Sourdough Grilled Cheeses at the Mile End Market

I have one more favourite stall at the Mile End Market. I don't even know the name of the stall, but what I do know is they take their fresh sourdough bread (the only bread they make) and some incredible cheese and make very simple grilled cheese sandwiches in front of you.

Okay, so a lot of places are touting the simple grilled cheese, the gourmet cheese, the classic, the modern, etc these days. Comfort food. There are whole restaurants devoted to grilled cheese, and I don't even eat grilled cheese(!), but I love this stall. I've chatted with the woman who tells me that it's her husband (I'm pretty sure it was husband) who has spent the last year or something ridiculous like that honing his sourdough bread craft. He inherited sourdough starter from a former roommate of some sort and kept it going. All he makes is sourdough bread, and the lady bakes other things, but at the market her job is to grill this bread with some organic cheese. There is absolutely nothing fancy to this, but I love this couple.

Across the way a woman sells pickled asparagus and honey-dijon vinaigrette. Now honey dijon vinaigrette is about the easiest thing in the world to make, but this is from a very high-quality honey from her farm. I don't know how you would possibly get through all this vinaigrette without it going bad, since there are really no preservatives in it and it couldn't last more than a few weeks max after opening, but good luck.

Pickled asparagus are something I never would buy for myself, but house guests bought them after sampling them and left the bottle at my house. I do not throw out organic local products, no matter how much I dislike refined sugar. Basically the pickling mixture is vinegar, sugar and salt. I ended up loving these things, though. They're the dessert of vegetables - not sour or hot like kimchi or bitter or chewy like pickles. If pickles were this good I think I would like them. I do love asparagus, however, and the natural sweetness makes this a refreshing topping on a salad. It's basically a roasted asparagus salad pre-made and without the oily dressing; you don't even need to add anything to it. You can snack on them as they are, or combine them with something else, like lettuce or carrots, which actually helps to dilute the intensely sweet brine.

She also makes some tasty-looking muffins. I never buy them because I never want 6, but did you ever think of rhubarb and almond in a muffin? I didn't. She did. Her blueberries and wild blackberries also look plump and ripe in their muffin homes, as well as the more traditional strawberry-rhubarb option. Flavours change every week, so Thursday 4:30-8:30 at Parc Lahaie (St-Laurent and St-Joseph) is your chance to be surprised.

What Ste-Anne-De-Bellevue Has That Montreal Doesn't

It seems like there are a lot of the same vendors at the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market and the Mile End and Plateau Farmers' Markets, so why trek out to Ste-Anne if you're not lucky enough to live there already? It's a bit touristy, a bit fake, and beautiful in a soon-to-be more touristy and fake kind of way. It's also a calm, beautiful escape from the city. It also has a whole lot more producers that don't make it into Montreal, like Ferme Tourne-Sol (such a great name: "Sunflower Farm", but more literally, "Turn the Soil Farm":

The abundance of produce is impressive. I think they get a lot more customers at this market. Supplies are limited at the other markets because they're smaller. Here there seems to be more of everything, and vendors don't run out of products until later in the morning. Farmers' Markets are not like stores where everything must be in stock all the time; they only bring what they expect to sell, or a little more if they're feeling lucky or outgoing or generous that day.

You won't see this in Mile End: Huge blocks of maple sugar to be grated. GRATED! It's like cheese.

Or choose from this vendor's whole line of maple products, including pure light (for waffles and pancakes), amber (a bit stronger) and dark maple syrups (bitter and strong like molasses), as well as crushed maple sugar, chocolates, fudge, suckers, and dessert sauces. If you can make it with maple, this guy has.

I saw these and was immediately confused, and then very impressed. Who buys enough bread that gets hard fast enough to care about buying a bread bag for them? Apparently some people do. These are double-lined to be specially-insulated. Since buying my favourite loaf of bread ever at the Plateau Market (hazelnut) and nearly dying of joy eating a few pieces that day, I was saddened to not return to bread heaven the next day at breakfast. I think the same bread-saving (non-hardening) effect can be achieved by wrapping the bread in a tea towel before putting it in a plastic bag, but these are just so beautiful, the bags, that for $5 if I had a bit of additional income, I'd invest. The woman who makes them loves her bags, and obviously loves her bread. I respect that. You can even get one bag to hold your baguette and one to hold your miche. Only the French...

I like the honeywine guy at the Plateau and Mile End Markets (Ferme Desrochers), but I like that the honeywine here in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue is from a different wine-maker: Les Trois Acres. Of the honeywine selection at the Montreal markets, the dessert wine is the only really great one (the Cuvée de la Diable). I might cook with the others (white, rosé, and red) but only for something that needed some extra sweetness, like the white in a chicken recipe with white wine, orange and a little honey in it anyway. These Trois Acres wines could be used similarly and are a little less expensive ($12 for the dry white. "Dry" being a relative term because it is honeywine after all). I also love that the name of the white wine is La Musicale.This doesn't make any sense at all. Perhaps drinking it leads to outbursts of song. Or you drink it while you're singing and it makes you seem better, or at it seems that you sing better.

Because it's not the Montreal markets, Les Trois Acres can also sell their skincare products, all made with beeswax. Or you can go for their vinaigrettes or honey-mustards. I think one of the nicest things about farmers' markets are the little info pages on each farm. You can just ask the vendor any questions you may have, but the pictures of the farms are worth a thousand words. I suppose I should stop writing now...

Oh, there was one more honey vendor whose products were too beautiful to not include. There were SO many kinds of honey. Now they're not my favourite Manuka honey from Australia that you can only get at St-Lawrence Market in Toronto and will cost you about $36 a bottle, and whose health benefits of it are incredible, but these are as close as you can come in Quebec. We just don't have the bees and the environment ("terroir") here. These clock in at about "no-where-near-as-good-for-you, but still a little bit so". The variety and price are incredible. It's also unpasteurized, and you're bound to find a creamy, clover or buckwheat variety that you like. 

They also do "cooking" demos here. I only put the quotation marks because the day I was there the demo happened to be a juicing demo, not so much cooking. I usually hate drinks sweetened with beets, but there were enough carrots in this mix to make it savoury enough for me. The apples didn't even bother me. If I see a used juicer I will buy it quickly. These things are expensive, and the old ones are generally stronger and better. Yard sales or friends looking to get rid of them? This is how I got a pasta maker...

If I had a car, a ride, or public transit that could get me to this market every week, I would want to go. I would skip the Thursday Mile End Market (sorry) and enjoy a leisurely morning in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. I'm not a country person, but this is just enough of an escape for me. 

Where: 107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

When: Saturdays, 9am-4pm (but supplies don't always last, especially for the muffins...)

Who: Some of the best of the province's organic producers and artisans

Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market and My Addiction to its Muffins

Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue Farmers' Market

107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

I am addicted to these muffins. I'm almost 100% sure they're the from the same farm as my Plateau Farmers' Market muffins. It's a different guy who was doing the selling, but rest of the market stall's offerings were the same - the "healthy" seed cookies, the date squares, the same kinds of breads. If I had bought a bread I would know for sure. Alas, I stopped myself at a muffin.

I want to live in a quaint small town sometimes when I forget how much I love urban centres. It almost makes me want a cottage. I draw the line at a cottage, though. No, I think I draw the line at a dog. A cottage wouldn't be so bad. I mean, it's not like a cabin or anything (I'm from Newfoundland, where there's a HUGE difference between a cabin and a cottage. After moving to Toronto and venturing to Muskoka expecting no running water, I was a bit blown over by the satellite TVs everywhere...cottages are second home, or better homes, and cabins are shacks in the woods that your Grandfather maybe built himself) and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue is close enough that it doesn't take an age to get there by car.

You could bike it, like one vendor does. She actually lives in my area and jumps on the Lachine Canal bikepath with all her handmade bags every Saturday. I thought about trying it once but I got lost looking for the Lachine Market, and that's supposed to be a whole lot closer.I figured it'd be a bit more dangerous to get a few hours into the trip and only then realize I'm horrendously lost. Maybe if I just stayed on the bike path I wouldn't end up on the highway going the wrong way like I did last time?

That's the nice thing about this market - the diversity of the products. It's a farmers' market, but it also has crafts and things that don't come from a farm. Some people aren't okay with this, like the Marché Fermier organization in Montreal that runs the Plateau and Mile End Markets.

One vendor here who sells beautiful photographs of flowers isn't allowed to have a booth at those markets because he's not food-related. Makes sense, but I bet no customers would mind. I suppose then it's not fair to artisans from Montreal who would want booths as well.

This market also felt bigger than both of those markets, which are the biggest farmers' markets in the city besides the public markets. I loved that I recognized some of the same vendors here, though. Stairsholme Farms was there with their organic beef products. The Wasselton family farm was represented with their sambusas, injera, sweet loaves and some produce (the producers for Organic Campus at McGill - check out my Food Audio tab above to access my radio feature on them). Then there was the Ochado Tea makers:

(they're so lovely, and have very high quality red, green, white and black tea blends)

They're not from a "farm" either, so the fairness is a bit sketchy, but they're "food and drink-related"). Then there's the apple donut, chili sauce and marmalade husband and wife team from the Plateau Market:

They're from McMillan Orchards and sell big bottles of fresh apple juice and cider for VERY reasonable prices. The wife is also the queen of canning. I need a weekend with her to learn these important things, but I fear the havoc to be wreaked on my digestive system from the apple donuts.

The cheese people from the Plateau and Mile End Markets, Le Ruban Bleu (the ones whose goats' milk cheese is used by every guest chef at the Mile End market), are represented here as well, but they offer more variety to sample and buy. Their name means "the Blue Ribbon" and they do specialize in very delicate blue cheeses (not stinky as you may expect - and I love) but they also have some very nice orange-ribbon-ed offerings with peppers and spices.

So these are the food-related vendors that you can find other places in Montreal, plus some of the non-food ones. Next post I'll feature the ones you can't find in the downtown area on any day of the week, plus a woman who makes special double-lined bread bags for specific kinds of loaves of bread. This woman...so very endearingly Québecoise.

Where: 107 Ste-Anne Street, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC

When: Saturdays, 9am-4pm (but supplies don't always last, especially for the muffins...)

Who: Some of the best of the province's organic producers and artisans

Mile End Farmers' Market: Corn

The Mile End Market is run by the same organization as the Sunday Plateau Market, but some of the vendors are different. Most important, La Perle and her baker aren't there, so no muffins or incredible bread for me, malheureusement.

On the upside, however, there is always a guest chef. Often they'll bring something half pre-done, like La Montée du Lait's chef did when he brought his eggplant pancakes, then put some goat's milk cheese available at the market on top and covered it all with some fresh arugula. Voila, snack.

Another chef from...hmm...I forget...somewhere that specialized in pig. Anyway, this chef made tacos with pork butt. I ran before they were done. Better to run away than explain my reasons for not-eating pork.

So my favourite stall is currently the corn and raspberries guy. The corn is a recent addition to the stall's offerings. I met him about three weeks ago when I was busily not buying raspberries. I was walking around the market and seeing all these raspberries that looked delicious but I'd try them and they just weren't. Nothing special, not worth the high price tag, but then I got to this guy and he had some that were bigger, and normally to me that's a bad sign. It often means they're genetically modified, like the oversized everything at normal grocery stores or even Atwater Market. Except the Mile End market is all organics, so I asked why they were bigger, and he said they were a different varietal of raspberry, a little sweeter...good salesman. So I caved and bought them, and yes, the bigger ones were sweeter, but they were mixed in with smaller ones that I didn't like much. Still, I somehow managed to get through them, force them down and all, while waiting for that day's chef to decide to make yet another salad with goat cheese...

Now what really got me with this man was that he immediately said, "First time? I don't think I've seen you here before," and he was right. Then when I came back two weeks later, he said, "I remember you," and I believe he did, even though I was wearing my contacts that day instead of my glasses, a very Superman-like change in appearance.

So I decided to buy his corn. I love fresh corn. I was in Appleton, Wisconsin one summer and bought corn by the dozen off the back of a truck. That was the sweetest, most amazing corn I've ever eaten. You don't even cook that corn. I've had good corn since then from the corn guy at Atwater, but so far this year neither his corn nor this Mile End Market corn guy's corn has compared. I'll try again in a few weeks. It's not bad, and I like this guy so much now that I will continue to buy his corn anyway. I mean, it's better than potatoes as far as starchy vegetables go, especially with some lime juice and salt, but it's not amazing. It's the human element that brings me back; this man remembers me. Maybe his week is a little more complete if he sees me, and mine a little more complete if I buy corn or berries from him.