Dear reader,
I’m typing this out a bit slower than usual due to an injury I inflicted upon myself while trying to ceremoniously carve a tiny leg of jamón. (The fewer questions asked, the better.) Thankfully, when it happened, I was with parents of young children, who all raced to their cars for first-aid kits. After a little iodine, gauze and—where Band-Aids failed miserably—duct tape, I was nearly as good as new, but also torn between enjoying the ham or drop-kicking it out the door like a slippery little acorn-fed football.
Sometimes it’s best to leave things that involve sharp blades to the professionals—like Jonathan Larrad, the owner of Spanish Pig, a Roncesvalles shop that stocks all kinds of imported Spanish goods, including preserved seafood, high-quality olives, aged Manchego and packages of (pre-sliced!) Ibérico ham. See below to take a peek through his home kitchen.
Also in this week’s newsletter, you’ll learn about a Korean restaurant serving up what may be the trendiest—and hardest-to-find—seafood dish right now: raw marinated crab. The uncooked crustacean is currently having a moment on TikTok thanks to its mukbang-ability.
And we take you into Sounds Good, the newest addition to Toronto’s burgeoning listening-bar scene, where a former Alo sous-chef is making his own music in the kitchen.