Jamie Oliver's Italian Restaurant opening in Toronto

Jamie Oliver is opening his first Jamie's Italian Restaurant opens in Toronto on Sunday December 6th, 2015 but I got a special preview tasting invite from my fellow Food Revolution Ambassador,  friend Denise,  owner of Petits Chefs Academy in Vaughan to join her and her staff for lunch at Jamie's Italian at Yorkdale Mall today.  The restaurant is training it's staff this week and they have invited a few people to sample the food and give them feedback and get their staff used to the menu and the operations of the restaurant.
The staff are extremely exhausted as they have been working night and day training and getting things ready for the official opening on the 6th.  Appropriate date for the 6ix don't you think?

The sign out in front of the restaurant isn't up yet but there is a huge photo and sign at the side beside the entrance to the mall.  The interior is completely ready and is gorgeous and spacious.  With the bright teal blue bar seats contrasting the rustic wood interior, the 2 story feels both warm and airy with the light spilling in from the large storefront windows.  We were seated at the back near their pasta making station which doesn't have natural light so my photos are a bit yellow from the lighting so it doesn't do the food much justice so you will have to take my word for it that it looks much better in real life.

The staff are both exhausted and excited for the opening.  They are all very friendly and accommodating.  Denise and I briefly spoke to Jamie's partner Chef Rob Gentile of Buca and Bar Buca and the person responsible for making sure that the restaurant runs at Jamie's standards.  We also met Chef Francisco and the General Manager who were all interested in feedback to make sure they get everything right before the general public walk in the door.

There were 5 of us there to sample some of the menu and we decided to all pick different things so that we could all share and try a lot of different items on the menu.  We pretty much ate about 75 percent of the menu I think.

Some of the things we tried included:

• Rabbit Cassarece
• Fried Polenta,
• Shrimp linguine
• Pear and Prociutto salad
• Mushroom Fritti
• Arancini
• Chicken puttanesca
• Steak and frites
• Jamie's Italian sausage Tagliatelle

and we demolished the whole dessert menu of:

• Tiramisu
• Sorbetto Gelato
• Panna Cotta with Blueberry and raspberry sauce
• Affogato
• Lemon Meringue cheesecake pie
• Extreme Brownie with ice cream and popcorn

My favourite dishes were the Chicken puttanesca with a great smokey flavour.  I didn't try the Arancini but they looked good.  Jamie's Italian Sausage Tagliatelle had great flavour too.

My favourite dessert was the Extreme Brownie which tasted kind of like a flourless chocolate cake.  Not too sweet but full dark rich chocolate flavour.  I also really liked the Lemon Meringue pie.

Denise pretty much inhaled the Affogato so I think she liked that too.

There were a couple of menu items I would have liked to try but they had sold out already but I hope to return to try some other things in the new year.

They are still working out the kinks of a new restaurant and are extremely focused on getting quality control right at this time and they want to have everything perfected by the weekend.  They have 150 staff who have been working really hard during the training period and I hope they all get a bit of rest before the opening because it's going to be an extremely busy place.  It's pretty much the best restaurant choice at the mall and as Chef Gentile put it he has been eating at the food court during the building process and he is really happy that the restaurant is finally up and running.  

Jamie's Italian Canada is located beside the Crate and Barrel at Yorkdale Mall (Dufferin Street) in Toronto, Canada.  It's the first Canadian restaurant chain for Jamie Oliver.  

I don't think Jamie will be around for the opening as he was just in town recently but the staff are all pretty excited at the fact that he might show up at any time when he comes to town.

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*Disclaimer:  Our meal was complimentary but all of the opinions and photos are my own.  

The Gluten Free Garage at Wychwood Barns - Event

Wychwood Barns

There seems to be a trend for a lot of people to be switching to Gluten Free foods lately when they aren't even gluten intolerant.  Why? Well because they have heard that people lose weight when they go gluten free.   Well this is true when you are diagnosed with celiac disease and you give up gluten free food then you will lose weight but there is no real proof that it's beneficial to you to go gluten free if you don't have any related health issues.   While I do believe we aren't eating what we did over 30 years ago when it comes to wheat based products because of the new farming technologies that have stripped the land of the soil benefits that would produce a full healthful benefit in the wheat we used to grow that doesn't seem to exist anymore unless you are getting it from a small organic farm.

Joy McCarthy Joyous Health

I have a friend that has been gluten free for years but this by no means makes her more healthy it just means she gets really sick when she eats wheat products.   I have another baker friend who was advised by her nutritionist to eliminate gluten products and she has seen results in weight loss and feeling better when she doesn't consume gluten products.  And there is a third friend who has diabetes and wants to switch to a higher protein and low sugar based bread and eliminate more white based foods that spike his blood sugar.  He is on a mission to find a bread that he can eat every day.   We made an attempt to make a recipe found in the Wheat Belly book but it was a horrible substitute for bread.  He said it was better when toasted but if I had to eat it I would give up bread altogether.   I myself don't have a gluten intolerance but I know that it's in my best interest to investigate healthy and tasty products and I feel like it's information that might be helpful to the people that read this blog.   While I am not a certified nutritionist or healthcare provider I did work in a hospital for 14 years and saw a lot of the effects of what happens to people that struggle with pain and health issues.  I learned a lot while working in the hospital because at the time I decided to lose weight by going to weight watchers and used the information available at the hospital to learn some things and then over the years I have been open to learning about diet related issues from either books or from some of the documentaries I have watched.

In the never ending quest to find better foods and to see if I could find products that would help my friends I decided to go to the GLUTEN FREE GARAGE event that was held at Wychwood Barns this past sunday.   I brought my friend who is in search for bread with me to see if he could find some things.  

We tried many samples but unfortunately there weren't any samples of bread for him to try but there were a lot of crackers.  It's easy to make a cracker taste good because you can use flax seeds and dried herbs to make a crispy cracker.  It's a lot harder to make a light and tasty bread that rises without the gluten.   He did find a vendor that sold various flours and had a multi grain bread mix which my friend bought to try out.  He paid $5 for the package and will get 2 loaves from that.  We will see how they turn out as soon as he tries it.

The other thing that I have tried in the past that was never very good was Pasta.  I'm a purist and just prefer the taste of regular pasta, but I must say that I was impressed with the taste of Ital Pasta's penne in tomato sauce that they sampled at the event.  It just tasted good.  A pleasant surprise.  They were also sampling polenta which I suppose a lot of people use to instead of some other things.  That was tasty as well.

There were many bakery products but I didn't try much of them,  I only tried the samples.

One thing I must say is that there are companies trying to cash in on the gluten free trend where they really shouldn't be marketing it that way because the products have probably always been gluten free like the use of corn in products and say a tomato sauce that doesn't have a flour or cornstarch thickener.

You need to be careful still when buying some products because they may increase the fats or sugars to make the products taste better when they take out the gluten.   It's the same as yoghurt, when it says zero fat it has increased the sugar content for flavour.

At the event there was also Tonica Kombucha which I have written about before and there were other Kombucha and smoothie drinks.  There were dips and spreads, and falafels which are probably normally gluten free as well.  

But I have to say that most of the food I sampled tasted very good.   There was only a couple of things that I tried that I didn't love but I suppose there are people that get used to some of the products when it's the only thing they can eat.

I sat in on one demo with the owner of Bunner's Bakery which just opened a location in Kensington Market.   She made a really tasty granola and a breakfast waffle that would be a great breakfast substitute item.  She had a beautiful cookbook on display and a large booth where my other friend tried a cinnamon bun and said you couldn't tell that it wasn't gluten free.

So all in all I would say the event was very successful and I am sure it helped a lot of people find products in one place instead of searching all over town.  It enabled them to sample before buying a lot of the products so it would save them a lot of time and money which is always a good thing these days.

And for me I learned a few new products that I can recommend to my gluten struggling friends and I know that if I have a dinner party that there are options out there that will accommodate people's ever changing diets.

for more info about the show and the vendors check out the website www.glutenfreegarage.ca

D.I.Y. Cooking from Scratch-Bread & Pasta

I have been using my time without a full time job to take the time to do some
D.I.Y. from Scratch recipes like our Grandparents did before everything came in a convenient package.

1.  BREAD

People used to bake their own breads or get it from their local Bakery.  When was the last time you saw a local Bakery in your neighbourhood?  More than likely you get your bread from a huge supermarket that gets it shipped from who knows where and if you are lucky they might bake it probably from a ready made dough on site.   There is nothing better than the smell of freshly baked bread.  It makes your place feel like HOME.

I have been trying to perfect a No Knead dough recipe that has been going around.   What I need to perfect is how to make it without spilling flour all over myself and my kitchen.  I think I got the bread almost perfect now.  It's not exactly no knead in my books because you still have to semi roll it out and then form a ball and it's a long process.  It takes about 20 hours of resting time and approx. 25 minutes to bake.   But this is what it looks like after taking it out of a dutch oven.

2.  PASTA

The next thing I attempted is to make Pasta or specifically Orrechiette which is "little ears" in Italian.
I used a combination of Semolina flour and all purpose flour but I think I should have added eggs to make it a bit lighter.  It turned out a bit chewy.  I used equal parts of semolina and flour and then added
water.  I will try it with just semolina next time and see how it turns out.

What I realized from this experiment is that it's a whole lot easier to just pick up a box of great pasta as it's less of a mess and a whole lot less time consuming.   But  when it comes to making GNOCCHI the DIY way is way better than the frozen version as it makes Gnocchi that are as light as pillows instead of frozen rocks.

3. PIZZA

And the last thing in the Bread and Pasta attempt from scratch was a Pizza dough and pizza made from '00' flour from Italy.

This is another one that I haven't perfected yet but it did work.  When I was a kid my best friend's mom who was from Italy used to make fresh pizza dough on a saturday night and we would cut up the toppings and put it on the pizza and then she would bake it off for us.  It was the best Pizza I ever had anywhere.  It was light but had a crunchy bottom crust, more like a focaccia bread but it was delicious with fresh toppings and crushed tomatoes 

instead of a commercial sauce.

I want to get to the point where my homemade version brings me back to that great tasting pizza dough that I remember as a kid.   It wasn't the wood oven type of thin crust but a thick and light crust that just tasted fresh and great.  This one take a lot more elbow grease to knead the dough even if you use a mixer you still need to stretch out the dough.

Although it's a whole lot more work trying to make these things from scratch the one thing you get when you make them is the Pride that you DID IT YOURSELF and if you master these recipes you will know that you can whip up an amazing dish just with a little flour, some water, maybe some eggs and add a little tomato sauce and cheese and you have some GREAT FOOD.

Everyone should know HOW to DIY some basic
recipes that our Grandparents made on a regular basis and didn't even think they had an option to do it any other way.

Teach your kids or grandchildren these skills so they don't die off with future generations.

The way things are going with our foods and the trust factor of mass producers it's nice to know that you can try and get a few ingredients and make things yourself and know what is going into them and control what you eat and how it's made a whole lot more.   While I doubt we are ever going to grow our own wheat and grind it, this still reduces the risk of what goes into our bodies.    Of course if you have an opportunity to have a garden or a farm then you know that you have the option to control a lot of what you make from scratch.

I am not suggesting you spend all day in the kitchen making everything from SCRATCH but I am suggesting that you KNOW HOW to DIY and know how it's made and know that you CAN DO IT.

I know that I CAN and have the choice to do it or not now.   DIY and feel the Pride!