Two weekends ago, two of Jenn's former house-mates came to Ottawa for the weekend. They came to visit and enjoy some of the festivities of Ottawa's annual winter festival, Winterlude. Unfortunately, the weekend was fraught with blisteringly cold temperatures and freezing rain, so, from time to time, we had to stay indoors. Happily, poor weather really can't keep a houseful of foodies down. Besides visiting Ottawa's premier shawarma establishment, the Shawarma Palace, a lot of the weekend was spent swapping old recipes and trying a handful of new ones.

Here's what turned out:

Pernil

Anyone for Cuban Sandwiches?

Biscotti Baby!

Dried Cranberry and Pistachio Goodness

What's Frying Doc?

Southern Fried Chicken

Recipes follow:

More after the jump...

The egg was once considered nature's perfect food. Not only can it be cooked in a myriad ways (fried, scrambled, boiled, poached), but its components are key to other dishes. Egg yolks provide the emulsifiers for sauces like mayonnaise and hollandaise. Egg whites, or albumen, can be whipped into a semi-stable foam that can be used to leaven cakes such as angel food cake and sponge cake. If egg whites are beaten further, so that they form stiff peaks, you get meringue, which can be dried or used to top pies. Together egg yolks and egg whites form the binary components to make soufflés.

To pay homage to the culinary potential of the egg, I went looking for egg-related "media" on the web. Here is what I found:

Eggs according to Dictionary.com:

The oval, thin-shelled reproductive body of a bird, especially that of a hen, used as food.

A Korean toy maker made egg action figures. Here is the now "infamous" advertisement.


The song is rather addictive. Here are the Lyrics:

Eggs, get your eggs here! Fresh and white eggs are here!!! Wiggle jiggle, yellow middle, thats the best of what you are. White and tender, surround the center, cozy sitting in a crackling shell. Vitamins and minerals in you. Oodles of the proteins, too! Oodle doodle! Popular and perfect and so complete in every way! I love you eggs eggs! Come into my tummy, oh so very yummy. Crack, crack, crack! Chipa chipa away your shell and come to me! Get your eggs! I love you! Fresh Eggs! I love you! White eggs! Really really love you so! Eggs fresh white eggs. Eggs I really love you like the sky~ above! Eggs are the best! I love you! Fresh eggs! I love you! White eggs! Really really love you so! Eggs fresh white eggs! 365 days I really love you so! I really love you so! mmm! Yummy!

Here is a link to the original flash video.

Here is an award-winning animated short, called "screaming eggs" on YouTube:


And now we're full circle. Eggs -> food -> toy -> food :)

This just in:
Here's another picture of the "plight" of eggs that's making its way around the blogosphere. It comes from a Ariel Bariel Long's flickr album and is entitled "Eggs in Peril." I picked it up from digg.com. There, the tag line is "A Breakfast Tragedy." Kudos to Ariel Bariel Long for her creativity!

And:
Not sure the source, as I got it by e-mail...

Here is a subset of pictures of science projects from, presumably American, elementary school children. The source archive contains a multitude of other non-food-related pictures. It is located at photobasement.com.

I'm not sure what this project studied, but I'm curious what sources the student used.

Juicy Beans

Sponsored by Coke and Pepsi!

Plants and Pop

Vampires and witches beware!

Deadly Garlic

Hot Dogs = WMD's???

Hot Dog Effects

Given that my better half is a high school teacher, I am constantly amazed at the "creativity" of students and the patience she must have to deal with them.

Like many cube-dwellers, my morning begins by hunkering down to breakfast at the office. Armed with a spoon in one hand and a bowl of plain yogurt and granola in the other, I fire up my workstation. By the third spoonful, I'm usually online and scanning the headline news using an rss feed. Then, I fire up my browser and e-mail client. If time permits, I look at the day's dilbert and load up digg.com/technology to do another scan. Afterwards, I take my first caffeine hit of the day: a large cup of medium roast Columbian - black, no cream, no sugar.

Designer Jason Farsai decided that a sufficient number of people have rituals like mine that the world would benefit by making some efficiencies. He came up with the Yuno PC concept: an insulated mug that incorporates a flexible screen, a computer, and high speed wireless Internet access. This way, you can take your morning alerts (headlines, weather, traffic reports, and stocks) from the same receptacle that you drink your coffee. With the increasing miniaturization of processors and storage and companies like Sony exploiting Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology, Farsai's concept could soon become manifest. As one comment on yankodesign.com states, "my phone already does all of this."

Originally found on therawfeed.com.
Image from yankodesign.com.

Hail to the multi-function gadget! Cheers to Jason Farsai!

I found the following little gem on the web during a search for information on the Sun Micro System's purchase of MySQL. I've a feeling it was on digg.com under the article I was reading. Suffice it to say that I was taken aback and momentarily forgot what I was looking for.

Funny if you've a dirty mind
Source: funny.com

For those of you with clean minds, here's something more whimsical:

Hot Dogs
Source: Bayraider.tv

This just in: The Banana Guard - Yet another funny picture if you have dirty mind...
What lead me to this rather interesting contraption was one of those "products that look like something they're not" lists. Posted just 2 days before Valentine's Day, the good people at omglists.com included a "ribbed" model. And yes, the Banana Guard is real. It is an actual patented product with its own website, bananaguard.com.

Update: 2Juicy Orange Squeezer - Another mildly dirty funny...

2Juicy
For people who believe that orange juice should come from pairs.
Source: Gizmodo.com

During the Tuesday evening of my week in Toronto, Mademoiselle Ling took me to Little Korea (aka: Korea Town or K-town) for dinner. In Toronto, Little Korea is located along a stretch of Bloor Street between Christie and Bathurst Streets.

There, we went to a restaurant whose name neither of us could pronounce. She found the restaurant on chowhound.com. It comes highly recommended.

Korean Restaurant

For dinner, we both ordered a popular Korean dish, called bibimbap in a heated stone bowl or dolsot.

Dolson Bibimbap
Essentially, bibimbap is a dish of hot rice, a variety of cooked and/or raw vegetables (stir fried slivered carrots and daikon, blanched bean sprouts, sliced boiled mushrooms, and spinach) and cooked beef (roughly minced or coarsely ground). Traditionally, it is also served with a raw egg, freshly cracked on top. The egg is meant to be mixed into the hot rice and cooks in the residual heat. Ours came partially cooked, fried, but runny.

Of course, our bibimbap mains were served with soup starters and a myriad of communal "banchan" or side dishes, which are meant to be finished with the meal.

Banchan
One particular side dish seems obligatory to any Korean meal. Called Kimchi, this banchan is a revered and traditional preparation of fermented vegetables. The most popular, is made, from Chinese cabbage and is flavoured with garlic, ginger, onion, chili, and fish sauce. It is somewhat analogous to German sauerkraut. However, kimchi can be made with other vegetables such as cucumber, which was also served that evening.

Bibimbap can actually come in two ways, as we were served or with the ingredients in one bowl and hot rice in another. To eat it, sauce to taste with chili paste and mix all the ingredients together using your spoon and characteristic Korean metal chopsticks. If your bibimbap is served in a heated dolsot, the rice mixture resting against the bowl will crisp and toast.

Crisped Rice
I found the rice crisp easily came away from the bowl. It was the best part of the meal. Otherwise, it can be eaten softened by pouring hot water into the dolsot and scraping the rice off.

Together with the banchan, the meal displayed tremendous balance in its contrasting flavours (sweet, sour, salty, savory, and spicy), colours, and textures. I had an excellent meal. I should note that the runny egg somewhat emulsified the rice mixture, allowing it to carrying more flavours.

Afterwards, instead of taking a subway back, we actually walked back to my hotel.

Along the way, we stopped at a walnut cake or Hodo Kwaja bakery.

Hodo Kwaja Bakery
Hodo Kwaja are miniature cakes that are somewhat analogous to Tim Horton's Timbits, only they are not nearly as sweet, slightly more dense, and taste of ground walnut.

There, we purchased a box of two kinds of cakes. Both walnut cakes, they differed in their fillings.

Box of Cakes

Filled

After Sampling

Potato Filling

Red Bean Filling
I found the sweetened potato filling starchy and a little much to take after dinner. The familiar red bean filling was also sweet. Though it was less dense and somewhat richer in flavour.

Here is the bakery's business card:

Front

Back

Apparently, the little cakes with their intricate designs are made by the machinery Ling and I walked by to get to the front counter to order. Here is a youtube video of it in action.


We also stopped at Honest Ed's. Located at 581 Bloor, Honest Ed's is an institution in Toronto.

Honest Ed's

It sells the largest assortment of cookware of varying qualities I have ever seen.

Cookware far and wide

Thanks to Mademoiselle Ling for introducing me to dolsot bibimbap and taking me on a lovely tour of Toronto at night.

For the record, downtown Toronto is not walkable. The trip from little Korea back to my hotel took several hours.

Update:
Since the talk these days is a faltering economy, Honest Ed's decided to have a three day mega sale, featuring prices from the Depression Era. According to its current general manager, Russel Lazar, if economist are going to predict a recession reminiscent of the dirty thirties, consumers need a break so he discounted a selection of his merchandise to match. Dubbed "Hones Ed's Hungry 30s" Bargains, the sale ran for three days (January 22-24, 2009) and attracted crowds of grateful customers.

Here's a short list of the 30s priced "items":

• White sliced bread - 25 cents
• Dozen eggs - 25 cents
• Italpasta spaghetti, 900g pkg - 25 cents
• 1L Sealtest 2% milk - 25 cents
• Mac & cheese dinner - 25 cents
• 200 mL carton apple juice - 17 cents
• Assorted bouillon cubes - 25 cents
• Aluminum picture frame - 15 cents
• Evenflo 4oz glass baby bottle - 10 cents for 4
• 10 pack pencil set - 10 cents
• Ombra bath & body wash (20 mL) - 10 cents
• Ladies T-shirts - 10 cents
• Men's briefs - 25 cents
• Facecloths - 10 cents
• Tapered candles - 10 cents
• Salt & pepper set - 25 cents
• 5x6" framed oil paintings - 25 cents
• Men's gloves - 25 cents
• Men's suit bags - 10 cents
• Porcelain salad plate - 10 cents
• Coffee mugs - 25 cents
• Nail polish - 12 cents
• Light bulbs - 17 cents
• Garbage bags - 5 for 25 cents

Source: citynews.ca

For posterity, foodiePrints is going to host the flyer. We don't see this kind sale happening ever again.

Particulars:
Honest Ed's
581 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario
Tel.: (416)537-1574

Last month, I spent a week in downtown Toronto, schooling in the ways of SAP, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that is popular among medium and large scale enterprises. Since my course was 5 days long, I was initially apprehensive about being unable to sate my foodie appetites for a week. Toronto is a big city. It has much to offer foodie-wise, but culinary adventure is limited when you are unfamiliar with Toronto's public transit system and you've a grueling day's instruction the following morning. Happily, if your hotel just happens to be located on Bloor, 10 paces from Yonge Street, finding a decent meal isn't difficult.

After I checked into my hotel, I went looking for a convenience store to purchase a calling card. During my search, I noticed that I was famished and stopped by a cafe-style Vietnamese restaurant, called Ginger (695 Yonge Street). There, I ordered a really nice bowl of pho, but what really impressed me was the sheer variety of inexpensive menu items available and the large number of people Ginger served. When I finished my meal, a quick glance at the latest set of patrons and their orders compelled me to return. I even took a colleague to Ginger the following Thursday to introduce her to pho.

However, it's not the pho that I enjoyed most. It's the bahn mi, the Vietnamese incarnation of the submarine sandwich.

Beef and Chicken Bahn Mi

Beef Bahn Mi - Close-up

Chicken Bahn Mi - Close-up
After I observed two of the line cooks polish off a couple of the sandwiches on their break, I told myself that I had to give it a try. Made to order, these sandwiches featured either thin cuts of chicken breast or thinly shaved beef. Each seemed marinated in a sweet and slightly spicy sauce that reminded me of Thai sweet chili. When ordered, the meat was seared on the griddle and then placed into a buttered crusty roll with plenty of pickled daikon and carrots and young stalks of cilantro. Oddly missing was the thin slather of liver pate that is characteristic of bahn mi, but the full seared flavors more than made up for it. The meat was tender and savory. The vegetation provided bright herbal flavors and textural contrast. Both the chicken and beef bahn mi were delicious.

The crusty roll actually reminded me of the "paposeco rolls" from the Ace Bakery that are sold by the Superstore back home.

Supermarket Paposeco Roll

For breakfast the next morning, against my better judgement, I went to the nearby Tim Horton's for a Bagel, Egg, Lettuce, and Tomato (BELT) sandwich and a cup of joe. Considering that most Timmies aren't equipped with a flat top or griddle, the sandwich's egg and bacon are more than likely ready-made and microwaved. This explained the unnatural round shape of the bacon and the strange rubbery texture of the eggs. Gratefully, I discovered that SAP courses come with complimentary coffee and muffins, so breakfast was sorted for the rest of my stay.

Here's what a Timmie's BELT is supposed to look like:

Timmie's BELT as advertised

For lunch, I dined with the rest of my fellow students in the underground food court, linking the SAP learning center and the connected mall next door. Twice, I went to the Soup It Up for the sandwich and salad special. Neither special warranted any pictures.

On Thursday, however, I ate at Druxy's, a familiar purveyor of deli sandwiches. There, I had the "chicken special", which was worth writing about. With its smear of mayo, fresh lettuce, sweet tomato, swiss cheese, grilled chicken breast, bacon, and sliced avocado, the sandwich demonstrated perfect flavor and texture harmony. Sweet and bright tomatoes balanced the savory chicken and salty bacon. Crunchy lettuce balanced the firm meat, crisp bacon, and soft avocado.

On Tuesday evening, I wandered into a Popeye's for some fried chicken for supper. Ottawa actually has no Popeye's Chicken and Seafood location, so the restaurant was novel to me.

Signage

Toonie Two Piece Chicken Deal

Close Up
I found Popeye's chicken's crust both thicker and much darker than what I was used to. The chicken itself looked over fried and had a very greasy mouth feel. I finished one piece before I came to my senses and disposed of the other. This is when it dawned on me that the chicken most likely sat under a heating lamp and was re-fried when served.

My Friday class ended at 1:00 pm so I took a final stroll before having a late lunch and catching my train home. This is when I decided that I couldn't leave Toronto without having sushi of some form. With luggage in tow, I stopped at Natural Japanese Restaurant (714 Yonge) for an Okinawa combo.

Restaurant Interior

Salad Appetizer

Okinawa Combo: Salmon, Tuna, Mackerel, and Crab Nigiri + California Rolls
Alas the sushi was little better than the buffet-eria-style sushi from typical all-you-can eat restaurants. The California rolls were poorly constructed and the nigiri was somewhat unevenly formed. Fortunately, the fish was fresh and the rice was loosely packed so each piece fell apart in my mouth as they should. Cost: $10.99 before taxes or tip.

Nevertheless, I realized that I needed to pickup something for dinner during the trip home, so I ordered a cooked combo, called Kyoto Sushi on the menu. Cost: $11.99 before taxes or tip.

Kyoto Sushi Combo: shrimp, crab, egg, and surf clam + salmon tempura rolls + eel hand roll
The combo served me well on the train ride home. I actually found that I enjoyed the cooked combo better than the raw. Particularly, the salmon in the maki was fatty and fresh, imparting both a pleasant flavor and texture.

This Just In: If you're interested in making authentic bahn mi at home, head over to the Wandering Chopsticks blog. There, you will find recipes for a grilled pork bahn mi (banh mi thit heo nuong), a breakfast (egg) bahn mi (banh mi hot ga op), a barbecued pork bahn mi (banh mi xa xiu), and even a meatball bahn mi (banh mi xiu mai). For the record, the characteristic pickled daikon and carrots are called "do chua." I gather they can be purchased at an Asian market.

Menus follow after the jump:

More after the jump...

Sucre à la crème literally means sugar cream, which just happens to be the component ingredients of this holiday dessert. It is essentially a maple fudge. Like fudge, sucre à la crème is made by mixing sugar (usually brown sugar and maple syrup), butter, and dairy (condensed milk or cream) together, heating the mixture to approximately 240F, and allowing to crystallize.

In the candy making trade, this means bringing the sugar mixture to the "soft-ball" stage. The softball stage is a temperature range from 235F to 245F. These are the temperatures when a heated and cooled sugar syrup forms a ball in cold water that flattens once removed.

According to wikipedia, sucre à la crème is similar to a confection called Talbet from Scotland. Like sucre à la crème, it is made from sugar, condensed milk, and butter. Unlike sucre à la crème, it is often flavoured with vanilla.

This past Christmas, I had the good fortune to try sucre à la crème for the first time. My cubicle neighbor dropped by my office with individually portioned boxes of sucre à la crème for sale to raise money for his daughter's elementary school. To entice us to purchase a box, he offered a free sample. Rich, buttery, sweet, and distinctly tasting of caramel, I was immediately hooked and purchased a box. I then launched a search to find authentic recipes to make the confection myself.

With its Quebecois roots, the recipes I found were either written "en français" or roughly translated from French, so I had to clarify some of the ingredients and cooking directions with colleagues who had better grasps of French than I. My search eventually attracted the attention of one of the assistants, who found me a "quick and easy" recipe. Assuming that I would prefer a recipe in English, she ran the recipe through the AskJeeves.com translator. Lets just say that some things were lost in translation. Consequently, I ran the recipe through BabelFish and the results were also somewhat less than adequate. Both translations instructed me to cook with gasoline. One wanted me to use "bird brains." The other wanted me to employ "microphone(microcomputing) waves." Can someone please tell me what "fast cream" is?

More after the jump...

Sugar, ah, honey, honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you
Honey, ah, sugar, sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you

This picture of sugarcubes always reminds me of the "Sugar sugar" song from the Archies. It was taken during the first couple months my better half and I were dating.

One bright Autumn day, we decided to visit Gatineau Park to see the trees in their full fall colours. There, we had tea at the Tea Room on the Mackenzie King estate. It was during tea that I ate my first scone. I remember it being sweet, starchy, and rich, perfect food to fuel a good hike through Gatineau Park.

When I came across an advertisement for smoked pork shoulder, selling for 99 cents/lb, I couldn't resist picking one up and trying my hand at "hamifying" it: roasting and glazing with sugar. Ham, as per the culinary tradition, is typically a leg of pork that has been cured and smoked. Smoked pork shoulder, as its name denotes, comes from the pork shoulder or "Boston Butt", which is replete with connective tissue. The smoked pork shoulder I purchased seemed wet cured with sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrite causes pork to take on a characteristic pink colour that remains even when cooked.

What turned out was very ham-like indeed. Smokey, salty, and savoury. The sweet glaze acts as a counterpoint to the saltiness.

The "hamification" process I followed borrowed heavily from a recipe for "glazed smoked shoulder" from about.com. It follows:

1. Submerge a 2.610 kg smoked pork shoulder in water in a large non-reactive pot. Please follow the instructions that come with the pork shoulder to prepare it for simmering. For me, I had to remove the string netting that covered the pork shoulder.
2. Add various ground or whole spices to the water. I added 2 tablespoon ground cumin, 2 tablespoons five spice powder, and a tablespoon of whole black pepper corns.
3. Cover the pot with a lid and place it onto medium heat
4. Bring the contents up to a simmer and turn the heat down to low
5. Simmer the pork shoulder until it reaches an internal temperature of 170°F. For me, this took approximately 45 minutes.
6. Remove the pork shoulder onto a cutting board and allow to cool for 10 minutes
7. Pre-heat an oven to 325°F
8. Score the fat layer with a knife, creating a diamond pattern
9. Using a paper towel, dry the surface of the pork shoulder
10. Transfer the pork shoulder to an oven-proof dish
11. Brush lightly with sweetened mustard. I used prepared honey mustard
12. Sprinkle brown sugar onto the light mustard coating
13. Bake at 325°F for 30 minutes
14. Turn up the heat to 400°F and bake for another 30 minutes or until the skin of the pork shoulder glazes over and darkens
15. Remove from the oven and let rest for 15-20 minutes
16. Slice and serve