Apparently, January 29th is National Corn Chip Day in the United States, a day that celebrates the American almost addiction for corn chips. It comes with a challenge to eat corn chips for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

To mark the occasion, Scott Kleinberg of Chicago's free newspaper RedEye went looking for and found 18 of what he calls "Strangest Corn Chips from Around the World." Images of his choices were made into a slide show that is gathering a following on digg.com.

Among his chosen corn chips are 10 varieties of Doritos. 16 are manufactured by FritoLay. Two, from corn chips originator Fritos.

The 15th entry in the slide show is Doritos' Scream Cheese, whose caption reads, "I'm assuming this is spicy cream cheese flavor." It is actually a Canadian one. In fact, its name originated in a user-generated marketing contest to find a marketing "guru."

I came across the unnamed chips one work day during lunch. Curiosity got the better of my palate and I purchased a bag.

Unnamed Flavour of Doritos' Corn Chips

Ingredients

Corn Chips
Ordinarily, I avoid Doritos' corn chips since the flavouring powder contains either an artificial cheese compound or a preservative that makes me cough. Attempting to become Doritos' new marketing guru, I came up with "Fieri Cheese" and based my proposed marketing campaign on one of the Food Network's most annoying personalities, Guy Fieri. It made sense, the chips tasted rather artificial like the Doritos I have tried before. Only, this flavour had bite. I envisioned a series of commercials where Fieri goes around saying "Got Fieri", pops a chip, and breathes fire, setting various objects and national monuments ablaze. Happily, I never found time to submit the idea.

Instead, a much more deserving Montrealer named Ryan Coopersmith was chosen guru. Here was his entry:


Anyhow, I have partaken of several cream cheese-based dips, spiked with a chili puree. Each tasted far better than Scream Cheese from Doritos. Each was served with plain corn tortilla chips, two made from corn (not flour) tortillas.

If you plan to celebrate corn chip day next year, I encourage you to make your own from corn tortillas and whip up a nice salsa to accompany them. Better yet, homemade nachos (beef or chicken) with freshly grated cheese is always a crowd pleaser.

What can I say? I am rather fond of The Piggy Market (400 Winston Avenue, just off of Richmond Road) in Westboro. Jenn and I visit the high-end foodie-shop often. Yes, there are closer by storefronts in the Wellington West neighbourhood that sell some comparable goods. Saslove's (1333 Wellington Street) sells freshly made sausages. The Ottawa Bagel Shop (1321 Wellington Street) sells Art is In Bread and raw milk cheeses. Il Negozio Nicastro (1355 Wellington Street) sells in-house made terrines, patés, and duck confit. Thyme & Again (1255 Wellington Street) sells Pascale's now legendary ice cream (for a dollar more). However, we've not developed the same relationship with these shops as we have with the owners and staff of The Piggy Market. Dave, Pascale, and Kate are wonderfully warm people, fun to chat with, and always generous with serving suggestions.

Though, even with The Piggy Market's storefront just a neighbourhood away, we always spend some time at its stall at Lansdowne Farmers' market. Why? Sometimes pricey, The Piggy Market sells nothing short of local foodie goodness.

Every week, Dave and Kate whip up special dishes with ingredients from The Piggy Market's local suppliers to supplement their regular line of products. The specials vary seasonally, so check back to the "Specials" section on its newly re-designed website often. Most weeks however, you will find classic charcuterie in the refrigerated glass display case.

Spring
Earlier this past spring, we picked up some chicken liver paté and pork terrine.

Chicken Liver Pate and Pork Terrine
The paté is milder in flavour than anything you will find at the supermarket and more refined in texture. The terrine, baked wrapped in bacon rashers, is often sold to customers as "meat loaf."

We also found goat milk feta that afternoon nestled amongst the cartons of locally-raised free-range Bekings eggs in the opposite case, beside the cash and till.

Goat Feta
More dense than traditional cow's milk feta, stronger tasting, and sharper, I like pairing slices of it with slices of terrine.


Paired Goat Feta with a Slice of Pork Terrine
Served on Jewish whole-grain rye crisp bread (unleavened bread, sold in the same aisle in the supermarket as Melba toast) and paired with a tossed salad, you've a lovely lunch or a hearty mid-afternoon snack. The brand I usually buy is Ryvita.

Incidentally, the paté and sliced terrine go equally well with the grainy crisp bread by themselves.

Pate on Rye Crisp Bread

Terrine on Rye Crisp Bread
Picking up several inches of each, some local cheese, and a grainy mustard makes a great appetizer plate for your next dinner party.

That spring also saw us take The Piggy Market rotisserie chicken to family potlucks and a picnic.

The Piggy Market Rotisserie Chicken

Honey Mustard Rotisserie Chicken at a Family Potluck
Unbelievably juicy and flavourful, it always disappears at potlucks faster than I can take a picture.

Summer
The Piggy Market is revered for Dave's in-house-made sausages, using locally-reared heritage pork. Dave even teaches sausage-making at the Urban Element (424 Parkdale Avenue). Me, I purchased his sausages for the grill.

Piggy Market Chorizo

Piggy Market Hot Italian

In the summer time, The Piggy Market also sells produce on select weekdays. We found them selling freshly picked Chinese broccoli (Gai Lan) one Monday.

Gai Lan from Jambican Studio Gardens

Gai Lan
Fresh from field to plate, we thought the gai lan picked too old. Chinese cuisine prizes gai lan for its stems as much as its leaves. As such, it needs to be picked young. What we purchased, while fresh, was very fibrous and tough.

Fall
For an autumnal treat, carefully layer sliced game terrine (this one pheasant and wild boar), sliced ripe Niagara peaches, and some of The Piggy Market's goat feta onto toasted rye bread.

Bread overlayed with sliced terrine, feta, and peaches

Neighbourhood Sandwich

Served
Like we did for Food Day Canada, this sandwich is sourced from within the neighbourhood, making it a neighbourhood sandwich. The peaches were sourced from the Parkdale Market. The terrine, Il Negozio Nicastro and the bread, the Ottawa Bagel Shop. Though, the rye bread was actually baked at the Rideau Bakery downtown. The fruity sweetness of the peaches provides a great counter point to the savory terrine and sharp feta. It was delicious.

This fall, Dave started baking Jamaican Patties. They made great edible carry-ons when I flew to North Vancouver in August.

Jamaican Patties
More on these wondrous savoury pastries will appear in another post, entitled "Snacks on a Plane."

Winter
Most recently, Jenn picked up some "head cheese" (aka: brawn) for me, essentially meat jelly that is served either cold or room-temperature. Traditional European head cheese is made with long simmered bits of meat, skin, cartilage, and tongue, each picked from the head of a pig. It is not cheese per se, but a jellied product, set using gelatin rendered from simmering the head, sometimes with added trotters.

Dave's Head Cheese
Dave's head cheese includes bits of pickled cucumber, which I feel it can do without. According to wikipedia.net, this addition make Dave's Head Cheese more German in tradition. I served it chilled and sliced with whole grain crackers.

Over the past year, Jenn and I have purchased many cartons of Pascale's Ice Cream. Dave's in-house hot smoked duck breast has graced our dinner table. The Piggy Market's locally sourced Pinge prosciutto was served as an appetizer for Christmas dinner. Its stock of vinegars, most recently a Maple Vinegar from Cabane du Pic Bois, made excellent gifts.

Good luck on the coming year Dave, Pascale and Kate. We'll be in to check on you soon.

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

Earlier this week, the blogging team behind foodiePrints contacted the people behind the community website, Ottawa Tonite, to answer its call for volunteer bloggers. Having very little insight into local theater (usually turn to Evan Thornton's Wellington Oracle), visual art, film, or even comedy, we offered blogs on food in Canada's capital. The powers that be accepted and we saw our first discussion piece on the recent controversy surrounding Top 10 lists of Ottawa's restaurants appear last Thursday.

Here is a screen capture for posterity:

What's In a List

Recently launched, Ottawa Tonite answers the growing need in Ottawa for an online source of information on local art and entertainment. It was conceptualized at the bar of Chez Lucien, a locals' burger joint, one evening by Sue Murphy and Cheryl Gain. According to Murphy's recent blog entry, "How to build a community website", after they finished their dinner, they scoured the web for that evening's live performances, Murphy on an Iphone and Gain on her web-enabled cellphone. Finding no online source for information, they decided to make one. Gain's vision: "Create a community space where local artists can talk about what?s really going on behind the scenes of their craft and bring a glimpse of their lives to their audiences."

Shortly after Ottawa Tonite's launched, I pitched the idea of contributing material to Ottawa Tonite to foodiePrint's editor, my better half Jenn. When we got the go ahead from Ottawa Tonite's staff, we sifted through our collection of "to post" material for foodiePrints. We settled on something that would allow just about all of the fine dining restaurants in Ottawa to be listed. Jenn and I are very proud of how much Ottawa's restaurant industry has developed in recent years, offering a variety of choices to diners, and we hope it continues to grow.

That said, check back to Ottawa Tonite every so often, you may find a foodiePrint or two.

Cheers to Cheryl Gain, Sue Murphy, Rob Dupuis, Dave Samojlenko, Patrick Denny, and Mike Thompson for putting Ottawa Tonite together. Thank-you for letting us contribute!

Those of you who know me know that I am a proud Canadian and I fervently believe in supporting local businesses, especially locally owned restaurants. It is one of the reasons I live in an area of Ottawa that has one of the highest concentrations of locally-owned eateries and fine food stores outside of downtown Ottawa, the Wellington Village.

Imagine my glee when I had the task of putting together a Canadian Care Package to send to Texas. I literally had an overabundance of ideas to balance against shipping restrictions. Heavier and larger packages become increasingly difficult to ship. To solve the dilemma, I first consulted the Internet to see what foods are common up north, but less so down south. On J.J's Complete Guide to Canada, I found a "Foods of Canada" list. The list includes everything from nanaimo bars to butter tarts (something I thought was British in origin), Beaver tails, Poutine, ketchup chips, and several chocolate bars. I was rather surprised to find that Coffee Crisp, Aero, Big Turk and Smarties are rather Canadian. After selecting two items from that list, I decided that I had to include coffee from my favourite local purveyor of Fair Trade brew, Bridgehead.

The rest of the package I promised myself would come from outdoor markets, preferably local farmers' markets and absolutely local producers. Here is the what I ended up putting together:

One Canadian Care Package
Top row:

• Dark Maple Syrup from the Byward Market
• Apple Jelly from the Marche Vieux Hull
• Ketchup chips
• Whole bean Columbian from Bridgehead

Middle rows:

• Cherry Blossoms
• Red Deer Pepperettes from the Marche Vieux Hull

Bottom row:

• Maple syrup candies from the Byward Market
• A fall picture of Ottawa's Parliament Buildings from the Collected Works Bookstore, an independent bookstore

I originally wanted to include some locally produced honey, but realized that Texan bees can easily produce comparable wild flower honey. Though, they arguably have different plant blossoms to feast on.

Aside: Speaking of the Marche Vieux Hull, when I went wandering that Thursday on rue Laval for care package fodder, I happened to come back with an apple pie from the Verger Lacroix Cider House.

Old-Fashioned Apple Pie
The label actually reads "Grandma's Pies."

Here's what it looks like unboxed:

Not your ordinary boxed pie
Unboxed, the crust smelled distinctly of butter and was brushed with an egg wash. Though, it also flaked as if the crust were made with shortening.

Here's a slice:

Sliced, served
What are my characteristics of a good boxed pie? Cooked apples, non-soggy bottom pie crust, flaky strata in the top crust, egg wash to colour. This pie met all the requirements. Best of all, the apples tasted incredibly fresh.

How can you serve a slice of great apple pie better?

A la mode
Top it with rich ice cream from Pascale's. The ice cream of choice, dulce de leche, to add just a bit more caramel flavours.

Over the weekend, I had some words with Chris Kimball on Twitter. For those unfamiliar, Kimball is the founder of Cook's Illustrated and host of the popular America's Test Kitchen, which airs syndicated on American Public Broadcasting Stations (PBS).

Most recently, Kimball is becoming known for writing an opinion editorial (op ed) for the New York Times, in which he took what amounts to those of us enthusiastic about food on the World Wide Web (WWW) to task for the fall of the Gourmet magazine. It was published October 8, 2009, several days after Gourmet's former editor Ruth Reichl cleaned out her desk.

Like Ryan Tate of gawker.com, I found Kimball's piece rather opportunistic. And, I think Tate describes best our shared sentiment in the following excerpt from his "The Trolling Cook" piece:

...a wrongheaded and nakedly self-serving New York Times op-ed about how much internet recipes suck, and how the web's terrible food writing basically killed Gourmet magazine. Where can you turn for quality recipes? Cook's Illustrated, naturally.

Source: Valleywag, Gawker.com

Further, my thoughts on Gourmet's "shuttering" closely align with another gawker.com writer, Hamilton Nolan. In another gem piece, "Gourmet's Dead. Don't Blame The Internet", Nolan writes

The internet loves experts. And it loves thoughtful, considered editorial...The democratic aspect of the internet...is not one that means that every opinion is equal; it just means that every opinion can be equally heard. The good stuff can still rise to the top. Conde Nast (Gourmet's former publisher) is not currently in a budget crisis because of an imaginary virtual "ship of fools" that smashed up the noble magazine industry like drunk savage hordes rampaging across an enlightened village. Conde Nast's problems stem from the fact that its entire business model was based on a sort of quasi-monopolistic sham sold to advertisers?a model that's now crumbling.

Source: Gawker.com

Imperceptibly, Kimball would later challenge the WWW on his blog to a recipe dual, pitting his test kitchen against a "wiki-style" recipe developer. The boys and girls at Foodista accepted the challenge.

Me, I see far too many parallels between Kimball's challenge and the software world, the realm of my professional career. The same battle is being raged right now between incorporated software companies like Microsoft (and its competitor Apple) and open source developers who produce such software as the Linux operating system.

Kimball believes his professional test kitchen hires can and will produce better recipes than anything that can be "crowd sourced", to borrow a Web 2.0 term. However, while I have thrown my support behind Foodista in the same way I support open source software, I think Kimball is completely missing the point.

Happily, while a partial version of a blog entry explaining my position sat in draft format, a chef I greatly respect (Jonas Luster aka: @wildhunt), posted his own with similar thoughts on his site, Chez Geek. As I originally intended, Chef Luster waded into the growing skirmish, "taking Chris Kimball by his word?." His entry is such a great read that I found myself re-drafting and finishing my blog entry in a comment on Chez Geek. The comment follows:

I recently tweeted to Chris Kimball via @foodista, who accepted the challenge, that Kimball is completely missing the point. In it, I added, "IMO learning how to cook is a question of tinkering and breaking free of recipes."

It's not the recipes that I keep going back to Cook's Illustrated for. It's the stuff around the recipes I find so much more valuable: the diagrams about how to truss a bird or roast, the explanations about what attempts with which ingredients produced different flavours, the tips about why adjusting temperature during baking produced better textures etc. It's the same reason I am an avid fan of Alton Brown's "Good Eats" and his books.

However, I also turned to Gourmet, but for vastly different reasons. Like Kimball's somewhat self servicing op-ed piece, I believe the demise of Gourmet has to do with poor management at Conde Nast and it misjudging the state of its audience.

I enjoyed Gourmet because Ruth Reichl and her crew published innovative dishes and photographed how they could be plated. Many complaints about Gourmet, post mortem, involve its former recipes and/or pieces employing ingredients that are difficult to find or prohibitively expensive. And, the recipes were equally difficult to attempt and often prone to failure.

I think people simply lost the ability to appreciate Gourmet because they've forgotten how to cook. Quite frankly, I'm no better. There are a little over a hundred posts involving recipes on my own blog.

Cooking is a dying art whose death is hastened by "paint by number" recipes. With people having too little time to devote to developing techniques or finding out why a recipe works, because we simply don't have time to fail at making a dish anymore, everyone looks to recipes. Recipes in turn have become very granular and reflect this increasing loss of skill and understanding. Hence, why Kimball believes and perhaps rightly that his recipes are of higher quality than his contemporaries. His come from a professional test kitchen, staffed with trained cooks/chefs. His are somewhat fool proof.

When Kimball replied to me, he tweeted "Are recipes that much of a burden? I cook from recipes!!!" I replied " u r not just cooking from recipes, u r cooking w/decades of experience, both yours and those of ur test kitchen." He responded "That would be, I think, the whole point!"

Damn right! Yes Kimball's recipes reflect the expertise he and his staff have developed over decades, but the recipes themselves do not pass on this expertise. Kimball cooks with experience that was gathered from a lifetime in a kitchen. We don't. While we may use his recipes and produce great results, we gain nothing if we don't read the "stuff" he publishes around his recipes.

There is a reason that cooking by taste isn't heard of much anymore. There is a reason that Michael Ruhlman, author of Ratio, thinks foodies are masturbating deviants who "get off" on FoodTV. We barely cook anymore.

Is there a solution? What is written in the blog above. Crowd source and share expertise from learning how to cook again. Post insightful recipes that are more than just instructions. And most importantly, go play in the kitchen.

Source: Chez Geek

That's my two cents on the matter of Kimble vs. the WWW. If you will excuse me, I am shutting down my Ubuntu-powered laptop and am off to play in the kitchen.

A transcript of my encounter with Chris Kimball follows...

More after the jump...