Insider’s Tips - April.17
The mornings have remained cold, and Chef Loseto once again found that the early spring produce is delayed this year at the Ontario Food Terminal. This week, it was promising, however, that Ontario flower sellers have reappeared. The terminal was full of farmers with early plants, shrubs, bushes and small trees.
The Ontario hothouse crop was slight, and this week, shortages of rhubarb occurred.
At the French debate last night, political leaders, when asked what American products they were boycotting, all answered that they had given up buying American strawberries. Their timing was prescient because Chef noted that no American strawberries were available this week save from one distributor who was hiding the very few he had.
American asparagus from California was still unavailable, except for one dealer who had a small amount of purple asparagus.
Is this the future for Americans? © Alamy Stock Photo - FT “A Warning To US Foodies from Irate Italian Producers”
Over last weekend, a warning to Americans was published in the Financial Times. Agribus, a powerful Italian agribusiness lobby, warned Americans that Donald Trump’s 20% tariffs on EU goods meant that “imported Italian foods were going to be more expensive for American consumers, pushing them towards ‘fake Italian’ or ‘Italian sounding’ alternatives.” This group could see a horrendous gastronomical descent as the population reverted to 1950s standbys like Chef Boyardee and Kraft Dinner, abominations in the minds of Italians. The writer, cruelly and meanly asked at the end of the piece, whether the Americans would even be savvy enough to know the difference.
Chef bought a new supply of French white asparagus, which came in at half the price of the ultra expensive Holland asparagus. He will use it this Easter weekend on his special Seafood Dinner on Friday and Saturday nights.
Chef will also begin using the first of the early spring crop of wild vegetables this week, with the arrival of West Coast miners’ lettuce and wild onions in his kitchen.
With the shortage of wild West Coast mushrooms, Chef bought wild chanterelles from Portugal, which he likes. He will add them to his halibut and bison dishes.
He also bought delicious looking Fuji apples marked from Ontario, but Chef is suspicious about their origin.
Off the dinner menu temporarily are Quebec squabs and sweetbreads, which failed to arrive this week for some reason.
For Seafood Dinner this weekend, Chef particularly likes the Vancouver cod, which is part of a salad, as well as the poached BC organic salmon with quinoa and the above-noted white asparagus from France.
Happy Easter to all!