Beautiful musings of flora and fare.
Lunar New Year in our family is just another excuse to get together to eat copious amounts of food. Typically we go to my mom’s home, where she cooks up lavish Korean dishes and the entire family eats like gluttons for both lunch and dinner.
Taking this into consideration I skipped on groceries today and figured I’d scrounge something up from the cupboards for breakfast. Maybe cold cereal?
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Who doesn’t love a good deep fried donut hole? Especially if it’s filled with ripe sweet pear and the ever-so-pricey, silky Italian cream cheese (that we North Americans covet)mascarpone, then deep fried to a golden ball and tossed with some cinnamon and sugar. Pure bliss.
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It’s not often that I come up with my own recipe. Typically I adapt someone else’s. Why reinvent the wheel if it works, right? Wrong. Cooking/baking is truly an art. A perishable, consumable art form that has evolved so much since humans began to eat (so since forever). In every culture and society, food is one of the most tangible elements that defines us. Without the innate need to push the envelope or evolve our culinary creativity, humans wouldn’t have invented sous-vide cooking or Cronuts, (the latter, which I still haven’t tried). But enough of sliding down this sociological slope.
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With in-laws living in Waterloo, Belgium we usually spend a couple weeks in the summer to visit so my husband Pierre can get his fix of Belgian cuisine whilst the in-laws enjoy their grandkids. Pierre has now been living in Toronto for 12 years and gets home-sick every now and then. Well, its mainly the food he misses. As do I. Once there, he easily eats the tomate aux crevettes grises (small, grey, flavour-packed shrimps prepared in a hollowed tomato), or Américain préparé (Belgian version of steak tartare) daily for lunch. Then of course there’s Belgian street food – frites with so many different sauces (Samurai and Américaine sauce are our faves), Mitraillette (a baguette with meat or sausage, topped with, grated carrots, lettuce and French fries smothered with Andalouse sauce) and my daughter’s favourite, Belgian waffles.
For those of you who haven’t been to Belgium, its one of those countries where the majority of the restaurants and street foods are consistently excellent. There are way more hits than misses. After personally experiencing the food and culture, its easy to understand why a Belgian expat would become home sick. I often find myself craving certain restaurants or dishes from Belgium. Not to mention even basic groceries such as their high fat butter and fresh eggs with sunset hued yolks.
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I recall when my husband Pierre immigrated here (Canada) in 2005 from Europe, he was fascinated by the Canadian obsession with Tim Hortons. He would without fail, cry out, “Quelle horreur!” every time we’d pass one. He couldn’t understand why Canadians would line up 24/7 for a large water-downed coffee and deep-fried, saccharin-drenched, yeast-leavened rings known as the donut.
Coming from Belgium he is definitely a food snob. Delicious and perfect Croissants and eclairs can be found on every street corner in Brussels. Here in Toronto, there are only a small handful of authentic Patiserrie/boulanger. Sure I get it. Tim Hortons looks and tastes nothing like Herman van Dender or Pierre Herme, but Tim Hortons is not bad. It’s consistent and for me it’s “comfort pastries” and an iconic Canadian experience.
In fact my love for “pastries” started probably in kindergarten when my mother bought me my first chocolate walnut cruller at Mister Donut (now Dunkin Donuts). I still remember that donut to this day. I was standing in line twirling around in my brown floral dress feeling like Liesel from The Sound of Music, when my mom passed me what I thought looked like feces. Of course being 4 years old I immediately said no. That’s when my dad firmly told me to at least try. The donut was bliss. The glaze, the crunch, and the soft chocolate dough whirled around in my mouth like a beautiful symphony.
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I remember seeing a Staples ‘Back to School’ commercial last fall, to the tune of, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” In this commercial, the dad gleefully drags a rope attached to a sofa with his grumpy kids in anticipation of getting them out of the house and seeing them off to the start of school. Fast forward a couple months, and as the winter holidays are coming to a close here in Ontario, I’m feeling a bit giddy like that dad in that Staples commercial.
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I have this recurring nightmare that’s been haunting me for decades. I’m in a bakery surrounded by delectable and mouthwatering mounds of pastries. Croissants, cakes, pies, macarons and muffins piled high in baskets and platters in varying hues of browns and beiges. I can see steam wafting from the butter croissants and fresh icing still runny, dripping off the danishes. It’s one of the most beautiful and delicious sights ever. I’m overwhelmed by the wondrous selection and I can’t decide which to eat first. Chocolate torte first? Then I won’t have space for the tarts. I’m so torn. This indecisiveness goes on and on and feels as if the entire night of dreaming is spent trying to decide which pastry to taste first. Then the dream becomes a nightmare. I awake without having made a choice. My indecisiveness leaves me empty handed. As I’d slowly awake to reality, I’d be filled with regret for not having sunk my teeth into one of those heavenly pastries.
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