Tartines with ratatouille and sardines

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Oh, ratatouille, how I have missed thee.

I love ratatouille because it reminds me of summer, which I am yearning for right now, but it's also a recipe that demands a lot of work. I've been buying the ingredients every week for a month now, and then feeling too overwhelmed to make it. I finally made it on the weekend, the first time in at least a year.

I basically followed my old recipe (Ode to ratatouille), but with some differences. I used my indoor grill to grill the vegetables. I tossed each vegetable in olive oil and a different dried herb — the zucchini with oregano, the peppers with basil, and the onions and eggplant with herbes de Provençe — and grilled them in batches.

The grill marks were lovely and brown and stripey, just like from a real barbecue. S was pretty impressed because he has had no luck yet getting the appliance to make the same fine grill marks on fish.

While veggies grilled, I sauteed some ingredients in a big deep frying pan for the ratatouille base: diced onion, diced sundried tomato, minced garlic, two big tablespoons of tomato paste and lots of olive oil. As the vegetables came off the grill I added them to this pan and mixed everything up as it cooked. An hour and a half later, I had a lovely ratatouille. It gets better the day after you cook it, and better still the day after that!

My favourite way with ratatouille these days is to have it on tartines, a French dish that is basically little baguette toasts topped with a spread. I first heard of tartines after watching Laura Calder make them on the "Cooking for One" episode of French Food at Home on Food Network Canada. She made three different tartines, one with olive tapenade and tomatoes, another with a fava bean spread and a third with a mushroom saute. I've been making two lately, one with ratatouille and the other with bristling sardines.

Does anyone else have a favourite way of making tartines? I would love to collect some more ideas!

Ottawa Farmers' Market

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Food Network has published another guest blog post of mine. This one's about my latest trip to the Ottawa Farmers' Market, where Robin Turner (above middle) of Riverglen Farm, and Cory (below) of the Elk Ranch, sell their company's locally made foods every Sunday. My post on the market is at this link if you want to check it out. As always, I would love it if you would leave a comment :)


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BeaverTails on the canal

BeaverTails on the canal on Flickr by beFOODled.

When I first started skating to work, I ate three of these BeaverTails in the span of about a week. They are highly addictive, and highly Canadian. But I recently found out there's an American connection, too.

Made in France, sold in Ottawa

Flavoured mustards from Made in France, a specialty store in Ottawa, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

Check out my most recent guest post for Food Network Canada about Made in France, a specialty store in Ottawa that sells the most amazing flavoured mustards. My other favourite reason for going here is because it reminds me of my recent trip to France for a culinary vacation.

Ichibei, a Japanese restaurant in Ottawa

Ichibei, a Japanese restaurant in Ottawa, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

I recently wrote about my favourite Japanese restaurant in Ottawa for Foodtv.ca. I also reviewed it earlier this year on beFOODled. I bet you're curious about the identity of that cute little animal in all of the pictures, the one with a bellyful of sake! Either post will tell you about him, so click on to find out more.

Herb and Spice — a friendly specialty store in Ottawa

Herb and Spice — a friendly specialty store in Ottawa, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

All kinds of fresh foods have a home at Herb and Spice, a specialty grocery store in my old stamping ground of Wellington West in Ottawa. The produce here both looks good and tastes great, but I have found yet another reason to like the place. You can find out more in my guest post on Food Network's Bazaar :)

The Ottawa wine and food show

S and I went to the Ottawa Wine and Food Show last week. We tasted the wine of 500-year-old vines and found out which winery made a pact with the devil to keep thieving hands at bay! We also met some local chefs, including The Piggy Market's David Neil pictured below with his girlfriend, a student at Ottawa's Cordon Bleu culinary school. They took part in a 100-mile cook-off hosted by celebrity chef Ken Kostick.

Thirsty for more details? Read the full story in my guest post on Food Network's Food for Thought :)

Food TV Favourites: Michael Smith

Food Channel, why do I love thee? Let me count the chefs...

Episode 1: Michael Smith from Chef at Home
Of all the chefs on Food TV, I like Michael Smith the best. He's a trained chef, and I can tell he knows his stuff just by the way he explains things. He breaks down everything he does and why into very simple building blocks, and his reasoning makes so much sense that you won't have trouble committing it to memory. For example, take the way he explains braising, which means cooking in a little bit of liquid. He starts always his braises with chopped onions, carrots and celery as base flavourings for the meat, and then builds on that with liquids, aromatics and garnishes that go together naturally - like apple juice, cinnamon and raisins. Or orange juice and rosemary. He also takes time to segue into trips to the grocery store, where he gives tips on how to choose the best ingredients. He really surprised me when he said the most flavourful cuts of meat are the cheaper, less tender cuts. And he gives practical tips about equipment, too. I like the fact that even though he is knife happy and has a whole drawerful of blades, he admits you really only need three: a chef's knife, a paring knife and a bread knife. Very good advice for a frugal gourmet like me!