Lunch that is Brunchified

Step into the elegance of wine country cuisine with sunshine streaming into the simplicity of Early Canadiana décor of crisp, white woodwork, contrasted by muted Tuscan colours and romantic chandeliers hovering over crisp white tablecloths. This is Peller Estate Winery Restaurant and I’m having brunch, or as Executive Chef Jason Parsons tells it, “lunch that’s brunchified”.

“I make dishes at the restaurant that I’d make at home and then some,” explains Parsons of his irresistible menu that has room for both lobster and baked beans on the same page. The food reflects a rich Canadian culinary tradition and a typical chef’s playground all at the same time. Yet Chef Parsons is a real peoples chef; he makes food you’d want to eat instead of the artsy plates.

Brunch is one set price of $47.95 and it includes the most decadent start, a glass of Peller Estate sparkling Ice Cuvee. This is a delicious glass of uber elegant sparkling wine with a kiss of icewine used as the dosage – oh yummmm! To say the rest of the menu includes an appetizer, entre and dessert, is to understate the palate experience that follows the high expectations already set by sipping.

The Lobster salad fills the palate with fresh, sea breeze clean flavours of succulent lobster, bright greens, juicy beets and luscious chevre. It’s a dish that leaves you feeling as happy and exhilarated as a walk on a warm sunny spring day.

The Truffle Seared Diver Scallops offers up large, mouth-watering scallops that are seared and caramelized on the outside, seductively moist on the inside. The icewine hollandaise sauce lends a melt-in-your-mouth, heavenly texture while the potato rosti anchors the play of elegance with a crispy, weighty texture. With a sip of the Ice Cuvee, this is a dish you’ll swoon over.

The Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder with House Baked Beans, and Riesling Braised Winter Greens is a rich, savoury, heart-warming dish. The dance of hearty flavours wraps you in an embrace of passion and with every mouthful, you feel it right into your soul.

Heritage Beef Tartar with Celeriac Remoulade and House Made Toast offers up bright beef flavours on a floating texture that’s feather-light on the tongue and brought into focus with a morsel of celeriac slaw (or remoulade - chef’s speak).

The menu changes often and has more to do with Parson’s creative rhythm than any culinary schedule. In the spring you may find tiny tarts of bright, virgin asparagus and thick, sexy brie but the next week it may be gone in favour of what Parsons finds new and exciting. Parson’s is a rare chef that cooks with a heart and shares it with everyone who cares to eat his food. Don’t miss this amazing dining experience.

To feast with your eyes, check this out: http://on.fb.me/ykLc4V

Peller Estate Winery Restaurant
290 John St, Niagara-on-the-Lake
888-673-5537

Wine Books for Local Food Donations

Tis’ the season for giving and that’s exactly what Niagara Cooks is hoping to do. Author Lynn Ogryzlo has purged her wine library of over 100 titles and offering them up for a donation to The Craig Award.

Here’s how it works. You pick a title you’d like and it’s yours for a donation. Some titles have a $10 price attached to them and that’s the least amount of donation accepted, others with no amount you can have for whatever you’d like to donate.

The books are lovingly read and lightly handled so most of them look as good as new, there are however, a few with a look of being thoroughly loved.

Choose from the eclectic pile that includes anything from The Oxford Companion to Wines, by Jancis Robinson to Wine Tastes, Wine Styles by Andrew Jefford. There are books on South Africa and others on health, like The Save Your Heart Wine Book. There are some by Simon & Schuster as well as William & Sonoma. There are books about cooking with wine, tasting wine, learning about wine and lots of coffee table style books from the experts; all great for holiday giving for an aspiring student, an eager enthusiast or a winetasting pro.

The Craig Award is a new research scholarship program funded by the Ogryzlo’s and run through Niagara College. It’s to financially encourage students and farmers to work together on innovative agricultural projects that have a positive outcome for Niagara’s local food culture.

Please join the Ogryzlo’s this holiday season, give the gift of wine and food reading while creating a stronger local food community in Niagara.

For a listing of the books, go to www.NiagaraCooks.ca

The Season Has Begun

It’s Niagara’s first agricultural crop of the season. Harvesting maple syrup starts around mid February and depending on the weather, lasts until the end of March.

“We need 3 days above freezing to get the sap running”, explains Ann Bering of White Meadows Farm in beautiful Effingham. The freezing and thawing temperatures starts and stops the sap many times.

Maple syrup starts as a sticky sap from the insides of a maple tree and is then transformed into a lusciously sweet nectar that is irresistible to all who try it. White Meadows Farm is in full maple syrup swing right now. You can visit the farm every Saturday and Sunday (holidays as well) from 8:30 am to 4 pm from now until mid April. Bring the kids for a wagon tour of the sugar bush and see how the trees are tapped, learn how its boiled down into maple syrup and end in the Pancake House with a full pancake breakfast complete with loads of sweet, fresh maple syrup.

throughout Niagara more chefs are using maple syrup in their dishes because it's a more complex sugar with more depth of flavour and has more nutrition than regular cane sugar.

White Meadow offers different grades of maple syrup; light, medium, amber and dark. The different grades have more to do with the time of the season than it has to do with processing. Traditionally, at the beginning of the season the sap is light and as the season progresses, the sap gets darker and richer. You'll find all four grades of maple syrup in The Sugar Shack, the on-farm retail shop. The dark syrup is almost black and the taste is reminiscent of molasses, but not as thick as molasses. The Sugar Shack is the only place you’ll find this rare and unique maple syrup.

If you’re looking to eat local this winter and you’re thinking nothing is happening in Niagara in February, think again. Not only is the sugar bush in full harvest, but White Meadow is also a cattle farm offering frozen beef in boxes with mixed cuts; ground hamburger, wieners, hamburger patties and pepperettes.

There’s even farm made baked beans (Ann’s own secret recipe!) and popping corn. From just over 2-acres of popping corn planted last summer, the Berings have more than 5 tons of popping corn in storage, ready to test, package and sell. Their popular maple kettle corn is made from their very own popping corn.

Inside The Sugar Shack you’ll also find the Berings famous maple barbecue sauce – perfect to glaze a winter roast or rack of beef ribs. There’s maple salad dressing, maple vinegar, maple mustard and red pepper maple jelly. They blend and mix their own pancake mix in two varieties; Buttermilk and Gluten Free and have a trio of fruit sauces all laced with maple syrup; cranberry, peach and wild blueberry.

They have maple granola, maple sugar candy, maple butter, maple tarts and of course with a barn brimming full of popping corn, you can pick up a big bag of fully popped maple kettle corn.

Get out to White Meadows on the weekends and enjoy the regions first of many harvests to come and don’t forget to bring the kids for some good, wholesome, family, farm and country fun.