Balance of Food

Mirepoix is a great base to build wonderful dishes

Onions, carrots, celery. Pretty boring by themselves. Working together, these stable vegetables can form a taste sensation on which to build countless stews, soups, and sauces.

The triumvirate of taste is known as a mirepoix (French), sofrito (Spanish), and soffritto (Italian). The general rule of thumb is 2: 1: 1 ratio of onions, carrots, and celery. The holy trinity in Cajun and Louisiana Creole cooking has a slight variation switching green bell pepper for carrots.

The ingredients are sweated in fat until soft. This is not a saute. This does take awhile, perhaps 25-30 minutes.

Mirepoix and its cousins might not excite you because they are vegetables and texture issues. The beauty of mirepoix is that the process makes them better tasting. As for the texture, you should start with finely minced versions of the vegetables in the sweat process. If you have a food processor, cut the vegetables into small pieces and then put in the food processor.

After the mirepoix process, you can use a stick blender to reduce texture issues. Ideally, you would add a liquid to make the stick blending easier whether that be stock or tomatoes as examples. You still have to cook them down even more in whatever else you are making. You may need that stick blender a second time. 

Appreciating food culture as is before adding your own changes

Resolve to post more pictures of home cooking in 2019

Certain dishes such as stews can involve a mirepoix process where the pieces are larger and then taken out of the final dish, leaving their essence.

I like the essence of all those ingredients but not the texture. I tolerate raw onions on rare occasions (Detroit coney dog, pickled herring).

I made 2 batches of red sauces with mirepoix. The first batch was really thick but added some chicken stock to create an ideal ratio. You can taste the essence of the ingredients. You know that you are getting vegetable servings in the sauce besides tomato in the sauce.

You can cut the onions, carrot, and celery into tiny pieces and put them in a food processor. If you are truly lazy/busy, Trader Joe's sells a pre-cut mirepoix.

Sweating the vegetables will take time. The total cooking time, sweating and sauce making, was a little over an hour, stick blender time included.

You can make the mirepoix in advance on a Sunday and then add the mixture to dishes in later in the week.

If you are trying to impress a future partner that you can cook, a mirepoix is an ace in the deck. If nothing else, mirepoix is a French word that usually impresses someone who already likes you.

photos credit: me

Checking out Canadian food ads from fall 2019 NHL Center Ice free preview

Editor's note: The following is a slightly condensed version of a feature from our sister blog, CanadianCrossing.com. The full feature can be found here. The column is reprinted here with full and complete permission.

Eggs for breakfast make sense. Eggs for lunch? The brother thinks eating eggs for lunch is weird. The sister thinks eggs for lunch is fine. Then again, the sister thinks her brother's girlfriend looks like their mother. That might be a little weird. Eggs anytime is fine.

Another Tim Hortons trading cards zamboni ad with Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon is not that exciting. What is exciting is the new addition to the ads. Recently retired NHL Hockey Night in Canada legend Bob Cole is the voice of the Tim Hortons ad. You have to love that Cole is 1) still working; and 2) is still a part of the NHL even via an ad for a donut shoppe. Take that, Rogers.

"If food matters to you, you're a food lover."

Food lovers might not be into canned cranberry sauce. The Loblaw's ad lets us know you can be a food lover who is into canned cranberry sauce. Aimed for Canadian Thanksgiving, the ad can work for the American readers for the U.S. Thanksgiving.

Jon Hamm thinks he is a real Canadian in this latest incarnation for Skip the Dishes. Hamm thinks he is now a Canadian citizen and wants to celebrate by having food delivered.

Turns out Hamm's citizenship was denied even though he bought a Moose Jaw, Yellowknife, and a Sault Ste. Marie (whatever that is). These ads have been hilarious. Hopefully, more Americans will find out Hamm is funny.

How the [bleep] did Pepsi get the rights to the old Hockey Night in Canada theme? TSN/Bell Media got the rights to the song when the CBC let the rights go free. Having the song play in a soft drink ad reduces the impact of the song when played for real. We see what Pepsi gets from it but Bell Media's motive can't just be money. If the song had to play in an ad, that song should run in a Canadian company commercial.

BalanceofFood.com advertising coverage

The relatively low standards of North American fast food is the platform where Harvey's can brag about being the first national fast food chain to offer 100% Canadian beef in an angus burger with no antibiotics, steroids, or added hormones.

I haven't had a Harvey's burger for a very long time, mostly because I haven't found a location lately. I would likely want to find a place, such as one I found in Toronto, where I could get all of that AND have the burger cooked medium-rare (because they grind their own beef). In a pinch, I might try this burger.

At Wendy's Canada, you can get jalapenos, onion tanglers, and avocado on any dish. This concept is aimed at burgers but French fries with onion tanglers sounds really good. Onion tanglers look like what Americans would call onion strings. Cliff's Notes and Cole's Notes are the same idea but the former is American while the latter is Canadian. You can go over those notes while at Wendy's with a jalapeno burger.

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photo credit: Choose.ca

Ethnic food aisles should be seen as an opportunity without stigma

If we consider "ethnic food" to be insulting as a concept, then the ethnic food aisle in the grocery store should hang out with the dinosaurs.

Or does the ethnic food aisle serve some useful purpose, no matter how awkward the concept is in late 2019.

As a white person of a certain age, I wouldn't profess to know the damage the concept of "ethnic food" entails in some communities. I grew up some time ago in a small town where the "exotic" food was Mexican, Italian, and Chinese.

When mainstream grocery stores first put in an "ethnic food aisle," they were seen as progress to carry foods from different countries not traditionally stocked at the store.

If a grocery store had 12 aisles, 11 of them were for "regular food" i.e., "American food." There would be part of an aisle devoted to Italian since Italian food didn't fall into ethnic or regular. Italian food essentially was defined as spaghetti, red sauce, and green cans of grated "parmesan" cheese.

I live in a large city where there are a lot of "ethnic" supermarkets. There are no "ethnic" aisles in these supermarkets. Supermercado became a word in my vocabulary for primarily Mexican supermarkets. I have frequented East Asian, African, South American, Eastern European, and Middle East markets without leaving the city limits.

I also frequent "mainstream" markets with ethnic aisles. They are my favorite part of the store. The cool foods are in the "ethnic" aisle.

I do get the perception of the color of skin associated with "ethnic" foods. Though Scandinavian foods fall into ethnic and the people are pretty white. British foods end up in the ethnic section. Mexican food is making its way outside the ethnic food aisle.

"Ethnic food" can also be foods that Americans don't generally understand. Let's be honest: Americans aren't the most enlightened people when other cultures are involved.

This is my argument for an "ethnic food aisle" in a way. The aisle is a way to say "these foods exist. Travel a bit by going down the aisle."

If grocery store data showed that people were avoiding this aisle because of the "strange" foods, that would be a compelling case for not having an ethnic food aisle.

The logical alternative would be to scatter those same foods in different areas of the grocery store so consumers would go down every aisle. Some foods could easily fall into categories in other aisles. Other foods might struggle to find a logical spot.

The "ethnic food aisle" has changed as American tastes change. Some foods have moved away to other aisles.

"If you go to the ethnic food aisle, that is sort of the last bastion of racism that you can see in full daylight in retail America," chef David Chang said on his Ringer podcast in July.

The stigma of feeling different because of different foods is a real pain experienced by second-generation immigrants and others.

The Canadian sketch troupe Tallboyz had a sketch on its CBC television show this fall about a restaurant set in a secondary school cafeteria complete with lunch shaming.

The food would be outstanding but served with a bullying or shameful factor that would take you back to awkward childhood moments.

Tim Carman's story in The Washington Post points to a different reality. Sales of international food items did better when there was an ethnic aisle in the grocery store. Customers knew where to find the foods because they knew where to go.

The United States (and Canada) are countries where the grocery store experience is more multicultural. Sometimes that comes with pitfalls such as the "ethnic food aisle." Many countries have more of a homogeneous shopping experience.

A compromise might be to keep the convenience of an "ethnic food" aisle but reduce the stigma of the foods in the aisle.

BalanceofFood.com world food policy coverage

Educating consumers about the foods might be a nice way to bridge cultures. A museum type experience where people can press a button to hear a story about the foods in front of them. A tap of a smartphone to a QR code can lead someone to a Web page that explains the food. Consumers can take pictures (subject to grocery store policy), go home and do a Web search and find out more about that food.

Explore an atypical supermarket on a rainy weekend afternoon. Look at labels; there may be a foreign language as well as English on the label. Buy something and create a weeknight meal tied to that food or culture.

Shedding the walls of "ethnic food" is easier when we experience something different than what we used to having. If you love ravioli, try pierogies or pot stickers. If you like a club sandwich, try a shawarma. If you love fried chicken, try Korean fried chicken.

Traveling the world in food doesn't require a passport or shots. All food and no food is ethnic food.

photos credit: me (2); Tallboyz/CBC (2)