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A Taste of Country in the City
Withrow Park Farmers’ Market is a bucolic park setting in east-end Toronto where rural farmers and artisans bring their wares to meet with the urban community
by Chef Sacha Douglas
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As a chef and urban dweller, I am constantly amazed at the amount of global bounty available to us in the great city of Toronto. Year-round strawberries from California, fish from Japan, tomatoes in winter, New Zealand lamb... whatever we need is there at our fingertips.
But lately a shift is moving through the populus. You can sense it on restaurant menus, in the aisles at the grocery store, in the books we’re reading…something is afoot, slowly but surely.
Now more than ever, people want and need to reconnect with their food. Where is my food coming from? How is it being made? Who is making it? Easier questions to answer, perhaps, if you live in a rural area. But what if you live in the centre of the largest city in Canada? One of the only ways to make that fieldto-table connection is through urban farmers’ markets. To meet the demand, a crop of them has flourished across the city in recent years. A recent upstart is the burgeoning Withrow Park Farmers’ Market, an intimate cluster of 15-20 vendors nestled amongst the tree-lined streets of Riverdale, just south of the hopping Danforth strip, otherwise known as Greektown.
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The Withrow Park Farmers’ Market is in full swing on a sunny September morning. Families, young couples, kids and students comb the market, their bags and wagons filled to bursting with organic and local produce, meats and cheese. September is the magic season for food. There remains an abundance of late-summer heirloom tomatoes, green beans, carrots, beets, watercress, corn and zucchini. But traditional fall staples like apples, squashes, potatoes, parsnips, rutabagas, and cauliflowers are starting to rear their heads too. A crossover meeting of the seasons that is pure culinary heaven.
Roberta Stimac, the market’s organizer, flits from stall to stall, talking with vendors and customers alike. Along with a group of friends and neighbours, Roberta worked tirelessly to bring the local market to fruition. A truly grassroots project, her think-outside-the-box approach finds free offerings like Nia and yoga classes, cooking demonstrations, and lifestyle presentations happening each week at the center tent. Today it’s my turn to do a cooking demonstration inspired by the market’s bounty—so I set out to visit the stalls and to get inspired for my dish. My goal is to encourage people to let the market dictate what they make, instead of the other way around.
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The first five of seven years that they have been personally farming saw them trying to sell directly within their own rural region. Mark tells me that it was a difficult sell—so they took action and began to make the 1.5 hour trek to Toronto to do two things—join the budding trend of farmers’ markets and to approach the city’s restaurant chefs to supply directly to them. Slowly they began to cultivate strong relationships and supply chains with local kitchens. “A group of 8-10 Toronto chefs in particular have been extremely important in bringing attention to consumers about using local produce,” he tells me. “It’s now at the point where we are letting the chefs dictate what we are growing.”
On any given morning, you can spot some of these chefs perusing the market for the freshest product available, or picking up orders from farmers like Mark. “It’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone—giving us more reason to take time out from farming to come and meet our customers face to face. Part of the problem,” he explains, “was access and reliability. Now the chefs know we are in town a few times a week for market days, so we can guarantee that they’ll receive their orders.” As we are talking, chef Michael Caballo from Toronto’s Niagara Street Café stops by the stall to chat and peruse the produce for his busy Saturday night at the restaurant. While Michael has some idea of what he’s picking up on market day, he always discovers some interesting surprises which find their way onto his ever-changing seasonal menus. Today’s market search finds him gorgeous bunches of tender heirloom carrots in shades of orange, crimson and yellow.
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The family tradition continues as I visit David Weber and his two children, Isaac, eight, and Rhoda, five. David and his wife, Ellen, run Weber’s Pasture Raised Meats from their 67-acre farm in Paisley, a three-hour drive from Toronto. Chickens, Black Angus beef and veal, turkeys, geese, ducks, Berkshire pigs, and lamb are all raised naturally and humanely, roaming the fields, feeding on fresh grass and natural feed. As it should be.
A relative newcomer to the Toronto farmer’s market ‘scene’, David tells me that unlike Grassroots Organics, the Webers can sell most of their meat locally, but their production is growing so fast, they simply need more selling outlets. Hence the three-hour trek to the Withrow Park Farmer’s Market. Lucky us.
As David is surrounded by customers placing orders for Thanksgiving turkeys (the more adventurous cooks opt for ducks and geese), I leave him and make my way over to talk with Gabriel Pretto, from Fun Guy Farms. It takes me a moment to realize the pun, even as I stare down at their boxes of pristine exotic mushrooms.
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Fun Guy Farms also sells excellent parmesan reggiano from Italy. Ok, so it’s not exactly local, but I can’t resist! I settle on making simple and hearty crispy exotic mushroom salad with organic arugula and shaved parmesan reggiano. The perfect dish to showcase the freshness, quality, and ease of ‘market cuisine’.
An impromptu crowd gathers to watch my casual cooking class in the park. The salad is a hit and mysteriously, the audience size seems to increase as I start to hand out samples.
As I finish up, Roberta announces the upcoming Ontario Wine and Cheese Tasting in the Park that the market is hosting for the community. This special afternoon event is bringing together wine and beer producers from Toronto, Niagara, and Prince Edward County regions and matching them with local artisan cheese and cured meat producers. Sommeliers and cheese experts will be on-hand to guide guests through the experience as they mingle, taste, learn, and purchase wine, cheese and beer directly from the producers—just in time for Thanksgiving feasts. What better way to spend the afternoon than to commune with neighbours in a gorgeous park setting while nibbling and sipping the best wine and cheese Ontario has to offer?
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As the market begins to shut down for the day, I bid goodbye to Roberta, the vendors, and my neighbours, and think, when was the last time I did that at the grocery store? I gather my purchases and walk home, head filled with ideas for dinner. A few blocks away from the breezy park, I pass by Broadview Street with its view of the busy Don Valley Parkway and beyond that, the impressive city skyline of Toronto. Places like the Withrow Park Farmers’ Market truly give us the best of both worlds—a bit of the country in the city, and the direct-connect with our food and the people who bring it to us. Dinner is going to taste extra good tonight.•
Info: www.withrowpark.ca, www.coupe-mag.com/coupespace.html
Dishware and props were supplied by The Cook’s Place in Toronto
(www.thecooksplace.com)
Originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of Lifestyle Nova Scotia Magazine.
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