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Masala to Almond Cake: Restaurant-Hopping in Toronto’s East End

It’s been a rough few weeks.

In mid-December, my wise ther­a­pist, inspired spir­i­tual teacher and beloved friend Terry Flynn died. It was sud­den and unex­pected. Although he had been diag­nosed with the dreaded dis­ease called ALS (Lou Gehrig’s), Terry assumed he had months, maybe more, to live. I miss him with all my heart.

Hot on the heels of this came two work-related set­backs. In both cases, I didn’t see them com­ing. Both trig­gered strong emo­tions. Both made me doubt my judg­ment, some­thing that’s been shaken up since I quit the cor­po­rate world in 2007 after 18 years as food editor/columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest news­pa­per, and embarked on my intre­pid, often lonely, fre­quently bumpy path as a fledg­ling free­lance food sleuth.

And so I am try­ing, in mid­dle age (hap­pily, imma­tu­rity and hair dye keep me young) to han­dle these new chal­lenges: finan­cial inse­cu­rity (I’m self-employed but haven’t yet given myself a pay­ing job) and what I can only describe as the steep learn­ing curve called Life.

The ongo­ing lessons are many, most of them learned the hard way. But enough about me.

In the litany of mishaps from recent weeks are some that befell others.

My boyfriend Ross’s mother Betty fell down the stairs on Christ­mas Day eve and broke her femur. Thanks to some nifty surgery, she is on the mend.

Then the cruise ship Costa Con­cor­dia hit rocks off the Ital­ian island of Giglio. On it were Ross’s sis­ter Lau­rie and her hus­band Alan, cel­e­brat­ing their 30th wed­ding anniver­sary. Thank­fully, they sur­vived; oth­ers were not so lucky.

Mean­while, as I am wont to do in dif­fi­cult times, I recalled the upbeat words of my dear late friend and men­tor, Julia Child: “Don’t look back. Look forward.”  

Then I took to the kitchen and cooked up a storm - the best way I know to soothe my trou­bled soul and one highly rec­om­mended by the inim­itable Ms. Child who famously said: “Cook­ing is the best work there is. You get to eat the results.” (Read to the end of this blog for the fruits of this labour.)

Also com­fort­ing in trou­bled times is break­ing bread with those I love. One recent, rainy Sun­day eve, this pur­suit took me to Lit­tle India accom­pa­nied by my daugh­ter Ruthie and her girl­friend Usha.

Usha, whose her­itage is Sri Lankan, sug­gested din­ner at Moti Mahal, a casual cafe-style eatery that’s been a pop­u­lar haunt in that ‘nabe for many moons. For some rea­son, I over­rode her idea in favour of the nearby Udupi Palace, home to the dosa: a giant thin and crispy curry-filled crepe I was crav­ing on that par­tic­u­lar night.

For once, my restau­rant radar was off. I should have known things might go wrong after not­ing bulbs for the word “Palace” were defunct on the Udupi emporium’s out­side sign. Luke­warm, under­whelm­ing dosas with too lit­tle, under­spiced fill­ing fol­lowed. Oy vey!

In an effort to save the evening — noth­ing puts me in a bad mood like infe­rior food — I sug­gested we move on to Moti Mahal where Usha had men­tioned the desserts are ter­rific, espe­cially some­thing called Ras Malai.

Wow, the noisy din­ers dip­ping into over­sized thali plates while enjoy­ing lively con­ver­sa­tion crowded into the uti­latar­ian booths couldn’t have been hav­ing more fun. When Usha came to our table bear­ing a bevy of desserts, nor could we.

Ras Malai is a sweet, creamy “patty” made from milk swim­ming in a sweet, creamy sauce with lit­tle chunks of chopped pis­ta­chio float­ing therein. I hate the term “com­fort food’ but this delec­table con­fec­tion could give it a good name.

The fol­low­ing week, I informed Ross that Moti Mahal was call­ing my name at din­ner time. Alas, it was Tues­day night and the place was closed.

En route home along Queen Street East, I saw the sign “Edward Levesque” and remem­bered eat­ing at that resto almost 10 years ago. Home to clever chef/owner with the above name, its food, I recalled, was refined down­home cook­ing — just darn good, real food. The room is pretty and tranquil.

After a short chat with the chatty Mr. Levesque, who rec­og­nized me after all this time, we sat down to eat. Ross’s creamy Chicken Pot Pie was old-fashioned, crowned with per­fect pas­try and resplen­dent with juicy chicken and green peas in a creamy sauce. A side of skinny, crunchy fries was sim­ple, salty and superb; my Duck Con­fit was above average.

But dessert was the crown­ing glory: a rich, moist wedge of Orange Almond Cake topped with lus­cious Lemon Con­fit and a dol­lop of whipped cream.

I am a food sleuth and sleuthing is my game. So I asked chef Levesque about this dish. Yes, you guessed — I wanted the recipe.

He was dis­creet at first, say­ing a pas­try chef makes his desserts. Then he offered up a few clues. “I think it’s an old recipe that orig­i­nally called for clemen­tines.” Then the name “Nigella” came up and some key info: that the oranges/clementines are cooked whole before being incorporated.

Back home, I took to the Inter­net. It quickly served up a trade­mark recipe from Nigella Law­son for Clemen­tine Cake. I made it the next day and served it with Lemon Con­fit: a recipe shared with me on this sleuthing trail by my pas­try chef buddy Joanne Yolles. It and a scoop of Loblaws divine Crackle ice cream were the crown­ing glory.

By the way, a week later Ross and I returned for din­ner to Moti Mahal where we each dug into a thali plat­ter — mine with goat curry, his with cur­ried chicken but both includ­ing cinnamon-infused bas­mati rice, delicious and not-at-all-slimy, spicy okra, cau­li­flower potato curry, top-notch naan and chile-laced raw onion pickle. Del­ish — and we’ll be back.

So here’s that cake from Edward Levesque fol­lowed by the Lemon Con­fit that I plan to make reg­u­larly and use to gar­nish all kinds of desserts.

Clemen­tine Cake

I used organic sugar, which is light brown rather than white, and whole unblanched almonds (skins on) which I ground in the food proces­sor to resem­ble coarse crumbs.

5 or 6 clemen­tines, prefer­ably seed­less (about 1 lb/500g)

6 eggs

1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar

2 ¹⁄₃ cups ground almonds

1 heap­ing tsp bak­ing powder

Place clemen­tines in medium saucepan with enough cold water to cover. Bring to boil; reduce heat to low and sim­mer, cov­ered, for 2 hours. Drain and cool. Remove stem ends, halve and remove any stray seeds. Chop coarsely, skin and all.

But­ter and line 8-inch/2L spring­form pan with parch­ment paper. (If you don’t have the paper, but­ter and dust with flour.)

Pre­heat oven to 375F.

Beat eggs in medium bowl. Add sugar, almonds and bak­ing pow­der; mix well. Add chopped clemen­tines; stir until com­bined. Trans­fer mix­ture to pre­pared spring­form pan.

Bake in oven about 1 hour or until tester inserted in cen­tre of cake comes out clean. Cool in pan placed on wire rack. Remove rim from pan.

Serve thin wedges of cake with a lit­tle Lemon Con­fit (recipe below) spooned on to each wedge and a scoop of ice cream, whipped cream or thick­ened yogurt. (This cake tastes bet­ter the day after it is made and keeps well stored cov­ered in a cool place.

Makes about 12 to 16 servings.

Lemon Con­fit

I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend Meyer lemons for this — their robust sweet/sour taste is ideal. I used a man­do­line to slice the lemons.

3 or 4 Meyer lemons, very thinly sliced

1 cup sugar

1 ¹⁄₄ cups water

Pre­heat oven to 300F.

Arrange lemons in small bak­ing dish.  Com­bie sugar and water in small bowl. Pour over lemons. Cover with foil; cut small slits in foil.

Bake in oven about 2 hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One Comment

1. Dusanka
   Posted February 7, 2012 at 1:02 pm | Permalink

   Thanks for shar­ing the recipe Marion…I will try it for sure as I love these kinds of desserts. If you like coconut, I have a coconut bread recipe to share. It’s quite good (easy and moist) but needs a some­thing extra on top per­haps that maybe you can fig­ure out.

   I hope 2012 has started off well for you.

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