Local Menu - Mario & Malcolm's Dinner, Part 2.
by Malcolm Jolley

A map at The Healthy Butcher's Queen Street Store shows
their supplying farms and dairies throughout Ontario.

This is the second part of a three part series. Read part one by clicking here.

The email arrived a little before lunch, but even if I wasn't already hungry, I would be by the time I opened the attachment. The Healthy Butcher's chef John Abrahams had sent me the menu for the private charity dinner we were planning to put on. Their in the simple black and white and centred justification of a Word document was the butcher shop's ethos and a celebration of Ontario terroir. It read:

Dinner Menu
September 25, 2009


To Start

Tarte Fine de Canard
Duck Confit, McIntosh Apples and Black Radish
on Puff Pastry with Arugula Puree

2nd

Lake Huron Pickerel Pappardelle
Pan Seared Pickerel on Fresh Pappardelle Pasta
with Local Heirloom Tomato Sauce

Main

Grassfed Beef Composition
A Sampling of Whole Pasture Raised Beef
Tongue Terrine, Seared Loin, Braised Shank
Served With Roast Beets and Rapini

Dessert

Kabocha Squash Bread Pudding
with Crème Anglaise

Brilliant. I knew Abrahams, and his sous for the evening, fellow Healthy Butcher chef David Zilber, were going to use pasture-raised beef, since this is the best time to eat it (the animals have been eating fresh grass, instead of hay, for months), but this seemed to incorporate every ingredient imaginable. Fowl, fish and beef. And then a squash dessert for a particularly harvest-time touch. Furthermore, the rapini was to be "foraged" from Abrahams' neighbours garden! YOu couldn't get more local than that.

To pair wines, I began with a bottle of Norman Hardie's 2007 County Pinot Noir which was in my cellar anyway. For the duck confit, I thought, a Niagara Riesling. The 2007 Tawse Wismer Vineyard would be fantastic, the sharpness would cut through the fat of the confit, and the minerality would compliment the apples. For the fish, we'd switch to Chardonnay, something with a bit more body to play off the tomatoes - likely the Cave Spring Estate, also from 2007 - hopefully I could find one in a Toronto LCBO. And for the dessert an ice wine, Henry of Pelham's Riesling Icewine (NV).

Sarah, a parent at my son's school had won The Healthy Butcher catered dinner as part of a a fundraising drive (see Part One of this series here.) As a recent immigrant form Korea, she was unfamiliar with Western foodways. In fact, at first it didn't seem like she understood exactly what she won, thinking I was a restaurant. When we established that The Healthy Butcher was going to cook her and 5 guests an all Ontario dinner with wine, she became excited but nervous. Could we cook in her condo? While she said she was open to all foods, would she and her guests enjoy the meal? How exactly do you explain what Confit de Canarde is? The date for the dinner was appraoching, and we would find out.

NEXT WEEK: Will Mario and Malcolm pull it off?

Find out more about the Healthy Butcher and their two Toronto locations at www.thehealthybutcher.com.

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.