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Certified Pastry Chef Kristen Gilliam, glaze gun ablazin'

Pan de Muerto - Bread of the Dead

Kristen's blog of the dead comes back to life, if only for a moment, to bring you this giant brioche bun that I had no idea Mexicans had been eating to celebrate All Souls' Day every November 2. There's some serious dead bread catching up I've got to do!

The brioche-like bread is baked in various shapes, but generally it is round and often shaped to suggest protruding bones, like this one here, which is pictured courtesy of the Carol Sarah Meixcan Bakery on Beaubien East. This one even had candied orange pieces in it, which I love. Very yummy stuff, this bread!

I called the baker when, during Halloween festivities, I read about this culinary tradition and decided to investigate locally. Problem was that Halloween this year fell on a weekend so by the time I could get through to the bakery it was already November 2. There was some telephone tag and it was well into the evening by the time I spoke with the baker, a friendly helpful man named Jorge. It was late, I was going out and he was past closing. But he kindly agreed to make a loaf to order, just for me. I had to wait though till November 3, which was the day after All Souls' Day. So the dead's celebration at my place this year was a bit sluggish and slow getting going. I suppose, though I don't know any cadavers, that this can happen.

To fiesta-up Dead Days, the Pan de Muerto is sometimes decorated with white frosting, not only to look like twisted bones, but also to make things look all pretty and sparkly. I was happy to hear that Jorge was willing to bake for me because I had read that he tends to use a granulated pink sugar sprinkled on top. Picking up my order, I didn't notice this at first, but without the bright flash on my camera, you can see a bit of pink sheen... Take a look!


By the way, Jorge convinced me to buy the yellow-packaged hot chocolate kit you see in the photos, an authentic Mexican cocoa accompaniment to this festive bread. The Ibarra brand is quite sweet - made mostly of sugar - but there is a nice cinnamon taste to it.

Well, Happy Belated All Souls' Day. I'm promising to do my best to mark the occasion in a more timely fashion next year. That'll be easy because memories of this tasty bread will keep me tantalized and ready to find some more, come late October 2010, the next time that this bread gets baked.

Timmies, meet the Big Apple; Big Apple, Timmies.

It just came to my attention that the New York Times is writing about Tim Hortons... As if someone just yelled out "Call the papers! There are these things called Tim Horton donuts and they're giving them away in Times Square!" This is of course funny for any Canadian to imagine.

It's even funnier for me. I used to make these suckers. And now the venerable Times assigns its team of food sophisticates to give Timmies (they decide to call it T.H. for short... how wrong is that!?) a blind taste test next to Dunkin' Donuts.

You can picture me, here in my little Ontario backwater, holding my breath as the Manhattanites chow down and ponder till a verdict is reached. Oakville, Hamilton, points in between and all over southwestern Ontario, flash before my eyes. What will they say about us? About me and my one-time livelihood slinging coffee and frying dough in fat?

I skip to the bottom of the review because I can't bear the suspense.

Overall: Neither chain posted a clear winner or an overall advantage in quality. Conclusion: Mass-produced doughnuts [notice that these people would sooner die than drop the ugh in donuts] are achieving total global mediocrity.

New York City aesthetes, you cop out.

Which reminds me, someone already tried elevate the art of Timbit appreciation, and it's reproduced in its entirety below (see #5) ...And now that I read the whole NYT review instead of skipping to the end, I realize that those New York City foodies never sampled a Tim Horton sour cream glazed, not to mention a sugar twist. Not to mention a chocolate toasted coconut or fresh strawberry-filled powdered. Shame! Shame on you New York Times. Your investigative journalism ends at a Crueller.

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I would never put eating on a list of things to do before I die. (Before 90 minutes passes is a more likely timeframe for that.)

Yet foodbloggers around the world are doing this very thing: enumerating memorable morsels for all to see. I got passed a meme that invited me to do the same. Before I even knew it I was biting...

1. Carré aux pommes from Première Moisson on Avenue Mont-Royal Wait till fall starts and you'll get local Montérégie apples sliced in a perfect pastry made with 100% real butter. Or don't wait. These squares are excellent year-round and are made on the premises seven days a week. They are $1.95 each. I think two bucks is amazing deal for something that will give your entire afternoon a lift.

2. Chocolat noir (84-99%) French dark chocolate, sometimes in its darkest forms referred to as noirisme, is easy to locate in Montreal, especially chocolate in the top 15 percentile (in terms of pure cocoa content). I wrote about Poulain's dark tasting chocolate in the past, under the guise of things to pair with robust red wines. Bottom line: take a taste of this, vino or no. Buy the Poulain Noir Ultime 86% from the pharmacy in the train station and pay just $2.99 for 100 grams, which is definitely more than one serving.

3. Caffè ArtJava's Macchiato A feast for the eyes and without a doubt the best espresso in the city. This item, which achieves a perfect balance between bitterness, consistency and richness, should certainly be at the top of any bean lover's list. Only $2 and change. I'd pay twice that for the sense of anticipation you get as your server brings you your latte or allongé -- the awesome foam designs that are melded into the crema run the gamut from flowers to hearts to the intricate kitty-cat shown here. You never know what you're gonna get. Find Caffè ArtJava in the Plateau Mont-Royal district or downtown adjacent to the McGill métro and university campus at a soon-to-be-opened location.

4. Alati-Caserta lemon ice I know so very little about Pasticceria Alati-Caserta. It is a frilly Italian pastry shop that faces one of Little Italy's most ornate churches. But the no-frills homemade lemon ice they serve up in the summer is a simple shot to the heart. It was the first thing that entered my mind of when I thought of Montreal tastes that transport you. Alati-Caserta is definitely a subject for further research on these pages. Until then, rush up to Danté Street before summer ends. Take a twoonie with you -- this treat cost me $2 even.

5. Tim Hortons Snack Pack of 10 Sour Cream Glazed Timbits Doughnut holes are not for foodies. And Tim Hortons is definitely no place for foodies. The service staff is routinely shocked when someone like me walks in. I ask for some Sour Cream Glazed, and when they announce they are all out, walk right back out the door. "Don't you want a coffee? An old fashioned timbit at least?" they shout out, startled that I would come in and leave empty-handed. Tim Hortons locations are strewn across the land, and it's true that my behaviour is considered quite odd at any of them, but take it from me, for best results (and handfuls of timbits), take a trip to Tim Hortons de l'Église in Verdun. Share the $1.50 price tag on the Snack Pack with a friend. After all, ten of these suckers is overkill. Three or four does the trick.

Wow! Montreal's best gastronomy for $10! Picking $2 treats was not exactly my aim. While it is a bit of a coincidence, I did have a bit of a method to my madness that encouraged bargain bites.

HOW I DETERMINED MY FIVE THINGS

In my mind, the goal of this online project is to encourage people not only to explore the world, but a world of flavours. Previous listings of "things to eat" operated more like polls or surveys. This one started by The Traveller's Lunchbox wants to act a bit more like a gourmand's guide to travel. So indeed, I considered it an offer to do my part for my city: to give readers a few good arguments for tasting what I'm tasting in Montreal, Canada.

I selected small delicacies -- finite and chartable tastes that hit your tastebuds and then leave you longing for more. But perhaps more important than being small, these picks are also pretty much constant and unchanging items, unlike a chef's dish, let's say, which may change from night to night or season to season. My treats, even with repeat business, have yet to disappoint.

By the way, The Foodblogger's Guide to the Globe does not actually require an invitation to participate. As a result, I'm not re-enacting the unfortunate chain mail aspect of the project by sending this to five other people. Chain mail is wretched. Read this and instantly consider yourself worthy!

Create your own list or add a comment below to record an idea on what needs to be eaten, in Montreal or beyond.

Cotton candy, constructed for a cake...

The taste of cotton candy usually makes most people think of summer carnivals and amusement parks. After making these pulled sugar and sugar rock caketop decorations that taste somewhere in between candy floss and dietetic sugar, I now think: Damn, that's a lot of hard work for soemthing that doesn't really taste like much. The pulled sugar daffodil flowers were the hardest to do. I thought my fingers were going to melt off!!! But they do look good, don't they? It's the textures of the finished sugar pieces, not just the colours and shapes, that set these apart from everyday cake toppers.

FOOD FROM FRANCE!!!

Long time no update. For now, here's a quick caption-less rundown of all the great tastes I've been sampling over the past weeks while I was visiting France and the Northwest corner of Italy. The above shots are from Aix-en-Provence, while all those that follow are from the Riviera, starting with the Italian Riviera first. Hope to explain more about the baked goodness later. Meanwhile, feast your eyes!

Some Goji baked-goodness?...

...or some wacky hungry-like-the-wolfberry-might-as-well-dump-them-in-'cause-I-didn't-have-any-cranberries scones.

Yup, these are Goji Scones. More of a savoury biscuit than a clotted-cream douceur, to be sure!

Guess what? That strong tincture of yellow you see smeared around the places where the berries dot the scones? That doesn't just look like something from a hot pepper. Goji berries are part hot pepper. Goji peppers is actually a more suitable name than goji berries, if you ask me.

Or if you were around to taste these.

So, while these creations were not spicy hot, these were definitely some scones for serious constitutions.

Other (better) ideas for Goji in the kitchen?

As a food, dried wolfberries are traditionally cooked before consumption. Dried wolfberries are often added to rice congee, as well as used in Chinese tonic soups, in combination with chicken or pork, vegetables, and other herbs such as wild yam, Astragalus membranaceus, Codonopsis pilosula, and licorice root. The berries are also boiled as an herbal tea, often along with chrysanthemum flowers and/or red jujubes, or with tea, particularly pu-erh tea, and packaged teas are also available. Various wines containing wolfberries (called gǒuqǐ jiǔ; 枸杞酒) are also produced, including some that are a blend of grape wine and wolfberries. At least one Chinese company also produces wolfberry beer, and New Belgium Brewery makes their seasonal Springboard ale with wolfberries used as flavoring. Since the early 21st century, an instant coffee product containing wolfberry extract has been produced in China. Young wolfberry shoots and leaves are also grown commercially as a leaf vegetable

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry#Culinary