The Produce Depot on Carling Avenue (near Maitland) is a fabulous place. When you walk in you can just inhale all the fresh fruits and vegetables, waiting limpidly to be picked up by the diverse peoples walking around inside. And by diverse, I mean really diverse - Chinese folk picking over the bok choy with hawk eyes, Indian grannies selecting the finest methi leaves (fenugreek), and Eastern European couples with big-eyed babies picking out green peppers and eggplants. Different languages and accents speckle the air as everybody comes to buy the freshest, cheapest produce this side of Bronson Ave.
I really do think that immigrants are more attracted to this place than to big box stores like Loblaws, which purport to offer everything, but have limp zucchini and tired strawberries. Places like Produce Depot are more like the way one buys fruits and vegetables back home - fresh, fresh, fresh.
How fresh? Well, when I was in India this August, each morning vegetable sellers would bring their carts up and down the street, selling their just-picked wares. My mother in law tells me that many people insist on buying new vegetables each day and refuse to eat anything that has been stored in the fridge for a few days. "They don't like to eat "stale" vegetables," she said.
Oh boy, let's hope they never get a look at the withered specimens in the vegetable bin of my fridge!
Here in the West we have fewer compunctions about this kind of thing. "Convenience", a lack of greengrocers in close proximity to our houses, and our busy, busy schedules mean that most of us buy groceries once a week. And if we manage to use up the lettuce before it rots, we give ourselves a collective pat on the back (at least I do).
Okay, so that's the appeal of Produce Depot. Now what about the pesto I've got up there in the photo? Right, I'm getting to that.
So I was wandering around Produce Depot one day, ogling the wares, and trying to decide if I should buy lychees, rambutans, or longans in addition to the Cape gooseberries, Chilean cherries, and figs that I had in my cart (that's another reason I love this place - exotic fruit!). I passed by the fresh herbs cooler (dill, methi, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms...and a whole buncha other stuff I couldn't identify) when my eye fell upon the pretty pesto pack you see pictured above. Now, my son loves pesto pasta, so I often buy the bottled kind (being too lazy to make my own). But here was fresh pesto (oh boy, I should have labelled this post "Fresh") and it was "tradizionel"! I had to try it.
A few days later (as my longans slowly went stale in the fridge) I pulled out the pesto and added it to some boiled shell pasta. Some boiled broccoli for colour, some sautéed shrimps for protein, and voila - quasi-tradizionel pesto pasta!
I really do think that immigrants are more attracted to this place than to big box stores like Loblaws, which purport to offer everything, but have limp zucchini and tired strawberries. Places like Produce Depot are more like the way one buys fruits and vegetables back home - fresh, fresh, fresh.
How fresh? Well, when I was in India this August, each morning vegetable sellers would bring their carts up and down the street, selling their just-picked wares. My mother in law tells me that many people insist on buying new vegetables each day and refuse to eat anything that has been stored in the fridge for a few days. "They don't like to eat "stale" vegetables," she said.
Oh boy, let's hope they never get a look at the withered specimens in the vegetable bin of my fridge!
Here in the West we have fewer compunctions about this kind of thing. "Convenience", a lack of greengrocers in close proximity to our houses, and our busy, busy schedules mean that most of us buy groceries once a week. And if we manage to use up the lettuce before it rots, we give ourselves a collective pat on the back (at least I do).
Okay, so that's the appeal of Produce Depot. Now what about the pesto I've got up there in the photo? Right, I'm getting to that.
So I was wandering around Produce Depot one day, ogling the wares, and trying to decide if I should buy lychees, rambutans, or longans in addition to the Cape gooseberries, Chilean cherries, and figs that I had in my cart (that's another reason I love this place - exotic fruit!). I passed by the fresh herbs cooler (dill, methi, bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms...and a whole buncha other stuff I couldn't identify) when my eye fell upon the pretty pesto pack you see pictured above. Now, my son loves pesto pasta, so I often buy the bottled kind (being too lazy to make my own). But here was fresh pesto (oh boy, I should have labelled this post "Fresh") and it was "tradizionel"! I had to try it.
A few days later (as my longans slowly went stale in the fridge) I pulled out the pesto and added it to some boiled shell pasta. Some boiled broccoli for colour, some sautéed shrimps for protein, and voila - quasi-tradizionel pesto pasta!
This is a classic recipe I have devised on my own, with no help from anybody (except a nameless website which had a long and complicated recipe that inspired this one, but was actually no good at all).
Like a closer look?
Like a closer look?
Yummy...now go check out Produce Depot and say hi to the chayotes for me.
Happy munching!
