Food flings

Monday, February 25th, 2008
10:00am – 1:00pm
Fairmont Château Laurier - Drawing Room
1 Rideau Street, Ottawa
Free Admission for Savour Ottawa members*

Farmers and chefs meet to build business
relationships for the 2008 growing season.

* Non Savour Ottawa members are welcome to attend for a nominal fee of $20, see below for additional details…

Questions & Media
Questions: Contact Heather Hossie, Savour Ottawa, 613-236-9300 x305, heather@justfood.ca

Media: Contact Jantine Van Kregten, Ottawa Tourism, 613-237-6822 x116, media@ottawatourism.ca

This week I have an easy but delicious recipe to share. As we move towards “le temps des sucres” it is perhaps fitting to start using maple syrup in recipes…but I really don’t need much of an excuse to do that!! I love maple syrup and enjoy using it as a replacement for sugar in sweet recipes. Sometimes it also finds its way into savoury recipes, as witnessed in this recipe for an easy smoked salmon dish. I sort of eye-balled the amounts this time around, but I’ll transcribe it anyway since it is really easy.

For 4 people, you will need:

• 200g of smoked salmon (preferably Pacific or wild)
• Olive oil (a couple of tablespoons)
• 1 small onion
• 2 tablespoons of maple syrup
• 20cl of table cream or crème fraîche if you have any
• Approx. 400g of pasta, small size is best (penne, farfalle…I used casarecce which are nice because they have grooves that absorb the sauce)
• Salt and pepper

1. Chop onion and sauté in a tablespoon or 2 of olive oil over medium heat. Salt lightly to caramelise. When onion is transparent, add maple syrup and cook another minute or 2. Meanwhile chop smoked salmon. Add to onion and stir until salmon begins to cook (it will be take on a paler pink colour). Add cream and bring to boil. Reduce heat and cook 1 or 2 minutes until the cream thickens slightly. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.
2. Heat enough water for pasta. As pasta comes to a boil, add salt to water. Add pasta and cook as directed (do not overcook). Drain pasta (but don’t be afraid to keep some moisture on them, as this will only help the sauce…you can also reserve some of the cooking water before draining in case the sauce is too thick). Add pasta to sauce and toss. Heat through if needed. Serve immediately.

Dislaimer: What follow is not a restaurant critique by any means, just a few thoughts on a meal that I had lately in Wakefield.

Boy do I love duck. Even when I was a semi-vegetarian (pre-Europe), I still had a hard time passing up duck on a menu. Some people find the meat too gamey and strong, but I just can’t get enough of it. A few weeks ago I went to dinner at Chez Eric in Wakefield and had some duck, magret specifically. Chez Eric is a well-known mainstay of Wakefield and has always been quite well frequented. Since I have been away, the original owners sold the café and it has changed hands again recently. I am not aware of the exact details of all this, but I do know that there is a new chef behind the counter. Because I didn’t think I was going to write about this I cannot exactly remember the vegetables that accompanied my meal, but I do remember the magret, and it was very good. I thoroughly enjoyed the slices of meat with the little layer of fat, slightly crispy. Yum!

The cooking at Chez Eric was usually quite good (although sometimes a bit variable)…they often had local meats and game on the menu which was always interesting. I heard that this chef has some experience in a few of the better restaurants in Ottawa so this could bode well for the place…hopefully the prices won’t go up too much though as the restaurant is in a rustic setting and does not really give off the vibe of a top-flight place. Good quality slightly creative dishes would be the path to take I feel. A suivre…

I’ve been back in Canada for a little while…I guess it’s actually 4 weeks exactly. It seems simultaneously “like yesterday” and like a long time ago… I guess this partly because I spent a good 1/2 of that time just doing almost nothing…between a strange mixture of acclimatization and dealing with aftershocks of some of the more stressful parts of my little voyage.

Now that I am more or less back in earnest, I am starting to revisit some old food haunts and prospect newer ones. Today as I was downtown, I dropped by the Cheese House and la Bottega (Nicastro’s)…I wanted to check out the cheese selection at the Cheese House having become a bit more knowledgeable about cheeses this last time. Not bad at all…I picked up some Morbier that didn’t appear too expensive as far as imported cheese goes.

Next stop was la Bottega. I perused the pasta aisle to see if there were any new items there. I ended up buying just a few basics like Italian canned tomatoes and passata. I also got a block of fresh yeast for the next time I make pizza or other baked goods, some mozzarella di buffala (which I have never bought in North America so we’ll see if it’s worth the price…) and a Chinotto for the road.

My promise to write more has not been totally fulfilled, but in my defense, I have been away most weekends until this one AND I am taking a trans-Atlantic flight next Friday to go back to Canada after almost 8 months away…my plate is pretty full (and not all of what’s on it is yummy despite the avowed theme of this blog).

I thought I would just write to give a bit of an update on where I am at with my departure. Things are pretty good. I am feeling quite tired. Ready to go though (if not stuff-wise, at least, mentally). I have had enough of some of the things I am living here and am looking forward to being among familiar faces…and resting.

Last week I was able to go to Turin and visit with some Italian friends, which was great. I have said goodbye to quite a few people and had my colleagues over for a bit of a party. Despite the ups and downs, and some difficult situations, I am sad to leave these people who did make room for me, if even for a while. Yet at the same, the mass confusion/vagueness related to my entire work experience once again reared it’s ugly head this week, and leaves me once again profundly disappointed in some people’s lack of understanding and sensitivity. I need to be in a quiet space to be able to digest the rest, but I do know that I have learnt alot and will be able to leave with positive elements.

A bientôt! From Canada, next time…

1. In the last 2 years, I have lived for a minimum of 2 weeks in 8 different houses (or apartments). Before that, I stayed in the same apartment for almost 5 years.
2. In a similar vein, by the age of 7 I had moved to 3 Canadian cities (Montreal, Calgary and Ottawa) and one Belgian village (Elouges). Hmmm…are we starting to see a pattern here?!
3. I used to enjoy recording myself as a child and create “radio shows” complete with interviews, music and other special features. Some of these tapes still exist somewhere in my parents house I believe.
4. I too have fantasized about being a rockstar: lead singer and guitar. I would love to feel the rush of playing in front of an audience cheering for me.
5. My interest in food is pretty deeply rooted: when I was 9 or 10, during a particulary rainy summer (lots of humidity and thunderstorms), I organized a baking contest for my other neighborhood friends. I even distributed flyers or something to invite people on the street. Only our friends came, but we actually had my mom and my friend’s aunt judge the “entries”…I think I made sponge cake and Max (only 5 or 6) made fruit salad!!
6. I am not allergic to anything (that I know of, anyway).
7. I once went more than 10 years without throwing up (sorry this is a bit of a gross one!).

And there you go!!

It’s true, despite some ups and downs, there are some definite advantages to living in France and having good connections with the Slow Food community. One of them is being frequently invited to gastronomic events here and there. Yesterday, I drove all the way to Toulon to attend a little wine tasting/lunch with the Provence Méditerranée Convivium. The occasion was the visit of the leaders of the Russian River Convivium (California). They brought some bottles of Zinfandel from their area, and we tasted these together with Primitivo from the Puglia region in Italy. Both these wines come from the same grape, which is what made this exercise interesting. We also sampled a few other wines, including a wine from our hosts for the day, the Dupéré-Barrera. I am not enough of an expert to discuss these wines intelligently, so I won’t!! Suffice to say, it was an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday, despite having to contemplate a 2 hour drive back (after all this sampling).

Next tasty event: End of this week, in Tours, for the IEHCA Forum.

“These utterances, such as im, hum, ah, er, mm and their repetitions signify the ongoing hesitation, silence. They also communicate the anxiety level of the speaker.”

Ok, so I don’t know if I can say I’ve been consumed with anxiety about writing for this blog…but I am admitting that this silence has been prolonged unduly by hesitations of all kinds… For instance in the last week or so, ever since my dear friend Cristina has “tagged” (read, “taunted”!!) me, I’ve been signing into the blog, contemplating the “new post” I am going to write, and just as quickly signing out and putting it off. There are a few reasons for this:

1. It’s actually quite difficult to break such a lengthy silence…think of when you have not spoken to a friend in some time, you can’t reconnect all guns a-blazing…you have to start slow, take the time to exchange some banal news to start with, then perhaps graduate to deeper content.
2. I think my readership (if readership there ever was to start with!), has declined, and perhaps, disappeared altogether!! I started wondering about an elaborate wooing scheme which went far beyond blurting out 7 facts about me. That seemed like a daunting task.
3. I couldn’t think of 7 things that were interesting or unknown about me…!!

Then I realised I just had to take the leap…and see what came of it. So I am going to try it…write a bit more frequently. About food mostly, as the blog suggests, but maybe about other things too. Next post: my 7 facts!!

Learning to navigate between expectations and reality is a lesson I am constantly confronted with. I have tended to be disappointed easily in friends, in situations, in outcomes…I really wanted things to go a certain way, and when they didn’t (or don’t!), I feel badly. I don’t think this is a special characteristic of mine, but what I do know is that living abroad is teaching me every day how to live with the unexpected, and how to manage my expectations. Case in point, a few things that happened yesterday:

- I bought little organza blinds on sale at Casa (a pretty cheap deco store kind of like Pier Imports) thinking of my front windows that give onto a little place that is quite frequented, hence my desire to have a bit of privacy! They turned out too wide for those windows, and I knew I couldn’t return them. I wondered if I could still use them on the narrow windows (I now realise all my windows are about that width), but the wooden rod makes the windows difficult to open and close when the blinds are attached. Finally, I discovered that they do fit on the glass doors of the living room/guest room, so I was able to use them after all…!!

- I have no sandals with me here and it’s starting to get quite hot. The “soldes” started in my department (04) this week and so I went to Manosque to see if there was anything interesting. I was thinking of buying just flip flops to start (for the beach, as indoor shoes, etc…). I went to a sport shop and none were on sale. I went to another one that advertised “thong sale”, tried a few and settled on a pair of black ones with a brasilian flag…only to discover later that they were rip-offs of the Havaianas brand and only cost 4 euros less!! Not such a great sale after all! I felt cheated (although I don’t really care about the brand in itself, it’s more the principal!), only to think it over and decide that the point is to have flip flops I can use…

- Last, but certainly not least, my car totally broke down on me yesterday. It all went very fast, but I did manage to notice some smelly white smoke coming from the front of the car (I think)…as I tried to pull into a parking space the car coughed and just expired…I was unable to make it start again. The flip side? I was back in Forcalquier from my shopping trip, not in the middle of some country road. I eventually was able to get help from strangers to push the car into a space until I can deal with it on Monday…Phew!