A friend of mine introduced me to a Lebanese fast food, called Lahem Bi Ajeen (or Lahm bi'ajeen), earlier this year. Lahem Bi Ajeen are essentially open-face meat pies. They are made with a yeast leavened bread dough and topped with a spiced ground lamb mixture. It can be likened to a pizza, but the crust is much thinner and these meat pies are usually served folded in two. Condiments include cheese, lemon juice, and/or a hot sauce.

According to several reputable source, there are two really good places to purchase Lebanese Pies in the National Capital Region. One of them is Aladdin Bakery at 1020 St. Laurent Boulevard in Ottawa South. The other escapes me at the moment.

Aladdin Bakery is nestled in a strip mall with other takeout ethnic restaurants, but it seems to be the one doing the most business (translated: VERY popular). It also has a west end location at 1801 Carling Avenue. However, I've never frequented that location. Since it is closer to home, I'll have to rectify that sometime soon.

This said, the Aladdin Bakery on St. Laurent is a rather unassuming establishment. It has a very large gas-fired oven where pies are baked to order. In front of the oven is the sales counter with a cash and till. Facing the sales counter, on the right are refrigerated cased, filled with drinks and some Lebanese groceries like labne, which is a traditional yogurt cheese. On the left are palettes of fresh Lebanese pita bread, which is a staple for Lebanese meals. I've heard it said that no meal in a Lebanese household is complete without pita bread.

Trust me on this one, avoid pita bread from the mega-mart. Firstly, it's not the right size. It's far too small. Pita bread is meant to be torn (hence breaking bread), and used to envelop bite sized pieces of meat or vegetable. Secondly, Lebanese pita bread is softer, fresher, and tastes better. You won't get the same texture or flavor from "Mr. Pita." Though, I've been known to drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt on mega-mart pita bread to make pita chips, but that's a whole other matter. Don't even try to make fatouch, a bread salad, with mega-mart pita bread. Though it bakes up crisp, it doesn't taste the same.

Aladdin specializes in pies. It serves several pies besides Lahem Bi Ajeen. These include spinach filled pies, vegetable filled pies, meat and potato filled pies, and Zaatar topped pies. The spinach filled pie is a sealed pie. Its dough looks a little thicker than the one used to make Lahem Bi Ajeen. Zaatar topped pies, on the other hand, use the same dough as Lahem Bi Ajeen.

Zaatar is a Lebanese spice mix. The word zaatar means "thyme" in Arabic. "Red zaatar" consists of thyme and sumac. "Green zaatar" consist of thyme, toasted white sesame seed, and salt. Though other additions can include savory, hyssop, oregano, cumin, and fennel seed. I'm not sure which is used on the pies.

I usually purchase two meat and cheese pies; three if I'm really hungry. The magic is the balance of meat to starch with every bite. The lamb mixture tastes of aromatics, spices, and a slight sourness from what might be tomatoes. The spices taste distinctly Middle Eastern, floral and warm, but not hot. The dough is crisp and crunchy from being freshly baked and served from an incredibly hot oven. The flavors and textures are incredible. My better half now insists on visiting the Alladin Bakery anytime we are in possession of a car.

Particulars:
South End Location
Aladdin Bakery
1020 St. Laurent Boulevard
(613)728-5331

West End Location
Aladdin Bakery
1801 Carling Avenue
(613)742-4244

If you want to try to make this at home, please remember that your oven won't get even remotely hot enough, which is why visiting a professional bakery every so often is necessary. Nevertheless, here are several recipes:

• Lahem bi Ajeen from elkhazen.org
• Lahem B'ajeen from Recipzaar.com (this recipe is supposed to be Syrian in origin)
• Lahm bi'ajeen from Suite101.com

If anyone can help me identify both the spices and their proportions for the lamb mixture, I would be very grateful!!! The closest I've come to figuring it out is: 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground allspice, 1/2 tsp of ground black pepper, 1 tsp salt, and 2 tbsp of pine nuts. No pine nuts aren't a spice, but they help season the lamb, providing flavor and texture.

Having watched my share of Japanese anime in my youth, I've gatherred two things about Japanese culture. Firstly, the Japanes are obsessed with all things cute. Secondly, no matter if you have magical powers or super human ninja skills, like everyone else, lunch comes in a bento box. What is a bento?

Bento is a single portion cold lunch that is served in compartmentalized containers. Each compartment is traditionally dedicated to rice, meat, fish, sausage, or egg, and various side dishes. The side dishes can include pickles, preserves, raw vegetables or cooked vegetables. Bento are readily available in Japan from restaurants, grocery stores, and specialized bento shops. However, according to Wikipedia, preparing bento is still considered an essential skill of a Japanese housewife.

The image of a typical bento box comes from the bento box community on flickr.com. The image of the "wild" bento box comes from the Rico and Coco blog.

Be it homemade or store bought, as with the majority of Japanese cuisine, presentation is paramount. Bento needs to be aesthetically pleasing. As such, it can be very elaborately arranged. Sometimes, its various components are arranged in such a way to resemble other objects.

Continued:

More after the jump...

According to an article from yahoo.com, a rather rotund guinea pig, weighing in at 3 kg (approx. 8 lbs of flesh, fat, and fur), turned out to be the largest shown during a festival in Lima, Peru. The festival, which occurred last weekend (June 23-24, 2007), celebrates guinea pigs, but with a twist. There are contests for the largest, best dressed, and tastiest. Apparently, Peruvians in the Andes highlands see guinea pigs as a culinary delicacies.

The image comes from the associated press.

Called "cuy", guinea pigs were not only displayed, but they were also featured in a variety of dishes, some being sold for as much as $7 USD. During the festival, you could purchase fried cuy, barbecued cuy, grilled cuy, baked cuy, and cuy au vin; all served with with Andean potatoes and Peruvian corn.

The custom of eating guinea pig isn't specific to Peru. The image on the right comes from dentsem.com. Featuring a Bolivian feast, the photo was taken by Mark Baker from the Chippewa Herald for a photography exposition.

Perhaps adopting similar customs and recipes could be used to solve the wild rabbit problem in various parts of the world...Take, for instance, Milan, Italy, where an airport was reportedly shut down to capture hares and wild rabbits...

According to a poll from the FoodTv.com website, out of 31 204 respondents, approximately 26.5% (8 282) considered pizza to be their favourite comfort food. While my comfort foods are more Asian-oriented, I crave a slice every so often just like everyone else.

So what happens when you're craving pizza and you've only leftovers? Answer: Pickup a cooked 9" pizza crust from the megamart, shred some cheese, slice, dice, and make a leftover pizza. With a couple cans of tomato paste in the pantry, almost-scratch pizza is just about ready-made. Besides, frozen pizza is just about as palatable as eating plastic coated cardboard...

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

A colleague recently arranged a lunch that featured ethnic foods from the Balkans: e.g. Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and Serbia. The lunch featured kebabs of spiced minced meat called cevapcici (ćevapčići).

When I was invited to participate in the lunch, I immediately looked for recipes, reviews, and accounts from travellers to the Balkans. According to various sources, including Wikipedia, etymologically speaking, the word, cevapcici comes from the Turkish word for kebab. Cevapcici also varies regionally. Macedonian cevapcici contains pork. Serbian and Bosnian cevapcici is made entirely of red meat: lamb and beef (sometimes veal). The version that we orderred was Bosnian. It was served in a soft and fluffy flatbread, called lepina (or lepinja).

Several accounts described cevapcici as essentially caseless sausages that consist of heavily worked spiced beef with some breadcrumbs. Most recipes involve cooking them on a grill or barbecue. From my meagre experience sampling traditional foods from Eastern Europe, the descriptions of cevapcici reminded me of Turkish kefta (sp?), which is also a kebab that is cooked on a barbecue. One popular recipe for cevapcici that I kept running into comes from an old episode of the Frugal Gourmet, a former television program on public broadcasting that was hosted by the late Jeff Smith. I later learned that his recipe, because of its added ground pork, onions, and spices, more resembled a dish called pljeskavica, which is more Serbian. Bosnian cevapcici has no onions or Hungarian paprika. It is cigar shaped. Pljeskavica is shaped like large hamburger patties.

The cevapcici that we tried came from a Bosnian Deli on 956 Merivale Road, called Skela: Fine European Food. Along with the cevapcici, we also had burek. Burek is a spiral pastry that can be filled with cheese, meat, or spinach. It is made by taking a table sized sheet of phylo-like pastry, which is produced by hours of kneedings, and rolling it up to encase the filling. The whole thing is then placed in a tight spiral into a round baking sheet, brushed with butter, and baked.

The flavour and texture of the cevapcici are distinctive. Cevapcici tastes of finely ground meat that was well worked, conservatively seasoned, and then perfectly grilled. Each sausage-like link had a very light crust, which means that it was cooked with care at high temperatures. Both the crust and the seasonings provide flavors that compliment and don't overpower the meat. The texture was indeed soft and juicy, almost spongy. I've encounterred the same texture before with steamed meat dishes in Asian cuisine. It is difficult to replicate, as my many attempts to make Chinese soup meatballs demonstrate. I was told that, while the texture of the cevapcici that we ate came from adding mineral water (approx. 1/4 cup per 2 lb of ground meat) to the meat, the texture can also be produced by working the minced meat and chilling overnight.

The burek had a very crispy pastry. Having seen this dish in cooking and travel shows on FoodTV, I never thought I would be able to encounter this pastry in Ottawa. Happily, I was able to try both a meat-filled and cheese-filled version. The meat filled version contained spiced meat. The cheese filled version contained a salty white cheese.

Both the burek and cevapcici will have me visiting Skela sometime soon to try them again.

Particulars:
Skela: Fine European Food
956 Merivale Road
(613)321-6692

Westfest is a community-oriented outdoor festival that showcases local musical, visual art, dance, spoken word, and performance art talent. It is a 3 day event that takes place entirely in the Westboro village of Ottawa. During the event, a stretch of Richmond Road, between Tweedsmuir and Golden Avenues, is cordonned off from traffic. This year it took place on Friday, June 8, 2007 and ended on Sunday, June 10, 2007. Most importantly, Westfest is free. It is sponsored by the Ontario Trilliam Foundation and local businesses, newspapers, and, of course, restaurants.



Many of the eateries along Wellington and Richmond participate in WestFest by having open air stalls that showcase their distinctive wares. This includes artisanal bakeries, the Ottawa Bagel Shop, and Il Negozio Nicastro. A good number of restuarants either rent temporary accomondations or use their existing facilities to have open air patios as well. The patios at the restaurants closer to the festival itself open onto the street.

One of the restaurants that has participated in the festival year after year is the Works. The Works has 5 locations in the Ottawa area. One is on Bank Street (580) near the 417. Another is in Westboro, 326 Richmond Road at Churchill.

The Works is renowned for serving the best hamburgers in town, albeit perhaps the most expensive as well. The Westboro branch is rumored to puchase its meat from Saslove's on Wellington St., which is the local outlet for organic meats. During Westfest, the Works rents out large gas barbecue facilities and produces hamburgers for purchase. One is called the WestFest burger.

Jenn and I have been meaning to visit the Works ever since we moved here. Happily, we tied our inaugural visit to the Works with our annual visit to Westfest.

By the time Jenn and I could find time to visit WestFest, it was late Saturday evening, so we were scoping out possibilities for dinner. We stopped at the Works where we both orderred WestFest burgers; hers without cheese; mine with a nice slice of cheddar, non-processed to boot. What distinguised the WestFest burgers from the Works' regular cheese burgers was the addition of sauteed onions in an almost hickery barbecue suace. The burgers were sublime: juicy, flavorful, perfectly grilled with just a little crust formation, and, most importantly, fresh (made to order). A regular cheese burger cost $6.00 each. The WestFest burger cost $8.00 each. It was worth every penny.

We ate our burgers, sitting on a bench, listening to a live performance of a local band. We were surrounded by numerous families, young couples, elderly couples, and people just out walking their dogs. It was definately a wonderful way to spend a warm spring evening.

Particulars:
The Works
326 Richmond Road
(613)564-0406

The archetypal quick bread (bread leavened without yeast) has to be the banana bread. Everyone makes banana bread. It is comfort food extra-ordinaire.

Besides, how else are you going to dispose of overripe bananas on the kitchen counter? Mind you, by overripe, I by no means refer to bananas that are past due. I am referring to those darkly speckled bananas that have ripened at room temperature. These unsightly bananas are no longer cosmetically pleasing to the eye or appropriate for resale on supermarket shelfs. However, when bananas are permitted to ripen to this stage, their starch content actually decreases because naturally occurring enzymes break them down into simpler sugars. Green bananas actually contain complex carbohydrates that are difficult to digest and could cause stomach upset. Ripe bananas are sweeter and tastier and make great banana bread.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

In North Carolina, there is a successful supermarket chain, called Bloom. Amongst the large variety of regular groceries and specialty products it sells are several signature products. These include two-ounce gourmet cookies and "Bloomberry" jumbo muffins, which are apparently unique to the region according to foodlion.com.

In 2006, Bloom hired an advertising agency called Boone Oakley to put together a distinctive outdoor campaign. Among some of the ads are signs reading "Shitake Happens: 20 kinds of mushrooms always in Bloom"; a bulging billboard that repeatedly grew until a baby's mobile with groceries appeared with the words "It's arrived"; and, of course, an interactive billboard that saw a muffin crush a car.

The muffin crushing billboard won an "OBIE" award from the Advertising Educational Foundation (AEF). "OBIE" awards are given out for outstanding outdoor advertising.

The image comes from the AEF website.

I recently poked through the June 2007 issue of the Ottawa magazine. In it, I found a glowing review of a take-out restaurant, called Indian Express. Accordingly, this little restaurant has won the hearts of just about every member of Ottawa's police forces. Please remember that uniformed members of the police are the good people who patrol large sections of a city. They are on the road. They work ungodly hours. They appreciate good food and are a great source for tips on what best to eat and where to find it. The first police officer to order from Indian Express did so because of the rather bold statement in its front window: "Best Butter Chicken in Town." He returned with his colleagues and word spread.

Indian Express is located in the Hintonburg neighborhood (1104 Somerset St. W), which happens to border on the Wellington Village. When I walked into it, I discovered that the review from the Ottawa magazine wasn't an exaggeration. The back wall of the eatery is papered with business cards from police officers. There is even a signed picture from a Canadian astronaut, nestled amongst the cards.

The gentleman behind the counter must have been the owner. A tall and friendly fellow, he was quick to smile and warm to speak with. When asked for my order, I of course chose the butter chicken. As I waited, I learned a couple things about the establishment. When asked about whether business was slow, the owner answered, "I can't complain. If I complain about the slow days, I really can't appreciate the busy ones. It's been 2 years since I opened this place and everyday I come to work is a joy." When the restaurant owners have this kind of outlook, you really can't go wrong dining in their restaurants. Their pride and joy will show in the food they serve.

"Butter chicken" or "chicken makhani" is essentially a spiced braised dish that is often served on rice. Most recipes start by frying up chopped aromatics (onions, shallots, ginger, garlic), freshly ground spices (garam masala, cumin, cinnamon, coriander), and a bay leaf. Some cook the spices by adding butter. Others add full fat dairy (yoghurt and/or half and half) and use its fat to cook the spices. These recipes add the butter later. For body and brightness, all recipes include tomatoes. Most recipes employ pureed and peeled tomatoes with juice. Some use tomato paste or a combination of both. The mixture is then simmered together and used to braise boneless chicken.

At Indian Express, the result is borderline magical. The chicken must have been braised low and slow because it literally melted in my mouth. The braising liquid had even penetrated superficially into the meat. The sauce provided a wonderful warmth from the added spice. It was a back of the throat warmth, which is far from a sinus searing or eyes watering hotness. The fat from its preparation was visibly colored by the spices. It carried flavor. There was a also a strong aromatic base. Needless to say, the dish was very rich in taste. Even so, some lightly sour notes were present from the cooked tomatoes. The rice was fluffy and tasted slightly of coconut. Given its texture, it may have been basmati rice. I am more familiar with Asian rices.

The portion was huge. It was large enough that I could only finish half and saved the rest for lunch the next day. My cube-mates weren't too happy when lunch time came and I heated up my left over butter chicken. Even the aroma was addictive.

You better bet I'll be returning and soon. The counter display was filled with sweets. During my 10 minutes wait, I saw 3 customers pickup a half dozen samosas each. The menu also listed dozens of curries and even a British Vindaloo.

Before you ask, vindaloos aren't authentic Indian food. They are extremely spicy concoctions that are widely popular amongst the testosterone saturated young male Brits. If you followed the series, Red Dwarf, the character Dave Lister subsisted on them. His character typifies consumers of vindaloos.

Particulars:
Indian Express: Food and Sweets
1104 Somerset St. W
(613)761-0000
Cash prefered (I didn't see an Interac or Credit Card machine)

I just ran across a rather disturbingly long list of "uses" for soft drinks (aka: pop) other than human consumption on thebachelorguy.com. I've heard accounts of a handful of several of these uses in polite conversation, particularly when it comes to the Coca Cola (Coke). Apparently, the "chemical soup" that make up commercial soft drinks is far more versatile. It doubles as a cleaning agent, de-greaser, rust solvent, drain cleaner, and paint stripper.

Here are my favorite 5 uses from the list:

• Clean Your Dirty Toilet Bowl.
• Clean Grout.
• Clean Burnt Pans.
• Loosen Clogged Drains.
• Loosen Rusted Nuts and Bolts.

Considering that the majority of uses involves dissolving organic compounds, one has to wonder what effect prolonged exposure to soft drinks has on the gastro-intestinal system.

The familiar image of Coke Classic comes from Paxton Holley's blog. He did a piece on Coke marketing "through the ages."

John's Quick Lunch comes with extremely high praise from the members of the online community at OttawaFoodies.com. It also received high praise from my better half. As such, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to know that we've heard excellent things about fish and chips at John's. One of the accounts comes from a maritime couple who swear that John's fish and chips are as close as they've ever gotten to authentic. Last Friday, Jenn and I put John's to the test.

During our run to the local mega-marts and the Herb and Spice shop for ingredients for a banana bread (that's another post :P), we peaked into John's and discovered that the special was fish and chips.
It consisted of a soup and a generous platter of fish and chips for approximately $10 (12.50 with 15% tip).

The soup of the day was pea soup. It was good. The taste of cured meat and slow cooked chick peas stood out with every spoonful. It was thick and hearty. Unfortunately, the bottom of the pot must have burned. I found black specks in my bowl and they weren't grinds of black pepper. Nevertheless, the broth tasted good and I have a soft spot for pea soup.

The fish and chips more than made up for the soup. Before we begin, let me point out that nothing was greasy. Every fry and each piece of fish was cooked to perfection. They must have been cooked golden brown and delicious in appropriately heated oil and judiciously evacuated. Fried foods need not be oily. They only get oily when they stay in the oil too long or if the oil isn't heated properly. The fries tasted fresh and were hot. Each piece of fish had a crispy coating. It was thin, glassy, and seasoned. The fish inside was thick, moist, and flavorful. Most importantly, I could taste fish with every bite. While seasoned, the batter wasn't over powering. The ratio of batter to fish wasn't out of whack. The fish wasn't overcooked. This is very atypical. At most pubs in Ottawa, I have to literally search for often leathery fish, sometimes with poor results.

If John's fish and chips are what maritime fish and chips taste like, I really need to head out East to try some. However, I wonder if the restaurants out East are as friendly or as accommodating as John's. Jenn and I showed up 20 minutes before closing (8:00 pm on Fridays). Given that John's opens at 5:00 am, we expected to be turned away or asked to order take out. Instead, the waitress checked with the kitchen, showed us to a booth, and encouraged us to order to eat in. Needless to say, the service at John's was impeccable.

Ask anyone at John's. John's prides itself on serving old-fashioned home-cooked fare. I've attempted British-style beer-battered fish and chips many-a-time at home. Mine don't turn out this good. Find the time to try the fish and chips at John's. You won't be sorry and you won't have a dirty kitchen to clean up afterwards either.

Particulars
John's Quick Lunch (formerly: and Pizza)
1365 Wellington Street
(613) 761-1010

University students are renowned for being frugal. Due to various factors, including the cost of living, tuition, student fees, and book prices, this is more necessity than lifestyle choice. As such, the eateries around a university's campus need meet certain requirements. This is because cash-strapped students hit them between classes for a quick bite or to fuel up after classes before heading back to the dorms, labs, or libraries. These eateries need to be reasonable price-wise and have fast service. To meet these needs, they tend to serve diner-like or pub-like fare. It's fast to prepare. It requires simple ingredients and it produces large portions at low cost. In the morning, a lot of these eateries will offer a cheap breakfast. We're talking the one or two egg combos for a couple bucks.

I ate a lot of these combos when I was a student. At the local campus joint, my "regular" consisted of two over easy eggs, two rashers of bacon, two breakfast sausages, home fries, four triangles of lightly buttered toast, and a coffee. As frosh (freshman if you're American), the combo cost $3. When I graduated, it cost $5.

It's been a couple years. The grease doesn't get along with me as well as it used to, but I still treat myself to a cheap breakfast combo every once in a while. The one at Le Deli in the food court at Place Du Centre demonstrates that breakfast combos can have regional variations, but are based on the same premise: fast to prepare, simple ingredients, large portions, and low cost. In this case, the regional variation is based on French Canadian culture.

At Le Deli the breakfast combo consists of two eggs, two breakfast sausages, potatoes, four triangles of buttered toast, baked beans (fève au lard) and coffee, all for $5.25. The eggs are made to order and in any style. Mine usually end up over easy. Here's a tip: How well the person at the grill makes over easy eggs is an indication of his/her skills and experience. Le Deli's grill man has mad skills. My yolks always end up runny, but they aren't broken when they get to my plate. They are not greasy either. The breakfast sausages are fresh, thin skinned, and juicy. They are a far cry from the dry breakfast sausages from other breakfast joints that taste of nothing but filler and whose skins are 3 mm thick from sitting too long under the heat lamps.

What is distinctive about the combo at Le Deli are the baked beans and the potatoes. While you can order traditional home fries, I strongly recommend you try the vegetable potatoes. They look almost scalloped. They are cooked with tomatoes, onions, and green peppers and seasoned with what looks like dried parsley and paprika. Its spiciness is brightened by the vegetables. It work beautifully with the starchiness of the potatoes. The baked beans have a sweetness that reminds me of molasses. You will be hard pressed to find baked beans on the Ottawa side with a typical breakfast combo.

Every so often, you crave a cheap breakfast combo. For me, I usually satiate my cravings on Friday mornings and end up in line with a tray at Le Deli. BTW, the line up at Le Deli gets long. Go early.

In my search to develop a recipe for French Tortière, a series of unfortunate but "strategic" mistakes resulted in a curried hash recipe.

I call this a hash for two reasons. Firstly, that is precisely what it is. According to Wikipedia, a hash is "a mixture of beef, onions, potatoes, and spices that are mashed together into a coarse, chunky paste, and then cooked either alone, or with other ingredients." Secondly, the word hash sound like it may share etymological roots with the French verb "hacher", which means "to chop." Since the recipe employs ground beef (viande haché), onions, slivered potatoes, and a spice mix (curry powder), the name fits.

However, unlike the infamous corned beef hash, this hash can happily sit in a pie shell. It is also quite happy to be tucked into a sheet of puff pastry, folded into a triangle, and eaten as a "pocket pie." If garden peas are added, it can even resemble Indian samosa filling.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

According to Bette Spurling of the Mount Dessert Oceanarium, lobster shells are usually a blend of the three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. Together, the naturally occurring pigment proteins mix to form a greenish-brown colour, typified by most lobsters. This includes the rather large lobster of 22 lbs depicted on the right. The image comes from National Geographic. According to the Mystic Acquarium website, the absence or overabundance of any or all of these pigments due to rare genetic defects results in lobsters of different colours: blue (overabundance of blue pigment), yellow (complexes beneath the shell), red (lack of blue pigment), and white (lack of all 3 pigments). These lobsters usually avoid the pot and live out their lives protected, well fed, and on display in an aquarium. If cooked, save for the white lobster, each turns red.

The image of the blue lobster comes from an article from the Associated Press. Accordingly, Steve Hatch and his uncle Robert Green caught the lobster in a trap at the mouth of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, on June 10, 2007. The odds of finding a blue lobster is 1 in 3 million. The recently trapped lobster has been donated to the aquarium, which also has 2 other blue lobsters.

The image of the yellow lobster comes from lobsters.org. The image is of a male lobster that was donated to the Lobster Conservancy in 2001. The odds of finding a yellow lobster are 1 in 30 million.

The image of the two-toned lobster (half cooked) comes from an article on boston.com. Accordingly, Alan Robinson caught the lobster in Dyer's Bay, Maine. It is a typical mottled green on one side. The other is a shade of orange. According to officials from the Mount Desert Oceanarium, the odds of finding a half and half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. This specimen was donated to the oceanarium.

The image of the extremely rare albino lobster comes from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Photo Bank. A 1 1/4 lb specimen was caught in New Orleans in May 2005 according to capecodonline. The odds of finding an albino lobster are 1 in 100 million.

According to the Associated Press, the Pepsi corporation (warning: godawful website) launched a new beverage in Japan, called "Ice Cucumber." It hit shelves today, June 13, 2007. Ice cucumber, like other carbonated drinks in the Pepsi arsenal is entirely artificially flavored. It contains no actual cucumber. However, it is advertised to resemble the "refreshing taste of fresh cucumber."

The images are from Newlaunches.com and Yahoo news.

According to Pepsi's distributor in Japan, Suntory Ltd., the mouthwash-colored soda will only available for a limited time during the summer. The idea behind the product is to encourage people to think of "keeping cool." Suntory believes that having a drink that embodies cucumber accomplishes this. It further states that initial sales have been brisk it aims to sell 200 000 cases over the next three months.

A correspondent from Newlaunches.com has sampled a 500 ml bottle of Ice Cucumber. According to his account, the drink smells like perfume, but lives up to its tag line and tastes great.

To everyone who wants to get your fix of chocolate, beware of Hershey chocolate products, particularly bars of chocolate. Take note of batch numbers from 6417 to 6455. These batches of chocolate were originally recalled due to potential salmonella contamination at Hershey's Smiths Falls, Ontario, factory. According to the recall, the implicated Hershey products include the following:

• Hershey Chipits Milk Chocolate Chips, 270 g
• Hershey Creamy Milk Chocolate With Almonds, 43 g
• Hershey Creamy Milk Chocolate, 45 g
• Oh Henry! 62.5 g; 62.5g/4 bars, 145 g
• Oh Henry! Bites, 130 g
• Oh Henry! Peanut Butter, 60 g
• Hershey Chipits Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, 350 grams, 2 kg
• Hershey Chipits Semi-Sweet Mint Chocolate Chips, 300 g
• Hershey Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, 300 g
• Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate, 45 g
• Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate with Almonds, 43 g
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, 51 g, 68 g, 51 g/4 bars
• Lowney Cherry Blossom, 45 g
• Glosette Peanuts, 45 g
• Glosette Almond, 42 g
• Glosette Raisin, 50 g; 145 g
• Hershey's Chocolate Shell Topping, 177 ml
• Eat-More Dark Toffee Peanut Chew, 56 g; 56 g/4 bars
• Lowney Bridge Mix, 52 g; 340 g
• Hershey Assorted 16 count, 728 g
• Hershey Assorted 50 count, 2.5 kg
• Hershey Chipits Mini Chocolate Chips, 300 g, 10 kg (bulk), 175 g, 500 g
• Hershey Chipits Chocolate Chip Bulk, 10 kg (bulk)
• Nut Roll, 5 kg (bulk)
• Hershey Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips, 10 kg (bulk)
• Chocolate-coated almonds sold between Oct. 23 and Nov. 10 at the Hershey Chocolate Shoppe at the factory

The image comes from snowflake-designs.com. Snowflake-designes is not implicated in this issue. I just needed a picture of Hershey chocolate products.

For those of you who remember, several batches of potentially contaminated Hershey's chocolate were implicated in a recall last fall, on November 9, 2006. However, according to several news sources including cbc.ca, canada.com (National Post), and theStar.com (The Star), some may have made it back into the retail supply chain and ended up on store shelves. Apparently, chocolate that was destined for disposal at a recycling depot because of the recall was stolen. The theft was discovered Tuesday (June 12, 2007) morning when police arrested two men, a 39 year old and a 32 year old, who unloaded 40 000 chocolate products from a van in downtown Toronto (River St. and Queen St. E. are). In total, police recovered 8 skids of recalled shrink wrapped Hershey products from October and November. The suspects have been charged with possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000 and theft over $5,000. The National Post article further states that approximately 12 bars maybe missing, which may have been consumed by the two suspects. Other articles are not that specific about what the palettes contained or what was missing.

To my readers, take care when purchasing Hershey chocolate. You may want to check your pantries as well.

Someone just remarked to me that he didn't know that I was a "gourmet." I hastily corrected him, pointing out that I just love to eat and cook. I should have answered that I'm a proud amateur "foodie." What's a foodie? A foodie is a colloquial term (joille en français) for someone who has a distinctly keen and devoted interest in food, particularly the enjoyment of preparing it and eating it. I wear the title proudly.

The foodie T-shirt image comes from prettygoodgoods.org.

When I went to determine what the world thinks of foodies, I was a little surprised. Unfortunately, with the recent rise of culinary culture and the growing popularity of foodtv, the term has been much maligned in popular culture and has developed some unsavory connotations. This includes foodies generally being overweight and foodies having a haughty (snobbish) attitude. Such is evident in two of the definitions at urbandictionary.com, a wiki-type dictionary that allows visitors to add content indiscriminately.

More follows:

More after the jump...

Sometime during Christmas, I went looking for new cookie recipes and I spent some time wandering around the foodtv website. There, I ran across a short video clip from Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis. The clip showed Giada making Almond Blueberry Cookies. They looked so great, that I dug out the recipe from the foodtv site and decided to try my hand at making them. Unfortunately, my stash of almonds were destined for biscotti and I had no frozen blueberries on hand, so I had to make some modifications to the recipe.

With the exception of the blueberries and almonds that made this recipe distinctively Mediterranean, the recipe itself seemed very standard: cream some butter with sugar, add an egg, add some liquid, add sifted flour and baking powder, and add your featured ingredients. I decided to imbue the batter with citrus. My featured ingredient was 3-4 tablespoons of orange zest.

The result was wonderfully citrus cookies that went into a Christmas cookie tin for a dear friend. The package also included shortbread, but that recipe will have to wait for its own posting later.

Yesterday evening, I revisited the recipe and added back the blueberries. In hindsight, I think I should have reserved some blueberries to top the cookies with. Otherwise, the recipe came out great.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

Due to popular demand, I will be splitting up the content from foodiePrints and placing all non-food-related postings onto a new blog that has been tentatively named missingPrints. Given the fact that foodiePrints has restaurant reviews, recipes, kitchen gear articles, and food-related news items, there is more than enough variety that non-food related postings should not be missed. To date, I have tried to keep an 80/20 split between food and non-food related postings. With the new blog, I get to post more of the wackier things I have taken pictures of and I can stand on my soap box more often.

Anyhow, if you see some missing categories and some missing articles, look for a link in the side-bar pointing to a new blog.

Incidentally, the image comes from reacttheatre.org, the website for a multi-ethnic theater, called "Repertory Actors Theatre." Essentially, I wanted to find a picture of the San Andreas fault, but this will do. Besides, I get to advertise for a Theater. I love small theater and don't get the opportunity to see plays as much as I would like. Unfortunately, this theater is located in Seattle, Washington.

Cheers!

During a morning sojourn to digg.com, I discovered a pair of great shots that capture the grocery sprawl that has beset the local mega-mart in all its commoditized and mass market glory. Just look at the sheer number of shrink-wrapped, plastic bottled, glass jarred, and card board boxed products neatly displayed on the shelves. Just think of the nutritional and culinary value or lack thereof of each product. "Supermarket Seizure" was taken by a photographer named Chris, who goes by the handle unaesthetic on flickr. According to his account, the picture was uploaded in 2005. "99 cent pop" was taken by a photographer named Andreas Gurksy and was displayed at an exhibition in 2001 at the Museum of Modern Art.

If you read Chef Anthony Bordain's now infamous book, Kitchen Confidential, he recounts a point in his career when he first encountered and learned to appreciate fine Italian food. Because of his French upbringing and primarily classical French culinary education, he had had little contact with Italian cookery beforehand. In his account, he describes how a particularly good Tuscan restaurant made everything fresh from pasta and bread to sauce that came from freshly seeded and peeled tomatoes. Meat came from the butcher, cut to order. Freshly cooked pasta was sauced and plated in such a way that it "stands in a mound" on a plate. Most importantly, this restaurant's food demonstrated how four ingredients of the highest and freshest quality could be used to make a wondrous dish with "clean and unassuming integrity."

While I am not a chef and have eaten in far fewer places than Chef Bordain, I dare say that this is the quality of Italian food that comes from Caffe Ventuna: fresh, clean, simple, and wondrous.

Caffe Ventuna is the small restaurant situated inside of the fine Italian food shop, Il Negozio Nicastro, in the Wellington Village. Inside, along with bottled, canned, and bagged high end groceries, you will find a dazzling array of butchered and cured meats, a large variety of olives, and a collection of European cheeses that will make your jaw drop. This is what the part time high school student who manned the meat counter said to me when I first visited. He was absolutely right. Awestruck, I purchased 200 g of prosciutto and a jar of capers. My better half and I then walked across the store to Caffe Ventuno for lunch.

For the record, there happen to be a lot of places in Ottawa, sporting the name Nicastro. So far, I've come across the following:

• la bottega nicastro (at 64 George Street)
• Nicastro's (at 1558 Merivale Road)
• Il Negozio Nicastro (at 792 Bank Street)
• Il Negozio Nicastro (at 1355 Wellington Street)

The first 2 are owned by the same family, the Nicastro's on Merivale being the founding establishment. La Botegga (boutique in Italian) is run by the son, Pat Nicastro, of one of the brothers who opened Nicastro's. Regarding the two stores named Il Negozio, according to Ottawa Foodies, they share the same ownership. Whether they are affiliated with the older Nicastro's has yet to be determined. Don't worry, the next time I pop into Il Negozio's for more parma prosciutto, I'll ask.

My review of Caffe Ventuno follows:

More after the jump...

If you like baked cheesecake, you'll love this recipe. There's nothing richer than a New York style cheesecake. This is most likely why there are so many frozen preparations. However, if you follow this recipe and have a food processor, you'll find that you can actually make one from scratch during the time it takes to go out and purchase a frozen New York style cheesecake.

The picture of the Master Choice New York style cheesecake comes from the frozen section from the Loeb at Lincoln Heights Mall (1350 Richmond Road).

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

SPAM is a very well recognized and satirized pre-cooked meat product that comes in tins. Produced by the Hormel Foods Corporation, it hails from the 1930s. According Hormel's official statement, the original meaning for its name was "Shoulder of Pork and Ham." Because of it participating prominently in feeding American troops since WWII, SPAM is also known as "Special Purpose Army Meat."

According to the SPAM website, spam consists of the following ingredients:

• Chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added
• Salt
• Water
• Sugar
• Sodium Nitrite

Sodium nitrite and its close cousin sodium nitrate are chemicals that have been used for decades in the production of sausages, bacon, and ham. It is both a colourant and a preservative for cured meats. However, recent studies with mice have demonstrated that diets with high concentrations of nitrites can be very unhealthy. As such, American bacon producers no longer employ these chemicals. Happily, SPAM is a "sometimes" food in my house.

According to the Wikipedia.org article on the subject, one of the highest per capita consumers of SPAM is Hawaii. Here, SPAM is used in many recipes, where it regularly substitutes ham. One such recipe is SPAM fried rice. Because of its flavor and texture, cubed SPAM plays well with rice and the various "usual suspects" of fried rice. It's pink colour also makes a nice presentation.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

If you want something more practical or utility-oriented in your utensils than conversation piece, head to Global Homeware (708C Somerset Street West) in Ottawa's little Chinatown. Like other home cooks, I really dislike digging into boxes or parcel bags for staples like AP flour, granulated sugar, corn starch, rice flour, baking powder, baking soda, or kosher salt. As such, I cache on-hand quantities in much more manageable translucent glass or plastic containers with air-tight lids. When these containers run out, I refill them from the boxes or parcel bags. The only problem is that when I prep my mis en place, I have to dig around my utensil drawer for teaspoons, tablespoons, soup spoons, or the like. Here's a solution. Pick up a couple small wooden spoons to keep in the containers at all times. If you need a pinch of flour, open the container, reach for the spoon, and add to your recipe. It can be that convenient.

The spoons from Global Homeware come in a variety of sizes and handle lengths. They even have scoops. I've seen these little spoons on sale at restaurant supply houses for upwards of $3. Drop by Chinatown, you won't be paying above $2.

Ever wonder what happens to your lost forks, spoons, and knives? I could be wrong, but some of mine may have ended up in a wonderfully ludicrous piece of furniture from objection.pt. Made entirely out of cutlery, the table is a limited edition piece, entitled "Precious Famine." It is more conversation piece than furniture.

Before we begin, I feel I must point out that I love eating this dish. It's my absolute favourite food. I grew up eating it. I order it when I go out for dim sum. I purchase it from Chinese grocery stores when I visit Markahm, Ontario. And, I make it whenever I have the opportunity. It maybe its texture. It maybe its taste. It maybe the fact that every bite deliver bits of Chinese sausage, shitake mushrooms, green onions, and sometimes dried shrimp. Whatever the case, I adore eating turnip cake.

Phonetically, turnip cake is "luóbo gāo" in Cantonese. It is essentially a steamed cake made from rice flower and shredded white turnip (aka: white radish). For some odd reason, white turnip is better known as daikon, which happens to be its Japanese name and the name North American grocery stores sell it with. However, even though stores have stocked white turnip for nearly a decade now, I still find that the cashiers have no idea what it is and have to frantically search their inventory lists when I decide to buy any. Typically, while I wait for the cashier to price my purchase, a customer will ask me what the heck I'm purchasing. They then turn up their noses when I tell them it is essentially a overgrown albino red radish. While I don't understand the reaction, I have evidence for this description. Once, when I ran short of white turnip for a turnip cake, I substituted about a half dozen peeled and shredded red radishes. The results were identical. I honestly couldn't tell the difference and I know my turnip cake.

That said, I've eaten a lot of turnip cake over the years. Some were better than others. I can even tell when a restaurant wants to save money and uses more flour slurry than white turnip in their turnip cake. To restaurant owners, I speak very badly of your restaurant when I see this type of behavior. If you need to cut corners, please do not allow your dishes to suffer. Reducing the ingredient for which a dish is named is borderline unforgivable.

When I make turnip cake at home, I follow a recipe that I learned from an old friend, named Josephina. Though somewhat unorthodox, I believe it embodies how to make quality turnip cake. Firstly, turnip cake must preserve the flavor of the shredded turnip. Secondly, every ingredient has a different cooking time. The process for making turnip cake must take this into consideration. Otherwise, some ingredients could be overdone while others, underdone. Either case would result in a poor turnip cake.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

I think I'm developing a "thing" for smart cars. I even found a smart car teapot from autogrotto.com. In a coincidental happenstance, I also found an news article from bbc.com that states that how you make your tea can be just as important as drinking it.

Accordingly, researchers from the Rowett Research Institute, have demonstrated that teapots with either tea bags or tea leaves produce tea with a higher amount of polyphenols when allowed to steep for 5 minutes. Polyphenols are naturally occurring antioxidents in plants. They have cancer-fighting properties. Longer steeping does not produce any additional beneficial results. Dunking a teabag in a cup, on the other hand, simply doesn't release the same level of antioxidents.

The research showed that participants who drank tea that had been brewed for five minutes had blood antioxident levels 60% higher than those who consumed a one-minute infusion. The research also demonstrated that milk had absolutely no effect on the level of antioxidents in tea.

Personally, I like strong tea, so I leave my green, black, or white tea leaves in the teapot for a while. Wonderful stuff. Cheers!

A news article came out a couple months ago stating that the majority of people use the World Wide Web to search for recipes. This phenomenon was loosely demonstrated on digg.com today when an article about how to purchase groceries for a week's worth of meals ended up top "dug" with 2222 digs since its posting 1 day and 8 hours ago. The article is entitled "Shop Once, Eat for a Week."

The article comes from menshealth.com. It explains how you can eat well and nutritiously by forgoing take-out and shopping but once a week. For approximately $47.96 (USD), you can purchase enough ingredients for 10 meals (lunch and dinner). The article includes a shopping list and easy-to-follow recipes for 10 dishes (entrees for lunch and dinner). The recipes include some popular dishes such as wraps, fajitas, quesadillas, and a stirfry or two. The article also correlates the percentage of men that spend little to no time preparing their own meals (64%) to the percentage of men that are overweight (64%). Please note that I am assuming that the second statistic involves overweight men. The article is not so specific.

Here at foodiePrints, I encourage everyone to make your own meals. Between the heavily chemical components of processed foods and the outright cost of take out, it can be more advantageous to spend some time in the kitchen. Besides, to you guys, I'm told that some culinary aptitude is considered sexy in men.

When I went to university, the annual Sparks Street's Chicken and Rib Festival was one of the reasons I tried my best to find work in downtown Ottawa during the spring and summer semesters. At least once during its 5 day run, I would wander down to lunch on smokey ribs or barbecued chicken. In fact, providing my schedule is flexible enough and with my manager's blessing, I still do.

The logo comes from the sparksstreetmall.com website.

The Chicken and Rib festival is an invitational cook-off for Canadian and American teams to compete against one another for the rank of best rib (choice), best ribs sauce, best chicken (choice), and best chicken sauce. The sparkstreetmall.com website has the word "choice" in 2 of its listings of rank. If you have the best chicken, wouldn't it be the best choice of chicken as well? The judging is usually performed by informed radio personalities in Ottawa. I've a feeling the respective radio stations are also sponsors of this event.

While I love to watch a good cook-off, the competition is no longer the reason I attend this event. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get your hands on good smokehouse-style ribs or pulled pork if you live this far north of the American South? If you don't, you probably have no idea what pulled pork is either. Pulled pork is disassembled pork shoulder (aka: Boston Butt) that has been seasoned with either a wet or dry rub and slow cooked in a smoker for upwards of 6-12 hours. Last year, I attended the Chicken and Rib festival to pickup a pulled pork sandwich alone.

On that note, I must warn you. If you buy anything for take-away from this event, do not eat it in a cubicle environment. Your neighbors will be none too happy. They will however accompany you the next time you go down.

BTW, for you enterprising foodies, Alton Brown published a recipe on how to make pulled pork at home. Unfortunately, the recipe does not include instructions or blueprints for how to build the make-shift ceramic smoker from the related episode of Good Eats, called "Q". Having watched the episode repeatedly, purchasing a pulled pork sandwich from the Chicken and Rib festival seems FAR less troublesome. You also don't need to explain to your better half why you're purchasing a pair of unglazed terra-cotta planters that she can't put plants in.

Readers may remember "stabby", the voodoo knife holder, I blogged about sometime ago. Well, I found a REALLY sick-looking knife holder/cabinet on the same website that stabby came from, Gizmodo.com. This particular holder/cabinet is being sold at wirelesscatalog.com for $59.99 USD (presumably). Behind its front pane of glass, this knife holder/cabinet features an unmoving crouching figure. Above him are 5 slots to hold knives of varying lengths and widths. Apparently, the largest slot accommodates a standard 9-inch chef's knive. Gizmodo.com observed that a 9.5-inch chef's knife could cause the figure some mild discomfort. Sick. Sick. Sick!!!

Image comes from wirelesscatalog.com.

A recent tasting at Toronto City Hall, that aimed to broaden the diversity of street food in Ontario, centered around a comfort food. Hosted by local chef, Guy Rubino, the tasting served frog leg porridge, which has at its base a seasoned congee.

Congees vary in their preparations. Generally, long grain white rice is boiled with multiple times its weight in water for a long time. Eventually, the rice breaks down and released starches that thickens the remaining liquid, resulting in a viscous white porridge. To this, many "usual suspect" ingredients are added. They include salted duck eggs, grilled or salted fish, lettuce, bamboo shoots, various meats, various shellfish, and sliced fried bread sticks that are known phonetically as "youtiao." Congee is usually seasoned with white pepper, salt, and/or a little soy sauce.

While it can be served during any meal, congee is akin to chicken soup in that it is also served to people under the weather. Like chicken soup, congee is considered to provide and easy to digest food that is warm and soothing. In fact a warm loose congee is served to cure nausea and indigestion. This somewhat mirrors the European "rice water" tradition to cure nausea. According to robbiehaf.com, rice water is made by boiling a 1/2 cup of rice in 1 cup of water for 10-20 minutes. The "water" is drained and sipped to relieve symptoms. Regarding loose congee, the entire porridge is served, broken grains and all.

To me, congee will always be the staple I subsisted entirely upon when I had my wisdom teeth removed. During the several days it took my gums to heal, I had bowl upon bowl of plain congee with various ground meats and vegetables mixed in. As such, I developed an appreciation for congee.

I also developed an appreciation for how to enrich congee with flavor and nutrition. As such, when I make congee as a meal, I tend to use homemade chicken stock, instead of water. This adds flavor, but can darken the congee. Whatever meat can be pulled from the soup bones after making the stock can also be added to the congee as well.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

If you are like a lot of foodies out there who spend their daytime hours behind a desk, the odd business trip may take you into another city and unfamiliar culinary territory. That is, you've no idea how to satiate the odd craving because you don't know what is where or what is good. Such is but one situation where Foodpages.ca can help out. So long as you are in Canada, if you want to find somewhere to shop or somewhere to eat, punch in the url.

Having gone live on May 17, 2005, Foodpages.ca is essentially an online community that hosts a national listing of eateries from tiny mom and pop groceries to international chain restaurants. According to its "What" page, Foodpages.ca is "a site for helping people make better decisions when they eat out or shop for groceries." With over 20 000 food stores and almost 90 000 restaurants listed as verified or unverified, this site offers a lot of choices.

At Foodpages.com, eatery establishments self-register to list themselves on the site. During registration, they classify themselves according to categories. Based on the registration page, the main category is fixed (either restaurant or grocery), but the sub-category is free-form. The former data analyst in me sees a future taxonomy nightmare (e.g. British vs. British Isles Food) at hand, but I digress. Registered eateries are then listed according to their geographic regions, categories, and sub-categories. Once listed, eateries are subject to anonymous ranking and reviews by any visitor to the FoodPages site. At the moment, the result is a highly navigable, search-able, and informative database of eateries for almost any geographic region in Canada.

Here is the Ottawa cuisines page from Foodpages.ca.

Go take a peak. I've found myself turning to FoodPages.ca almost every time I type a blog entry.

On a trip to Loeb (1360 Richmond Road) I snapped a picture of a bottle of Heinz branded baby food. The label read "Chicken and Vegetable Paella by Laura Hawkins." I honestly couldn't resist. Happily, the same weekend I found this bottle of baby food, I also managed to cobble together a quick dinner that loosely borrows from the Spanish paella tradition.

Please picture the following situation. It's late Saturday evening. You've some chicken rigged up to roast in the oven a la beer-can. A quick inventory of the fridge yields 2 sweet peppers, a vidalia onion, three tomatoes, some left-over chicken breast, 3/4 of a head or garlic, and some cold long grain rice. Your pantry, as usual has chicken and beef stock in 2L tetra-packs. What do you do? Ordinarily, I'd make fried rice, but so much of what was at hand resembled something more Mediterranean. It would be a pity not to try my hand at a sofrito...The rest just came together naturally.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

My better half and I saw two very "interesting" smart cars driving down Bank Street as we walked to CA Paradis, a local restaurant supply house. One had a wind-up handle attached to its roof. The other sported a kitchen sink. Happily, the one with the wind-up handle also had a Senators flag billowing from the front passenger-side window.

The cars belong to TransGlobe, which looks like a national property management group. According to its website, TransGlobe manages commercial and residential properties in Ontario, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Alberta. Cheers to TransGlobe for operating an effective marketing spectacle while doing their part to lower emissions and save the planet.

For those of you who have traveled overseas, either to Europe or Asia, you will most likely be familiar with the tremendous street food component of those countries' culinary landscapes. There are travel guides, websites, and entire cookbooks dedicated to street cuisine. People actually travel to Southeast Asia solely to enjoy "hawker"-stall food.

The Hong Kong street food image comes from a gallery on about.com.

For instance, if you watched Anthony Bordain's older tv series, "Cook's Tour", just count how many sit-down restaurants he actually patronized when he visited Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, and Brazil. He and his cameras spent more time meandering the labyrinth of food stalls in open marketplaces than anywhere else. In Vietnam, he even visited an entirely water-born community where hawkers had taken to boats to sell their wares.

Now, with Ontario being a multi-cultural province in an arguably multi-cultural country, do you ever wonder why we don't find a vast array of "hawker" cuisines being sold on the streets? The answer has to do with a provincial law that abjectly states that hot dogs and sausages are the only food that can legally be sold from a street cart.

This has so infuriated a chef named Guy Rubino, that he set out to feed an Asian-favorite street food to provincial politicians and their staff at Toronto's city Hall. According to an article from cbc.ca, Chef Rubino, who happens to be the co-owner and executive chef of the restaurant Rain, served up frog-leg porridge in Nathan Philips Square to highlight how diverse street food in the city and province could be.

The image of frog-leg porridge comes from the talking+photos blog.

Phonetically, frog-leg porridge is "thim kai chok" in Cantonese. Chef Rubino discovered the dish on a trip to Singapore, a country that accordingly impressed him with its tasty street food. Largely considered a delicacy in Asia, the dish consists of a bowl of seasoned white rice porridge, called "congee", various aromatics, and, or course, frogs' legs. Accounts say it tastes like chicken.

The taste test at city hall was a co-ordinated effort by both Chef Rubino and Toronto's Board of Health to demonstrate that street food can provide nutritious alternatives to the hot dog. The board's chair, John Filion, has asked Queen's park to change its rules regarding street food.

More of the Toronto's top chefs will be pressing the issue during lunchtime on July 13, 2007. They are arranging a street food fair at city hall. I guess I will have to schedule a visit to Ontario's provincial capital.

According to an article from cbc.ca, researches with the New York-based magazine, Consumer Reports, have determined that cooking with teflon-coated cookware poses little threat to humans. Accordingly, their findings state that there are minimal emissions from a synthetic chemical, called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in tests of teflon-coated cookware at heats of 400°F. PFOA is used to make non-stick coatings and, earlier studies, have suggested that, at high temperatures, this chemical can release fumes that could trigger flu-like symptoms in people.

The molecular structure of teflon comes from the good people at 3dchem.com.

The article further states that Health Canada holds the position that non-stick coatings are safe to use at temperatures under 662°F. However, at these or higher temperatures, irritating or poisonous fumes may be released.

What does this mean to the home cook?

1. Try not to use non-stick coated cookware to sear food. Blackening is out of the question.
2. Temperature-wise, do not treat non-stick coated cookware like their stainless steel equivalents. Personally, I never take a non-stick pan above medium on the cooktop
3. Use teflon-coated cookware in a well ventilated area. This means cracking a window and turning on any active/passive ventilation you have available.
4. Use plastic or wood utensils when cooking with non-stick. Though the coating itself will not largely fume at lower temperatures, you do not want to break the coating or ingest any teflon.
5. Older cookware where the coating has started to flake should be discarded immediately.

As for me, I've just purchased my first carbon steel pan from a restaurant supply house and plan to retire my non-stick egg pan. Like my cast iron pans, I will be seasoning my new pan soon. It should develop a nice natural non-stick coating. Hopefully, I can avoid teflon-coated cookware altogether.

A new member to foodiePrints, Sean, requested a twist on a recipe for bacon wrapped chicken breast. The web is replete with recipes for bacon wrapped chicken. Some use a dollop of mustard under the bacon. Some wrap chicken with slices mushrooms with the bacon. Others wrap sandwich ham with the bacon.

The reference dish image comes from kabobs.com.

Here's the back story. After being served bacon wrapped chicken as an appetizer at a dinner party, Sean made his own modification on the dish using chicken livers and bacon. Accordingly, he took towel dried chicken livers, wrapped them in bacon, and broiled them in the oven. It went over well with his guests. The originating recipe, however, involved chicken and was said to have used soy sauce.

As requested, the following is my twist on the recipe. I decided to cook the bacon wrapped chicken on the barbecue. I also glazed/quick marinated the chicken with a fish-sauce-based sweet and salty dressing. The dressing is actually a Vietnamese dressing for Green Papaya Salad. I found it on an episode of the Australian food show, Food Safari. The results married three wonderful flavors: sweet, salt, and smoke.

Recipe follows:

More after the jump...

Forbes Traveler online has an article that contains a breathtaking slide show on the world's most expensive sweets. It made this foodie's jaw drop. One dessert has a gem resting on chocolate that cost more than my university education. Another comes with a Saint Louis crystal atomizer. Several involve edible 23 or 24 karat gold leaf. And we haven't started going into rare ingredients yet: truffles, Manjaree chocolate, and rare cognac. Wow...Just wow...I guess some people in this world can really afford to eat well. I thought a 7 course tasting menu for $75/plate was extravagant...

According to the associated press and nwsource.com, archaeologists in western Japan excavated remains of a melon that was carbon-dated to be approximately 2 100 years old. What makes the find even more significant is the fact that the melon still had flesh on the rind. As such, it is the older than the remains found in China that date back to the 4th century AD.

The fresh melon image comes from plantsciences.ucdavis.edu. The moldy melon image come from scienceclarified.com.

A theory has emerged regarding the reason why the melon was so well preserved. It holds that because the melon remains were vacuum-packed in a wet layer below the ground, microorganisms that might otherwise have broken down the melon were held at bay.

And here I have trouble keeping melon in the fridge for a week. Talk about sealing in the freshness.

When my better half informed me that she had never tried fajitas, a North American tex-mex favourite, I immediately made reservations for dinner at the Lone Star Texas Grill in the Byward Market (128 George Street). It so happens that I had had fajitas for lunch a week earlier in the Lone Star across from the St. Laurent Shopping centre (1211 Lemieux Street). Though the Lone Star is a chain restaurant, that now has locations in Quebec, New Brunwick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, I actually found that I enjoyed the experience. The fajitas I had had were by far the best I have ever been served in a restaurant.

Like other tex mex restaurants, Lone Star serves grilled chicken or beef and grilled vegetables on cast-iron hot plates to keep them warm. Unlike other tex mex restaurants, your "fixings" include generous amounts of "Mexican" rice, baked beans, sour cream, and guacamole. Under your containers of sour cream and guacamole, you also get shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes. Other text mex restaurants in Ottawa aren't this generous with either portions or variety. The meat component comes in 1/4 lb, 1/2 lb, and 1 lb portions. You can also request half portions of chicken and beef. However, what really sets Lone Star apart is their freshly baked tortillas, which, to me, resemble Indian Naan in texture, flavour, and consistency. For the adventurous, Lone Star also offers grilled mushrooms to go with your fajitas.

For $39 CAD (including 15% tip), Jenn and I stuffed ourselves silly with a 1/2 lb order of half chicken and half beef and a side of grilled mushrooms. To be fair, I must say that we thoroughly enjoyed wrapping meat and vegetables in the somewhat oily fajitas that reminded us of Indian bread. How often do you really get to interact with your food, save for stabbing and cutting with forks and knives? Our beef, which was most likely skirt steak, was grilled to medium rare perfection. It was tender and flavorful. The chicken, on the other hand, was too cooked and crumbled when eaten. The mushrooms came over seasoned and left us very thirsty. Whatever thick sauce was dosed on the mushrooms also burned on the hotplate, firmly attaching them to it. Imagine trying to pry mushrooms from hot cast iron. Fortunately, the fixings were fresh and the lettuce and tomatoes were crisp.

Our waiter was great. He was extremely attentive and friendly. This was no small feet considering that it was also Stanley Cup playoffs, and the Sens were playing that evening.

All in all, We weren't disappointed. Though, next time we're sticking with beef and avoiding the mushrooms.

Particulars:
Lone Star Texas Grill
128 George Street
(613)562-9865