6 amazing new partners

What a week! Prepare yourself: we have six amazing new partners whose products are available on the Marketplace. Here are their stories.

  • Esprit Bio
  • Fromagerie La Sation
  • Olive Pressée
  • O'Mari
  • Téh Bar
  • Tullochgorum Farm

Esprit Bio

In her kitchen Kristina prepares the most delicious brownies, which also happen to be gluten-free and vegan. Check out how she does it. (You might even get a hint of all the love and devotion she puts into these treats!)

Ingredients: Agave, almond butter, chickpea flour, coconut oil, cocoa, walnuts, potato starch, sea salt, cinnamon, vanilla, baking soda

Esprit Bio
Montréal
514-995-2138
Follow Kristina on Facebook

Fromagerie La Station

In the Eastern Townships there's an incredible dairy farm and fromagerie. Fromagerie La Station has been run by the Bolduc family (and their herd of 80 cows!) for four generations. Carole and Pierre opened the fromagerie in 2004 to transform their organic milk into Quebec's best terroir cheeses: ones that will give you taste of their village of Compton.

Their son, Simon-Pierre (shown in the photos), specializes in organic dairy production. The company now employs a dozen people, including three who tend to over the 6000 aging cheese wheels on the fromagerie's shelves.

From milk to cheese
Here's what goes into the cheesemaking process:

  • Milking cows (early morning)
  • Milk maturation
  • Coagulation (transformation into cheese)
  • Decurdling and brewing (cutting and stirring)
  • Drying and draining
  • Molding and pressing
  • Refining (rubbing and turning)

These cheeses are ridiculously good.

The cheeses

  • Comtonne: soft, aged 2 months, washed rind, aromas of butter and crabapples. (Try it gratinated or on pancakes.)
  • Chemin Hatley: firmer, aged 3-4 months, with sweet fruity and floral notes. (Perfect for a grilled cheese.)
  • Alfred le Fermier: firm, aged 8-9 months, made from raw milk; notes of hazelnut, caramel, and almond. (Named for Alfred Bolduc, the great-grandfather of the current owner, and delicious eaten pretty much any way.)
  • Raclette de Compton (with pink pepper): aged 3-4 months, pepper flavors with notes of butter and hazelnut. (Delicious in a raclette or fondue, but on a cheese plate too!)

Did you know ?

  • Standards are very demanding for the processing of raw milk into cheese. For this reason cheeses made from raw milk are increasingly rare. (This makes Alfred le Fermier a particularly special treat!)
  • Cows' food (in this case, organic pastures) influences the taste of cheese

Simon-Pierre recommends ...

  • Put cheese everywhere... 

 
 
 

Olive Pressée

It started with a simple fact: Guillaume and Bruno love olive oil...but not just any olive oil. They found it annoying to have to pay for imported oils without first having tasted them. After seeing a boutique in Ottawa where different oils were sold in bulk, they realized that Montreal deserves a similar shop.

After a year spent researching suppliers and products that matched their discerning taste buds, they opened Olive Pressée, a shop on Mont-Royal Est that sells oils and olives in bulk. Even though it’s possible to get everything from a single supplier, Bruno and Guillaume decided instead to buy directly from producers. They taste absolutely everything before they start selling it, either on site (lucky them!) or by requesting samples.

 

Did you know?

  • 2013 wasn’t a good year for olive production. Some producers are even out of stock. 

Bruno recommends...

  • The premium organic balsamic vinegar: no sugar added, completely pure...impeccable. They also have a fair trade organic olive oil from Palestine, available only in-store. Worth a trip down there!

Olive Pressée
1871 Avenue Mont Royal Est
Montréal,
514.596.5665
Follow them on Facebook

O’Mari

Since my first visit to O’Mari on Boulevard Monk in Ville-Émard, I’ve wanted to live a bit closer to this charming and inspiring shop.  Daniel is welcoming and his passion for pasta is immediately clear. His products are exceptional: pastas made to-order, homemade sauces, high-quality shaved Parmesan...the list goes on and on.
 
O’Mari has been a Lufa Farms pick-up point since December. For several weeks now, they’ve been preparing fresh pastas for Lufavores the morning of delivery. You’ve had the chance to sample the rigatoni and the spinach penne so far, but Daniel has a few other suprises up his sleeve.

According to Daniel, pastas made from eggs have a better taste and a more compelling texture. Other factors that make a difference are mixing time, the balance of ingredients, the quality of the durum wheat that goes into the semolina flour, the dryness and humidity. Glad we have Daniel to help us out!

Did you know?

  • There are two pasta finishes: rigate (rougher), which holds sauces better, and lisce (smooth), like fettucini.
  • O’Mari is just two minutes from the Monk metro stop. Make sure to stop by!

Daniel recommends...

  • Never put olive oil in the water for boiling pasta.
  • Taste pasta to check whether it’s done.
  • Never rinse pasta with cold water!

  

O’Mari
6584 Boul. Monk
Ville-Emard
514-768-2613
Follow O’Mari on Facebook

Téh Bar

 

Brossard residents are lucky to have this shop in their neighborhood. Téh Bar—which opened in November 2012—is the brainchild of Jean Marc, a tea lover who studied and worked in finance for several years before changing career paths to work on this project.
 
Having grown up in a family of tea drinkers, Jean Marc eventually discovered the versatality of loose-leaf teas and set out to help Quebecers discover them. (Somewhat like we discovered and adopted wine!)

A unique tea for each occasion
 
There’s no way for Jean Marc to pick out a favorite tea: everything depends on his mood, on the context, and what he feels like having at any given time. There’s a tea for each occasion—and a special way to prepare it for each occasion as well. By opening Téh Bar, Jean Marc wanted to innovate instead of copying existing concepts. So he created a “snif bar” that allowed clientele to take in the aromas of each tea sold in the shop as well as a unique tea bar that offers a great variety of iced teas, lattes, smoothies and granités, all made with loose leaf teas. What’s more, the majority of his teas are mixes created specifically by and for Jean Marc and his team, who take into account the comments and suggestions of their customers. If customers want a mango green tea with notes of vanilla, the Téh Bar team will design a recipe and order samples for testing. They then make adjustments until Jean Marc is happy with the final result, which will be made available to all customers. (Now including Lufavores!)

 Jean Marc recommends...

  • Preparing tea with care and following the instructions. This makes all the difference.
  • To try as many different teas as possible to develop your palate and taste for quality.

Let us know what you think! Jean Marc and his team are curious to know which teas you like best.


 
Téh Bar Quartier Dix30
9180, boul Leduc
Brossard, QC J4Y 0L1
450-443-4834
Suivez-les sur Facebook

Tullochgorum farm: local organic popcorn

  

We often ask about the source of our vegetables, fruits, and other food we have in the fridge or pantry, but have you thought about where your popcorn comes from and how it’s cultivated?
 
I have to admit that I haven’t thought too hard about the snack that I regularly eat while watching a good movie. After speaking with Steve and Loraine from Tullochgorum Farms in Ormstown, I’ll never think of popcorn in the same way.

Not all corn is popcorn
Shocking, huh? You have to cultivate specific varieties of corn to get popcorn. Loraine and Steve have a 220 acre farm that’s certified organic; as die-hard popcorn fans, they’ve been experimenting with different varieties for 10 years.

Growing popcorn in Quebec is a risky venture
The climate doesn’t lend itself particularly well, since summer is quite short. Yields are significantly lower than elsewhere, such as the United States (where most of yellow popcorn comes from), but Steven and Loraine choose varieties for their texture, taste, and quality and have been persevering despite a few difficulties in the last two growing seasons.
 
Did you know?

  • Yellow and blue (and black...might show up in 2014) popcorn kernels become white upon popping. On the Marketplace you’ll find White Lightning and Tollochgorum Blues. On average, a hectare of corn can yield between 4 and 5 tons, which results in about 1 ton of popcorn kernels.
  • Steven and Loraine are the only farmers growing organic popcorn on this scale in Quebec and the only farmers to grow organic blue popcorn in Canada. They might sell out over the next few months, so make sure to stock up!

Steve recommends...

  • Making popcorn in a casserole dish (don’t forget the lid!) with a little bit of vegetable oil at a high temperature (don’t forget to shake it from time to time).

 

Tullochgorum farm
2890 chemin Tullochgorum
Ormstown, 450 829-3933