Snow & Beets

I spent pretty much the whole weekend in my snowsuit. The Rideau Canal opened to skaters for the first time this winter (yipee!!!). It was terribly late freezing this year. All this talk about global warming has me feeling like I should go out and plant trees or something. The canal was packed yesterday. I got a full-body check by a woman skating from the opposite direction. And only one section of the canal was open – the ice on the rest of the canal is apparently not safe enough to support skaters. Though part of me wonders if that’s the NCC litigation lawyers speaking more than the ones who look after the ice. The day before yesterday I was up in Gatineau Park on a snowshoeing nature walk. We saw tracks for snowshoe hares, squirrels and field mice. I went with my friend Kate and a friend visiting form Australia, Paul. They met when Kate was living at a hostel in Scotland. It was Paul’s first time in snow so that was funny to watch. (It was also funny to hear him talk eg) "I feel rather roley poley in this winter jacket".)
Anyway, we got to talking about lunch after snowshoeing. And that’s when I found out that a gastronomical oddity in Australia are egg and beetroot sandwiches. Paul didn’t know how the got into the Australian culinary diet. But if he’s an measure of Australian tastes, slapping fried egg between two pieces of bread is something enjoyed Down Under. We ended up having lunch at the burger restaurant, The Works. (BTW, it serves an Austrailian burger topped with a fried egg and beetroot). Paul didn’t order that. But he did get a burger with a fried egg on top. I should google fried egg and beetroot to find out how the union between beets and egg began.
Though I have to say it doesn’t beat my friend Shrimp’s preferred sandwiches: peanut butter and bacon. That just sounds weird.

Yeast Commitment

This week at work we interviewed a guy big on fermentation in. Kevin Mathieson is the baker at Art-Is-In Bakery and he came in to talk about his sour dough starter. If I understand starters properly, they’re a medium to promote wild fermentation of yeast. You mix together some flour, water and a little salt or sugar and then let the lump of dough "capture" wild bacteria in the air. The starter ferments and then you use scoop out a few spoonfuls everytime you make bread. The baker we spoke with talked on-air about how using starter makes bread more flavourful – adds a tang to breads (And his baguettes are definately delicious).
Starters are fascinating to me because of the commitment they require. They’re divas. You must feed it flour each day (some bakers up to three times a day) at the same time each day. The water you feed it should always be at the same tempture. They also need cleaniness. You’re supposed to use clean, clean utensils when feeding it. I haven’t read Kitchen Confidential (it’s on my reading list) but apparently Anthony Bourdain writes about a baker in New York who goes on heroin benders for the weekend but still has the presence of mind to phone other chefs in the city and tell them to "Feed the Beast".
Then I learned that Stu at work has had a starter going for the past eleven years. He told me this as he was about to bite into his vegan tofu sandwich. I got to try some of his bread. Stu offered to share with me a bit of his starter. My immediate thought was oh god, that’s too much responsibility for me. And that was pretty revealing. It got me thinking about the responsibilities in my life, and I realized there are not that many. I rent. I car-share rather than own. I think my relationship with my goldfish has been the biggest level of commitment I’ve had to anything. Funny how a sourdough starter can get you thinking about whether you are where you want to be in your life. It’s kind of like when a friend tells you he or she has just bought a house and you start measuring in your head whether you should also be house-hunting.

Soup Bones

I'm back in Ottawa and have taken a few weeks to settle back. It's been busy. I've joined the Kanata Symphony Orchestra (hiding out at the back of the second violins in hopes). I haven't played in an orchestra for over ten years so I'm spending a lot of time practising. Also, I've become addicted to knitting. All of this in addition to the cooking and baking is making me feel that I'm way too domestic. I need to start watching NFL football or something.
Went grocery shopping recently at the Hartman's on Bank and Somerset. I may have said this before, but they have one of the best grocery store meat sections. Not to be blunt, but's often stocked with animal parts that I can't find anywhere else. Chicken livers, beef tongue, tripe, pork kidneys... a lot of internal organs as well as rare cuts of meat. The other day I came across a whole pile of soup bones, which made my day. I was honestly giddy. It's hard to find soup bones at a major grocery store. Even more rare to find my favourite kind of soup bones: pork. I loaded up my shoppping cart. I think I have enough to make soup for the whole winter.

Seattle Final Day

There are certain days where I think I should give my parents more credit than I actually do. Take our last morning in Seattle, for example. We decided to have breakfast somewhere downtown, go for a walk in Pike Place Market and then back to the hotel for check-out. I chose a restaurant named Le Pichet because it was located downtown and the newspaper Seattle Weekly described it as having all-day breakfast.
The restaurant is very cute on the outside. It has the look of a small French cafe. That look continues on the inside. It’s a long and lean space so one half of the restaurant is devoted to a long, dark-wood bar. The other half is devoted to a row of table and chairs. A long, rectangular mirror hangs horizontally against one wall. The place reminds me of the diners my cousin and I ate breakfast in when we were in Spain a few years back.
But the place wasn’t my parents scene. First, the crowd was not just WASPy, but it was tweed-jacket, string-of-pearls WASPy. Second, most menu items were written in French with itsy-bitsy English translation below, making it more difficult for the parents to read the menu. Third, there were only two items on the menu that could be considered breakfast items. One was a homemade yogurt with walnut and honey. The other was two eggs with ham and cheese. Both items cost double what my parents pay at their usually breakfast haunts. The rest of the menu was filled with pate and charcuterie. My parents seemed a bit confused.
I wanted to slide down under the table. I usually don’t hear the end of it when I make a bad restaurant recommendation. This French cafe will certain be mentioned at meals-yet-to-come. "You want us to try ordering the special salt pork ribs?" Mom will say at while we’re out for Cantonese food out night, "No, we’re not going to try the salt pork ribs. Remember the time you took us to that place where they charged us eleven bucks for ham and eggs? We’re not going by your recommedations anymore."
But a funny thing happened as I began my slide under the table. Dad took a sip of his coffee, paused for a moment, and said it was not bad. No ranting about sully waitress. No complaints about the lack of waffles on the menu.
Then our breakfasts came. And that’s when Dad surprised me again. Dad and Mom both ordered the ham and eggs. Their meal was brought in a porcelain bake dish. The ham lined the bottom of the dish, then two eggs were cracked in and topped with gruyere chese. The whole dish was then put in the oven. Halfway through the meal, Dad said that he liked the dish (especially the cheese) and noted how the ingredients used seemed to be of a better quality than the Pancake Coral from yesterday. He then added that it was good to try a restaurant that’s a bit different from the usuals.
I think my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe all of this was coming from a man who believes no place in Vancouver can do breakfast better than Whitespot.
I think I know my parents. When choosing a film to watch, I know they’ll go for action-adventure movies. They’ll fall asleep in anything else. If I purchase music, Dad will love Nat King Cole or the Andrew Sisters and Mom will love anything baroque. They won’t play any music produced after 1958. But my parents’ thumb-up for Le Pichet makes me think that I my sense of their tastes could be all wrong. What if I’ve been making safe recommendations for them, knowing they’ll like them, but never really testing their likes and dislikes with broader options? If a person’s world is supposed to get smaller as they age (which is what’s happen with Mom and Dad), should I be doing more to pry it wider?
Mom and Dad both polished off their eggs as well a three quarters of a baguette.
I got the yogurt for breakfast. My homemade yogurt came in a small porcelain cup with a walnut plopped in the middle and a drizzle of honey over everything. It was light. I liked how the consistency was thinner than store-bought yogurt. The walnut and honey were nice touches.
After settling our tab, we walked down to the market to look for the singing seafood packers before hitting Interstate 5 back to Vancouver.

Seattle Day Three

Found the best place in Bellevue for breakfast before we left the suburbs for Seattle proper. Ended up at a restaurant off of Bellevue Way called the Pancake Corral (a woman at a coffee shop raved about it to us after we had spent half an hour looking for breakfast in downtown Bellevue). The Pancake Corral is a tiny restaurant that’s been around for years. The parking lot was packed when we got there. The waiting area inside the restaurant was no better. But we got to watch people cook at the grill while we waited for a table. The grill area was tiny! (You can see it behind the maple syrup dispenser). About the same size as the galley kitchen in my apartment. The Pancake Coral servers pretty simply and hearty breakfast fare. The special when we were there was two eggs and corned beef hash. The decor in the restaurant reminded me of an aged Hollywood starlet from the 50s. Photos covered the walls -- everything from black and white photos of the 50s to character sketches to ribbsons. And a chandelier wagon wheel dangled from the ceiling. Breakfast came quickly after we ordered to a very alert and perky waitress. The corned beef hash was a little salty for my taste, but it was stick-to-the-ribs food. Dad was disappointed by his strawberry waffles and whipped crea. Thought the waffles were too hard – he wanted crispy on the outside, a nice, soft middle inside. I think the appeal of this restaurant has as much to do with the packed ambiance as the cheap eats.
After breakfast we motored over to downtown Seattle. Our hotel is just a few blocks away from the Space Needle. (Close to Pinky the Elephant as seen above, which prevented us from getting lost on more than one occasion.) Spent the afternoon driving around the city, and toured Chinatown. Also strolled through some of the downtown area. Seattle seems to have more old wealth to it than Vancouver. And the downtown area has buildings with much more history and character.
Dinner ended up being at a little burger joint named Dick’s. They serve hamburgers, fries, soda and that’s about it. They have a few dessert items and I think ice cream... but it’s mainly a burger shack. There are apparently a chain of them in Seattle. I like their soda cups.

Seattle Day Two

This is what American suburbia looks like at the dinner time. My parents and I ended up having supper at a Chili’s restaurant in Bellevue on Day Two of our trip. We wanted to eat something quick before sitting down to the new James Bond film and the restaurant is near the multiplex. It’s in one of those long box-store strip malls that stretch on for blocks and blocks. This strip mall came complete with a grocery store (Quality Food Center), a Barnes and Nobles book store, a Michael’s craft store and an Old Navy clothes outlet. My parents were in awe of it all. There aren’t any box store strip malls in North Vancouver. The excitment spilled over to the idea of eating at a Chili’s.
But they were less impressed once we actually stepped foot inside the restaurant. They didn’t expect the blaring early 90s music (Dad’s hearing is starting to go so he spent half the meal going "What?"). When we opened the menu’s at our table, the menus were caked with crud from past dinners. I think I had some sort of cheese-byproduct binding my pages together. Our server was earnest but definately overworked. He looked stressed and rushed through welcoming us to the restaurant. He also dropped the napkins and forks in the middle of the table for us to sort out. And none of us were sure if our noses were playing tricks on us, but we all noticed a faint urine smell wafting through the restaurant.
So by the time our meal came, our expectations were pretty low. Which may explain why all of us were surprised by the fact that our dinners tasted okay. Mom and Dad both got the Guiltless Grilled Chicken. The chicken breast came with steamed veggies, rice pilaf and a whole cob of corn. It was a lot of food. The chicken breast was the pre-seasoned, frozen variety, but moist. The steamed broccoli, peppers and carrots were quite fresh looking. Dad loved how the corn came pre-buttered. I had the Guiltless Pita – chicken strips with lettuce, cheese and a side of black bean sauce. It was all right. A bit messy to eat because the filling kept falling out of the pita and the sauce kept falling out of the bread and onto my hands. It was definately a three napkin dinner. The best part is no one got food poisoning as Dad had predicted during the meal. And the movie was good as well (my parents have a pretty simple rating system for films. If they fall asleep... it’s bad. If they stay awake... it’s good.) They stayed awake for the whole thing.

Seattle Day One

My parents and I decided to go on a road trip to mix things up a bit. We chose Seattle – which at a distance of about three hours away (plus or minus time waiting to cross the border) is a decent stretch for a road trip. This was our second trip down to Seattle – we went once last year – so we decided to stay a little east of the city centre in the neighbouring city of Bellevue. I really like Seattle. It’s the one American city I’ve been to that feels like a Canadian city. I don’t know how to explain that.
Anyway, after a three hour drive, we landed at the The Coast Hotel in Bellevue, just outside of Seattle. I thought Bellevue would be a good place for us to stay one night because my parents are big fans of surburbia and Bellevue definately has that feel. It’s downtown includes a Macy’s, a Nordstrom’s a giant Crate and Barrel as well as a couple of multiplex cinemas. After checking in, we decided to have lunch. The hotel clerk recommended a Japanese restaurant to us (Dad loves traditional Japanese food... I should have added that to the list of places he’s willing to go). The restaurant she recommended is called I Love Sushi and it’s tucked inside a dingy strip mall. It doesn’t look that stellar from the outside. But the place was packed with people. When we stepped inside, we saw on the left a sushi bar with three chefs slicing and dicing the seafood. Dad noted that they were actual Japanese sushi chefs. He gets suspicious when Chinese sushi chefs are behind the sushi counter. Dad likes his sushi authentic.
We were seated after waiting fifteen minutes. Dad flipped straight to the sashimi section of the menu. Mom, not being a terribly big fan of raw fish, started reading up on udon noodle soup. I also wanted something other than maki rolls and sashimi so I prowled the menu for other options. The I Love Sushi restaurant could also be called the I Love Tofu restaurant because it had quite a corner of the menu devoted to tofu. Tofu croquettes (deep fried tofu nuggets), tofu steak, tofu salad. I settled on a steamed tofu – which is silky smooth tofu steamed in a bowl. I ordered that with a side of cold soba noodles. Dad went for the bento box special and Mom decided to get a combo plate special of maki rolls and sashimi, under the promise from me and Dad that we’d eat the sashimi for her.
I would say the best part about the tofu is I got to play with my meal. The tofu itself comes in a high, porcelain bowl, covered with a little lid. Also with the tofu is a small jug of soy sauce. And another little bowl of green onion, pureed ginger and dried fish flakes. Those are the condiments for the oburi. It was fun to pour the soy sauce on and then mix in varying amounts of green onion, ginger and fish flakes with each bite. The tofu was very smooth and delicate – the texture was that like a lightly set custard. It didn’t have a very strong tofu taste. A lot of the flavour came from the condiments.The soba noodles were also fun to play with because I got to dunk the noodles in the accompanying sauce. Very interactive food. It was a nice change from maki rolls. Dad really seemed to like Mom’s sushi. I think he had more of her lunch than she did. And he was also a big fan of his bento box. I can’t remember what was in it. I was too busy interacting with my oburi tofu.
All in all, it was a good meal. The fish was fresh (or so Mom and Dad told me). The tempura was light and crisp (also according to the parents). And the service was good (my waitress quite patiently explained to me how to eat my oburi). The price was decent as well. I think our bill came to something lik e $45 US. I wouldn’t say the menu was particularly inspiring. (There was one maki roll called the caterpillar roll that was shaped like a green caterpillar – thanks to the liberal use of avacado slices – but that was about it.) But it was straight-up Japanese sushi well worth the price.