Farmer’s Market Review: Sustainable Butterfish Roti and Rice Bread Sandwiches; Stasis’ Pickles and Preserves

I want to love all farmers’ markets, but the first time I went out of my way to go to one (about 5 years ago) I was a little disappointed. Sure, the lettuces were beautiful and there were mountains of tomatoes of all colours, but I was looking for gourmet dinner, and instead I found a butterfish roti. It sounded and looked great! Take a homemade whole wheat roti shell, add some curried organic veggies, some grilled sustainable butterfish (my favourite kind of sushi, but rarely sustainable when found on such a menu – this fish was caught with a line off the coast of Jamaica, as it turns out), grilled plantain, and wrap it up with a little bit of papaya-laced Caribbean homemade chili paste, and how could it not be amazing? Well, it wasn’t. And I never bought it again, until this year, when I went to a farmer’s market where this company was again, and I figured I’d give it another go.

This time, they even had a second option on rice baguette (“gluten-free fluff! Amazing!” I thought) with sundried tomato pesto, lettuce, and pickled onions in addition to those curried veggies and optional fish.

The curried vegetables weren’t on the menu for the sandwich, though, and they shouldn’t have been. As healthy as this sandwich was, it was bland. There wasn’t enough sun-dried tomato pesto, the plantain was bone-dry, and the curried vegetables were made with water, not broth, so there just wasn’t enough flavour. I’m saying they have to be made with broth, but there’s a reason the cheap roti you get all over Toronto and at a few places in Montreal taste so delicious. In fact, there are two connected reasons: they’re made with broth or bouillion cubes or powder and that broth has MSG in it. Both delicious and headache-inducing.

And the fish probbly tasted like butter when it was first grilled 3 or 4 hours ago, but sitting in a chafing dish is never going to make any fish any better. These guys were obviously so proud of their wraps and sandwiches but only the rice baguette really impressed. It was a fluffy roll, not a baguette, really, but it was actually not dense like all other gluten-free bread ever. Apparently it has to do with the milling, and the local mill where they got their flour specially milled would mill it multiple times just to make rice-based baguettes such as these. These Caribbean guys at the market weren’t baking this stuff themselves.

the pickled onions were alright, but three strands does not a sandwich make.

A tiny bit of lettuce in the roti got all soggy when folded up, but two gorgeous pieces of heirloom tomatoes in the sandwich were nice. I only i could have tasted that sundried tomato pesto on the right side of the baguette.
This kid looks pretty interested, but not in the fried bits of dough on the right.

Then the preserves from Stasis Preserves. This one didn’t disappoint.

The guy at the market is self-taught, uses pH strips (thus tries to be very safe), does a different preserve each week, and only does things in season, so he’ll run out of strawberry jam by August, and plums come later, as they should. He brought a bucket of his two-week fermented pickles, and they were delicious. He had samples of his low-sugar, no pectin jams. Some were more like syrups than jams because of the no pectin bit, but it also means there’s more goodness left in the fruit as they’re not boiled to within an inch of their lives to reach the gelling stage.
Bucket of pickles on a stick for $1, surrounded by preserves. Watermelon (not the rind, but the bottom parts plus some red), elderberry (sureau in French, we think), blueberry, peach, not so much gourmet preserves like my peaches with various kinds of alcohol and herbs, but simple and delicious. If I was in the market for local jam, this is where I’d buy it. Available at the Trinity-Bellwoods Farmers Market on Tuesday afternoons, and I think also at the St. Lawrence Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. The fish sandwiches are at Trinity-Bellwoods and Dufferin Grove. Ask for more hot sauce and you’ll be A-okay, but arrive at the beginning of the farmers’ market for the best fish.