Little Oven 2
A column exclusively about cooking with only a countertop air-fryer oven. This time it's apples slices in rum, local produce, and glamour.
I have an indefatigable love for good veg and fruit, especially local and especially seasonal but I certainly, absolutely don’t turn my nose up at imported produce. Never would I ever consider not buying bright, sweet pineapples and broccoli imported from Mexico and California during Vancouver’s long grey rain season. What am I going to do, eat locally grown turnips all winter?
About 15 years ago there began an obnoxious craze among elite Vancouverites for buying and eating only locally produced food, and even for larping as agricultural workers and picking fruit themselves. Suddenly, the kind of city people who had large, secure incomes and nice cars and second homes in the country could be heard bragging about dirt-grubbing. Two local journalists, a couple, wrote a book called the 100 Mile Diet, which became a bestseller nationally in Canada and even spawned a TV show. In 2007 “locavore” was declared word of the year by the Oxford American Dictionary.
I can’t tell you how much I hate this sort of thing. In the old-school, dour, neo-animist, crunchy granola culture of British Columbia, the glossy Real Housewives of Vancouver and the Lamborghinis that get wrapped around a pole once a year don’t reflect the aspirant glamour of locals anywhere nearly as well as the 100 Mile Diet couple.
The very idea that ordinary people with real hard jobs and families to support are responsible for carbon footprints and how far goods, including foods, travel to their local shops, is wholly repulsive to me. I’m disgusted by the push to make working class people responsible for the evils of oligarchical capital.
Having said all that, a life without fresh fruit and veg would hardly be a life for me. I don’t preach shopping local for others, and I don’t see the point of preaching, unless of course one is landed with a nice little book deal to do so. The vast majority of people shop at suburban supermarkets and superstores and who can blame them, given the convenience and the enormous price differences. My taste buds however are what they are, and they crave the nicest veg and fruit I can lay my hands on.
Over winter I would normally have access to the city’s one large winter farmers market for good produce but with covid still raging here and spreading far and wide, I’m not going to take transit whenever I don’t absolutely have to, and I can’t drive. So the winter farmers market is out and I’m limited to what I can get on foot. Which isn’t inconsiderable. Within tolerable walking distance of my downtown apartment there are several supermarkets and many more smaller shops, stalls and delicatessens. The issue isn’t shops but distribution.
Most produce imported into BC or mass produced locally is distributed through the province through an organized wholesale tier of quality, three levels, highest to lowest. Supermarkets chains and independent stores alike choose a tier to be supplied from. Some go to the extra effort of stocking from small local farms and hothouses in addition to this distribution network. None of the big box stores in my neighborhood are supplied from the top tier of quality but I fully intend to root out what I can from them, and from the indy shops.
I began with the great little green grocers in my neighborhood. Kin’s is a family outfit that started with one produce table at the Granville Island markets in the 80s and now has close to 30 small shops in the lower mainland. The offerings there from BC farms are what I’d expect this time of year - cabbage, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, hothouse baby peppers. I also picked up a huge and luscious imported pomegranate to garnish some pork loin chops. For more unusual local offerings I’ll need to make the trek to the Granville Island markets, and take my wallet loaded with cash because it ain’t cheap.
The little peppers will be roasted black and skinned, and served with chili pork loin chops and pomegranate.
For now though, please enjoy some air fried local Fuiji apples. From my windowsill potted herb garden I snipped some of the last of this year’s apple-mint and crushed the stalk lightly with my pestle on the tray the apples were to be cooked on. The essential oils of so many herbs are so delicate and easily lost, so I prefer to prep them without transfers between prep bowls and cooking dishes. I added a heaping spoon of soft brown sugar, another of vanilla bean paste, and a splash each of dark rum and hot water, stirring them around a bit on the tray, just enough to dissolve the sugar and distribute the vanilla paste and apple-mint oils.
Apple-mint isn’t enjoyable to eat raw or cooked but it’s an incredible infuser, and very lovely in applications like this, and as a tea, and as a clear jade jelly if you have access to bushels of it. It is a mint (Mentha suaveolens) but the mint note is subtle and I suppose its name came from how well it brings out the apple flavor in apples, which can’t be said for other varieties of mint. After 8 minutes at Airfry 400F my apple slices were beautifully crinkled and heady with perfume. I leave the skin on apples when I cook them because I love the tang they bring with them. They can go in or on anything like pancakes, pies etc but I like to eat them just as they are in their rum sauce. Although they are very nice with steel cut oat porridge for breakfast.
Coming up will be a visit to Granville Island, carrot experiments galore and chili pork loin chops.