Over the past three weeks, I’ve have the privilege of attending three diverse, yet amazing foodie events: The Good Food and Drink Show, The Green Living Show, and DishCrawl Toronto.
At the Good Food and Drink Show, I got to sample the latest and greatest trends in the Toronto Food
scene. I found out that tea is the new coffee, trucks are the new restaurants, and beer is the new wine. The back-to-basics local eating movement continues…with a side of South Asian and Caribbean.
These trends were mirrored the next week at the Green Living Show, when I found out that the seemingly opposite concepts of healthy and delicious can coexist. I found happiness in a fish taco: the perfect combination of sustainable seafood fished from Canadian waters and sweet and spicy coleslaw made with Mexican mangoes.
A few days after that, Sonya, invited me to join her on my first-ever DishCrawl in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood; its like a pub-crawl except instead of walking from bar to bar to drink, you walk from restaurant-to-restaurant to eat. Over the course of three hours, we ate incredible meals at Pangea, Dynasty, Toni Bulloni, and The Dessert Lady. Everything I ate confirmed what I learned at the other two events: good food may be found as close by as your own backyard or as far away as 10 000 miles, the important thing being its sustainably and responsibly produced and “clean” (read: as unprocessed as possible).
I also found out that I can eat a lot. And by a lot, I mean A LOT.
To celebrate the lessons I learned at these three incredible events, I created my version of a Thai Mango salad. Ingredient-wise, its the perfect combination of local and global ingredients and the perfect South Asian flavour combination of sweet-salty-sour-spicy. It’s healthy, gorgeous, and the most delicious side dish for anything from burgers and wings to Pad Thai and pulled pork.
Thai Mango Salad
Ingredients
Salad
2 mangoes, cut into matchsticks. For this dish, you want mangoes that are a little under-ripe. Look for ones that barely have any give when you push your thumbs into them.
1 large carrot, shredded.
1 cup coleslaw mix
1/4 cup parsley (or cilantro), chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 cup crushed salted peanuts
Dressing
3 tbsp canola oil
juice & zest from one lime
1 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp coconut sugar (you can substitute regular sugar)
1/2 tsp garlic chili sauce (or more if you like it spicier)
Directions
1. In a jar with a lid combine all of the dressing ingredients. Shake well & set aside.
2. Combine the first four ingredients of the salad in a large bowl.
3. Give the dressing an extra shake then toss it in with the salad.
4. Top with the green onions and peanuts.
5. Cover and let chill for at least 20 minutes until ready to serve.
Yummy. I love mango salad. I’ll have to try this.