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Archive for July, 2012

Jul 31

25 Comments

Review: Kinki – Asian Fusion restaurant

41 York Street Ottawa  613-789-7559  Website 

Date of Visit: July 24, 2012

I first visited this place some four or five years ago. I don’t have any specific bad memories of that visit but I also can’t remember a single dish I ate either, so I would have to mark that occasion down as being unmemorable at best. On this visit to the capital I decided to give the place another try but, while it made more of an impression on me this time, it was, sadly, not a particularly favorable one… Read more

Jul 30

11 Comments

Travel: Home from Ottawa…

So, the First Air Jet with the big Inuksuk on the tail came to collect me and fly me home this morning (well, not *just* me, you understand…) It was a pretty good flight, generally, but we were ‘green-stickered’ for the landing in Iqaluit due to fog and only just made it. When we finally dropped below the cloud we were barely 200 feet above the ground and just a quarter of a mile from the runway. Everybody, including yours truly, was amazed (not to mention thankful) that the pilots actually brought us in!

Anyway… it was a very successful trip to Ottawa. I hit many interesting new restaurants and tried some food and drink I have never had before. I also did a lot of shopping and acquired some exciting foodstuffs and equipment that will be featured in upcoming posts. Beyond that, I had a nice relaxing time and got to see some very interesting sights as well… Read more

Jul 29

18 Comments

Recipe: Champ

 Now, this really isn’t a recipe I expect any of my readers to rush right out and try but some of you, especially those of Irish descent, may find it interesting. ‘Champ’ is a rustic dish native to Northern Island that consists of little more than mashed potatoes mixed with green onions (scallions) and then served with lots of butter and salt. It’s the sort of concoction that would go very nicely as a side dish with a roast and other veggies, but its roots lie very much in the poorer corners of Ulster and many families would have made a whole meal of it. Nowadays, of course, it is eaten more for its appeal as a comfort food and it is a treat that I enjoy it very much. My wife, perhaps because she lacks any Irish blood, is not really keen on mashed potatoes in any form, but since she is away out of the country as I write this, I have whipped up a batch to enjoy alone… Read more

Jul 28

14 Comments

Experiment: Chayote with Salted Duck Egg

This experiment was inspired by a recipe I came across for Bitter Melon. I decided to adapt it for Chayote  by using a slightly tangy marinade and first grilling the vegetable before sautéing it with the preserved eggs… Read more

Jul 27

18 Comments

Travel: Ottawa Trip Update

Well, I finally made it to Ottawa and I am now on day three of my visit. The anticipated thunderstorms over the city that I thought would delay me turned out to be not so serious (although they provided some spectacular cloud formations, as you can see above), but I still ended up arriving late due to a mechanical problem with the aircraft that kept me cooling my heels in Iqaluit airport for nearly five hours… Read more

Jul 26

8 Comments

Experiment: Fiddleheads sautéed with Mushrooms and Bacon

In my ‘Foodstuffs’ post featuring Fiddlehead Greens I mention that, although I ate these very often when I lived in New Brunswick, I didn’t care for them very much as most people there usually cook them by boiling them to death and then serve them with just a little butter or vinegar. However, once I got older and experimented a little, I discovered that if you blanch and then sauté them with different ingredients they can really be quite good.

While I was trying to decide what to do with a batch of fiddleheads my wife picked up, I came across a pretty decent recipe over at One Dad’s Kitchen that looked pretty good. That recipe braises green beans and bacon in chicken stock and I thought that, with a little modification, it might work nicely with this vegetable… Read more

Jul 25

16 Comments

Equipment: Dim Sum Plate Lifter

I have been burning my fingers trying to lift Dim Sum dishes out of bamboo steamers for longer than I care to remember. The old expedient of using a cloth, or oven mitts, is not very effective in the cramped confines of most baskets, and I often find that I end up dipping the edges of cloths into the food. I happened to see a plate lifter designed especially for this task when I was surfing the Internet one day and, on a trip to Montreal’s Chinatown this spring, I kept my eye out for one… Read more

Jul 24

9 Comments

Travel: Ottawa Bound!

Well, folks… by the time you read, this I *should * be in Ottawa. As I write this, it is currently 11am here in Iqaluit and my flight leaves at 1:45pm. This post will be automatically published at two minutes after midnight, at which time I will be either burping contentedly on my hotel balcony after my first food adventure, or (more likely) already asleep. The building you see in the middle of the picture is ‘Les Suites’ hotel in downtown Ottawa where I have stayed on my last 6 or 7 visits. I always ask for a room on the upper floors overlooking Dalhousie street (the street whence this photo was taken) and, all being well, that I where I will be when this post hits the blogosphere…

The weather here in Iqaluit is 9 degrees but the sky is clear and flying should be no problem at this end. The only possible fly in the ointment is a sever thunderstorm warning for Ottawa this afternoon so I have my fingers crossed… I also see that the temperature there is a humid 27 degrees so the change will be a bit of a shock to the system and I predict that lots of cooling liquids will be in order.

The plan for this evening (should the weather gods smile upon me) is for dinner at Kinki’s, a self-style ‘Asian-fusion’ restaurant in Byward Market, just a short walk from my hotel. As I will be busy shopping and feasting, my next post will be a pre-written article featuring a nifty little cooking gadget I recently tested and the following one will quite probably also be one I have written already. My review of Kinki’s will be along very shortly thereafter, though…

 

…

Jul 23

16 Comments

Foodstuff: Fiddlehead Greens

Fiddleheads are nothing new to me, but I suspect that they may be unknown to some of my readers. They grow wild in the Canadian Province of New Brunswick, where I lived for almost twenty-five years before moving North, and I have picked and eaten them more times than I can count… Read more

Jul 22

16 Comments

Travel: Home from Pond Inlet

Home safe and sound!

Compare the picture above to my post from yesterday and you can see that we finally had a lovely day for flying home. I tried very hard to get a nice shot of the town of Pond Inlet after take off but, alas, I was seated on the wrong side of the aircraft. I did, however, manage to get a nice aerial picture of the iceberg you can see in the distance beneath the left wing of the plane, as well as a lot of other photographs detailing this past week’s visit… Read more

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