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Road Food

March 22, 2011

This March Break, we decided to forgo our preferred method of travel (flight), in exchange for a long 17 hour road trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My boys booked 5 days of golf, which allowed me the leisure of exploring the small historic towns along the coast, as well as visiting some farms and checking out the local and artisanal food scene. One day even took me to Charleston, a truly beautiful and historic city. Another day I spent at the spaaaaah…did I mention the 17 hour drive??

Needless to say, where there’s a road trip there is ‘road food’. The boys in my house are big fans of the Travel Channel’s ‘Man vs Food’ (a show whereby the host travels to various areas in the United States, profiling independently owned restaurants who feature outstanding ‘down home cookin’). To break the monotony, we decided to plan our driving route to accommodate a few of their favourite episodes.

Our first stop was ‘Ben’s Chili Bowl’, an ‘institution’ in Washington, D.C. There, we had the house special; a chili half smoke with chili cheese fries. Basically, this is a hot dog, smothered in chili, with french fries smothered in cheese and chili on the side – a southern poutine!

Next stop on our journey was ‘The Backyard BBQ Pit’ in Durham, North Carolina for a ’soul food’ dinner of succulent brisket, pulled pork and ribs, expertly slow roasted for many hours in their backyard cinderblock smoke house. Our final stop was the Bowen’s Island Oyster House, in Charleston, for an authentic and very rustic, ‘oyster roast’. This was, without a doubt, our favorite meal of the whole vacation!

Long drive home …this vacation was a calm before the storm…only 5 weeks left until the big move!

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Montreal’s Jean Talon Market

The final stop in our weekend in Montreal was the Jean Talon Market. This is the best place to go if you are looking to incorporate a meal into your visit. Many of the vendors sell food that is ‘ready to eat’, and the market is surrounded by permanent shops, many of which offer take away or eat in service.

This is also the best place to visit during the growing season when the market spills out into a series of tents. If it grows, they sell it here.

The trick is to arrive hungry and take the opportunity to sample from the vendors. My favourite stops are the Fish Monger, who will deep fry calamari, shrimp or fish and chips for you on the spot. In the winter I enjoy the sausage maker who sells small duck or wild boar sausages on a stick hot off the BBQ.

The highlights are too numerous to mention. There were leeks the size of your arm; duck, chicken & quail eggs; white and purple eggplants of every shape and size; an entire booth dedicated to heirloom tomatoes. But I was most impressed by ‘les Cochons Tout Ronds’. I thought for a moment that I was back in Spain!

Cured ham, Rilettes, Terrines, and Sausages hanging to dry. Not sure what you want? No problem. The knowledgeable staff are happy to let you sample their wares. I was hard not to leave with a little bit of everything!

Then, after a long day of shopping, we agonized over our final decision. Where to eat? The perimeter of the Market is lined with small restaurants offering up every type of ethnic cuisine you can imagine! You can choose from Moroccan, Asian, Mexican, Italian, Portuguese, the possibilities are endless. After considerable debate, we settled on Mexican, mostly because the most lovely woman was grilling hand made tamales, tacos, and gorditas right in front of us, and the smell was irresistible.

After a hard day of marketing, it was just what we needed to fuel ourselves for the 2 hour ride back to Ottawa.

What a delicious end to a fantastic weekend!

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8 Little Piggies went to Au Pied du Cochon

Au Pied du Cochon has been a longtime favourite restaurant of Jo-Ann’s. She has visited there many times and has been working her way through the entire menu over the last few years. So, when we were looking for a place to bring our team for a unique dining experience, Au Pied du Cochon was at the top of the list.

Opened in 2001 by chef Martin Picard, this restaurant celebrates ’snout to tail’ eating. If you think I’m joking, the current menu features bison tongue, boudin noir (blood sausage), head cheese, stuffed pig trotters, and many more delicacies that have evolved over time out of the necessity of making use of every part of the animal.

So, armed with a healthy appetite, and a late reservation, we arrived at our destination. You know you are in for an experience when the restaurant doesn’t even need to have their name on the front of their building! Their reputation alone fills up the space every night of the week.

After waiting an extra 20 minutes for our 9pm reservation, we sat down to a complimentary plate of house made charcuterie and piping hot cod fritters. The fritters were too salty for my taste (and I like salt) but the sampling of tongue, head cheese, boudin and aspic was lovely.

Between the 8 of us, we made every effort to sample the whole menu. When the Bison Ribs arrived at the table, I felt like I was dining with the Flintstones. They were juicy, meaty and were almost 18 inches long!

Another highlight of the evening was the ‘Duck in a Can’. Containing braised cabbage, duck breast, and fois gras, then heated in a can, this meal was opened table-side, and the contents poured onto a slice of crusty bread smeared with mashed potatoes. The presentation was unique and the meal was tasty.

The Seafood Platter for Two was beautiful to look at and full of vegetables including some lovely deep fried zucchini blossom, but quite honestly did not contain a lot of seafood. There was a one crab claw and some whelks (sea snail).

We finished the meal off with a sampling of the dessert menu. The wine flowed freely, and it was a beautiful evening. Sometime after midnight we spilled out into the streets, happy and full.

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Montreal Atwater Market

This past weekend the Red Apron team embarked on a trip to Montreal. Our primary reason for the visit was to eat at ‘Au Pied de Cochon’, but that’s another blog post! A group of us drove down on Saturday morning to spend a few hours shopping at the Atwater Market.

Flower Shop at Atwater

The Atwater Market opened in 1933. The interior of the market is permanent home to many butchers and a bakery. The outside market has farmer stalls where they sell both local and imported produce. There are two cheese stores and a wine store that specializes in locally produced spirits. You can also buy fish, flowers and seasonal items like Christmas trees in November & December

The Art Deco building is located on Atwater Street near the Lachine Canal and the Lionel-Groulx Metro Station. It’s central location makes it popular with cyclists. The market is easily accessed from Old Montreal by bike, metro, car or taxi.

Atwater is really the place to go if you want to buy meat. There are many fine butchers on site, each with their own specialty. If you are looking for sausage, you can choose from hundreds of flavours. If you need charcuterie, there are a number of places that make this their specialty. If you are looking for Boudin Blanc or Boudin Noir, it’s there too!

My favourite charcuterie stall is run by a group of women (they claim they have male employees too, but I have never seen one). Their terrines are rustic and flavourful, their presentation is lovely. They offer a number of items dressed & oven ready, including rabbit. They make a selection of their own sausages, and will sell you a package of assorted flavours. They confit their own duck legs and much, much more! While we were there the proprietress was rolling pastry and making samosas, which we got to sample hot out of the oven. They were divine!

We stopped by one of the fromageries and sampled cheeses. Most of the shops are willing to give you a taste of any cheese you would like to try before you buy. We were able to pick up a number of unique Quebec cheeses from our samplings to bring home.

Since we are at the peak of our growing season, fresh local produce was in abundance. Local strawberries, Ontario peaches, wild blueberries and every kind of vegetable you could imagine, was on display and at it’s peak. It was hard not to buy too much!

But one of the highlights of our trip was the warm, fresh from the oven, garlic bread stick from the Bakery. I think this picture speaks for itself!

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Lazy days of summer…

For the past 5 years my family has rented a perfect little plot of land on the shores of Golden Lake. We live in what we lovingly refer to as our “Cottage on Wheels”. This is actually quite a modern RV with all the basic amenities…electricity, beds, microwave, table, etc…however there is one basic amenity missing…NO WATER HOOKUP!! The most convenient toilet facility is the nearby outhouse! Some might refer to our accommodations as “Rustic” but this suits us just fine!

It’s a mere 30 paces from our deck to the beachfront, which is really what these weekends are really all about. Long lazy days are spent swimming, fishing and kayaking. Evenings are spent around a roaring fire, laughing, discussing and generally enjoying being together as a family .

What is most enjoyable to me about these weekends is that we choose to cook over an open firepit. Most Saturday mornings, after drinking a pot of campfire coffee, we drive to the Combermere Farmers Market and source out the ingredients for that nights dinner.

The market is not yet in full swing and the variety of vegetables is lean (growing season is slightly behind Ottawa’s). Nonetheless, we have been able to piece together some memorable meals.

Recently, our Saturday night ‘Farmer’s Market’ feast consisted of delicious ‘Schulist Family Farm’ grassfed beef T-Bone steaks. We also purchased a pound of organic shiitake mushrooms from Henry at the ‘Aldergrove Mushroom Farm’ booth. After adding local organic asparagus to our basket and some of the world’s best butter-tarts, we were ready to head back. A quick detour into Killaloe for a bottle of Bonneterra Organic Cabernet Sauvignon and we were set.