Table Talk — Archives
Archive for the ‘Tips and Tricks’ Category
Savour Ottawa
The Red Apron has been a Savour Ottawa Member for the last 3 years. Savour Ottawa works to develop and promote the Ottawa Region as a premiere, year-round culinary destination offering a robust assortment of locally grown and locally produced foods to residents and visitors alike. They maintain a close working relationship with Just Food, an organization that works to strengthen the local agricultural economy and increase access to locally grown food for all.
Our relationship with Savour Ottawa has resulted in many excellent buying agreements with farmers and producers in the area. Each year, Savour Ottawa and Just Food host the Chef-Farmer Meet & Greet, which we have attended each of the last 3 years – including this week!
The Meet & Greet is a fantastic event that has has been the beginning of many of our long-term relationships with cherished farmers and producers, including Ken Stewart from Fitzroy Beef Farmers, Colin from Jambican Studio Gardens, Bill from Heavenly Honey, and the list goes on.
This year ’s event was particularly fruitful. We met the owners of the Fromagerie Les Folies Bergères, who raise sheep for milk, using the milk to make a selection of spectacular cheeses. We decided to introduce their Fou Fou Feta (a creamy, smooth traditional Greek feta) to our select in-store assortment of outstanding local and regional cheeses. 
The crazy couple (their own description) who own and operate the Fromagerie produce a full line of lovely cheeses, and over the next few months we hope to introduce more of their products into our store.
We also met up with the Glengarry Cheese folks from Lancaster, who make an enticing assortment of cow’s-milk cheeses using milk from neighbouring family farms. We sampled their blues, their washed rind cheeses, their semi-soft and bloomy rind cheeses, and their variety of Dutch- & Welsh-style pressed cheeses. Since our space is limited we had to select one. Our favourite was their Aged Lancaster, a beautifully aged, firm cheese that fills the mouth with its rich, round flavour. Some decisions are hard to make.
We met a lovely woman from Donegal Farm in Eganville who raises Organic & Heritage breeds of sheep, cows and pigs. We talked to the folks at Trillium Meadows who raise red deer & wild boar. We talked to Bill Barkley from Barkley’s Apple Orchard and placed an order for Apple Cider Vinegar and Apple Jelly. We tasted some lovely wines from the Domaine Perrault, who grow their own grapes in Navan! And we placed our first order with Andrew from Major Craig’s Chutney.
Starting with recipes from his great-great grandfather (Major Craig), Andrew has developed a line of four exciting chutneys, each loaded with local ingredients. Two of his chutneys have received the Savour Ottawa stamp of approval, which assures that either the major ingredient or at least 50% of the ingredients are sourced from local growers and producers.
The most interesting of Andrew’s four chutneys was the Winter Butternut & Beer Chutney, made with local apples, butternut squash and Beau’s Lug Tread Ale. Doesn’t get any more local than that! My favourite, though, was the Date with Cranberry Chutney, made using Upper Canada Cranberries. This chutney paired marvelously with a nice sharp blue cheese.
It was a great day and we are truly excited about our new food partners.
Filed Under: Resources, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized
Cookie Baking
For the third year in a row at the Red Apron we have revived an age old tradition – the Christmas Cookie Exchange. The concept is simple: gather your friends and family, bake your favourite cookie recipe, and everyone takes home a sampling of each.
These events can sometimes be compared to sale day at Filenes Basement, with participants kicking, punching, and elbowing their way to the best goods. But ours was quite civilized, although it did include mulled wine and spiked apple cider!
Who knows where this tradition started. Many cultures share a history of community baking. The ruins of Pompeii show evidence of public ovens where people brought their bread to be baked and through the ages communities all over the world often shared public ovens which would be fired up daily, or weekly. These ovens became a community gathering place, where stories were told, problems were solved, and women found companionship and support. I like to think that this is the root of the Cookie Exchange.
Our staff work hard to put great food on the table for our clients and this time of year is especially busy. It doesn’t always leave us a lot of time to do our own preparations for the holiday season. So a few Sundays ago we gathered to bake.
Many pounds of butter, chocolate and flour later – we went home to stuff our cupboards and freezers with a selection of tasty treats. The favourites of the day were Justine’s Millionaire Shortbread cookies which took top prize for the most intricate and exciting cookie with layers of shortbread, chocolate and dulce la leche…mmmmm… Jo-Ann’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Balls were the easiest no-bake kid friendly. We all enjoyed his Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies too!
Season’s Greetings!
Filed Under: Recipes, Tips and Tricks, by Season
Once a week
It’s difficult to turn on the news these days without being inundated with doom and gloom predictions about our environment, making it easy to become overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness. It’s hard to imagine what one person can do to make a difference. If you are a Red Apron customer you are already making a difference.
You are supporting a local business – a local business that in turn makes it a priority to support other local businesses. Your Red Apron meals have a huge local and organic component – every day. Each day you are supporting the 13 people who are involved in getting your meal cooked, packaged and delivered to your door. You are also supporting people like Rob & his Family from Songberry Organic Farm. Rob grows organic vegetables which we use in our meals on a regular basis. Today, Rob delivered 100 pounds of Delicata Squash which we will turn into something nummy later this week.
Jasmine from Songberry enjoying an Organic Delicata squash
Tonight 150 of our customers are enjoying a vegetarian meal. We try to put a vegetarian meal on the menu at least once every two weeks, in an effort to raise awareness about the benefits of eating more vegetables and less meat. What we choose to eat is one of the biggest ways we can have a personal impact on the environment. Since the production of meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water, one of the best things we can do to impact climate change is reduce the amount of meat in our diet on a daily or weekly basis. If every North American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off the roads.
See what a difference one person can make can make!
Filed Under: Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized
Duck, duck, goose?
Well, we are up to our wings in duck…pies that is. This week marks the first week leading up to the Christmas Holidays that our seasonal pies will be available, starting of course with Duck. Our Duck & Fig pies have become a favourite with our customers during the 3 years that we have been making them, and the calls have been coming in for the last 30 days – ‘are the pies ready yet?’. The answer today is YES!
The process, I must tell you, is quite labour intensive. First, we start with premium Ontario Duck Legs – which are slowly braised in a mixture of figs, white wine and aromatics for 2 hours.
When they are cool enough to handle, the meat is carefully stripped from the bones and set aside, while the bone and juices are dumped into a large stock pot and simmered for a day – to reduce to a rich, flavourful sauce.
For our first batch we started with 70 Kilos of duck!
Meanwhile, batches and batches of Pie Crust dough was made – using butter, lard, organic flour and local eggs.
Many cultures have a traditional food that resembles a meat pie in some way but the Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word “pie” as it relates to food to 1303. In the Middle Ages, pies were the specialty of patissiers.
Filed Under: Entertaining, Recipes, Tips and Tricks, by Season
Holiday Entertaining
The Holiday Season is fast approaching and with it – our social calendar begins to fill up. If you are hosting a open house or cocktail party, we have some suggestions for simplifying your entertaining.
- In our retails store we carry a selection of oven ready flatbreads. Baked in the oven or grilled on the BBQ, these elegant flatbreads make a wonderful appetizer.
- Denis’ gourmet sausages can be cooked, sliced, and served on cocktail skewers with Henderson’s Mango Chutney or Redhead Pantry Tarragon Mustard. Our selection of sausages includes Thai Salmon, Cajun Turkey, and Turkey Merguez.
- Throughout the month of November we will be preparing our Seasonal Meat Pies. We are re-creating our very popular Bison with Sweet Potato & Cranberry, our Duck with Fig, and this year we are introducing Lamb with Apricot & Pine Nuts.
- If you are planning a dinner party, remember that our weekly fresh meal menu can be ordered for as many people as you are serving. This is an easy way to present a complete sit down meal, without having to shop or cook. Thursday menus between now and Christmas have been designed with an eye to Holiday entertaining, and feature entrees like ‘Cider Braised Lamb Shanks’, ‘Bison Meatballs’, ‘Confit of Ontario Duck’, ‘Kerr Beef Brisket’, and ‘Caroline Style Pulled Berkshire Pork’.
Filed Under: Entertaining, Tips and Tricks
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We are Mothers, residents of our community, entrepreneurs as well as active participants in our local economy. We individually have a history of owning and operating successful local businesses.
Our commitment to getting people “back to the table” starts at home and extends to our community through a number of philanthropic endeavours.