WestFest is a celebration of the Westboro Village and a fantastic opportunity to celebrate local and Canadian music, literature, and art. Now in its seventh year, this three day celebration continues to expand with local businesses eager to showcase what they do best and big Canadian acts realizing the immense popularity and uniqueness of WestFest. Regardless of the weather, an estimated 200,000 people are expected this weekend.

Beginning the evening of June 11th, the party doesn't stop until late Sunday night. You can check out the entertainment for the weekend, including the big music headliners, street performers, and vendors at the WestFest website.

Last year was the first year Don and I volunteered for this popular event. We had attended in previous years, but it was not until we became volunteers ourselves we truly understood the amount of work and planning behind the festival. The majority of of volunteers in the core group (the "crew") have full-time jobs, yet are willing to donate time to WestFest simply because they love and are proud of their neighbourhood. Kudos to them for all the hard work they put in!

After a great volunteer experience last year, we were eager to to sign up again. As a result, last night, Don and I did our first 6 hour shift with 12 more hours to go today. Originally, we had been slotted to sell bar tickets and bus tables. However, Beau's Beer (a major sponsor for this year's event) decided to bring in its own staff to serve alcohol. As such, Don and I have been re-assigned to other duties.

Despite the mix-up, we were busy, but still found time to walk up and down a partially blocked off Richmond Road. During our break, we managed to partake in some of the fun and delicious foods of WestFest. Please note Friday night was only a sample of what this great festival has to offer. The real fun starts on Saturday and Sunday when much of Richmond Road is blocked off (from Kirkwood to Broadview). There, you will find street performers, local shops and restaurants extending their businesses into the street, and family-friendly activities.



Don and I will be out and about all day today. Hope to see you there!

As a head's up food-wise, Westboro's The Piggy Market (400 Thurston) will be making Jamaican patties every half hour to serve at WestFest. They will also be sending out trays of charcuiterie to the street. Hintonburg's Essence Catering has an adorable site between Roosevelt and Golden. They are serving the most amazing smoked Pork Po' Boy, easily the best sandwich at WestFest.

I'll be checking out Sloan tonight!

Festival season has again graced Ottawa now temperatures have risen and the snow has completely disappeared. The grass is green. The skies are mostly blue. The temperature is balmy, sometimes a little too hot.

Many people see Victoria Day as a rite of Spring, taking the three day holiday to start their gardens and hold outdoor barbecues with friends and family. For me, Spring is marked by several weeks of events for various causes or charities that demonstrate significant generosity from locally owned and operated restaurants, fine food shops, caterers, breweries, and cideries.

Two of the biggest events are Taste for Life (April 28) and Bon Appetit (May 4). Taste for Life helps men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS by raising money for Bruce House and the Snowy Owl AIDS foundation. Bon Appetit distributes funds raised to 21 beneficiaries, including the Boys & Girls Club of Ottawa, Ronald McDonald House, St. Joe's Women's Centre, The Door, and The Causeway Foundation. Both events are held within days of each other. Afterward, there are smaller events that benefit the Ottawa Art Gallery (OAG), the Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC), and the Third Wall Theatre Company. As Patricia Parulekar, a Third Wall board member, told me, "food can make or break an event."

Why am I highlighting the restaurateurs, chefs, cooks, and wait staff who contribute to these events? Two reasons. One of our philosophies is to eat locally, be it food that is locally grown or locally produced. Secondly, a benefit of eating locally is the social network that develops. You meet your butcher, your farmer, your fishmonger, and your shopkeeper. We want to eat responsibly, learning where our food comes from, finding the best ingredients, and supporting communities and local businesses.

How responsibly an individual or a family eats is a personal choice. We prefer a proportion of our groceries to come from someone with a name, not a multi-national corporation. We prefer to eat at locally-owned restaurants who source ingredients from nearby producers. We try our best to limit our seafood choices to sustainably caught fin-fish and shell-fish.

In the course of our blogging about our learning to eat responsibly, we have been lucky to meet a number of people in Ottawa's food industry. When we participate in events for various causes or charities, we buy our tickets to support the cause. We volunteer at a number of events. And, we visit with some of the people we have become familiar with. Here are four we keep seeing donating food, time, and people to events.

Chef Jason Laurin of Essence Catering

Chef Laurin
For the Bon Appetit event, he started preparing his dishes 4 days in advance. His contribution:

Carrot and Cardamom Dark chocolate Truffles with Chai Tea Frosting

Pulled Pork on a Chipotle Biscuit, topped with Aji Amarillo Aioli

Chef Laurin (@chefjayl) hired extra staff to help him assemble and serve his dishes. He made more than enough for the event.

Extra Staff

Extra Cardamom Truffles
At the end, I noticed other Chefs and cooks dropping by Essence's booth, having heard so much about the innovative truffles.

A week later, Essence Catering would donate dishes to the Refresh 2010 Art Auction at the OAG and the Lawyers' Play at the GCTC. Check out the post by Rachelle of Rachell Eats Food blog on the Refresh event.

Essence Catering will also be one of the local caterers, participating in this year's WestFest (June 11-13, 2010).

WestFest

Chef Michael Hay of the Courtyard Restaurant

Dining Room Manager Paul samson and Chef Hay
If you recognize the @michealthehay Twitter handle, it belongs to Chef Hay. He recently impressed communications, public relations, and social media luminary Dave Fleet. When Fleet was last in Ottawa, he asked twitter for great places to eat "near the Westin hotel", thinking he would have to resign himself to a chain restaurant. I responded with twitter handles and addresses of many of the Byward Market restaurants I have visited recently and enjoyed. Only Chef Hay responded. Curious, Fleet ate at the Courtyard Restaurant and enjoyed it. In fact, he was so impressed, Fleet wrote a post on his widely read blog, touching on how communications is changing, businesses have to embrace new ways of cultivating customer loyalty, and Chef Hay is "doing it right."

Well, Chef Hay was also doing Bon Appetit right when Jenn and I ran into him there. His contribution:

Sous Vide Goat Cheese Bread Pudding, topped with Rhubarb Compote, Roasted Almonds, and Micro-Greens

Line Caught Salmon Tartare with lime, soy, and togarashi on a Rice Paper Puff
Like Chef Laurin, Chef Hay wanted to make sure no one who visited his booth left empty-handed. At the end of the event, he had many portions leftover.

Two weeks ago, Jenn and I would meet up with Chef Hay at the Courtyard Restaurant. This time, on a culinary walking tour of the Byward Market (by C'est Bon Cooking). There, he was again generous with attendees, serving tasting size portions of his tomato and cucumber gazpacho with roasted red pepper sorbet, everything finished with argan oil.

Tray of Tasting Plates

Tomato and Cucumber Gazpacho
An inspired dish, the gazpacho was somewhat rustic in texture, but subtle in flavour. The red pepper sorbet was a bold statement that savoury sweet can taste good cold. I can only imagine how the gazpacho will taste when tomatoes again come into season. Chef Hay uses organic hot house tomatoes right now.

More after the jump...

This past weekend, I discovered April was Grilled Cheese month according to a re-printed piece by Rita Demontis in the Toronto Star "Great Grills of Glory: Comfort can be Found in melted Cheese Sandwiches." Not one to let a sandwich occasion pass uncelebrated, I decided to attempt a bacon sarnie, grilled cheese style.

Here are the ingredients:

Ingredients
Clockwise from left: Rye Bread, Country-Style Boar Bacon from the Piggy Market, Kate's (Grainy-Style) Mustard from the Piggy market, St. Albert's Old Cheddar. Not pictured, butter.

As with other country-style bacon from Piggy Market, the boar bacon was brined, rinsed, and hot smoked, so it was already cooked. We just placed the rashers on a grill at medium flame to re-heat, crisp up, and sear along the edges.

Bacon, Reheating on the Grill
When you do grill bacon, be cautious, the fat renders quickly and can cause flame-ups.

I then piled three rashers onto one piece of bread, already lightly spread with mustard and layered with shredded cheddar.

Assembling Sandwich to Grill

Ready to Grill
Both the grill-facing sides of the bread were lightly spread with butter.

The left-over bacon umm..."disappeared"

Extra Baconny Goodness
And why not? The good people at the Piggy Market make their bacon, moderately salty. This permitted the stronger porky flavour of the boar to shine.

Without further ado (a very antiquated way introduction), here is a grilled "grilled cheese" sandwich with bacon...

Done
I served mine with grilled pineapples, a sweet and slightly caramel counterpoint to all the savouriness.

Served
Had I some caramelized onions on-hand to put in the sandwich, I would have gone with a peppery green salad as a side.

Aside: If you are interested in an aged cheddar melt that is slightly more civilized, head over to Marysol's blog, She eats Bears. She posted what may be the best way to start a work week I have ever seen!

According to the post's time-stamp, Marysol had the raisin bread, apple, and cheddar melt sandwiches made, panini-press grilled, and photographed and the accompanying post, written by 6:00 AM. Much respect...I'm not functional at 6:00 AM!

Particulars:
The Piggy Market
400 Winston Avenue
(613)371-6124

Last week, I attended a Prince Edward Country (PEC) wine and cheese fundraiser for Third Wall Theater Company's 10th Anniversary season. The event, dubbed "Go Local-Go Loco", was held at the Wallspace Gallery (358 Richmond Road). Its caterer, The Piggy Market (400 Winston Avenue).

Go Local Go Loco with Third Wall
Me, I was on assignment for Cheryl Gain's OttawaTonite.com when I attended the event and was delighted to have the opportunity to showcase The Piggy Market's food.

Chef/owner Dave Neil provided Prince Edward County raw and pasteurized goat, sheep, and cow's milk cheeses; locally-produced smoked meat; locally-reared heritage pork rib rillette; in-house marinated mushrooms; in-house pickled red and golden beets; and in-house baked mini-Jamaican patties.

At the end of the event, Chef Neil looked visibly relieved. He then informed me, The Piggy Market celebrated its first birthday. Indeed, it was a year ago, April 10th, when Jenn and I took our first Good Friday food tour down Wellington Street West and Richmond Road. We stopped into The Piggy Market, then newly opened. Chefs Neil, Warren Sutherland (Sweet Grass Aboriginal Bistro), and Pascale Berthiaume were just profiled in the Ottawa Citizen (a local newspaper).

A year later, The Piggy Market's storefront is ostensibly the same. Pascale is still making her now celebrated ice cream.

Pascale's Ice Cream Makers
It earned the 2nd spot on Ottawa Magazine's 101 Tastes to Try Before You Die list in its September 2009 edition. She is fast becoming a household name in the city.

Pascale's Image
Her image, now synonymous with rich and natural ice cream.

The Piggy Market still stocks many locally-produced products from preserves to juices, vinegars, and pickles.

Preserves and Pickles

Juices and Vinegar

And, loyal customers keep furnishing the foodie shop with pig-related memorabilia. In fact, every pig in the store is a gift. That is with the exception of the pig paintings at the front of the shop.

Flying Pig Paintings
These painted works are being displayed by The Piggy Market. They are for sale. The price tag: $300/painting.

More after the jump...

Hopefully, the gorgeous weather that has seen people go from light jackets to sun bathing, in the span of a week, will last. Ottawans have started taking to the roads on bicycles and roller blades again. Everyone else seems to be dusting off their sandals and running shoes.

Shops in the West Wellington Village, Westboro, and the ByWard Market have greatly benefited from increased foot traffic. The Piggy Market (400 Winston Avenue), a local fine food shop, has seen their display case of locally-made products empty from a day's good sales.

But, just in case the good weather doesn't last, here's a recipe to clear out the last of the winter vegetables before the farmers' market open. Why not answer a cold snap with a butternut squash soup, flavoured with ginger and apple.

The soup came about when I tried my hand at replicating a ginger butternut squash soup from my favourite fine food shop, Epicuria.

Ginger Butternut Squash Soup from Epicuria

Heating up the Soup

The Soup, Served
Think light on the tongue, velvety smooth, gingery, and butternut squash sweet.

My first attempt had me cooking by taste.

I decided to flavour roasted squash with slow cooker apple sauce.

Slow Cooker Ginger Apple Sauce

For the apple sauce, I took approximately a lb of russet apples, peeled, cored, and cut up,and placed them in a slow cooker set to low.

Russet Apples

Peeled, Cored, and Cut Up
To the apples, I added 1 tbsp of granulated sugar, 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, 1/4 cup water, 1 tbsp of orange juice, and a roughly chopped 4" thumb of ginger.

Everything was cooked on low for 6 hours, darkening the apple pieces.

Cooked Apples
To sauce, I forced everything through a strainer, removing any fibrous bits, mostly from the ginger.

For the soup, I took a squash.

One Butternut Squash
I peeled the squash, cored it of its stringy bits, chopped it roughly, and mixed it with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Squash, ready for roasting
I roasted in an oven pre-heated to 350F until softened. This took approximately an hour. After roasting the squash, I sweated two finely chopped ribs of celery on medium heat until they coloured.

Sweated and Coloured Celery
To the pan, I added the now cooled roasted squash and enough vegetable broth to come halfway up the squash.

Bringing Everything Together
This, I simmered for 10 minutes. I seasoned it with salt to taste and blended it in a stand blender in batches. I started with a stick blender, but it found the going to tough and overheated.

Soup, Blitzed
To the puree, I added enough of the apple sauce to flavour the soup and finished it with a touch of cream.

Served

Lessons learned, the soup was too cinnamon-y with two doses of cinnamon. Roasting the squash until it just colours produces a lighter coloured soup.

My second attempt had more measurements. This time around, I aimed for a gingerbread quality.

Gingerbread Squash Soup

More after the jump...