After spending the summer and part of the fall as a volunteer at the local St. Andrew’s farmer’s market, I thought that I’d seen the last of that great group of people – the farmers, the Farmers’ Market Ontario team and the other volunteers – until next year, but I didn’t count on the year-end review, celebration and luncheon hosted by FMO to bring us all together one last time in 2009. The purpose of the day is to review the progress of each of the markets this year, and bring together some ideas of what worked and didn’t work at the markets. Oh yeah, and we got to start the day with Angela Russo’s fresh-baked fruit muffins!

I especially like that they had assigned seats that mixed up the market volunteers, farmers and others so that we didn’t just clump together in our cliques: I was seated with two farmers and a volunteer from another market, none of whom I had met previously, and had great discussions with them.

There are five MyMarkets, each of which is certified by FMO to include only vendors who grow their own produce: East Lynn Park, Sick Kids Hospital, Bloor • Borden, Liberty Village, and Historic St. Andrew’s. The volunteers and/or market manager for each market gave a short presentation:

• East Lynn Park, taking place on Thursdays from 3-7pm: they’re a big-ish market with 15 vendors, drawing 18,000 shoppers over the entire season, which is roughly the same as last year. They were impacted by the city workers’ strike since some people were under the impression that the market was cancelled during that time; the lack of city-run facilities such as the wading pool meant that less people came out to the park and ended up as accidental shoppers. Since they block off the street during the market, they have issues with moving and setting up barricades; since they’re in a lower-density residential area, they also have more issues with parking for shoppers. They had some good ideas for next years, such as improving the MyMarket website to link to the individual market websites and other social media sites (I’m obviously in big agreement with that); since they don’t have any local restaurants giving cooking demos such as happens at other markets, they’d like to get that started as well. They also see the need for prepared food at the market to make it more of a destination for people. They have great community support, and involve local children’s groups and artists as well as providing community service opportunities for youths to do setup and teardown at the market each week. They also had a partnership with a local food bank, where food that would have probably been thrown out by the farmers at the end of the day went to the food bank. They had a number of green initiatives, such as Not Far From The Tree, handing out information. They also had a lot of child and family-oriented events such as face painting; obviously, this doesn’t work in all locations (such as ours) where the demographics are radically different, but lots of good ideas at work here.
• Sick Kids Hospital, taking place on Tuesdays 9am-2pm: this was the first hospital in Canada that allowed a farmers’ market to be held on its grounds, driven by their director of nutrition and food services. They just finished their second year; in 2008, they had 10,300 customers over the season, increasing to 12,000 in 2009. They obviously had a lot of traffic from the hospital staff, not just of Sick Kids but of the two other hospitals and many other businesses along University Avenue in the same area. They obviously have some different logistics issues than the rest of the markets, and have to be very cognizant of the fact that they’re set up in front of a very busy, fully functioning hospital, situated on a busy thoroughfare. They have a difficult time hosting events because of the location and the low numbers of volunteers.
• Bloor • Borden, taking place on Wednesdays 3-7pm. They see this a key community event that takes place in their neighbourhood, where the locals can come out and see their neighbours participating as volunteers, driven by three fairly active neighbourhood associations and supported by two of the local business associations. Just finished their second year, they had spent a lot of money in their first year on print, but found that word of mouth was most effective, as well as the cards that were mailed to homes or placed in local businesses. They combined this with on-the-street volunteers handing out fruit samples and the market cards to remind people that the market is back at the beginning of the season. They had a great idea for their weekly draws: “market bucks”, where the winner of the draw received four $5 vouchers to be spent at any vendor in the market. They also reorganized their layout to have a central social area with a coffee/tea stand run by a not-for-profit organization. They had several product feature days, some of them combined with cooking demos by local chefs, but some as simple as corn roasts or apples and honey. They had 12-13,000 customers throughout the 2009 season.They also took the food leftovers to a local charity, an idea that we should all be thinking about.
• Liberty Village, taking place on Sundays 9am-2pm. In its 3rd year, this is the probably the largest of the markets with 18 vendors including meat and cheese, as well as several local businesses and restaurants who did demonstrations or otherwise participated, although their attendance is lower than some others at about 9.500 for the year. However, they have less neighbourhood involvement since the residential area in Liberty Village is still growing and likely a very young (and single) demographic that are unlikely to be involved in volunteer activities. The area, however, is growing rapidly which is likely to ensure continued success for the market.
• Historic St. Andrew’s (that’s us!), taking place on Saturdays 9am-1pm. Colin Mooers, who was instrumental in getting the market starting and current heads up our volunteer committee, gave a presentation with me about our market:

To wrap up the morning, we had a session on what worked and didn’t work at the markets this year. Here’s some of the ideas that came up from everyone:

We stayed for a delicious lunch, including Angela Russo’s incomparable apple pie, but skipped out on the afternoon session on “innovative marketing made easy” featuring Lori Colborne.

All in all, a great day that generated a lot of great ideas.

Another great recipe from Chris Zielinski from last week’s cooking demo

Ingredients

1 Quebec duck breast (magret from moulard duck)
Sea salt
Extra Virgin Olive oil
2 ripe peaches
Coriander seedlings

I [Chris] like to serve this recipe over an arugula salad with candied walnuts in summer or root vegetable barley in the fall. A nice accompanying sauce can be made by pouring off excess fat after cooking the duck and deglazing the pan with fig balsamic vinegar and add a couple dabs of cold butter to thicken before pouring over the duck.

To prepare the duck, turn breast over and remove duck filet. Gently remove small piece of silver skin with boning knife. (This step is no necessary but it does keep the breast from curling up when cooking.) Turn back over and lightly score skin to allow fat to render more quickly. Heat a thick bottomed or cast iron pan. Season duck breast with salt and pepper on all sides. Place breast skin side down in pan and cook over low heat to evenly brown and crisp skin while allowing fat to render off. You made need to pour the fat out of the pans a couple of times during cooking. After about 8- 10 minutes, skin should be thin and crisp. Turn over and cook for about 5 more minutes on very low heat. Remove from heat and allow to rest 7 minutes before cutting. Slice peaches in the mean time. Slice duck as thinly as possible. Layer slices of duck with peaches. Top with coriander seedlings and extra virgin olive oil.

Serves 2 as a main course, 3 as an appetizer

Here’s the recipe from last week’s cooking demo

Ingredients

6 boneless Lake Erie Pickerel filets
1 tbsp butter
1tbsp olive oil

3 ripe Ontario peaches
1 heirloom or vine ripe tomato
2 jalapeno peppers
½ tsp ginger
1 clove garlic
12 thai basil leaves
12 mint leaves
2 sliced scallions
Juice of 2 limes
1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
Pinch sugar
Salt to taste

Dice peaches and tomatoes approximately ½ cm dice. Cut jalapeno peppers in half lengthwise. Discard seeds and stem. Fine dice jalapeno. Chop ginger and garlic fine. Coarsely chop Thai basil, scallions and mint. Place all chopped ingredients in bowl and gently mix. Mix all remaining ingredients in a separate bowl to create dressing. Pour over chopped mixture and season with salt if necessary. Salsa will taste better if it sits for at least 15 minutes before using. Salsa tastes better if it is made the same day as it’s being used.

Preheat a frying pan over medium heat. Add oil and butter. Season pickerel with salt and place flesh down in hot oil. Cook on one side for 3 minutes until light brown in color. Flip over and lower heat to crisp up skin and continue cooking until cooked through. Serve immediately topped with salsa.

Serves 6

A few weeks ago, Chef Alida Solomon from Tutti Matti gave a cooking demo at our local St. Andrew’s Market, where she cooked baby heirloom tomatoes with garlic, olive oil, salt and fresh basil to make a delicious sauce for pasta. The fates conspired against getting a large pot of water to the boil that day at the market and we weren’t able to enjoy it on pasta, but she served it in small cups with a dollop of ricotta mixed with fresh herbs. Since then, I’ve recreated her recipe at home with delicious results: very easy, and very reliant on the tastes of the fresh ingredients.

I haven’t been in Tutti Matti for a long time, probably since just after it first opened, and her demo reminded me of a great Tuscan restaurant in the neighbourhood with which I should become reacquainted. Luckily, my sister Betty and friend Pat read my blog, and decided to take me there for a pre-birthday dinner last night. It wasn’t at all busy on a Saturday night at 7pm; it did pick up by the time that we left, and I think that they draw a bigger crowd during the week from all the office around there.

The food was divine: we started with their speciality appetizer of the evening, “prosciutto four ways”: the classic prosciutto-wrapped melon, prosciutto wrapped around figs and then grilled, the same treatment for peaches, and a fourth way that completely escapes me right now because the grilled prosciutto-wrapped peaches were so freaking good that I was completely transported to another dimension. This would be so easy to do at home: firm, largish pieces of freestone peaches, probably almost a quarter peach, wrapped in prosciutto then grilled until it starts to crisp on the outside, which means that the peach is starting to caramelize a bit inside. We also shared the carpaccio affumicato, which paired smoked duck and smoked venison each with complementary garnishes: orange and pecorino for the duck, and figs, pine nuts and arugula for the venison. The third appetizer, which I know that we ordered from the menu but is not on the version on their website, was thinly sliced roasted pork with a tuna sauce, which sounds a bit weird but was incredible: the sauce had sufficient acidity to perfectly offset the sweetness of the pork.

For the mains, Betty and Pat both had the pasta special, a lobster ravioli with fresh peas; I tried a taste, and it was lovely. All their pastas are made in-house, and the quality really shows. I had the pappardelle con stracotto, which is wide, hand-cut noodles with pulled brisket, cherry tomatoes, garlic and fresh herbs. The flavour was wonderfully rich and complex, the perfect meal for the cool evening that we were having. I’ve had pappardelle with cinghiale (wild boar) in Italy, a very typical Tuscan dish, and this was reminiscent of that in all the right ways; I notice that she has tagliatelle con cinghiale on the lunch menu, which definitely motivates me to head over there for a long lunch some day. We accompanied this with a nice – and nicely priced – Chianti Classico Reservi.

We had skipped the secondi (meat or fish course) in order to save room for dessert; for that, we shared a selection of biscotti (including seriously decadent dark chocolate cookies) and a cheese plate, washed down with vin santo. All excellent.

The service was perfect: our main server was there when we needed him, offered friendly advice when asked, kept the water glasses full and generally seemed to enjoy talking to us. Chef Alida came by near the end of our meal and chatted; I know her from the market, although this didn’t seem to be special treatment for us: she was checking in at most tables to make sure that everyone was enjoying their evening. We were not rushed at all, and spent a leisurely 3 hours or so at dinner.

Open for dinner every day except Sunday, and open for lunch on weekdays. Although their website doesn’t mention it (so you should call to check before showing up with bottle in hand), BringMyWine states that they allow BYOW Monday-Thursday for a $30/bottle corkage – pricey, but worth it if you have an expensive bottle at home that you want to have with your meal.

Here’s the video to go with the slides from my previous post:

Ignite T.O. Sandy Kemsley -The Hungry Geek from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.

Last night, I was invited to give a presentation at Ignite! Toronto, part of O’Reilly’s Ignite! series, in which each presenter has 5 minutes to present their 20 slides, and the slides advance automatically every 15 seconds. In a complete left turn from my usual enterprise-y topics, I presented on how I am using social media to promote St. Andrew’s Market, our local farmers’ market that just started this year:

The slides may not make a lot of sense if you didn’t hear the presentation, although you will get the gist of it. Basically, I’m part of a local volunteer committee that’s charged with promoting the market within the neighborhood to help drive traffic to it, and I’m using various social media methods and some technology to tie them together as part of our campaign. All presentations last night were captured on video and hopefully will be posted online somewhere soon; I’ll link to that when I see it.

Since I’m pretty geeky, I used the technology in ways that non-techies may not: see slide 17 for what could best be described as a context diagram for my market message delivery framework. One piece of this is based on some Python scripting that my other half did to help automate a list of Twitter messages each week, and the picture at the right is the point in the presentation where I said “…and this picture is why he’s not here tonight”, since it depicts him wearing a cardboard cone with the label “800 MHz” on his head. What I didn’t have time to explain is that the cone was part of a prototype of a discone antenna with a central frequency of 800 MHz, part of his home-built HD OTA project.

I had great feedback from audience members after the presentation, and I hope that I inspired a few people to take on projects like this in the future to help community projects that don’t have a big marketing budget. I also had a ton of fun, and look forward to my next Ignite! presentation.

I obviously made a tactical error last week by publishing the stuffed zucchini blossoms experience; this week, Bosco Farms was sold out of zucchini blossoms before I made it over to his market stand. Next week, I’ll be faster off the mark.

I did, however, find a fresh little red cabbage and some red onions there, plus peaches from Loffredo Fruit Farms. With a pork tenderloin planned for dinner, I had the urge for some cooked red cabbage on the side. I’ve done so many variations on this, with ingredients ranging from caraway seeds to apples and blackcurrants, and it’s always about getting the balance right between sweet and sour.

This time, I chopped a large red onion and a firm peach, then cooked them over medium-high heat in a deep skillet with bit of olive oil. I quartered the cabbage and remove the core, then sliced it thin; the cabbage was quite small but yielded a couple of generous handfuls. Once the onion and peach were slightly caramelized, I tossed in the cabbage, a few sage leaves and a cinnamon stick, then poured over a bit of red wine vinegar (for the acidity) and a bit of red wine. I turned down the heat, covered the pot, and let it cook for about 45-60 minutes; I’ve also done this in a slow cooker for several hours, which works well. I then added a few tablespoons of a tart orange marmalade, the type made with fruit juices instead of sugar or sweeteners, and let it cook a while longer. I added salt to taste, and removed the cinnamon stick.

I served this with a pork tenderloin that I had rubbed in the Barbeque Rub from The Spice Trader (another local business that I love to frequent); this particular rub has a strong paprika base which complemented the sweet and sour cabbage tastes well. I dried the tenderloin (having seen Julie & Julia the previous night, in which we learned that meat needs to be dry to brown properly), added the BBQ rub, then browned it all over in a bit of olive oil. I put a lid on the skillet then popped it in a 350F oven for about 15 minutes, or until it registered an internal temperature of 145F, then removed it to a carving board and tented it with foil for 15 minutes before carving.

Next time, I’ll try thyme instead of sage to accent the peaches, and maybe a bit of grated orange zest for a sharper citrus undertone. One thing that I really love about a cabbage recipe like this is that it makes great leftovers: the flavours have a chance to blend a bit more by the next day.

Cabbage, onions and peaches are available at the St. Andrew’s Farmers’ Market; I bought mine from Bosco Farms and Loffredo Fruit Farms this week. The market is on every Saturday until October 31st, rain or shine, 9am-1pm.

July 25th was the first of our events at the Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket: a demonstration of three crostini recipes by chefs from George Brown College. This Saturday, August 8th, we’ll be hosting Chef Alida Solomon from Tutti Matti as she presents a Tuscan spin on what to do with the wonderful tomatoes available at the market. Chef Alida shops at the market regularly, as do other chefs in the neighbourhood, and has been known to carry off several crates of heirloom tomatoes in a single visit.

Although my background is pretty WASP-y, I grew up in an Italian neighbourhood where we visited Italian bakeries for veal sandwiches and espresso rather than McDonald’s for burgers and Coke after school, and I consider pasta and at least four types of olive oil to be staples in my kitchen. I spent my best vacation ever at a cooking school in Tuscany, going to the garden overlooking the hills and vineyards to pick the fresh produce for that day’s lesson, cooking in an open-air kitchen, then enjoying the finished product under the courtyard pergola. Can you tell that I’m looking forward to this week’s demo, as well as returning to Tutti Matti for Chef Alida’s mouthwatering cuisine?

Mark your calendars for more events coming soon:

• August 28th: Getting Peachy with Chef Chris from Ultra Supper Club
• September 19th: Apples and Ontario Cheese with Leslieville Cheese Market (which now has a shop just around the corner from the market)
• October 24th: Pumpkin Carving judged by the local Montessori school kids

We also had such a great response to the George Brown College chefs that we’re going to invite them back, probably sometime in September.

If you have other ideas about what you’d like to see at the market, or can volunteer to help organize events, email us at standrewsmarket@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=77018143011, follow @standrewsmarket on Twitter at http://twitter.com/standrewsmarket, and see photos of the market (and contribute your own) on Flickr athttp://www.flickr.com/groups/1143510@N21/pool/.

The Historic St. Andrew’s MyMarket is at the corner of Adelaide Street West and Maud Street, about halfway between Bathurst and Spadina, in the parking lot beside St. Andrew’s Park: http://bit.ly/aAQKG We’re there every Saturday between 9am-1pm, rain or shine, until October 31st.

Please spread the word about the market, we need the community to make this successful!

A lot of us have been taking photos of the St. Andrew’s MyMarket since it opened in June, and shared them on a Flickr pool:

If you have your own, upload them to your Flickr account, join the pool, and add your photos – we’d love to see them.

I’ve only cooked zucchini blossoms once before, when I was in cooking school in Tuscany about 10 years ago for my Best Vacation Ever; there, we inserted a leaf of sage and (optionally) an anchovy into each flower, dipped them in a light egg batter, and deep-friend them. Yum.

Fresh squash and zucchini blossoms have not been that common in markets here until the past couple of years, so I haven’t been tempted to try them again, but I started seeing them at the new St. Andrew’s Farmers’ Market in my neighbourhood, and finally took the plunge on Saturday and bought some. If you grow zucchini or squash yourself, you can harvest the blossoms from the plants instead; I’ve never tried this, but apparently if you pick the flower close to the base, the fruit will continue to develop.

I had planned to make these for dinner on Saturday night, but after a busy day working the volunteer booth at the market then sailing with a friend in the afternoon, I held off and included them on the menu for Pat’s long lunch on Sunday. While I was at the Cheese Boutique picking up the mozzarella di bufala for the caprese salad, I also grabbed a container of their incredibly good ricotta fresca to use as a stuffing for the flowers. I searched around for a recipe online, and settled on this one as a starting point. I packed the flowers and the ricotta in the thermos bag for Pat’s, and counted on her garden and kitchen to fill in the blanks.

Preparation was pretty easy: I removed the stamen from each flower by spreading the petals, sticking my finger in, and carving it out a fingernail. These were definitely male flowers (pictures here show the difference), which apparently don’t produce great fruit anyway so are often picked for the flowers instead. Lots of pollen under my nails, but quick work; removing the stamen is optional, but I wanted more room inside for the filling. I grabbed a handful of sage and chives from Pat’s garden, and my sister Betty mixed the chopped herbs with the ricotta, along with a dash of cinnamon (no nutmeg to be found, but this worked out just fine) and some black pepper. She loaded the filling into a small ziploc bag and cut a hole in the corner, then I held each flower open while she piped the filling in: note that this is definitely a two-person job, especially if you’re already a few glasses of wine into the afternoon. As each was filled, I pressed the petals closed around the filling. We had filling left over, but ate it later as a dip with crackers, so nothing was wasted.

I made a thin crepe-like batter by whisking a few spoons of flour and enough club soda to reach the right consistency, heated about 1/4” of cooking oil in a deep cast iron frying pan, then fried each of the blossoms for a few minutes on each side until browned. I put them on paper towels to drain, and we ate them while they were still warm. They were really delightful: the fresh taste of the flowers, the slight crunch of the batter, and the creamy yet light filling really came together well.

Now that I’ve tried these at home, I’ll be trying them again. I’ll try the fried sage and anchovy version that we made in Tuscany, and @peregrinatrix said that she stuffed them with goat cheese, chives and olive oil, then roasted them in the oven for 15 minutes, which also sounds very deserving of a trial.

Zucchini blossoms are available at Bosco Farms at the St. Andrew’s Farmers’ Market, every Saturday until October 31st, rain or shine, 9am-1pm. The market is on Adelaide Street West at Maud, about halfway between Spadina and Bathurst.