andrew coppolino

As winter winds down, we are likely in for some dull and dreary days, sans soleil.

But a blast of neon pink, courtesy of the pitaya, might brighten things up. The flavour’s mild, which is okay with me, but the colour startling.

A member of the cactus family and a thorny species native to Central and South America, the dragon fruit, or “strawberry pear,” can have a soft pulp with a nice satiny texture along with delicately crunchy seeds like those of kiwis.

The fruit has been around as long ago as the 1200s and was apparently introduced to Vietnam (where they grow in abundance) by the French and to the Aussies by the Colombians. So, it's a colourful fruit but also one with a international traveller's reputation.

My favourite way of eating them is to cut them in half and scoop out the insides. They come in yellow as well, but I have never seen one of those.



I love the ring of vanadium and chromium in the morning. Knives: their sleek stainless steel lines and alloy elements—even the names rugged—are forged to razor-sharp tactile pleasure. They rank supreme among kitchen equipment.

Aesthetically pleasing, but they’re work horses too. Sure, you can cook nearly anything on a $25 single-burner college-dorm hotplate, but you need good knives to prepare food properly.

When stocking a kitchen, people tend to purchase their knives last. “They’ll spend hundreds on a stand mixer and gadgets, but if you add up the times you use a knife against those items, you would exceed their combined use,” according to Derek Marcotte, national sales manager at Wusthof-Trident Canada.

I have several Wusthof-Trident full-tang, three-rivet knives including an 8-inch chef’s knife with great balance, a 9-inch slicer, and a paring knife that’s seen the better of its 25 years, though it diligently keeps on paring.

Also gleaming on my magnetic knife bar are a couple of Zwilling J.A. Henckels blades including a terrific 8-inch serrated bread knife: it nestles soothingly in my hand as I slice heavy dark rye for early morning toast. A  6-inch boning knife breaks down a chicken easily.  

Add to that an 8-inch knife made by Sanelli that’s good for rough chopping before it’s tossed in the dishwasher, assorted utility knives, and a small santoku with its “granton edge” for the lighter work of prepping veg and thin slicing.  

Anatomy of a knife

It’s about finding the right tool for the job, so know what you want to do with your knives when purchasing, advises Jordan Lassaline, sous chef at Stratford’s The Old Prune restaurant and a practical cookery instructor at the Stratford Chefs School.

“Figure out what you need, and buy accordingly. Ultimately, you’re looking for something that feels good in your hand, has ample weight to it, and is comfortable.”

A brief anatomy lesson dissects the components of a knife that you should be looking for. The good ones have a single-piece blade, the “tang” of which extends from the cutting portion and runs the length of the knife.

Check the “bolster:” it runs perpendicular to the knife’s length as a thick bit of steel between handle and blade. It’s the knife’s fulcrum and provides heft and stability.

The thick top of the blade is the “spine,” but of course the business side of the knife is the cutting edge starting at the “heel” (which begins at the bolster) and running forward to the “toe” or tip of the blade. Deciding how long a blade you want is up to you, but most chef’s knives are about 8 inches though some can range to 14 inches. If you can have only one very good knife, make it the versatile chef’s knife.

A comfortable grip is crucial for safety and reducing fatigue during use. Known as “scales” and riveted to the tang, handle materials range from basic polypropylene to exotic “mpingo” (grenadilla) wood harvested from ecologically sustainable farms in Mozambique, notes Wusthof’s Marcotte.

Incidentally, you can hear the dulcet tones of mpingo at play in the woodwind section of your local orchestra—it’s used to make clarinets and oboes.

A good knife’s true temper

Both flexible and hard, the best knives are high-carbon surgical steel (often blends of vanadium, chromium, and molybdenum), which means “virgin” rather than recycled steel. “The tempering—heating and cooling—brings out the true character of a knife,” Marcotte adds.

Premium knives are forged in 1800-plus degree Celsius furnaces before being cooled to 70-degrees Celsius within minutes. Tempering alters the steel’s molecular structure and results in hardness, the degree of which is measured against something called a “Rockwell” scale. Knife steel is actually harder than railroad tracks.

Taken out of its metallurgic context and put into your kitchen knife drawer, Rockwellian hardness is a gauge of how long the edge on your knife will stay sharp—or how easily you can put on edge back on it. That’s critical for making those little radish roses or an exquisitely precise brunoise.

Blended with steel alloys, ceramic knives are popular for cooks looking for something other than steel blades, and the black hue and zany whorled pattern on Kyocera’s “Kyotop Damascus” knives is certainly sexy, for example.

Made of zirconium oxide that is “sintered” (powders compressed to form a solid) at 1000-degree Celsius temperatures, ceramic knives are light weight and stay sharper than conventional steel blades.

Marcotte says “they’re probably the sharpest on the market, but they can be unbelievably fragile. You wouldn’t want to drop one too violently. They are not for hard chopping but are brilliant for lighter knife work.”

Check the warranty

Having broached the subject of breakage, a final bit of buying advice comes from Chef Lassaline: “When looking at higher-end knives, there is a lifetime warranty you have to watch carefully. Many will say you can’t cut bones or frozen food.”

Each time you reach for a good knife, its quality rings true in your hand—like the sound of blade on honing steel.

Regular maintenance and cleaning

Under a powerful microscope, a knife’s “edge geometry” is serrations like tiny tines of a comb. When you use your knife, those tines get bent and misaligned; hence, a dull knife. But there’s a difference between honing and sharpening.

Chefs like Jordan Lassaline might be “on their steel” before each knife task, depending on how much work they’re doing. Running a honing steel across the knife before each use realigns the tines and keeps a perfect edge on the blade for many years without the need for sharpening.

“With your knife steel tip-down on a cutting board, adjust your knife to a 20-degree angle and run it firmly but lightly down the steel through from heel to toe on both sides of the blade. Repeat the action about seven times per side. The whole process should take about 15 seconds,” suggests Marcotte. 

There are tools like sharpening stones and pull-through ceramic and carbide devices of all sorts. “The common factor is that they rip off the dull teeth and create a new edge. However, the more you sharpen, the more you need to sharpen because as you remove steel your edge gets wider and wider,” Marcotte says.

As for dishwashers, check with the manufacturer. Most premium knives are dishwasher safe, but both Chef Lassaline and Marcotte suggest washing by hand with a cloth and warm, soapy water. 

Who doesn’t remember that cute and cuddly Disney spaghetti kiss between the adorable pooches as they dine al fresco in "Lady and the Tramp?" Since that 1955 animated film, there have been dozens of movies featuring restaurants which have given audiences a brief, albeit fictional, glimpse into the world of professional kitchens.

In the 1997 movie "My Best Friend’s Wedding," Chicago restaurateur and star-chef Charlie Trotter has a brief star-turn playing the stereotypical “psycho chef” while preparing a restaurant critic’s meal.

During his cameo appearance (in a movie which incidentally grossed over $250 million worldwide), Trotter found a similarity between film production and sauce reduction. He plays a chef who threatens his staff while they prepare the critic’s meal shouting, “If you don’t get this right, I’ll kill your whole family!”

While his real Chicago kitchen is an intense one, Trotter says he isn’t that kind of cook but “thoroughly enjoyed playing up the ‘angry chef’ role.”

Chef's table in Trotters Chicago kitchen

“While it is not my style in the kitchen, it was a moment as a classic irate chef with unprompted, spontaneous dialogue in our kitchen. There is much that is comparable in film making and a restaurant—the energy, emotion, and drama of it all,” Trotter says.

Some of those comparisons can be seen in this brief list of films with food and restaurant motifs.

Energy and drama of a goofy sort characterize George Segal’s and Jacqueline Bisset’s gastronomic murder odyssey in "Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?" (1978). Country by country, the chefs are systematically killed—and in a manner that replicates their signature dishes. Apparently, a remake is in the works.

It’s New Jersey of the 1950s, and the brothers Primo (Stanley Tucci) and Secondo (Tony Shaloub)—“first” and “second,” just like the courses—are hoping that a visit from jazzman Louis Prima will save their moribund Italian restaurant in the magnificent 1996 film, "Big Night." Both actors spent some time in professional kitchens learning the ropes.

As Secondo says, “good food puts you closer to God,” so the staff of the small restaurant works for days to prepare the multi-course Prima meal culminating in the massive timpano dish. The movie’s food stylists apparently made 30 versions of this enormous “drum” of sauce, pasta, sausage, chicken, meatballs, and hard-boiled eggs.

The final scene—breakfast after the big night—is poignant: in silence, Tucci prepares the most basic of egg dishes, an omelette, for his brother. The only sound is the gentle and soothing clatter of pans and utensils.

The power of sweets is foremost in the 2000 film "Chocolat." Juliette Binoche arrives in a repressive French village as a chocolatier and manages to win over the village (as well as Johnny Depp) at the same time that her luscious chocolaty concoctions expose the village’s hypocrisy.

Though its fans rave about Peter Greenaway’s 1989 "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover," both the title and the film (like slow, lagging restaurant service) go on far too long to be enjoyable. To say the least, there are lots of unusual food and eating images.

Diners are part of the film smorgasbord as well. The next time you stop at a good ol’ greasy spoon truck-stop for a quick sandwich and coffee, try the Jack Nicholson approach to getting the waitress to “hold the chicken” on your order, as he does in "Five Easy Pieces" (1970). Similar greasy-spoon fun is found in Diner (1982): set in the 1950s, the film reveals just how long folks have been scarfing down deadly-rich fries and gravy.

Munching and murder will out in foodie mobster flicks, including "Good Fellas" and "Wise Guys" where tomato sauce might be called “gravy” (and where many scenes pay homage to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 "The Godfather."

In another movie with thugs and mobsters, Barry Sonnefeld’s "Get Shorty" (1995) features an all-star cast, including John Travolta as a loan shark who visits several famous L.A. restaurants.  

In the documentary vein, sit down to a healthy helping of "Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s" to see the tinsel-town elite—Sharon Stone, Matt Dillon, Jay Leno to name a few—as they close down one the city’s most notable restaurants. Chasen’s was famous for its salt-crusted, fat-cooked “hobo” steak prepared tableside and gets credit for inventing the Shirley Temple cocktail.   

More recent resta-mentaries include "A Table in Heaven" (about Sirio Maccioni and Le Cirque) and "Toots" (about the 1950s Manhattan watering hole Toots Shor’s Restaurant, which forced Charlie Chaplin to wait in line for a table).  

Recently released on DVD is "No Reservations which features the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones as a top New York chef working in what must be one of the most static and quiet kitchens ever. And it’s marvellous how all the cooks can keep their jackets and aprons so sparkling white.

A couple of years ago, Food Arts magazine recently named Remy the executive rodent-chef in "Ratatouille" “chef of the year”—the rat certainly has passion and inspiration in the kitchen along with unique technique. The film just won an Oscar for best animated feature, but Peter O’Toole deserves special mention for his terrific voice-work as the gloomy, malevolent restaurant critic.

No matter how bad a helping of a food-movie might be, at least it won’t leave you with indigestion.



We’ve been watching in deep sadness the events in Haiti following the massive earthquake which left the impoverished country in ruins. Millions are homeless; tens of thousands are dead. Hospitals have been heavily damaged or destroyed, and the already poor infrastructure of the country decimated.

It seems that in such disasters, though, that restaurants are among the first to set up aid programs, no matter how small.

Montreal, with the second largest Haitian population outside of Haiti, immediately saw a half-dozen restaurants and bars set up programs with a percentage of food sales going to Oxfam and other such organizations.

In Toronto, The Black Hoof restaurant’s January 20th event features Haitian cuisine and requires a $25-dollar minimum donation which will go to aiding the island nation. The LCBO has set up Red Cross donations boxes in its outlets.

Nancy’s Country Kitchen in the small town of Bothwell, near Chatham and with a population of just 1000, has a donations jar for Haitian relief.

People recognize that restaurants--even QSR restaurants--are where people meet and share a sense of community. Brian Johnson of Wingham wrote a letter to the Cornwall Free News, in which he said, “I urge Tim Hortons and other compassionate restaurants to ask customers if they would like to donate to the Red Cross Haitian relief effort at the time of ordering for the next few days.

“We live in an extremely privileged society, where we don’t even have to get out of our vehicle to get a meal....”

Well said Mr. Johnson.

Thanks to old Professor Zweers at University of Waterloo, I’ve always enjoyed Russian writers: Dostoevsky, Gorky, Turgenev, Chekhov. Gogol, too, who helped usher in the golden age of Russian prose, and especially “The Overcoat,” perhaps his most well-known story.

Gogol’s writing is laced with food references, likely because of and despite the fact that the poor sod thought his stomach was upside-down. He suffered from a miserable GI system and died from complications thereof.

Just flip through the story and you’ll find references and allusions to food: penny-biscuits, brandy, champagne, vinaigrettes, cold veal, meat pastries, cream pastries, lime, cream-pots, and “eating dinner gaily.”

Akaky, the protagonist of “The Overcoat,” was, the narrator tells us, “eternally carrying watermelon or muskmelon rinds...on his hat” that had been dropped on him from windows he’d passed below.

In fact, in much of Gogol’s work there are obsessions of many kinds, not the least of which is an obsession with food. Akaky “hastily gulps his cabbage soup and [eats] a chunk of beef with onion, not noticing their taste in the least.”

Yet, what Nickolai thought of as the body’s “most noble” organ, the stomach, treated him very poorly indeed. Even the character Akaky notices upon eating that plate of beef and onion “that his stomach was starting to puff up.”

Gogol tried to solve his own puffing problem as best as medical treatment at the time would allow, but it was to no avail. He fasted and died of starvation.