Random Tidbits: May - June

Grandma Tea's jang (aka lo mai gai, nom asom, sticky rice with mung beans and pork) is the best in our extended family. Nobody can make it taste as good.


I typically don't go crazy over them like Lucy. But on one particular day, I fried up some of Mom's batch of jang and had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Perhaps I was lazy to make anything else. Perhaps.





We had a large spread of food during one of our extended family dinners last month. Before that, Mom tried out a new batch of ham chim peng. They were still quite dense. I think that we need some double-acting baking powder or just give the dough more time to rise before frying.


Lucy helped make the prahok khati (aka minced pork curry with anchovies). It's different from gapit pao, which is made without the anchovies. We ate the prahok khati with sliced cucumbers and rice.


There was also salt and pepper shrimp and a large hot pot of samlor maju (Cambodian sour soup) with skate. My aunt also brought over bo kho.



We ended up having leftovers of a few things. Since we had some bo kho, I soaked some noodles and had it for lunch the following day. My aunt added her homemade spice blend in addition to the bo kho seasonings, which made it more fragrant and spicy.



We started to plant some herbs in our garden. This was the basil plants after a few days of being close to the flowers -- they got snacked on by little critters! That's my basil! I don't know youuuu!



How about some homemade baozi? Mom woke up super early and decided to make some. She experimented with adding canned beans and chickpeas. It tasted fine to me.





For Andrew's birthday dinner, Mom made a layered mung bean dessert called banh da long in Vietnamese. She made two types: one was softer than the other.



I had lunch with CA the day after. We opted to share the condensed milk brick toast at My Sweet Tea for dessert. When it arrived, we were both glad that we shared one order. We thought it was too much but then proceeded to inhale it in under five minutes. Woops.

The rain still hung around Ottawa. It wasn't as hard as the torrential rain we had the evening before, but it still rained hard, although it was brief.

We had a BBQ pork rib dinner. The pork ribs were baked in the oven for about two hours before getting a turn on the BBQ. We made a sauce using the pan drippings, onions, sugar, ketchup, and BBQ sauce.




Lucy and Jimmy brought some chocolate cake. We couldn't finish it, despite the pot of strong jasmine tea. The cake reminds Lucy and I of Matilda. Oh gerd, where's Mrs. Trunchbull? I definitely added some peanut butter to my slices of cake afterwards. It tasted like a peanut butter cup, except that the proportions were the other way around: more chocolate than peanut. It was so good!

Random Tidbits

All of the following photos were taken with my Motorola Razor HD phone. If you're following me on Twitter (@teafortwo_c) or on Instagram (@teafortwo_c), these will look familiar. If you aren't following me, then head over and follow me!

After working out and doing physio, I was craving something unhealthy for dinner. I needed to get all those calories back. What? That's not how it's supposed to be done? Oh. Well then. Moving on. Luckily -- or unluckily, depending on how you look at it -- Richard was happy to oblige. We bought some pizza and nuggets fer a #fatlikethat dinner.


We got two pizzas; chipotle chicken, red onions, and bacon crumble on the first pizza, chipotle steak and pineapples on a garlic sauce base on the other. The first pizza tasted much better than the other one.


Homemade fish and chips featuring basa fillets and sweet potatoes.




We had leftover battered fish so I made some dill mayo (mayo, fresh dill, dried dill, lemon juice) and put together two homemade fillet-o-fish-like sandwiches.


Here's a lazy dinner of dry noodles with a side of shrimp wonton soup. Having made the shrimp wontons ahead of time, all we had to do was take them out of the freezer and boil them. We had a pot of broth on the stove so we just had to tweak the seasoning a bit. As for the noodles, we just used the dried shrimp egg noodles. Who said lazy dinners have to be crappy?


If you're a fan of pecan pie and maple, check out these pecan maple pies made by St. Donat. I've seen them in Farm Boy ($9.99) and Metro ($7.99). Get them before they're gone.






Homemade chicken parm with fettucini in marinara sauce.

Waiting for Ribfest 2012

Saucy ribs from 2011

Ottawa’s 21st annual International Chicken-Rib Cook-off begins this upcoming Wednesday (June 20^th, 2012). We're planning to go on Thursday and bring the ribs home to eat. Having gone downtown to pick up ribs for family dinners a couple of years now, I’d say that Lucy and I are prepared for this year’s competition. We’ve come up with a plan of attack to help the less experienced:

• Bring cash, patience, and depending on whether the weather will cooperate, you might want to consider bringing sun screen and a hat (for waiting in the sun) or a raincoat and an umbrella (if it thunderstorms).
• A full rack of ribs have been going for $22, beans and coleslaw have been an extra dollar

• Go with at least one other person and split up. Try different stalls.

• If it's possible, avoid the long lines by going before/after the lunch and dinner rushes.
• The stands open from 11am - 10pm
• It'll be packed from Friday - Sunday

• Some stalls didn’t have any type of branding on their paper take-away boxes, so if you’re like us and you like to know which stall made what, bring a pen or marker along.

• Unless you plan to eat at one of the patios on Sparks Street (you have to buy a beverage from them to have access), you should bring re-useable bags.

• Bring wet naps or hand sanitizer. You can grab a pile of napkins from the stalls, but you’ll need something to clean your paws – even after you lick them clean.

In the past few years, the competitors at the Ottawa ribfest sold their tasty goods at these prices (give or take a few dollars).

Read about our experiences of the past competitions:

• Ottawa’s Chicken and Ribfest 2011

• Ottawa’s Chicken-Ribfest 2010

• Diet-Busting BBQ Chicken and Ribs 2009

• Ottawa Ribfest 2009

Ribs glistening on the picnic table in 2010

Random Tidbits: Part 8

When we were younger, my parents would buy a rotisserie chicken from Costco and we’d have a picnic at the beach. One day while shopping at Costco, my parents noticed that a new batch of rotisserie chickens coming out of the oven. Like an eagle, Mom swiftly snatched a plump bird before anyone else even noticed.

I’m drooling just looking at this!

Once we got home, Dad quickly began working on some potatoes. There were enough potatoes for two baking trays, so I helped Dad season both of them.

The first tray was seasoned with minced garlic, Italian seasoning, paprika and some oil.

The other tray had minced garlic, Italian seasoning, chili powder, chicken powder (the bouillon stuff), and some oil.

It’s too bad the pictures didn’t turn out, but they both looked amazing! Everyone favoured the second tray of potatoes because they were spicy and had more flavour than the first batch.

The chicken was so juicy – even the breast pieces! I feel like they brine their chickens a bit too long. The texture was a tad too soft, but in saying that, I’d rather have this chicken than dry and stringy chicken. We made gravy from some Swiss Chalet sauce mix and the drippings of the chicken. Yum!

~

My bacon, egg and pancake breakfast ended up becoming perogies with onions, bacon and sour cream. Wowzers!

While I was frying the bacon for my breakfast, Dad showed up behind me with some frozen perogies that we had in the freezer. I wasn’t ready for such a heavy meal, but everyone else wanted it. Richard took over and then fried another bag of bacon. The bacon he brought out was gorgeous!

This was a more fatty slice of (Canadian) bacon in the bag.

I’d say that Richard did a good job. There were both soft and crunchy bacon to satisfy everyone’s taste.

Lucy boiled the frozen perogies, Andrew prepared the onions, and then browned the boiled perogies on the griddle.

Once everything was finished, Andrew made himself a nice plate of perogies and all the fixings.

Brunch was quite greasy and heavy, but delicious nonetheless.

~

Like the last time I ordered Pizza Pizza pizza, I opted for Lucy’s garlicky creation. Hmm… she needs to name it.

You should order Lucy's pizza next time. It’s a thin crust pizza with a base of creamy garlic sauce, grilled zucchini, Italian sausage, and the four cheese blend (cheese on top). Chili peppers and Italiano blend was added on top of the well done pizza, too. Dad had it for the first time and loved it. You will too!

He usually eats a bit of everything but when I offered him one of a slice off of my pizza, he refused and went for another slice of Lucy’s pizza. Dad eventually had half of a slice of my pizza to make me feel better.

I unintentionally ordered the same kind of pizza; pepperoni, bacon crumble, four cheese and extra sauce on the bottom of the well done pizza. The pizza wasn’t well done enough. I love when the edges of the pepperoni curl up and become crispy, which was one of the reasons why I chose to have the pizza well done. Ah well.

Despite not liking Pizza Pizza pizza, I do occasionally enjoy it – when the pizzas are done right.

~*~

Addresses:

Costco

1849 Merivale Rd.

Ottawa, ON

613-727-4789

Pizza Pizza

68 Northside Rd.

Ottawa, ON

613-737-1111

Random Tidbits: Part 7 - Sandwiches

(Side note: I just noticed that on Firefox, the pictures on my blog are desaturated a bit. I checked other websites, but it seems as though it's only my pictures that get desaturated when I compare Firefox to Safari. The colours on Safari are fine. Is this just my laptop?)


Dunn’s: December 7^th, 2010

The last time we had a smoked meat sandwich, we visited Bobby’s Table sometime in November. As I said in that post, I found the smoked meat there a bit lacking in flavour. It was a decent sandwich, but nothing amazing. Since the visit to Bobby’s Table, I was looking forward to visiting Dunn’s. It took a bit of convincing on my part, but Mom and Dad eventually agreed to sit and enjoy a meal at Dunn’s.

I ordered their smoked meat sandwich platter with a Coke, while Mom and Dad each ordered a smoked meat sandwich with Kaiser rolls. At first, I asked the waitress if we could get the end pieces of smoked meat but she asked the kitchen and came back without an answer.

We received regular sliced meat in the end, which was fine by me. I was just curious as to how flavourful the end pieces of smoked meat were. The smoked meat was juicy but it felt like something was missing. Even though there was more meat in this sandwich than the one I had at Bobby’s Table, the sandwich wasn’t that much better.

In fact, the fries at Bobby’s Table were a lot enjoyable than the fries I was given here. The fries were warm – not hot – and had a slight bitter taste due to being too “well-done”. It felt like the fries were the last bits of a batch. Mom was not impressed and neither was I.

The coleslaw had a great vinegary punch. It played a perfect role of cutting the grease of the fries and the sandwich. I love how the creaminess mellows out the really sharp vinegar dressing. Lucy and Andrew love this stuff. 

Overall, the combo was mediocre. The over-done fries made the meal less enjoyable, but the coleslaw made up for the burnt fries. Mom and Dad liked the sandwiches more than I did, but agreed with me on everything else.

La Bottega: December 8^th, 2010

Lucy and I met up for lunch at the ByWard Market. We walked over to La Bottega and picked up sandwiches. The sandwich line was surprisingly short and quick when we went through. The line up at the two cashiers; however, was painfully slow. I mean, who buys their groceries at La Bottega in the middle of the week – during the lunch rush?

Anyway, we enjoyed our sandwiches at the food court in Rideau. Lucy had a prosciutto and capacollo sandwich with spicy eggplant, tomatoes, olives and mustard on focaccia.

I got a prosciutto and capocollo sandwich with provolone cheese, mayo, mustard and lettuce on some sort of bun – which was very similar to Lucy’s. I can’t remember which bread I chose. I liked the sandwich but I can’t remember any other details. I’ll just leave it as that.

Dad’s Beef Sandwiches: December 19^th, 2010

Dad made some sort smoked beef with his own concoction of spices (the stronger ones I picked up were cloves, star anise and black pepper). He planned to slice up the meat, make them into sandwiches and serve it with homemade french fries. Dad had the urge to make the fries since Dunn’s.

Homemade fries are really easy to make – the trick is to double fry the potatoes. First, Dad cut up the potatoes, dried them with a paper towel, then and briefly fried them in batches. The first time he fried them was to partially cook the potatoes. 

The second time he fried them was to get a crispy, golden crust. Again, Dad fried them in batches. This was done just before we began to eat. These fries were just like the fries at Bobby’s Table; the fries had a crispy jacket with fluffy insides.

An idea popped into my head. For some reason, I wanted to make onion rings and so I started to slice the onions. With my pro knife skills, I sliced the onions too thinly. And to cover up my mistake, I started to thinly slice the rest of the onions.

Instead of a wet batter for onion rings, I remembered that a dry breading mix would be perfect for onion strings. I added flour, chicken bouillon mix, black pepper, and chili pepper. At first, I thought about tossing all of the dry mix to the thinly sliced onions but I remembered that the mixture will turn into a gluey mess. Luckily, I stopped before it was too late. 

After a few batches of Dad's fries were done, I took a handful of onions and tossed it in the dry mix, shook off the excess dry mix, and tossed them into the oil. Once fried, these onion strings were heavenly! The breading was salty and slightly spicy, while the onions were sweet and tender. I’m definitely going to make these again!

For something a bit healthier, we boiled some sugar snap peas. These were quite sweet. A bit of butter not only made them taste better, but it also boosted the health factor. Oh yeah!

Lucy thought that Dad’s spice mix tasted like pho so much, that it grossed her out. She ended up snacking on the sides with kewpie mayo.

I didn’t get a picture of the sandwiches, but they weren’t that great. The beef was so dry that Jimmy and I ate our sandwiches by dipping them into gravy before each bite. After Dad’s first sandwich, he put together some fries, end pieces of the meat and gravy. This was something that brought back lots of memories of working at Kardish for Dad.

When I think of sandwiches, I think of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches and stuff like that. I guess it’s because I didn’t grow up with smoked meat sandwiches and Italian cold cuts, but those types of sandwiches still feel unfamiliar. I need to get more adventurous with my sandwiches – that’s for sure.

~*~

Address:
Dunn's
355 Dalhousie St.
Ottawa, ON
613-562-4966


La Bottega
64 George St.
Ottawa, ON
613-789-7575