Multi-Grain Clairecakes from Claire's on Cedros

The story:

My usual idea of breakfast is one piece of hot buttered toast eaten in my own kitchen, and my idea of brunch is lunch. Sure, once upon a time I was into the whole queuing up and fighting the crowd thing to get into a restaurant for Sunday brunch – back when I was young, childless, had a higher metabolic rate, and my non-renewable lifetime supply of patience was not yet close to running out.

I thought those days were gone until my nest emptied, I began to travel more, and I found myself seeking restaurant-served eggy meals while away from home. Especially after a strenuous morning hike.

This new appetite for brunch led me, for instance, to a tastes-better-than-it-looks breakfast sandwich, consisting of two fried eggs, local bacon, avocado, ‘Canreg Station’ hillbilly cheese, and tomato-chili-lime mayo on grilled sourdough at Le Chien Noir in Kingston, Ontario, served with crisped yet soft frites that kinda stole the show.

And at Claire’s on Cedros, in Solana Beach, California, I lined up and waited for a table on a sunny Sunday, even after calling ahead, to be rewarded with excellent multi-grain (whole-wheat and oat) “Clairecakes” shown at top, served with strawberries, butter and syrup.

Though the other selections we tried, including the fried green tomato sandwich shown here, were more meh than great.

All great and not at all meh were two quite different but excellent breakfasts I have happily eaten: one at Matt’s Big Breakfast in Phoenix, Arizona, and one at Little Dom’s in Los Angeles.

Matt’s is a small diner-type restaurant in downtown Phoenix which serves an all-day breakfast, has been featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners Drive-Ins and Dives show on the Food Network, and has hungry customers lined up in front of it every day of the week.

Two things make Matt’s breakfasts great: high quality artisanal ingredients, and skilled cooking. I neglected to photograph my hog and chick (farm-fresh eggs with bacon, sausage or ham) plate when I was there (I was too busy devouring it) but the thick-cut Niman Ranch bacon is deliciously porky and peppery, the home fries (shown below with an omelette) are crunchy/soft and perfumed with fresh rosemary, and the buttered whole-grain toast served with preserves from Terra Verde Farms is SO GOOD I wished I could take home a loaf and a jar.

More beautifully browned and crunchy potatoes, this time fried with garlic and parsley, can be had at Little Dom’s, a cool-vibe, hipster-ish restaurant that serves breakfast all day (it also serves Italianate lunches and dinners), inside three joined storefronts in the groovy Los Feliz neighbourhood of L.A.

With the potatoes, my not-as-into-breakfast husband E had a salmon sandwich:

and I had a gorgeous and tantalizing plate of poached eggs with roasted mushrooms, grilled bread and fennel pollen Hollandaise. Fennel pollen!

Worth an hour-long hike up and down Runyon Canyon to work it off, fo’ sho’.

Even after eating a very good pie this month at the legendary Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix (now open all day!), I still think the pizza at Mozza, reportedly created by baker Nancy Silverton in the Chris Bianco tradition, is the best, thanks to its puffy, crunchy yet chewy crust, and the delightful array of artisanal toppings on offer. I look forward to trying the Newport Beach branch of Pizzeria Mozza next month.

Best New Dish Discovery Adapted for Cooking at Home : Hawaiian Shrimp Tacos

Delicious shrimp tacos made in the style of Island Taco in Waimea, Kauai – with red cabbage, mango chutney and avocado, have definitely moved into the regular rotation chez moi, even if I do like them more than my husband and sons do.

Best Toronto Restaurant/Bakery Dessert Discovery: European-style donuts

The sfingi at Enoteca Sociale are a glorious full-on indulgence gilded with lemon curd and caramel.

The mini beignets at Thobors are just as good (and a little lighter) when hand-filled with the fruit preserve of your choice. They’re inexpensive (80 cents!) too.

Thobor's mini beignet

Best New York Restaurant Comfort Food: a ramen lunch set with fried chicken over rice at Ippudo.

A deeply satisfying meal no matter what the season, weather or lineup that must be endured to get to it.

Best Recipe for a Reimagined Traditional Meal That I Devised All By Myself: Simpler, zingier Thanksgiving dinner

A good helping of less is more.

Best New-to-me Take on A Foodstuff I Thought I Knew: Israeli hummus at Fattoush in Haifa.

Fattoush Hummus Baladia with Tahini

This hummus is decadent, gorgeous and continents apart in execution from any hummus I’ve made or eaten in North America. I’m still working on reproducing a comparable version of it in my own kitchen.

Best Store-Bought Food Discovery: Rick Stein’s Savoury Oat Biscuits

These oatcakes are wonders of nutty, oaty goodness and make a great lunch with a few slices of good cheese, a spoonful of spicy, fruity jelly, and a crisp apple sliced into wedges.

Best New Toronto Burger: The 6 oz. County Burger at County General

Like the new restaurant where it’s found, the County burger is small, cute, hipsterish, and full-flavoured without being garlicky or heartburn-inducing. The fries are excellent too. Beat the crowds and go on a weekday for an early lunch.

Here’s to another year of good eating in 2012!

Mahtab Narsimhan is the award-winning author of four novels for young people: her first, The Third Eye, won the Silver Birch award, and her latest, The Tiffin, was named a Book of the Year by Quill & Quire magazine.

Website:
www.mahtabnarsimhan.com

Blog:
http://mahtabnarsimhan.blogspot.com/

Twitter handle:
@MahtabNarsimhan

What’s going on in your writing life right now?

Doing a lot of promotion for my latest book, The Tiffin, published by Dancing Cat Books in August 2011. Also working on a futuristic YA novel which is an extrapolation of our current condition with overdependence on technology, dwindling energy resources and bizarre weather patterns. Simply described, it’s Matrix meets the Amazing Race.

What’s your writing routine?

I’m normally up early in the morning (5.30 am-ish) and write for about two hours from 6am to 8am. When writing a new draft, I give myself a daily quota of about 1500 words a day. I didn’t start out with this number but gradually worked my way up to it. This really helps in providing me with the discipline to write every day and by the end of the week I have added a substantial word count to my manuscript. If I’m revising, I still give myself a quota of a certain number of pages I have to complete in a day.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?

Whole-grain toast with cream cheese and lemon/mint tea.

What good books have you read recently?

Sanctus by Simon Toyne. Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, Divergent by Veronica Roth.
Just finished Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. It was fantastic!

What did you eat for dinner last night?

Jamie Oliver’s Mediterranean Chicken Breast with Sundried Tomatoes, Feta Cheese and Parsley with a Green Salad with Ginger Dressing, pictured here:

Writing rules you live by:

When writing a new draft, have to write 1500 words a day. When not working on a draft, have to do some writing related activity such as research, thinking of new ideas, or catching up on my reading. Love that last rule the most. It’s so much easier to read someone else’s work.

Foodstuffs you’re fiending these days:

Smoked Gouda, Castello’s Mild Blue cheese with Jacob’s cream crackers, Pickerel rubbed with Indian spices and served with Quinoa. And as always,chocolate.

A scene or piece you’ve written that features food:

I love descriptions of food and so all my books (The Tara Trilogy and The Tiffin) have descriptions and scenes featuring food, but used to depict different scenarios. In my latest novel, The Tiffin, I’ve used food to introduce the lecherous cook, Badri. The setting is the kitchen where large pots of goat curry, boiled rice and sambar are boiling away, and Bardri lurks in that cloud of steam waiting for the protagonist.

Favorite restaurants:

Crazy Sushi
Fin Izakaya Super Japanese Tapas
Oliver & Bonacini. Great variations on the usual fare.
Bamiyon Kabob Best Afghani food I’ve ever eaten

Three formative books from your youth:

1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
2) The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
3) Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein.
4) The Faraway Tree Series by Enid Blyton (Sorry, had to add this last one: loved it!)

Three formative books from your adulthood:

1) Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
2) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.
3) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Dishes/recipes in regular rotation in your cooking repertoire:

Mutton Biryani, Jamie Oliver’s Roast chicken, Pork chops, and my ultimate favourite, chicken curry:

I also love fish and experiment with making it in every possible way, baked, fried, grilled and in a curry.

Random bits of writing advice

• Believe in the process of writing
• Trust yourself when starting something new. It will work out in the end.
• Set a small but achievable target on a daily basis. It will help you stick to it and you feel so much better when you have accomplished something every day.
• Learn to love revisions because as we all know, writing is basically rewriting!
• Have fun. If writing seems like a chore, find something else to do.

What do you do when not writing, eating or reading?

I love to walk but that’s also because I normally have my iPOD with a few audio books loaded onto them. So really, I’m never far from books, except when I’m sleeping!

What’s your idea of comfort food and comfort reading?

Comfort food is a spicy chicken curry topped with fresh cilantro and a dash of lime juice served with cumin/onion rice and yoghurt.

Comfort reading: the Harry Potter series. Fantasy is my favourite genre of all (as you can probably tell from my reading list.). This series, especially the first four books, never fail to lift my spirits. I can read them at any time. In fact I probably would if there weren’t so many other great books that I had to catch up on.

The story:

While in England recently, I struggled to find simple, satisfying food experiences until, that is, I thought to go back to the basics.

For instance, I could eat a good savoury oat biscuit (my preferred brand at the moment being Rick Stein’s) with a chunk of mature cheddar and some spicy, fruity jelly (like Nuala’s Fiery Irish Gold from the Wychwood Barns Saturday market), all day long. Such a delicious combination.

Also classically English are pies, tarts and (French!) soufflés made with eggs and bitter greens. So when I flipped open an English food magazine and came across a recipe for a watercress and Gruyère soufflé from chef/author/TV personality Valentine Warner, I ripped it out and tried it at home, British measurements notwithstanding (my food scale came in handy). I used arugula AND watercress, to give it extra zing; did not make a paper collar as instructed; and managed to fold in the egg whites, though folding is not my strong suit.

The nicely puffed result was creamy comfort food that paired well with roasted root vegetables for a light supper.

Finally, while in Stratford-on-Avon, I encountered a new-to-me kind of crisp sugar cookie called a Shrewsbury Biscuit, made from a centuries-old recipe. After reading that dried fruit (i.e. raisins or currants) are sometimes added to the very simple cookie dough, I added dried blueberries and chopped roasted almonds in mine, to give them a fruit and nut feel that goes quite well with, yes, a cup of tea.

Blueberry Almond Shrewsbury Biscuits

Here’s the recipe:

Shrewsbury Biscuits (adapted from AllBritishFood.com)

MAKES ABOUT 24

100 g (4 oz) butter
150 g (5 oz) caster sugar
2 egg yolks
225 g (8 oz) plain flour
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1/2 c. dried blueberries
1/2 c. chopped roasted almonds

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the egg yolks and beat in well. Stir in the flour and lemon rind and mix to a fairly firm dough. Mix in blueberries and chopped almonds until evenly distributed.

2. Knead lightly on a lightly floured surface and roll out until about 0.5 cm (1/4 inch) thick. Cut out 6.5 cm (2 1/2 inch) rounds with a fluted cutter, and put on greased baking sheets.

3. Bake at 180°C (350°F) mark 4 for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned and firm to the touch. Transfer to wire racks to cool. Store in an airtight container.

A little food styling humour

Also nutty, sweet and altogether wonderful was the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, The Musical that I saw in London’s West End in November. The show is inventively staged, beautifully performed, features some lovely music and wonderful dancing, and is not at all meant only for children. I can’t wait for someone (I’m talking to you, Mirvish Productions) to bring it across the Atlantic to wow audiences here.

Marsha Skrypuch is the award-winning author of 13 books of historical fiction (and 1 book of non-fiction) for kids and teens. She lives in Brantford, Ontario.

Website: www.calla.com

On Twitter: Follow Marsha at @marshaskrypuch

What’s going on in your writing life right now?

My 14th book, which happens to be my first non-fiction, just came out. The book is called Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War. I am in the midst of promoting the book. Tuyet, the woman whose childhood rescue is examined in Last Airlift, is helping me with the promotion.

I also just finished the final edit for my Feb 1, 2012 Scholastic historical, called Making Bombs For Hitler.

Because the past year was spent doing the intensive writing of these two books, followed by leapfrog edits of the two, most of my non-promo time is now spent doing mundane things like cleaning out drawers and getting caught up on accounting, pleasure reading and long bike rides.

What’s your writing routine?

When I am in the midst of a manuscript, I write for about three hours most mornings. As soon as I’ve had breakfast, I go downstairs and get on my tread desk, which is a treadmill equipped with a desk top big enough to hold my laptop, all sorts of errant notes and reference books, a glass of water and a phone. I walk at a very slow speed — 1.5 miles per hour — and write. I find that I can write more efficiently when I’m slowly walking than I can while sitting.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?

50gms of fruit and nut muesli (yes, I weigh it) with milk, a banana, and a giant mug of strong black coffee.

What good books have you read recently?

Because I’m in writing vacation mode, I am reading for pleasure. I just finished Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden. I think she’s channeling a Bronte sister. I’m on a kick of Scandinavian crime thrillers, so have read books by Jo Nesbo, Camilla Lackberg, Lars Keplar, Karin Fossum, and Karin Alvetegan. I like to alternate adult and YA, so I’ve also recently enjoyed Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, Stitches by David Small and The Quilt by Gary Paulsen.

When I am actively writing, I don’t read fiction because I am afraid of unconsciously being influenced by voice. I immerse myself in non-fiction, mostly books I need to read for better understanding of the era I’m writing about, and while it is enjoyable, it’s not what you’d call pleasure reading. I tend to use the library for pleasure reading, but I buy my research books. I have a vast collection on World War II, the Armenian genocide, World War I, anything to do with Ukrainians, folk tales, myths, symbols, plus other topics that I hope to write about one day.

What did you eat for dinner last night?

Lazanky z kapustooyoo — a Ukkie comfort food. Shredded cabbage and onion slowly baked golden, then seasoned with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, and mixed with small square egg pasta. Drizzled with a bit of butter, it’s heavenly. [It does sound heavenly. I want to eat this! - Ed.]

Writing rules you live by:

Plunge forward: Get the entire first draft down before you start fussing over the first page.

Foodstuffs you’re fiending these days:
Honey crisp apples.

Describe a scene or piece you’ve written that features food:

In my 2010 novel Stolen Child, about a girl brainwashed by the Nazis into thinking she is German, I use cues from the character’s everyday life to pivot into her repressed past. As an example, when Nadia places a spoonful of Campbell’s Tomato Soup on her tongue in 1950, she has a flash of clinging to flatcar in the black of night as it speeds out of the war zone. When she finally eats, it’s a soup of muddy water and rotten potatoes, passed among the escapees with the reverence of a sacrament.

Favorite restaurants:

In Brantford, Ontario, Quan 99 on King George Road. The freshest and most delectable Vietnamese and Thai food imaginable.

In Creemore, Ontario, Chez Michel, a tiny French bistro where everything is divine.

Three formative books from your youth:

I didn’t learn to read until I was 9. The book that I taught myself to read with was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I suppose you can say that the Dick and Jane readers inoculated me against reading. And so did The Cat in the Hat, which gave me nightmares. Once I did start reading, other books I enjoyed were Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and all of the Freddy the Pig books, which were written by Walter R. Brooks.

Three formative books from your adulthood:

The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch. I avoided picture books until I was doing my master’s degree in library science. This one made me realize that children’s writers were no longer talking down to children. The other book that made me want to write children’s literature was Tim Wynne-Jones’ Zoom At Sea — again a book that respects the intelligence of children.

As to adult fiction, John Fowles’ The Magus.

Dishes/recipes in regular rotation in your cooking repertoire:

Standard dessert, in rotation with honey crisp apples, is berries on plain Greek yoghurt, drizzled with maple syrup. Standard salad is spinach with homemade mustard and onion vinaigrette, rotated with shredded jicama and cabbage mixed with vinegar and salt.

I make a huge vat of pasta sauce from scratch every few weeks and with this as a base, rotate through spaghetti, chili, lasagna etc. I also make flour tortillas from scratch and stuff them with a bit of the sauce, Greek yoghurt, and sharp unpasteurized Jensen’s 5 year old cheddar cheese. Yum!

We eat a lot of fish. Whatever is fresh, preferably Canadian and preferably wild. Depending on what it is, I’ll broil it or lightly saute in olive oil. Served with salad and rice.

I visit the local farmers’ market every week to stock up on cheese, vegetables, honey crisp apples. The Brantford market is only open two days a week and the variety isn’t huge so I drive to the St. Lawrence Market every few months to stock up on meat for the freezer. We like ostrich and emu, and also vension, kangaraoo, buffalo — lean and flavourful meats.

Random bits of writing advice:

Write for ten minutes every day. Write about the things that fascinate you instead of things that you know. Do a back-up! Read what you’ve written out loud as part of the revision process.

What do you do when not writing, eating or reading?

In good weather, I go on long bike rides. I swim and walk. My husband flies a small airplane and we take short jaunts on weekends which is fun and relaxing, although it does involve eating and reading and sometimes writing.

Airplane cookies Marsha made for the launch of The Last Airlift

What’s your idea of comfort food and comfort reading?

Peanut butter and banana on toasted rye bread. Mmmm.

Comfort reading? A novel written by a friend.

Fish & chips in London that did NOT hit the spot.

Excellent fries in Tel Aviv that did.

The story:

I recently returned from a trip to Israel via England. My husband E and I went overseas to visit our son Simon Farine, who’s in his first season playing pro basketball for the Maccabi Bazan Haifa team (go Haifa!). The trip included sightseeing, family bonding, no writing of any kind, and, of course, eating.

Not a stock photo! Taken by my very own E.

My boy Horatio Nelson presiding over in Trafalgar Square

Row houses in West Dulwich

After seeing the Group of Seven exhibit at the charming Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London, we went to a nearby chippie that is apparently both award-winning and fashionable (could have fooled me) called Olley’s. Our lunch there convinced us that a) we prefer the loose flakiness of haddock (pictured at top of post) to the tighter texture of halibut, and b) traditional English-style chips are a little too chunky, pale and firm for my taste. And I’m afraid to say that our restaurant meals in London over the next few days were not worth writing (home or anywhere else) about either.

We fared much better, food-wise, in Israel, land of sunshine, ancient history, and now, Simon.

Simon on his home court at Nesher in Haifa.

The view from our vacation rental apartment in Haifa.

The Roman Theatre at Caesarea near Haifa in Israel.

In Tel Aviv, I found the fries of my dreams at a fashionable (for real this time) yet casual seafood restaurant called Goocha, where E and Simon ate pricey but tasty salmon, and I had tender, cornmeal-dusted fried calamari:

Salmon at Goocha

Calamari from Goocha

We shared the soft, brown, deliciously greasy (good greasy) fries shown at top, and repeated here:

Excellent fries in Tel Aviv.

Our best meal in Israel though, was at Fattoush, a restaurant in Haifa’s pretty German Colony neighbourhood, downtown.

We sat on a pleasant outdoor terrace to eat amazing Israeli-style hummus, served with a pool of tahini and olive oil on top:

Fattoush Hummus Baladia with Tahini

With that, we had a delicious ‘calf’ (veal?) shawarma with handfuls of flat parsley and more tahini:

Fattoush Calf Shawarma

and the very fresh and crunchy Fattoush salad, made with chopped cucumber, tomatoes and fried pita pieces:

Fattoush salad at Fattoush

The food was so good (and reasonably priced, for Israel) that we went back a few days later, and admired the lovely Bahai Gardens just up the street.

Next time: finding good food back in England.

Antanas Sileika is the author of three novels and a collection of linked short stories. He is also the Artistic Director of the Humber School for Writers in Toronto. He will be reading from his latest novel, Underground, at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, on Saturday October 22, 2011 at 8:00pm. He will also be reading, as part of the Lorenzo Reading Series, on October 24 at UNB Saint John, on October 25 at UNB Fredericton, and on October 26 at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. To complete his busy fall schedule, he will appear on November 5 at Bookfest Windsor.

Website: antanassileika.ca/
Blog: On website.
Twitter handle: @sileika

What’s going on in your writing life right now?

It’s hard to concentrate on my next novel with Underground just published this year, but I am nudging forward painfully slowly on a new novel while writing short essays for my own amusement.

What’s your writing routine?

A lot like my exercise routine. I put it off and put it off until I feel so lousy I need to start it again, and then I become very serious for some months before slacking off again.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?

Ever since I read that jam sales are falling because people find putting jam on toast too hard, I have begun to eat toast and jam. But I am not helping jam sales – I use my own jam. I like oatmeal occasionally, and love cream of wheat and adore soft-boiled eggs (which are supposed to be dangerously unhealthy now – this is how a writer lives dangerously). I would eat poached eggs often if I could get them without water dribbling onto the toast. [Editor's note: blot poached eggs on and with paper towels after cooking and before eating them!]

A recent weekend breakfast for Antanas and family

What good books have you read recently?

Aleksander Hemon’s Lazarus Project, Esi Egudyan’s Half-Blood Blues, and Tadas Ivanauskas’s A Apsisprendiu, the latter obscure even in Lithuanian, but fantastically rich and detailed in its depiction of manor life in Eastern Europe before WW1.

What did you eat for dinner last night?

Beet borscht, butternut squash, and roast chicken

Writing rules you live by:

Not rules so much as questions: How can I say that more succinctly? How little can I interfere in the depiction of a scene in order to lead the reader to make his own interpretation? How can I punish real people I know by using their names or characters for people who end badly in my writing? [Ed: I do this too!] How can I make a reader fall into the work?

Foodstuffs you’re fiending these days:

I begin to nest in the fall. I stew rough farm apples and preserve some of them in jars to cook with onions and pork tenderloin in the winter – I make homemade butter and farm cheese, Damson Plum liqueur and Mountain Ash liqueur – boil up rillettes to spread on bread and would do more except my wife, Snaige, is taking over cooking now.

Describe a scene or piece you’ve written that features food:

In my last novel an editor accused me of putting more care into the description of making a pot of borscht than into the descriptions of sex.

Favorite restaurants:

I’m old school on this issue – Le Select on Wellington for French comfort food and ease of access; Bairrada at 1000 College Street in the summer where on the back patio I have eaten suckling pig, salt cod, and Portuguese chickens to be followed by a walk down the street to the Sicilian Ice Cream store; any of the many, many decent Vietnamese Pho restaurants; the fish sandwich restaurant (two tables!) in Little Italy; Caplansky’s on College for old-fashioned Jewish deli food and many, many more: Italian sandwich, Jamaican jerk, and Indian curry holes in the wall.

Three formative books from your youth:

Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (a play I read as a novel over 100 times)
Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
Every single Joseph Conrad in print, but most repeatedly Nostromo

Three formative books from your adulthood:

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire
Barry Unsworth’s The Songs of Kings

Dishes/recipes in regular rotation in your cooking repertoire:

(with guests) Cassoulet, sour cherry duck, pepper steak, lamb shanks, Cuisinart chocolate cake, creme caramel, apple pie

(at home) roast chicken, chicken livers, leek and potato soup, Italian sausages, beef and barley soup, borscht, braised pork chops, lentil soup, cheese omelettes

Random bits of writing advice:

Don’t get out of the chair when you are stuck. Stay there.
If it looks horrible, look at it again another day.
Don’t give up at 25 pages. That’s the first hard part in the long process. Push on to 100 before you give up.

What do you do when not writing, eating or reading?

Cook, do rough construction, fish, walk.

What’s your idea of comfort food?

Very good cheese with bread or crackers and port; chicken stew; beef stew; sausage pasta; risotto; roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; mushrooms as a main course; custard, rice pudding.

And comfort reading?

Most Central or East European history books (Tony Judt, Norman Davies, Timothy Snyder etc) or novels with strong characters and plots – Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers; Joyce Carey’s The Horse’s Mouth; Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake etc.

Also, the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Harper’s, Toronto Life, Cottage Life, Quill and Quire, Publishers’ Weekly, and even a Lithuanian journal, Kulturos Barai.

The story:

The traditional turkey dinner, chez nous

See that overstuffed plate above? That’s what my family traditionally eats for Thanksgiving dinner – a panoply of starches, including rice, mashed potatoes, bread stuffing and sweet potatoes, overlaid with butter and gravy, and accessorized with cranberry sauce – and this year, a spoonful of green bean casserole – on the side.

That meal has long been my favorite, but when I ate it this year for Canadian Thanksgiving, something seemed to be missing. The texture mixture was good – the crunchy nuts and toasted bread in the stuffing contrasted nicely with the soft potatoes and rice, and with the dry (I like it that way) turkey breast meat. But no matter how much salt and gravy I poured over my plate, the food tasted bland – the robust flavours I associate with a turkey dinner weren’t coming through.

A few weeks before that dinner, I had bought a turkey and cranberry pie from Au Coin Gourmand, an artisanal shop in the Atwater Market in Montreal, and quite enjoyed it.

But had I liked it because the turkey meat was integrated with a creamy sauce, because of the herb-flecked crust, or because I’d eaten it with peach chutney on the side? Or for all three of those reasons?

Left with a large jar of rather ordinary turkey gravy (made by a gourmet food shop) post-Thanksgiving, I decided to reconstruct a turkey dinner. I bought a fresh turkey breast on sale from the supermarket (don’t judge), roasted it, added the drippings to the prepared gravy to juice it up, and thinned the sauce further with some chicken stock. It already tasted better that way, but the kick and depth it needed came from a spicy, fruity jelly I’d almost forgotten existed within reach: Nuala’s Fiery Irish Gold. I drove over to the Wychwood Farmer’s Market on Saturday to pick up a small jar and stirred half of it into the simmering gravy.

I also threw together a small batch of bread stuffing using a few whole wheat ciabatta rolls from Ace Bakery – cubed and toasted, some chopped dried apples, fresh sage and thyme leaves, pecans, and sauteed onion and celery, all baked for 20 minutes with a little more chicken stock.

The baked stuffing, turned out onto a plate, made the perfect bed for the cooked turkey mixed with the now delightfully piquant gravy. Here was the robust and satisfying flavour and combination I’d been seeking, and without a need for three extra starches or a handful of salt.

Anthony De Sa is the author of the Giller-prize-nominated short story collection Barnacle Love and is also a high school English teacher in Toronto.

Website: www.anthonydesa.com
Blog: on website
On Twitter? Yes. My username is antiole

What’s going on in your writing life right now?
I’m working on the final edits (fingers crossed stressing final) of my new novel, Carnival of Desire.

What’s your writing routine?
I work full time, and I’m married with three young children. My routine is simply, I write when I can.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?
I don’t eat breakfast. I never have. Does a large cup of coffee count?

What good books have you read recently?
Over the summer I read a wonderful book, Life After Genius, by M. Ann Jacoby. I’m just about finished with Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table. But I must say I’m very excited about reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I’m fascinated with magic.

What did you eat for dinner last night?
My wife and I took the boys out to dinner at Korea House, on Dundas St West. I had seafood Bibimbap. The place wasn’t much to look at but the food was very good.

Writing rules you live by:
1. Write it down when it comes to mind.
2. Read, read, and read some more.
3. Borrow the truth, it’ll never let you down.

Foodstuffs you’re fiending these days:
A friend of ours is getting involved with raw food at Make it Raw. I’ve had raw spring rolls that were incredible. I’m also obsessed with Falafel World’s Janina sandwiches: lentils, carmelized onions, roasted eggplant, humus, tabouli and hot sauce, wrapped in a pita.

A scene or piece you’ve written that features food:
Food is an important part of my writing because I write about the Portuguese community. My first book, Barnacle Love, opened the door to what it was like to be in a Portuguese home. I don’t shy away from my cultural tradition of butchering pigs in our garages and in our laneways, and I write about the smells associated with food—the way the smell of sardines on the grill wafted through our chain link fences, or how the smell of pot roasts mixed with cabbage and sweet potatoes stuck to our clothes and got absorbed into our carpets and walls and stayed there for days. It’s part of what we remember as family.

Favorite restaurants:
Terroni – 720 Queen Street West, Toronto
Bairrada Churrasqueira – 1000 College St. West (Food is good but the atmosphere during the summer months is unbeatable)
Husk Restaurant – 76 Queen St. Charleston, SC

The patio at Bairrada

Three formative books from your youth:
The Magic Bed-Knob by Mary Norton
The Hardy Boys (only because I wanted a brother so desperately) various ghostwriters published under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler

Three formative books from your adulthood:
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci

Dishes/recipes in regular rotation in your cooking repertoire:
Pasta with fresh tomato sauce (just finished canning four bushels)
Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá (Cod and potato casserole)
Caldo verde (potato and Collard green soup)

Random bits of writing advice:
Listen to those you trust.
Stay away from as many writing events as possible. [I particularly like this bit of advice - HN]
The cliché . . . write what you know.

What do you do when not writing, eating or reading?
Are you kidding me, Kim? There isn’t enough time in the day to walk the dog, go to work, come home and fix up something to eat, get the kids ready for soccer practice after school or help (yell at) them do their homework, get them ready for bed, do a bit of editing and then plop myself into bed before I’ve got to do the whole thing all over again. (I might sneak in a bit of T.V: Mad Men, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation)

What’s your idea of comfort food and comfort reading?
Thick soups or stews with lots of fresh crispy bread and butter to sop up the juices. Roast chicken and roast potatoes.
I like books that take me away to a place that is foreign and exotic and yet the human drama is familiar. Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, comes to mind.

The story:
On a recent weekend visit to Montreal, my husband E and I stopped in at two Montreal mainstay restaurants for some old school favorites.

First up was lunch at the Greek restaurant Mythos on Park, the interior of which is painted in a throwback Minoan palace style.

We started with a simple Greek salad (shown at top) made with beautiful still in-season field tomatoes. We followed it with crisp, fried, thin slices of eggplant and zucchini, coated in a delicate batter, and served with what E said was stellar tzatziki (still too garlicky for my garlic-averse self). It did indeed look like a superior version of tzatziki, though.

And because we can never seem to get enough of fine fried food (not an oxymoron), we ordered fried calamari too, which had been coated in the same light batter.

The next day, a Saturday, we dared to enter classic French bistro L’Express, at the prime brunch time of 12:15 pm, without a reservation. Few tables were occupied when we arrived and we were greeted warmly and seated. The maitre d even replied to me in French when I stammered, “pour deux, s’il vous plait”, making him the first person in Montreal who had not dismissed my French by answering me in English.

The baguette slices, butter and cornichons brought to the table were a nice touch, and very good, besides.

As the room rapidly filled up around us with English-speaking tourists and French locals, I ordered a daily special, a spaghetti with tomato sauce and roquette, and was treated to a fresh-tasting tomato sauce over al dente pasta, garnished with some fresh arugula leaves – a simple, satisfying dish executed well.

E, thinking about his Montreal childhood, ordered a croque monsieur sandwich with salad that met his nostalgic expectations:

And we had to order a bowl of frites with mayonnaise to share (on top of spaghetti, a sandwich, and the bread we’d had to start), because how can one not order frites when in a French bistro?

They were everything we hoped for, too.