In Ottawa, the battle between big box and locally owned has descended upon Chinatown. With a newly opened T&T supermarket, the Vancouver originating chain's 4th largest in Canada, pressure has been applied on Chinatown. Chinatown shops are smaller, locally-owned, and specialized in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Malay groceries. The monopoly the shops once enjoyed is gone.

Now, the formerly pre-eminent Kowloon Market in Chinatown, once an extremely crowded and bustling business, has lost significant customer-base. The store is far less busy on Saturdays, normally peek shopping hours. Parents who drop off their children for Saturday Chinese language school, caravan to T&T in the Riverside South area. They fill its enormous parking lot, making Ottawa's T&T the consistently busiest one I have ever come across. Do not expect a leisurely shopping experience after 10:00 am. For perspective, I have been to several T&T's in Vancouver (including its first location), Toronto, and Edmonton.

To make matters worse, many of the shops lost employees to T&T. The butcher Jenn and I frequented at Kowloon Market for barbecued meats is now masterfully wielding her cleaver at T&T. In-house bakers, fish mongers, and cashiers defected. Even waiters from Chinatown restaurants, familiar faces from Yangtze (700 Somerset Street W.) and Chu Sing (691 Somerset Street W.), can be found working shifts at T&T. Prevalent reasons: better pay and an opportunity for benefits.

With significant turnover, some of the bakery at Kownloon Market has changed. Prices have been knocked down to compete with T&T and the buns are physically bigger. Curious, Jenn and I purchased baked (as opposed to steamed) barbecue pork (char-siu) buns (bao or baozi) from both T&T ($1.39) and Kowloon market ($1.09) and compared them. In the process, we happened to attempt to re-invent American South comfort food, fried chicken on a waffle, but more on that later.

Regarding the buns, both were brushed with an egg wash to brown. The Kowloon Market bao seemed more evenly browned.

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both were baked in-house the morning they were purchased.

Customarily, our T&T bao came individually wrapped in a self-sealing cellophane bag.

Individually-wrapped Bao
In fact, no matter where you go, bao from T&T are sold in the same bags. In fact, the char-siu bao pictured above was purchased from the T&T in the West Edmonton Mall.

To compare the Ottawa T&T and Kowloon Market originating bao, we weighed them and cut them open to look at their crumb and fillings.

Firstly, off to the scales:

T&T Char-siu Bao - 150 g

Kowloon Market Char-siu Bao - 144 g

Next, dissection:

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both white bread buns had the texture of super market dinner rolls, only sweeter. The T&T bao's filling was more centered. Conversely, the Kowloon Market's was off-center and it was much more red in colour.


T&T Char-Siu Bao Filling
Filling-wise, the T&T filling was predominately lean meat and included little sauce.


Kowloon Market Char-Siu Bao Filling
The Kowloon market filling was a mixture of fatty meat, onions, and sauce.


T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Flavour-wise, we found the T&T filling less intensely flavoured and more savoury. The Kowloon Market filling was strongly flavoured, tasting almost entirely of hoisin sauce.

If I were forced to choose, I would slightly favour the T&T char-siu bao, but bao wasn't our lunch that day.

At Kowloon market, Jenn and I eyed the hanging roasted pig after picking up a char-siu bao for the comparison. When we saddled up to the counter at the back of the store, we lucked out, ordering 2 lbs of belly-portion crackled roast pork.

Belly Portion Crackled Roast Pork

With our roast pork sporting an expertly crackled skin that was crisp and flavourful, I decided to stop off at Viva Loca in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, home of Great Canada Theater Company (GCTC) for something to accompany it. The theater center is located at the corner of Holland Avenue and Wellington Street W.

Oat and Whole Wheat Pancakes
We used the stack of made-to-order oat and whole wheat pancakes to re-invent the fried chicken on a waffle.

Roasted Pork Belly with Crackling on a Pancake
And yes, it tasted great with maple syrup.

As an aside, we observed Loblaws Superstore on Richmond Road selling individually-wrapped and nor Northern Chinese-style buns, starting in September 2009.

A Variety of Bao from Loblaws Superstore
A closer look at the labels reveals the source of the bao.

Source from a Toronto Bakery
Purchased from Jin Xin Bakery Ltd in Markham, Ontario, the buns are shipped in in refrigerated trucks, arriving cold. Not only is it interesting that the Loblaws CEO Galen Weston has been espousing the virtues of locally sourced produce and products when one of his Superstores sells trucked-in bakery, but Weston completely missed the point about why Asian supermarkets have in-house bakeries. Customers like fresh buns, not ones that taste stale. Shipping perishable buns in refrigerated trucks causes them, like fresh bread, to change texture. Refrigeration changes the protein and starch structure of fresh bakery. At least this means Loblaws Superstore cannot compete with T&T and Chinatown supermarkets.

Particulars:
Ottawa T&T
224 Hunt Club Road (corner of Hunt Club and Riverside)
(613)731-8113

Kowloon Market
712 Somerset Street W.
(613)233-1108

Viva Loca
1233 Wellington Street W.
(613)728-8482

Loblaws Super Store
190 Richmond Road
(613)722-5890

As someone who believes in eating nose to tail, I have always been intrigued by Mexican menudo, a hearty tripe soup (or stew) that is reputedly good for curing hangovers. I first encountered menudo while watching an old episode of Chef Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations (Season 5?). He was visiting Mexico and, as he tucked into a bowl, he made light of the soup having the same name as a former Latin boy band, whose lead singer was none other than Ricky Martin.

Like Chichi Wang of Serious Eats, author of a series of "The Nasty Bits" blog entries, I enjoy the texture of slow cooked honey comb tripe: delicate and almost gelatinous. Having grown up exposed to foods from many cultures, I have eaten beef tripe (omasum) at Chinese dim sum, where it is cooked crunchy and served with ginger and green onions (scallions). I have eaten beef tripe (honey comb) stewed in soy with star anise. I have even stewed beef tripe myself in store bought tomato salsa.

Stewing tripe in salsa was essentially my attempting to pair tripe with tomato and chile. It lead me to attempt a hominy-based menudo a year ago, with a small degree of success. Having come across Chichi Wang's attempt at Chef Rick Bayless' Menudo Rojo, I decided to try again, taking lessons learned from my first attempt. This time, I produced something sublimely good.

My Attempt at Menudo Rojo
Wang's recipe borrows from Chef Bayless' Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the heart of Mexico, a reference cook book that has enjoyed almost 22 years of re-prints.

Authentic Mexican, published 1987
I recently came across a first edition at a public library.

Though, I did stray somewhat from Chef Bayless' recipe, making an African Kosayi to infuse chile into the menudo stock instead of a paste from dried chiles.

We will start with the African Kosayi, essentially a spicy red pepper sauce that is somewhat analogous to Vietnamese sriracha. The following recipe comes from an episode of the third season of the Australian Food Safari.

Recipe

Red Peppers

Red Peppers Post Boil

Seeding and Skinning the Larger Peppers

Peppers Pureed

Puree, corrected for Flavour with Vinegar and Sugar

What You'll Need:

• 2 red bell peppers
• approximately a dozen bird's eye chiles
• 5 cili merah chiles
• Any mild vinegar like rice wine vinegar
• Granulated white sugar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• kosher salt to season

Essentially, any combination of sweet and hot chiles will do, so long as the ration is 1:1 by mass. The peppers I chose just happened to be varieties more common to Asian cuisine.

Method:

1. Place the peppers in a pot with a tight fitting lid, cover with cold water.
2. Place the pot over a burner set to medium heat and bring the water up to a simmer.
3. Lower the heat to medium low and simmer for 25 minutes covered
4. Remove from the heat and let the peppers cool until they are handle-able
5. Drain the peppers.
6. Dawn a pair of latex or vinyl gloves. Do NOT skip this step. Prolonged exposure to hot peppers, cooked or otherwise, can cause the capsaicin to seep into the skin. It burns!
7. For the larger peppers (i.e. not the bird's eye chiles), halve them, remove their seeds, and peel off the skins. Boiling the peppers like this is similar to roasting them. The flesh separates from the skins.
8. For the bird's eye chiles, just pull off the stems. They should come off rather easily.
9. Place the seeded and skinned pepper flesh into a blender along with the stemmed chiles
10. Blend until smooth
11. Strain the puree through a wire strainer. This will remove any errant seeds and skins.
12. Stir in the olive oil
13. Correct the flavour with vinegar and sugar. According to the source recipe, a Kosayi should not be too hot. For the above peppers, I added 2 tbsp each of vinegar and sugar.
14. Season to taste with kosher salt.

For the menudo itself, Chef Bayless' recipe employs pig trotters to impart a stickiness to the stock that comes from slow cooking collagen into gelatin. Please note that the tripe, more common at Chinese dim sum and served in bowls of Vietnamese Pho noodles, is layered omasum, the third of a cow's four stomachs. For this recipe, thicker and more substantial honey comb tripe is required. Omasum may actually dissolve completely from the long stewing in the following recipe.

More after the jump...

With a newly opened large Asian supermarket, Ottawa is being exposed to foods and groceries more common to ethnic communities in larger cities like Toronto and Vancouver. During its grand opening, the supermarket was quite the realization for many that tofu comes in more flavours and varieties than plain; soy sauce comes in several preparations from a multitude of foreign and domestic producers that bottles can fill an entire shelf; ice cream comes in exotic flavours like green tea, mango, taro, and durian; and Asian cultures commonly prepare off cuts like pig's ears and chicken feet.

Indeed, those, familiar with the Vancouver originating T&T chain, know stores have two meat displays besides a long and well stocked meat counter. One carries more standard cuts of meat. The other, glorious offal. Think beef kidneys, two kinds of beef tripe (honey comb and omasum), pig skin, pig heart, duck tongues, chicken hearts, and chicken gizzards, everything shrink-wrapped on styrofoam trays. At the meat counter, you will find more mainstream cuts of beef, pork, chicken, and duck. Interspersed amongst the chops, legs, stew meat, and roasts, you will also find pig trotters and chicken feet. Having never cooked pig's ears, I chose to challenge myself.

Previously Frozen Pig's Ears
And yes, those would be pig's trotters and tripe sneaking into the picture.

Eating cuts like ears, cheeks, snouts, tongues, and trotters means you are eating from nose to tail. This form of consumption seems to be prevalent in old world cultures whose values reflect strong agrarian origins. Raising livestock is an expensive and risky endeavor when considering both feed and care. To ensure return on investment, all the nutritive value from an animal's carcass needs to be extracted. Just about everything is edible, the question is how to cook it.

While an episode of the recently aired season of Top Chef Masters demonstrated French cuisine to be familiar with pig's ears (boiling them soft in a court bouillon), I decided to red braise them. Red braising or red cooking is a Northern Chinese cooking technique that imparts a characteristically dark colour and flavour to the slow cooked meat. At Northern Chinese restaurants, you will commonly encounter red braised pork belly.

Having purchased no pork belly, I slowly braised the ears, let them cool, chilled them, sliced them thin, and served them cold.

Red Braised Pig's Ears
Besides flavouring them, red braising softened the pig's ears, leaving a gentle cartilaginous crunch.

Recipe

Pig's ears braising in a mixture of wine, soy, sugar, and spice

One ear, retrieved after 3 hours braising, laid flat to cool

Two other ears, retrieved after 3 hours braising, laid flat to cool

Pig's ears, chilled, sliced, and served cold

What you'll need:

• 4 pig's ears
• 1/2 cup of dry sherry (a fortified wine) or rice wine
• 2 1/2 tbsp chicken marinade or dark soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 2 whole pieces of star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick

The following procedure involves parboiling the ears to remove scum and encourage flavours and then slow cooking them in a sweet and spice infused braising liquid.

Method:

1. Add the ears (thawed if originally frozen) to a large pot of water and place the pot on a burner set to medium.
2. Bring the mixture up to a simmer, not a rolling boil, and simmer the ears for an hour.
3. Meanwhile, place the sugar, chicken marinade or dark soy, and whole spices (star anise and cinnamon) into a slow cooker with a cup of water. Set the slow cooker to high and stir to dissolve the sugar.
4. Remove the simmered ears from the pot to the slow cooker.
5. Add as much water as needed to cover the ears and bring to a very gentle simmer.
6. Cook for 3 hours.
7. Carefully remove the ears from the braising liquid to a plate. They will be very soft and coloured brown.
8. Let the ears cool to room temperature
9. Cover with plastic and chill in a refrigerator until solid (approximately 3-5 hours)
10. Slice into slivers and serve cold.

As the Serious Eats recipe, on which this one is based, states, ear is an acquired texture as opposed to an acquired taste. Even braised low and slow for hours, the ears retain a cartilaginous crunch.

Next time, I am going to try cooking them in red chili.

Sometime early November, Cassandra Evanas of DivineCaroline published a blog, listing "Seven Terrible Ideas for Breakfast." Among them were Jimmy Dean Pancakes and Sausage on a Stick (the blueberry pancakes looking oddly diseased), Vanilla Milkshake Pop Tarts, Kraft Apple Cinnamon and Cream Cheese Bagel-fuls , and Liquid Cereal. Liquid Cereal happens to be packaged in a pop can and reminded me of two equally questionable foods I came across this summer.

The first, I tweeted about a week ago as something I would "not be trying again", a hash-tagged list of foods one regrets trying that was initiated by the pioneering food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim:

#nottryingthatagain "barely embryo" milk black tea from the "Go For Tea" bubble tea house in Markham, ON: http://flic.kr/p/7eK49c

Please don't get me wrong, the "Go for Tea" bubble tea house in Markham, Ontario (Unit 2-230 Commerce Valley Dr E) is a fine establishment.

Go for Tea Logo on Menu

Super Cool Wireless Device to Call Waitress
My judgment just happened to slip, when I let someone order me a "new experience" in bubble tea.

Barley Embryo Milk Black Tea $3.99

Barley Embryo Milk Black Tea with Tapioca Pearls Served

Unfortunately, the "Barley Embryo" milk black tea with pearls was not a new flavour experience.

Cereal-tasting Bits
Instead, it was a combination of old experiences that proved disconcerting. It was a mixture of weak tea, enriched with what tasted like whole milk, and cereal-tasting bits. Its texture reminded me of soggy cereal. Add to this softened tapioca pearls and you have something that I'd rather not try again.

The second, is bottled coffee, which I have read is popular in Japan. Loblaws and Loblaws Superstore even included a brand of canned coffee in its "Chinese New Year" sales last year. Having no experience with the specific brand, I opted against trying it. When I was in a Toronto T&T this summer, I changed my mind.

Nescafe Canned Coffee
After all, Nescafe is a trusted brand of instant coffee in North America. What came out of the can was precisely what I expected, cold instant coffee, with milk added. It was rather bitter and had me wondering why such products even have a market. There are times when convenience should not supersede quality. I only wonder when Starbucks will start marketing canned "VIA."

Lessons learned:

• Neither cereal nor coffee should come out of a can.
• Bubble tea should not taste of or like cereal.

Particulars:
Go for Tea
230 Commerce Valley Drive East, Thornhill
(905)886-0221

Picture this: It's Saturday evening. You've finished a day's worth of chores. Your better half is having a girls' night out and it's dinner time. There's no room in the fridge to fit even a pizza box, so ordering pizza is out. It's the weekend so that gourmet ready-made restaurant, Thyme and Again, is closed. As a rule, there are no frozen dinners in the freezer. What do you do?

Simple. Turn to an old stand-by: instant ramen noodles. Yessir! Yours truly, a self declared foodie who won't let frozen dinners take up any real estate in the freezer, keeps his pantry well stocked with at least 3 types of instant ramen. Two come from Chinatown. Both are imported from overseas. Anything else is "wild card" ramen: new brands or varieties that I find in the stores that peek my interest. This time around the wild card was a Thai ramen that was heavily marketed by Walmart during the Lunar New Year. Blasphemy? Hardly!

Instant ramen is a food that was invented to meet the age-old requirement to quickly prepare a starch base for a weekday meal. These dried then deep fried cakes of noodles are very versatile and can complement just about any meat, seafood, or vegetable. Case in point, that night, I paired a nice bowl of Japanese-style instant ramen in pork broth with stir fried snow pea leaves and pan-seared oyster mushrooms. I also added a side of stir fried baby cuttle fish. The dinner (save for the cuttle fish) took approximately 20 minutes from start to finish to prep, cook, assemble and serve.

Here's a breakdown:

• Pull some frozen baby cuttle fish from the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge.
• Wash and coarsely split some wonderful giant oyster mushrooms into bite sized pieces
• Separate and wash enough snow pea leaves to make up a vegetable serving
• Heat up some left over pork broth that was flavoured with ham
• Boil some water in a pot on medium heat and cook a pack of instant ramen
• Heat some oil in a wok at medium until it ripples and dump in the oyster mushrooms
• Season with salt and pepper and stir fry until the mushrooms take on some colour
• Evacuate the wok, add oil as needed, and toss in the snow pea leaves
• Season with salt and cook at medium heat until the leaves brighten and the stems soften
• Evacuate the wok, add oil as needed, and toss in the baby cuttle fish
• Season with salt and stir fry until the cuttle fish turn white and become slightly rigid.
• Plate up and dig in!

Giant Oyster Mushrooms

Before

After
The mushrooms came from a recent trip out to Markahm, Ontario. We purchased packs of both this variety and enoki mushrooms from a popular Asian supermarket chain, called "T&T". The price, $3.98 for 319 g before taxes.

Giant oyster mushrooms are flavourful and incredibly meaty. They take to heat extremely well and would make a great meat substitute.

I recently found this variety of mushrooms being sold at Loblaws. The price, $4.99 for 227 g before taxes.

Giant Oyster Mushrooms at Loblaws

Snow pea leaves

Snow Pea Leaves and Defrosted Baby Cuttle Fish
Snow pea leaves are a Chinese green that happen to be my better half's favourite. Their flavour is very bright and only slightly bitter. It is best cooked using high heat in a wok. This way, the leaves retain their crisp texture.

The snow pea leaves also came from a T&T in Markahm.

Snow Pea Leaves at T&T

Here are the completed dishes

Giant Oyster Mushrooms on a bed of snow pea leaves

Stirfried CuttleFish

My Bowl of Ramen
Because I also had some left over pork, I slivered it up, reheated it in a pan, and added it to my noodles.

Not bad for a lowly pack of instant ramen eh?