California wine show

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That's me at the recent California wine show with California winemaker Camille Seghesio. Her family's business, Seghesio Family Vineyards, was one of some 100 California wineries at the event. I went with my partner S and we really enjoyed both the wines and the way the event was set up. You paid only once ($60.00 per person) and once in, you could sample as much wine as you wanted from the 350 on offer.

There was also free food! Cheese and cracker bars were set up in the aisles. It was fun to get some wine and then find a blue, cheddar or brie cheese to complement it. There was also a booth where the hotel chefs was serving roast beef buns and horseradish for hungry wine lovers craving something more substantial.


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The wines were really fantastic. I tried some nice samples at Toasted Head. I like their Chardonnay that you can get at the LCBO, discovered thanks to my friend Maria who keeps serving it at her parties! There were also some great wines at Rodney and Strong and the people at the booth were very happy to talk to us. Our friend Calimocho went to the wine show too, and introduced us to this delicious threesome below at Beringer. From left to right the wine became more expensive and more delicious!


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Ottawa's Wine and Food Show

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I had a fantastic time at the Ottawa Wine and Food Show last weekend with S and friends, and my long-lost brother who I haven't seen since Thanksgiving! Some other highlights included (in the photo, clockwise from the top): a mackerel salad from Le Cordon Bleu, learning what's really in ground beef from local chef Duane Keats, smoked salmon from the Pelican Fishery & Grill, and meeting the leader of the Ottawa's Slow Food chapter, Peggy Hall.

First on the agenda was attending a food demonstration by Duane Keats, chef at Luxe Bistro in Ottawa's Byward Market. He taught everyone in the audience a great cost-saving skill: how to skin and fillet a whole fish. He demonstrated on a giant fresh halibut and an equally gargantuan fresh salmon. At 10 lbs, each normally yields 15 portions at his restaurant.

While his sous-chef showed us how to similarly fillet a big hunk of striploin, Duane told us something disturbing about ground beef, namely that it's made mostly from connective tissue called silver skin that's trimmed from cuts like this. It's tough and you can't chew it, like "beef bubblegum," he said. But if you remove it, your steaks won't curl during cooking.

At the demo, I had the pleasure of sitting beside Peggy Hall, the leader of Slow Food Ottawa, an organization that connects people who love to eat with local producers and their foods. She told me that one of her big challenges this year will be to raise the profile of Ontario wines by encouraging Ottawa-area restaurants to feature them on their wine lists.

My personal wine find of the evening was a delicious 2004 Spanish Rioja called Marqués de Riscal Reserve. We also spent a lot of time at the Argentine wine counter and sampled a few tasty Slovenian wines — Cviček and Refošk. I had no idea that Slovenia had such a big wine industry, but it stands to reason as it shares a border with Italy and also benefits from that Mediterranean climate that's so good for grapes.

And of course, the food was sublime. Em served us some mackerel salad at Le Cordon Bleu's booth — so fresh and tasty. She is Le Cordon Bleu's best employee ever. And we had a rich lobster mac and cheese from Foundation, and a wonderful smoked salmon appetizer with red onions, capers and a special sauce from Pelican Fishery & Grill.

As usual, it was magical and I can't wait until next year!

Beau's Oktoberfest

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Beau’s brewery of Lugtread and NightMarzen fame hosted an Oktoberfest celebration near Ottawa this weekend. S and I caught the bus out with Squeaky and Calimocho and we all met up with Peanut Butter and Jelly later. It was a little reunion of our old food club, the Gastronati.

We all got a free green alpine hat (made in China and which didn’t fit any of our heads) and immediately bought litre steins for $8 that became our drinking vessels for the day. I really liked the branding for the whole event. Their graphic designer, who also did Beau’s’ little tractor logo, was recruited to hand out armbands at the shuttle bus pickup. It seems every Beau’s employee was given a job to do.


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The food was very gourmet considering that we were in the middle of a farmer’s field eating off of hay bales. Some of Ottawa’s best restaurants that have Beau’s on tap came out to feed the people with lots of hearty stew-type dishes, perfect for the cold, damp weather.

Against a backdrop of happy oompah music, we ate fancy spaetzle poutine (which was so popular it ran out at 11:30 a.m.) and elk goulash from Murray Street, and a free raw oyster on the half shell from the Whalesbone.


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We also had two very nice dishes from the Urban Pear, a potato pancake with sausage slices and apple sauce, and a yummy hot cassoulet with chicken sausage, duck confit, smoked bacon and white beans and cabbage, real stick-to-your-ribs goodness!


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The only dish that really resembled traditional German fare was the Piggy Market’s Beau’s wurst on a bun with homemade condiments — very juicy and tasty. Squeaky took a big bite and I’m told a plume of sausage juice squirted onto my jacket. (I must have been too busy eating my delicious smoked fish chowder from Domus to notice.)


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Unfortunately, all the food ran out at around dinnertime because they had only really planned for about 1,000 and some 5,000 people came. They wisely ordered a large quantity of pizzas to keep people fed until 9 p.m. so that the next three hours weren’t pure alcohol!


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The Julie & Julia premiere in Ottawa

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Le Cordon Bleu hosted a lovely party for the Ottawa premiere of the Julie & Julia movie last month. The chefs served several delicious little “amuses gueules” at the reception, which thankfully staved off hunger during the movie because it was full of mouthwatering food scenes (or what S calls “hardcore food porn”). We attended the event with a few of our friends and I wrote a post about it for Food Network Canada, which you can read here. I'd love it if you would leave a comment!

CupCakeCamp Ottawa

CupCakeCamp Ottawa's red velvet purse was best in show on Flickr by beFOODled.

Last week I was a taster for CupCakeCamp Ottawa. About 500 people came to taste the wares of the many bakers who participated.


CupCakeCamp Ottawa platter on Flickr by beFOODled.

There were over 3,000 delicious cupcakes to be tasted, so I was glad I didn't have to taste alone.


Random cupcake closeup on Flickr by beFOODled.

The cupcakes came in all shapes and sizes, and were made even more charming with names like stud muffin, nacho libre, and dulce de leche with rum and butter cream.


Dulce de leche cupcake with rum and butter cream on Flickr by beFOODled.

Despite my good intentions to love them all, it only took four cupcakes before my stomach was full.


CupCakeCamp Ottawa bakers on Flickr by beFOODled.

The bakers brought out trays every fifteen minutes and placed them on long tables before the crowd. Then it became a feeding frenzy. For 25 cents, you could wash everything down with a shot of milk or coffee. And if things really took a turn for the worst, you could recover in the aptly-named Sugar Coma Lounge.


CupCakeCamp Ottawa judges on Flickr by beFOODled.

The judges had to taste all of the cupcakes and were definitely showing signs of sugar overload after only the first hour. Luckily they persevered, and these are the results of their deliberations:

* Best in Show: Red Velvet Purse by Michelle Morrison
* Best Chocolate: Before 9 Minipops by L’Oven
* Best Decorated: Oreo Sunrise by Kristen LaFrance
* Most Unique: Irish Car Bomb by Anne Patenaude
* Honourable Mention for Tastiness: Lemony Lemon by Colleen Forer

The organizers raised $2,000 for Ottawa’s Woman Alive/Femme Active Program.

Valentine's Day at Ottawa's Le Cordon Bleu

Chef Marc Berger on Flickr by beFOODled.

S and I spent the night before Valentine's Day at a cooking class put on by Ottawa's Le Cordon Bleu. It was a really fun evening. We made three dishes — a shrimp and anise appetizer, a creamy cauliflower and leek soup, and for dessert, crème caramel à l'orange with marmelade sauce — in one of the school's big demonstration kitchens. The idea was to learn how to make a wonderful Valentine's Day dinner that you could repeat the next day at home.

You can read more about the chefs and Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa in my blog for Food Network Canada, where I also added the recipe for the shrimp and anise appetizer.

There were two French chefs — Chef Marc Berger (above) and Chef Benoit Gelinotte (below) — who helped all of us get the techniques down pat, and many students of the Cuisine Diploma program were there too, volunteering as sous-chefs. They helped us with the various steps, including flambéing our appetizer, which was pretty spectacular!


A nice flambé on Flickr by beFOODled.

One of the students told me that the definitive guide to French cooking is former Le Cordon Bleu chef Auguste Escoffier's Le Guide culinaire, which documents the cooking techniques of French restaurant cooking circa 1903. In Canada, the American translation called The Escoffier Cookbook is easier to find and the next best thing to the original. I checked at Chapters on Rideau Street and there are currently two left on the shelf. I resisted the temptation to buy as I already have several shelves groaning with cookbooks, but it comes highly recommended by the Le Cordon Bleu students!


Chef Benoit Gelinotte on Flickr by beFOODled.

It was also interesting talking to the chefs when while we were cooking. When I asked Chef Gelinotte what kinds of jobs the students go on to do, he told me all kinds. Many of them go off to work in hotels and restaurants, but one shining student of his cut her program short a few months shy of graduation to go learn haute couture in Paris. Can you imagine, just killing time at Le Cordon Bleu? What I would give to do that!

Here's one of the recipes we made:


Crème caramel à l'orange on Flickr by beFOODled.

Crème caramel à l'orange
Serves four

First, make the caramel:

125 g sugar
31.25 ml water
6 g Grand Marnier

Dissolve the sugar in the water and don't stir! One of the students told me that if you stir, the sugar will crystalize on the sides of the pan. Boil until it thickens and turns a dark amber colour. Quickly take it off the heat and when it's cooled a bit, pour a thin layer into four ramekins.

Then the custard:

125 g milk
125 g cream
2 egg yolks
50 g sugar
1 Tbsp orange rind, thinly sliced

Combine the milk and the cream and bring just to a boil over gentle heat. Take off the heat and add the orange zest to infuse. In a separate bowl, add the egg yolks and sugar and mix together. Add to the milk/cream and stir. Strain out the orange zest. Pour over the caramel in the ramekins. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.


Marmelade sauce for crème caramel à l'orange on Flickr by beFOODled.

And lastly, the marmelade sauce:

four oranges
200 g sugar
50 g glucose
water
splash of Grand Marnier

Chop the oranges into medium-sized pieces. Cook together in a pot until the oranges have cooked down into a sauce-like consistency. Take off the heat and set aside.

When the crème caramels have cooked, let cool and run your knife slowly around the edge of the ramekin to dislodge the custard. Place caramel side up on a plate and drizzle with the marmelade sauce over top. (We ate our crèmes at the school and took the marmelade sauce home.)

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 :)