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Edmonton folk ‘n food

Arrived in festival city on Wednesday and have been having a fine old reunion with my former home. We ate at the BulGoGi House where the bulgalbi (ribs) were as fabulous as the smells of barbecuing beef had suggested; some jap chae (sweet potato noodles) to pad out the nooks and crannies and we were done. Friday we dined at the Urban Diner, a good place for a satisfying plate of meat loaf, or liver and onions, or fried chicken, or some very tall desserts.

The folk festival has been a good ‘un, with one day left. 27 years old now and running like a huge but well-oiled machine, yet still friendly and easy going. Have not braved the beer tent queues, but managed to experience plenty else. Some rain and chill the first night weakened my will to persist on the second, and so I missed highlighters Susan Tedeschi, the Neville Brothers and the Friday night workshops; but I also passed on a night on the hill in steady rain, chilly temperatures and a nasty late evening breeze that I’m told moved half the audience to leave before finale by Hawksley Workman, starting late on top of bad weather.

James Keelaghan led the ill-fated Saturday session I was at, featuring Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies, Lennie Gallant and Show of Hands. The clouds we’d watched blubber in from the west finally cut loose in the second number and the musicians watched awestruck as audience members hauled out rain gear, ponchos, umbrellas and either scattered for cover or stared them down from the assault and battery of a spectacular hailstorm. Eventually Jez picked up his guitar and wooed back the sun with Singin’ in the Rain, and gradually the precipitation slowed to a trickle and the audience dribbled back to full numbers. The sun was out again before they were done. Awesome organisation by the festival crew who were out shortly thereafter raking sand across the slickest puddles, and we were dried off and restored to sunny normalcy within a couple of hours. Thanked our lucky stars we’d stopped in at Mountain Equipment Coop and Mark’s Work Wearhouse the night before to top up our supply of quick-dry clothing and rain gear.

Saturday afternoon at the aptly named Master Class – Ricky Skaggs, the excellent five-piece doubled-up band billing as Southern Routes, a couple of members of Solas, together with terrific last minute substitution Oscar Lopez – burned a hole in the workshop experience, with Lopez setting an unbeatable pace on guitar and the others nimbly galloping alongside on a variety of instruments – mandolin, banjo, fiddles, bass and accordion. Sometimes it just all comes together like magic, and this was one great gathering. The group rendition of the old Hank Williams standard Jambalay was jaw dropping.

Tonight I heard what I came to hear: David Gray, in a fabulously elaborate setup, backed by five musicians, performing with manic diffidence. His show was geared to sell the new album, yet generously woven through with plenty of old favourites from White Ladder… We all knew closing time was nigh with the wistful, pumping piano that signalled the start of Babylon.

Other highlights so far for me: The Waifs, Feist – smoky supercharged melodies. The effortless power and purity of Linda Ronstadt’s voice; gorgeous music in well chosen ballads. Some beautiful churning Cajun fiddles from Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys.

The food on offer is above average but you have to shop carefully. I had some excellent mango-mint salad from Homefire Grill the first night, and the same vendor’s bison stew was given a thumbs up by my dining companion; tonight I supped on a big meal of beef and chicken skewers together with a tasty shredded papaya salad (scary for unsuspecting vegetarians – it featured slivers of beef jerky) from Hoang Long. But mostly it’s down to that comforting festival formula: variations on fried dough. Elephant ears (aka whale tails, beaver tails etc etc) with fruit (edible but somewhat disappointing – just canned pie fillings in apple and strawberry) for breakfast; green onion cakes and deep fried pork dumplings for lunch.

Market Envy

We have a lot of excellent markets and farm shops in Victoria, but reading a pair of articles in the Guardian about food markets made me pine and yearn all over again. Borough Market is one I try to visit every time I’m in London, and it seems to get better every time; the variety and quality are staggering, and the ambience incomparable. In the companion article about new vs traditional food markets the excellent point was made that marketeers offer human contact in an age where we’re removed not only from the source of our food itself but also from the people who raise, process and package it. And that small scale trading in food is not a bad way to make a living, for both sides of the barrow. Supermarkets are cheap, fast and impersonal, like so much of our world today; I’d rather give my money straight to the farmer if I can.

It’s not unlike buying discounted books: if you buy a cut-price read from Walmart or Costco or an online discounter, you are also cutting the royalties of the writer, which are slender enough. So too the farmer loses on the profit margin for retailing through supermarkets. So I don’t begrudge paying a supermarket price to a farmer any more than I do paying the retail book price to an author (who’s had to purchase the book from the publisher).

Something struck me in a recent interview with 87-year old Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

“My poetics are totally different to something like the Ginsberg school, which is based on the idea of ‘first thought, best thought’. It is a solid concept to get the most direct transcription of your consciousness, especially if the person doing it has an original mind. Allen Ginsberg had a fascinating and genius mind and so the poetry is fascinating and genius. But when this method is laid on to thousands of students, many of whom don’t have original minds, you get acres of boring poetry.”

Juggling jam jars and polishing poems

Exhausting times in the kitchens of chaos. Blackberry season is upon us, the apples are waxing and the corn has hit the shelves, or rather the bins of Silver Rill. The jam jars are filling, batch by batch. This week I’ve made two kinds: plum and blackberry, and salal, raspberry and blackberry. I’ve stewed blackberries and apples and picked some oregon grapes and juiced them ready for the next batch. I have accepted the cruel truth that there is not one plum to be had from my trees and am biding my time till the apples are fully ripe, dusting off the juicer in anticipation. I thawed some frozen apple, blackberry and carrot juice I made last summer and agreed with myself that baby carrots are the bee’s knees in a combo like that.

Between cauldrons of jam I looked up some information about writing competitions that’s come my way. Alors, you can sense the coming of autumn when you hear that the CBC Literary Awards competition is open already. The deadline this year is November 1st, 2006. Poets are advised to note that the word limits for poetry have been changed to between 1000 and 2000 words. A first prize of $6000 and a second prize of $4000 are awarded in each category, poetry, short story, and creative nonfiction. Winning texts are also published in enRoute magazine and broadcast on CBC Radio.

Well in advance of deadline, I visited the site of Poet’s Letter to read about the Beowulf Poetry Competition, whose first prize is a staggering £10,000.00, and which gives you until July 31, 2007 to get your entries in. The theme for the 2006/07 Prize is Poetry of Cities (anything and everything about cities: living, growing up, working, falling in love, buildings, architecture, engineering, arts, culture, food, suffering, agonies and joys).

The July issue of Poet’s Letter magazine features our very own Victorian, Yvonne Blomer, who had wandered off to England for year to earn her University of East Anglia MA.

The 100th post

Goodness, I have blogged 100 times since February.

Years ago, when I was still naively eyeing the glossy chrome and enamel glitz of Kitchen Aid mixers, pining after industrial-looking Kenwood kitchen machines, and had bought a wimpy but ever-so compact Braun all-in-one mixer/food processor/blender to fit in my tiny English cupboard, my mother had the wisdom to snap up a couple of Bosch kitchen machines for herself and my sister-in-law. These are serious mixers, but more importantly they sell on the principle that you keep them for life and add bits and pieces as you need them. Mine has a blender and slicer/shredder in addition to the mixer with its whisk and dough hooks and has been churning along happily for over 20 years, its white finish yellowing but its motor unfazed by anything I throw at it. The local supplier is helpful and creative, and her very useful website now offers online cooking courses by the batch, using simple narrated slideshows. There’s a free one on making bread in 1 hour 15 minutes, and if that doesn’t make you rush out and buy a Bosch right now I don’t know what will.

There’s a good discussion about poetry on CBC’s Canada Reads pages. During this year’s Canada Reads series, the question was asked, What makes something a poem and not paragraph? and the query was finally answered by several poets. I thought Susan Musgrave’s response was particularly good: “It troubles me that others worry about this distinction (between what is poetry and what is prose): either the poem affects you, or it does not.”

Another literary competition with a charity reaping the rewards has a looming deadline. The Canadian Aid charity offers commercial publication of a previously unpublished book-length manuscript. Deadline is August 31.

Pie night at the hacienda

A reminder that the Being At Work poetry competition closes today. They will accept emailed submissions – but if you do that don’t forget to send a donation to the Movement for Canadian Literacy in lieu of an entry form (with your return address for tax receipt) to: LivingWork.ca P.O. Box 41171 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 5K9

We had a pie double whammy last night. To start with I made my first pizza in years and years and was thrilled to find it closely resembled my favourite Pizza Express selection, the Siciliana. I do not own a pizza stone but it worked fine on one of those pizza pans with holes in the bottom for circulation. Unfortunately it didn’t last long enough to photograph, but I trust you all know what a pizza looks like. Here’s my recipe:

Rhona’s Pizza Siciliana
Crust:
3/4 c warm water
1 pkg yeast
1 tsp sugar
1-3/4 c flour
1-1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
* Dissolve the yeast and sugar in about 3 tbsp of the warm water. Let stand 5-10 minutes until foamy. Mix the flour and salt together and place in mixing bowl: add the dissolved yeast and the rest of the water, mixing together until you have a soft pliable dough, adding a little flour as needed. Knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and elastic. As you knead, chant to yourself: this will make my arms strong for badminton. (Or throw the lot into your mixer with the dough hooks and just walk away for 10 minutes, until you get the same result less the exercise.)
* Place the dough in a large greased bowl, cover with plastic, and leave for 1-2 hours to double in bulk.
* Punch it down, knead into a ball and then roll out to fit a 12″ pizza pan. Place on a plate or tray sprinkled with cornmeal. You can at this stage cover and refrigerate or freeze till needed, because you will be busy making…
Sauce:
1 small can tomato paste (about 1/3 cup)
1 tomato paste can water
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp good quality olive oil
1/2 tsp oregano
dash pepper
dash tabasco
* Spread half the sauce over the pizza and top with:
2-3 thin slices ham, in 1/4 inch strips
2-3 canned (not marinated) artichoke hearts, quartered
1-2 tbsp chopped black (kalamata are nice) olives
1 large garlic clove, chopped finely (not pressed, you have to be able to sprinkle it)
2-3 white mushrooms, sliced
Drizzle the other half of the sauce over the toppings and sprinkle with:
1 generous cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan
* Finish with:
2 tbsp good quality olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
* Heat the pizza pan and the oven to 425f. Slide the pizza onto the pizza pan and cook for 20-25 minutes until the base and the topping are golden.

I have a Transparent Apple tree (yes Virginia, you can see the apples) which has started to toss away its fruit, so I am in my annual scramble for apple recipes. For dessert we had fake tarte tatin, from a wonderfully devious Delia recipe. It is incredibly simple and pure. I strongly advise you dispense with the cinnamon, and don’t bother making pastry: use puff pastry. As you will see my end product doesn’t look quite like Delia’s but the taste is reliably heavenly.

Crumbling allegiances to British food

I get raised eyebrows by the pair when I respond to the question “what do you miss about Britain?” with “the food”. But it’s true. Somehow, perhaps in an effort to stem the flood of immigrants, a myth has been perpetuated that the only food available in the UK is overcooked vegetables, slabs of meat and inedible puddings with strange names. In reality, the countryside is dotted with gastro-pubs offering superb menus; London has the staggering range of cuisine you’d expect of a city of 7 million; and the array of produce and ingredients in supermarkets and specialty shops is the boon of proximity to the Continent and beyond.

That having been said, the Guardian recently offered a grisly list of traditional British dishes that are falling off the nation’s menus, either because they don’t suit the low fat high speed preparation needs of contemporary cooks or because their ingredients – offal (such as calves’ feet or pig cheeks) or game (such as rooks or hare) – are no longer popular.

I was sad to see fruit crumble among the Ten most threatened puddings:

  1. Calf’s foot jelly
  2. Junket
  3. Sussex pond pudding (suet and lemon)
  4. Kentish pudding pie (rice and pastry)
  5. Dorset dumplings (apples and suet)
  6. Lardy cake
  7. Simnel cake
  8. Malvern pudding (fruit crumble)
  9. Singin hinnies (fried scone)
  10. Spotted dick

For those who don’t number fruit crisps on their hit list, there’s a wonderful recipe for Peach and Blackberry Crisp (I made it with apples, blackberries and blueberries and it was fabulous) that has pecans in the topping.