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Tons of Tonnato
Read Full Post: Tons of TonnatoA less than beautiful substance caught my attention in Parma last year. I would see it in the windows of delis and think, mmm, a platter of grey sludge: how appetising! And then I tasted…. Last night I had my second successful experience making a version of Vitello Tonnato, served over hard-boiled eggs to make it Uova Tonnato. We thought it would be good as a dip or dressing for vegetables, or drizzled over cold poached fish, as well. It’s smooth and delicate when properly made, and its flavours meld to a point it becomes hard to identify. I made a variation of Delia’s version (less the eggs and garlic). Interestingly, Vitello Tonnato is mentioned quite often (translated as Veal in Tuna Sauce, which does not sound so appealing to me) in the book about the origins of Slow Food, Slow Food Revolution, which makes sense since it is a Northern Italian specialty.
I also wanted to report that the vegetarian haggis worked out really well on Burns Night, even without being piped in and addressed. It’s not a million miles from a nut loaf, to be fair, but it’s not all that different in texture or flavour from the real thing either.
Went for a hike to Witty’s Lagoon on the weekend. In one of those quirks of the weather systems (and with apologies to my countrypeople currently suffering -40c temperatures) our pleasant afternoon of this….
gave way, a few miles up the road, to this:
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Reading week
Read Full Post: Reading weekI have had a good run of reading lately. After finishing In Defense of Food, which I have charmed all my acquaintances by quoting from incessantly, I finished reading the book that came out of The 100 Mile Diet yesterday. I liked the attention the authors paid to making things – crackers, pasta, sauerkraut – from scratch, and it was interesting to learn what was and wasn’t easy to come by in and around Vancouver.
I have Shopped and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle standing by to begin, but am now reading Peter Singer and Jim Mason’s The Way We Eat – Why Our Food Choices Matter. The authors are a philosopher (specialising in bio-ethics) and a lawyer from a farm family. It’s got a lot to do with who pays for our food choices: if we buy cheap food, someone (maybe us) will pay, in many ways. More about that another day.
I’m also reading a history of the Slow Food movement, called Slow Food Revolution.
It’s Burns Night, and I found several recipes for vegetarian haggis, which I had eaten a couple of times in Scotland before Christmas; it was very nice with neeps and tatties and a dollop of onion gravy. Here’s another (bit simpler) one.
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Food, poetry, film, school dinners
Read Full Post: Food, poetry, film, school dinnersA foodie poet has told me about a literary journal in New York, Alimentum, which is about food! I had also heard that Gastronomica publishes poetry. Good to have a couple of markets for food poetry.
Went to see How to Cook Your Life last night, a foodie delight; a German documentary about an American Zen master and foodie. I particularly liked the talk about respecting food, and about waste: treat the food, he said, as if it was your eyesight, as if it was that precious, and don’t waste a single grain.
Saw the film made of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on the weekend: wow.
It made me ask myself why I hadn’t found the time to read a book that was so unbelievably painstaking for its author to write. But it has become a beautiful film, with – yes – food involved, improbable enough for a character fed by tube (significantly for a Frenchman, perhaps, one of the incentives offered by his physiotherapist is that he must learn to swallow so that he can eat normally). One of his fantasies involves a prolonged and sensual seafood feast, mostly raw oysters of course, but it looked like there were a few calimari on the table as well.And interesting and heartening to see that the UK school system is introducing cooking classes so that teenagers leave school able to to more than operate a microwave. Jamie Oliver is credited with waking up the British public to the same sorts of issues about juvenile nutrition and food skills that Alice Waters has been talking up on this side of the Atlantic.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
