel back and forth in a futile attempt to limit the impact of crater-size potholes on the single-track logging road. Branches slap the windows, and rocks slam the Jeep’s undercarriage. Her obsession: two large Lake Superior trout she left smoking over an open fire at the inn and the sporadic droplets on the windshield promising rain.
She skids to a halt near a large log cabin, cutting the engine and bounding from the vehicle in one swift move. The fish are dangling undisturbed from hooks over a slow-burning fire. She quietly fusses with them, and they turn up later as the centerpiece of a homestyle dinner, the pale coral flesh succulent with just a scattering of translucent salt shards.
She skids to a halt near a large log cabin, cutting the engine and bounding from the vehicle in one swift move. The fish are dangling undisturbed from hooks over a slow-burning fire. She quietly fusses with them, and they turn up later as the centerpiece of a homestyle dinner, the pale coral flesh succulent with just a scattering of translucent salt shards.
A new Iranian cookbook puts the spotlight on yogurt and whey
Two weeks before the launch of Homa Dashtaki’s book “Yogurt & Whey,” she threw a party at the California Zoroastrian Center in Westminster, southeast of Los Angeles. For several days she and her parents shaped spiced ground meat for kebab koobideh around swordlike skewers to sizzle over charcoal, streamed tart pomegranate molasses into the stew fesenjān, and poured steeped saffron, like marigold ribbons, into Persian rice. Garlands of oranges and their leaves ran down the center of feast tables, an homage to the culture’s agrarian roots.
As members of the Indigenous Iranian Zoroastrian community — arguably the first monotheistic religion in the world, dating back to the 5th century B.C. — Dashtaki’s family had lived in the belly of the adobe village of Yazd, Iran. When she was a girl, the family immigrated to America. The friends who had embraced them decades earlier gathered around her on this night. “My book is launching in two weeks, and before I give it to anyone else, I need you to have it,” she said to her guests. “This is for you.”
As members of the Indigenous Iranian Zoroastrian community — arguably the first monotheistic religion in the world, dating back to the 5th century B.C. — Dashtaki’s family had lived in the belly of the adobe village of Yazd, Iran. When she was a girl, the family immigrated to America. The friends who had embraced them decades earlier gathered around her on this night. “My book is launching in two weeks, and before I give it to anyone else, I need you to have it,” she said to her guests. “This is for you.”