With Eduardo Lee

Cachapas, which are made with fresh corn, salt, pepper, butter and top up with queso fresco, basil and olive oil. A traditional dish from Venezuela and people who came out to the testing welcomed our ideas and flavours with excitement and understanding of what chacapas really are. A humble, but delicious dish.

Serving cachapas con queso y albahaca (fresh corn pancakes with fresco cheese and basil)

The corn and basil was donated by Sandra and John Paul Mooney from Godelie Family Farm.
Queso fresco from the Local Dairy Products from Ingersoll, Ontario

Stay tune for opening party date

Arepa Cafe= Venezuelan Urbanity

Yours from the Market
Carlos

Front Row- L-R: Steve Gonzalez, Liz Rumebe and me

Back Row L-R: Jose Hadad, Luis Valenzuela and Mario Cassini.

Marina Queirolo is currently traveling in Argentina

Mario Cassini, Caju
Jose Hada, Frida
Luis Vanlenzuela, Torito
Steve Gonzales, Latino 5-Spice
Marina Queirolo, Sûrkl Empanadas
Elizabeth Rumebe, Alpine Bakery

Plus Sommelier Drew Innes pairing Spanish, Chilean and Argentine wines by course.

Seats are limited.
Don’t miss out.
Get in touch w/Mary Luz Mejia for tickets at 416. 992.2644
maryluz@sizzlingcommunications.com

Proceeds from the event will be donated to Youth Link
See you there.

Yours on a very exiting night
Carlos

The President’s Choice 1000 Tastes of Toronto meant that there were more chefs showcasing their food. Luminato also welcomed more artists, musicians, filmmakers and dancers from all over the globe. And let’s not forget Cirque de Soleil, which performed for free for the crowd once the chefs tore down their tables. “One City One Table” was done serving food by 8pm.

With Kelly at our table

My team and I decided to make something simple and great. We went 80 per cent local, as in corn tortillas, queso fresco, onions and greenhouse tomatoes. We made an onion confit and used it as a sweet note. We made a loose coronet with the tortilla and stuffed it with queso fresco, the onion confit and a sexy avocado relish, and we handed to our happy customers in a banana leaf. I’m happy to report that it was a hit with all of our vegetarian friends.

Single tortilla; Vegetarians loved us.

Ready for the crowds

It was great watching people enjoy the food, particularly our groovy organic vessel. Let’s hear it for composting.

Special thanks to Adam McDowell of The National Post for mentioned me in his blog, as his favorite taste that day. It’s good to be notice.

Looking forward to be back next year!!!
Yours from the Luminato.
Carlos

If memory serves, we have to go back to 1998-99, my Xango days. I just moved here from Ottawa, and to get to know the city in the way I enjoy best, I spent my days off eating out to see what other chefs were doing.

Ironically, kitty-corner to Xango was Avalon, Chris MacDonald’s restaurant that held top honours for over a decade. Perhaps many people will disagree with me, but I think it was Chris who was the first to offer his own charcuterie on his menus.

After Avalon closed, a chain reaction started. The young chefs who had worked in MacDonald’s kitchen went on to run some renowned kitchens of their own — and also started making their own charcuterie.

Pat Reilly and Chris Brown did their stuff at Perigee, Scott Woods at Lucien and Doug Penfold at Cava — as MacDonald culinary partner.

Then, at the turn of the century, Jamie Kennedy opened JK, the Rubino brothers opened Rain, and these high-profile chef-owners began putting out their own charcuterie. And the beat went on and continues today. Marc Thuet sells his own prosciutto alongside his great collection of Alsatian goodies.

Just last year, Kennedy imported Boris Coquerl, a French master chef of charcuterie, to produce the cured meats for all the JK restaurants. We have a master of our own here in Ontario. Mario Pingue from Niagara Fall is now the go-to guy for local prosciutto.

At Cava, MacDonald and Penfold make magic, with MacDonald ceremoniously slicing prosciutto at the bar.

On display: Jamon Serrano, foie gras mousse, chorizo and bison bresaola

Over the last year, Michael Steh of Reds has expanded his line of to great lengths.I sat down to his charcuterie platter one night, with no less than 20 items, from mortadella, fois gras a couple of different ways and a selection of flavours from his Slovenian roots. His inventory has nearly doubled since that memorable meal.

Micheal’s charcuterie platter:duck porsciutto, klobasa, house terrine, foie gras paté and more goodies

Scott Vivian does his curing at JK at the Gardiner, and Mark Cutrara chef-owner of Cowbell is strong on curing meats from local producers.

The year’s biggest must-go resto is The Black Hoof, where on any given night after a dinner service, chefs from across town gather to taste their way through a great long list of crazy-good cured meat. And yes, to drink beer and wine, and compare notes about their night.

Chef Grant Van Gamaren and front-of-house partner Jen Agg have really hit the city’s culinary chord. The Black Hoof is all about charcuterie, like no one else in town in.
Hanging with Gamaren one afternoon while heavy deliveries of meat and fois gras kept coming, he told me that his introduction to charcuterie was with Scott Woods at Lucien.

What I liked most about Gramaren was his humility. I’m just a guy who wanted to open a charcuterie and I did, he says matter-of-factly. He also writes about his techniques — successes and failures both — on his blog Charcuterie Sundays, where his kitchen mishaps are there for everyone to see. He clearly doesn’t care. He gets it. We owe most of our learning to trial and error.

Here’s to all the misses that made this great hits

Yours in great charcuterie
Carlos

In a more modern age, this art has been the work of old world artisans, and part of the cycles of their food season. As everyone knows, the pigs are raised and fattened for slaughter in the fall, then cured and ready to eat during the lean cold winter.

As usual, the old ways have always attracted the interest of chefs, and in the last few years, a number of Toronto chefs have begun to celebrate charcuterie by making their own. And now it seems everyone is mad about it — in a good kind a way.

The funny thing is that, over the last 10 years restaurateurs couldn’t sell an antipasto plate to save their lives, but now it’s cool, which is fine by me. You see, Im also mad about charcuterie.

My Italian in-laws have been making charcuterie all their lives. Not long ago we started making it together, Pa and Ma and me [their real names are Lodovico and Messalina; my wife's role is to enjoy the final products].

We make prosciutto, prosciuttino, lonza, sausages and now chorizo, curing it in their cantina. We also age fresh, local pecorino, cacciocavalo, provolone and fruilano cheese for our own tables, to share with friends, because as we all know, it’s illegal to make and sell charcuterie without the proper inspection, certification and licensing — which is fine by me. In the meantime, I get to learn from a master. How lucky can I get?

Quick story: during the holidays Locovico asked me if I wanted to go for ride. He wanted to show me something. He said it in a funny kind a way. If something happens to me, you will know where to get the meat for proscuitto, he said it, because I can see you want to continue the tradition. I don’t mind telling you that I got a little choked up. I love that guy.

So, there we were at Globe Meats, a couple of kids in a candy store. Honouring the pig in every possible way, the store had charcuterie hung in rows from the rafters, like an upside down forest of proscuitto, literally hundreds of them — more that I have ever seen in my life. They were arranged in various stages of curing: one month, two months. one year. You get it

.

Then, Lodovico introduces me to his paisanos [aka his buds], and I got the chance to talk to the floor manager — ironically someone named Carlos. He told me that they buy their fresh pork locally from Conestoga Meats in Breslau, Ont., near Kitchener.

If you want to age your own, you can buy one ready to cure [three for $99; team up with a couple of pals], but you will need to befriend an Italian family and their cold room. And don’t even think of asking Lodovico. We are chock full. Sorry.

You can also buy a professionally cured prosciutto for about $125, and just refrigerate and make your own antipasto platters. Add lovely crusty bread, pickled vegetables and plenty good wine.

La vita e bella; Life is good.
Yours in good charcuterie

Carlos
Next post: Charcuterie-chefs in town [licensed to knock your socks off]

Luis believes that doing so he is helping to improve the lives of people who do not have the chance to go to school in one of the most impoverished region in Colombia.

Foto: Andrea Moreno / EL TIEMPO
He started out with 70 books and has grow into a traveling library of nearly 5,000 books.
This began as a necessity,” Soriano told the NY Times, “and then it became an obligation, and after that a custom. Now, it’s an institution.

The most admirable and impressive thing he does is to travel without any escort in one of Colombia’s most volatile regions. On the battlefied are Colombian national army, numerous paramilitary groups and FARC, the Spanish acronym for the Columbian Revolutionary Armed Forces.

In this environment, Soriano has been robbed, and because he didn’t have any money (all he carries is books], the theives tied him to a tree and left him there for several days, but he says nothing will stop him from doing this work.

He’s married with three children, He and his wife have open a little restaurant, so they could make ends meet and to help to buy more books. They don’t get any help from the local or national government.

Luis Sorriano you are my hero.

I just want to leave you with this quote from Jacques Cousteau, which comes to mind when thinking of Sorriano.

” If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more that logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope”

Yours honoring an exceptional hero

Carlos

With Ospina: champion of Latino accomplishment in Canada

It’s time to identify and properly recognize our role models, Ospina says. The fact is that there are more than 900,000 Hispanics in Canada. We are five years younger than other immigrant groups, and we are more likely to be university educated than other Canadians. Most of us live in the GTA, and more than 70 per cent landed here in the last two decades.

The November 18th awards dinner is like a dream come true for me. Seeing all these accomplished Latinos, celebrating the contributions they made in our adopted country.

This year, 600 attendees will vote for their choice of the top 10 from a shortlist of 20, which were selected by a distinguished panel of journalists and executives from the CBC, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Canadian Business Magazine, the Hispanic Press Association of Canada, the Canadian Council of the Americas.

With Dr Zuniga-Pflucker and his wife

These are last year’s winners:

ELVIRA SANCHEZ DE MALICKI is founder of the Canadian Hispanic Congress, which has united Hispanics from 22 different countries, with over 250 member organizations to lobby government on such issues as persuading Statistics Canada to amend census gathering data to better reflect the true Hispanic profile. Ms Sanchez de Malicki has been a nightly news anchor for CFMT-TV and an independent producer of the national TV program Hispanos en Canada.

LUZ  BASCUAN has a teaching degree from the University of Chile and an MA from University of Toronto. As a public school trustee for the Toronto Board of Education for three consecutive periods, Ms. Bascuan became the first Latin American elected to public office in Canada. Since 1998, she has been the Education Advocate of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and created Escuela Pioneros de la Paz for teaching conflict resolution and social skills to children and youth within the context of the Latin American culture.

LITA GONZALEZ-DICKEY has been the Spanish Community Relations Officer of the Toronto Catholic District School Board for nearly 30 years. She has been instrumental in placing thousands of Hispanic children into schools, including those from many undocumented and refugee families. Ms Gonzalez-Dickey created Centro Bienvenidos, the board Spanish Resource Centre from where she helps children with their homework and provides opportunities for foreign trained teachers to get familiarized with the school system and obtain Canadian experience.

MARIA CARMEN ROMERO was granted a fellowship by the Canada Council for Arts and Humanities to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. Her postdoctoral research at York University analyzed the positive effects of bilingualism in the early development of literacy. A teacher and principal for 28 years, Dr. Romero worked in the Canadian Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Torture with refugees from all over the world. She has done similar work in Guatemala with the Canadian Central American Relief Effort. She initiated the opening of 17 educational programs in both the Toronto District and Catholic District School Boards.

JUAN CARLOS ZUNIGA-PFLUCKER is a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto. He recently discovered how to grow T cells in a laboratory using embryonic stem cells. T cells are the foundation of the immune system, which HIV, chemotherapy and radiation destroy. Dr. Zuniiga-Pflucker work attempts to answer one of the fundamental questions in the field: How certain cells respond to key molecular signals, making them develop into disease-fighting T cells.

JUAN CARRANZA, LLB, is the first Central American called to the Law Society of Upper Canada, with a law degree from Osgoode Hall and an MBA from Queen’s University. He is founder Carranza Barristers & Solicitors, Toronto’s largest ethnic law firm, serving clients in over ten languages, including extensive probono work by he and his firm. In 2000, Juan received the prestigious Community Service award from the Law Society of Upper Canada and was instrumental in obtaining from the CRTC Canada’s first Spanish-language radio station in 2003.

MARCO A. GUZMAN before attending St Francis Xavier University, where he was later awarded an LL.D., Mr Guzman he created Voluntarios en Accion in his native Bolivia, an organization with a 36-year record of such humanitarian work as providing thousands of school desks for children. For the last 10 years, he as been Executive Director of Frontiers Foundation Inc. He has placed thousands of national and international volunteers into partnership with aboriginal Canadian hosts and co-workers in hands-on affordable housing and education projects, such as Project Amik is a 75 -unit facility in east Toronto, with half the suites designated for aboriginal residence and 14 of the total space reserved for handicapped tenants.

ALEX JADAD. MD is one of the few doctors in the world with a doctorate in knowledge synthesis, which he received from Oxford University. In 2000 he joined the University of Toronto and founded the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation. In 2001 and 2002, he was featured by Time Magazine as one of the new Canadians who will shape Canada in the 21st century.

ESTEBAN LASSO is an international development professional with 14 years experience in social development projects, working extensively in the rural and child development sector with organizations such as Christian Children’s Fund, Catholic Relief Services and UNICEF. Since 2001, Mr Lasso has been dedicated to improving the availability of quality medical treatment and care for children and adults with left clip and palate, and related cranion-facial disorders through the nonprofit organization Transforming Faces Worldwide.

FEDERICO ALLODI, MD is recognized internationally as a pioneer, expert and activist in the field of mental health for immigrants, refugees, and torture victims. He founded the first specialized centre for the treatment of torture survivors and has participated in numerous international campaigns (many in Latin America) to advocate for health coverage for the poor.

Yours in proudly celebrating the accomplishments of Hispanics in Canada,

Carlos
Happy Hispanic Heritage month…

With Ed Robertson [center] Rosa Maria Tortorici [right]

The New Canadians team

In the CBC ustudio

Having to defend my honour by answering questions about Canada.I’m pretty passionate about my citizenship, and I’m pretty knowledgeable on the subject, so I was up for the challenge.As well my other thirty three teammates from our New Canadians Team.

We were on a fight of knowledge about our nation against 5 stronger teams; Canadian Forces, Reach for the Toppers, Tours Guides, Weathercasters and the American Canadians.

Wanna know who won?Tune in on Sunday, September 7 at 8 pm.

Yours at the CBC

Carlos