Home Food Check List - Café Archibald

The first time I went to Café Archibald was maybe fifteen years ago. I was with the oldest of my big brothers, because I wasn't old enough to hang out with my friends alone at a coffee shop, let alone be drinking or liking coffee flavored things. I remember the menu being made of paper and having paper-hole-punches in the shape of an escargo. That's snail for you english folk. And that's all I remember.

Since that day, I imagined it being a place created just for me. Ok, no, but I loved the atmosphere with small intimate tables, dimly lit spaces next to the open counter of a kitchen, and the glass half wall that lets you look onto the chefs creating the Café's specialty: crepes.

It's certainly come a long way, but the main elements of their menu have remained unchanged, other than the addition of a solid couple pages of item. The two most ordered dishes (by me) are crepes of the savory kind (comes with house "amazingly dressed" salad) and the sweet dessert crepes.

You can order the savories by picking through their vast list of healthy ingredients and less healthy but vastly tasty sauces & cheeses or sifting through their pre-fab suggestions.

(spinach, chicken, tomatoes and hollandaise)

The same selection process applies with the sweeter crepes, but because the crepe base is the same as the savory crepe, we collectively find it's best to choose a singular sweet ingredient. This way, you can enjoy the pure delicateness of the crepe itself. The lone chosen ingredient will most likely compliment the crepe and let you rip it apart with your hands instead of creating a giant freakin tasty mess, like my rookie friends recently did.

(Banana Split Crepe)

My personal favorites:
Savory - tomatoes, asparagus, mushrooms and hollandaise sauce

Sweet - blueberry jammy, light not too sweet but oh so drippy chocolate sauce on the side, or maple butter.

..

Then there are the beverages. Coffee houses have coffee, but I dare you not to be tempted by their grandma's hot chocolate (bowl), true lattes (bowl), iced mocha (with real chocolate thicker than mousse whipped cream), or pressed on the spot lemonade.

(iced mocha)

Whatever your pleasure already is, you're sure to find new ones at Café Archibald, along with the curious need to stay until closing time, musing over life issues you figure the table next to you can't hear because they're too wrapped up in their own life altering conversations.

Here are pictures of some olden days daily specials, just for kicks.

(shrimp pizza)

(salad with oats and a yogurty dressing??... it was good.)

Be sure and check out their menu if you're ever in town.

"What's is there in New-Brunswick??" "Guy!! Everything is in N.-B. You're on the On Notice list."

Home Food Check List - Lobster Roll & Fried Clams

I'm not a huge fan of clams, I'm not even a fan of battered fried things in general (other than tempura), so I can't explain why I love fried clams so much, even if they do make me a little sick. I just do. They're like stringy bits of fishy batter or if you get them at Deluxe instead of a local fish fry, they're like stingy bits of rubbery fishy batter. It's so hard to describe, so I won't this time. You just have to experience their greatness.

And lobster?

It's tasty! I'm from the coast, so of course I love fish and crustaceans; lobster is no exception. Am I the only fan of Lobster who thinks eating the darn things is too complicated and time consuming? .. And this is coming from someone who regularly takes an hour to dissect and eat a large orange. "It's part of the fun!" Pardon me, but having stinky lobster juice splash on my face and bib-less shirt is enough to make me want to wear a nuclear lab suit, or run off and order myself a lobster roll.

That's right kids, you can order a sandwich made of freshly cooked and never canned lobster. It's not even shredded, chopped, nor has it been altered in any mayoed way. It's simply tossed onto a light bed of shredded iceberg lettuce (hey, no nutrients, but it doesn't overpower the delicate lobster taste) and thrown into a run-of-the-mill white bread hot dug bun. Yum.

It's good without S & P and it supports my tradition of having lobster that's not dripping in butter, but it will cost you double the price of a real lobster. (12$ for the Lo.roll compared to 5.99$ lbs for canner lobsters.) I know, ridiculous since I'm the only who thinks this way about lobster, but on my list of things to eat first, L. rolls take precedent over lobsters in the shell..

Unless you're at a family dinner, then bring on the multi hour lobster feast, I say!!

Home Food Check List - Ice Cream

I missed ice cream! Not only because I'm lactose intolerant, but because there is no such thing as real hard ice cream in Ottawa.

Back home when we want ice cream, we don't run to the freezer or DQ, we drive to the nearest ice cream shack which looks like a backyard shed with a window and a couple kids trapped inside, located on the side of the road (any road), and order up a tasty GIANT scoop of local dairy brand fancy ice cream in a dish (or cone). If you're "in the know", you'll know exactly which shack gives the biggest scoops for the cheapest price (the one near my dad's on Mountain Rd).

I have two convincing arguments for ice cream in the case of ice cream vs. gelato. Not only does milk taste richer, creamier and just better in NB (is it the cows or what we feed them?), but hard ice cream comes in multiple elaborate chunky flavors. Gelato does not.

There are three main dairy farmer brands in NB. While Ottawa has Nelsen and that other brand that starts with an L, NB has Baxter, Scotsburn, and Northumberland Dairy. Both Northumberland and Scotsburn manufacture many ice cream flavors.

If you've live in NB, you've had plenty o' opportunity to test out the dozens of flavors including Hoof Prints, Bubble Gum, Cotton Candy and Death By Chocolate. My personal long time favorite, Peanut Butter Fudge Crunch is manufactured by Scotsburn and features a rich authentic PB ice cream base, ribbons of fudgey hard chocolate sauce, large solid chunks of solid dark chocolate and impossible to locate other than in mysterious taste, graham cracker chunks. The enveloping PB taste is by far the main reason I add this to my eat-while-at-home list.

I could go on with the delicious description, but here's a couple pictures instead. It's too bad we don't yet have taste-o-vision.

Home Food Check List - Pumphouse Brewery

Visiting home wouldn't be complete without my trusty food check list. This list is comprised of foods I often think about when in Ottawa, things I crave and talk about way too much, foods that remind me of being home in Moncton, NB.

First up, our very own micro brewery, the Pumphouse (Brewery). It's central, something you recommend to your visiting friends, and best of all, the beer is good and now sold in stores throughout the province.

The food is mostly infused with or uses beer in some way. I'm a fan of their pizzas, as they're cooked in a wood fire oven which gives 'em a greater bolder bubbly crust. This time, I was so bent on beer +out of town friends + seeing old friends = excitement, that I barely looked over the menu. If I had, I would have surely picked the buffalo burger.

Instead I went with a friend's favorite, the Roasted Veggie Pizza (sans mozzarella).

I like the idea of loads of toppings, but also getting ample tomatoey crust to dip into their tasty flavored olive dipping oils. I'm glad I didn't get mozza. Sure, it would have tasted good, cheese usually does, but it's also lactose overkill for me as the 'za also had feta, which I didn't omit. The pizza was good enough that I completely forgot about my Cadian Ale until I'd finished eating.

On a side note, I think I'm the only one who adds salt & pepper to their pizza..

Often I've been caught ordering the Beer Steamed Mussels. It comes with beer bread, which tastes like normal good multigrain bread to us regular folk.

The size of the mussels left to be desired when I compare it to the Clocktower's even if they were both PEI mussels. The taste was perfectly good if I can give them redemption after I've dissed their size (could have been a one time fluke). The beer broth was soaked up with what bread I had, and if I'd had a spoon, I would have turned it into a soup after that too.

The only question I have left is why I haven't tried their sister restaurant, the Barnyard BBQ. My brother raves about their gumbo. Or was it their chili. Next time, next list, I'll have both.

How many substitutions is too many?

I realize that the higher the amount of subs I make, the more likely things are going to go horribly wrong. At what point will the waitstaff start to get really irritated with my substitutions list?

I know just how I like my Grilled Fajita Steak salad at Local Heroe's (essentially a taco salad), and I was pretty baffled at how well they handled my multiple requests. Taco Salad sans fromage, in a bowl instead of the deep fried taco shell, and with salsa as the salad dressing. "Salsa?" Uh. Yes. Salsa. Tacos are eaten with salsa (or taco sauce), right? Doesn't it make sense to have it as a dressing?

Team Blackhawks (it was Stanley Cup game day) specified that technically I was only asking for one sub, the dressing. The rest was arguably not a sub since I'd rather have my salad in a real bowl, and was ixnaying the cheese because of the lactose issue.

After about four cups of coffee and waters, the order arrived without a hint of a frown or a shred of cheese. The small cut romaine lettuce was done right (lettuce in a salad should never be bigger than you can fit in your mouth without shoving), tomatoes and veggies were fresh and crisp, but the best parts are the grilled mushrooms and large onion slivers, topped a mound of perfectly cooked fajita steak. And salsa. Blows my soccer socks off everytime.

Mushy On Yo Hammie

It's mini sandwich time! To celebrate the occasion, sandwiches shall forever be renamed sammies. Of course it only makes sense to then call ham sammies, hammies. And if I'm adding mushrooms to my hammies, which I've also taking the liberty of renaming mushies, then we would have on our messy hands, a mushie hammie.

Why with an "ie?" Because I'm french and you're going to put up with my late night spelling idiosyncrasies and watch me add ie to whichever word I fancie. At least I didn't spell it "nite".

Now here's the tale of my little mushie hammie.

Once upon a time..

..a little sliced mini wheat roll was missing his friend jambon. Ham found bun and jumped on the love train to make a quick counter hammie. Hammie was feeling all green thumbs about the near expiring brown paper bag mushies, so I pan fried and steak spiced and topped it all off. The assembled mushie hammie rolled and rolled on the counter, basking in it's own tastiness and colliding with Mr. Onyon who volunteered his deliciousness as a caramelized peace officer. Hammie was all too amused to be eaten, but ordered a Ms Lite Cream Cheezette to tame the appealing ways of the steamy Onyon. Cooled and composed, the little bundle of happy time friends kept rolling and rolling, rolling straight into my wide open mouth. The end.

..

I made these for an older pot-luck among many other overly complicated mini sammies, individually wrapped and all. I expected the office to not finish every one and hand them outside to folks who would really appreciate any kind of food. The office liked them, but sadly rain scared the usual outside the office outsiders back indoors, thus making me eat all the mini sammies myself.

This was enlightening. I learned that I can eat the same thing five days in a row and if it's good enough my tastes buds will still be fist pumping eachother, and that food stories almost always inevitably sound dirtier than they are meant to be.

The double end.

Cookies?

Today feels like an oatmeal cookie day but I have no proper ingredients and I don't have my dad's ever-changing oatmeal cookie recipe. They always taste the same regardless of how he meddles with the recipe, unless when he adds Carob chips (worst possible substitution) or mint-chocolate chips (the best).

I'm a little home sick for my parents food, so I'm posting oatmeal cookie photos and leaving you drooling and hunting for your own parents recipes.

Mmmm.... as lumpy as five month old milk, but much much more delectably so.

Veggie Bars

My best friend's mom is my expert in comfort food. Her home was the place to be for turkey, lasagna, cookies, breakfast, the day after Christmas, Christmas in July, and I'm stopping myself short here.

I wanted a crowd pleaser for a lunchtime potluck last week and I started craving her veggie bars. That there recipe is a pot luck worthy one. I couldn't find the copy of the recipe she gave me, so I searched by ingredient for an online version which yielded tons of similar tried and tested recipes.

2 packages of lesser fat Pillsbury crescent rolls

1 package of 44% less fat Philly cream cheese (yes, it is 44%)

1 package of dry Ranch salad dressing mix

a bunch of coarsely grated cheddar cheese, the really normal kind

a half cup of finely diced red onions

a half cup of finely diced green peppers

some chopped chives

about a cup mixture of finely chopped broccoli and cauliflower

one grated carrot

pepper and cayenne to taste

Mix creamed cheese with Ranch mix, and refrigerate an hour.

Prepare the chopped things.

Roll out the Pillsbury dough on a cookie sheet and bake according to instructions. Spread the cheese onto the dough after it's cooked and cooled.

Sprinkle with pepper and cayenne, then veggies and cheddar.

Cut into bars.

Cool it or eat right away.

Great recipe to make the night before if you have Cling Wrap that actually clings, not like my silly non-cling brand-named wrap.

I baked the dough as two separate entities, brought the lot to lunch and returned home with a full pizza. My Jack Skeleton mug makes the food looks evil, but it's pure goodness. Next morning I popped a couple lactose enzyme pills and overdosed on the cheesy for breakfast.

Why let the heat escape?

If you order a hearty stew on a chilly day while sitting on a patio, you most certainly want it to be piping hot. Matter of fact, even on a boiling day I bet you want it hot. If you don't, you should! It's stew and it's supposed to be served hot.

So why serve this good beefy version in a shallow unheated dish that fails to retain the heat? It may be more visually pleasing, but it's not doing it's job if it's not warming me up. No knocks on the recipe (thought it required s&p.)

Good enough stew, no lack of giant tender chunks of beef, and you can find it at Heart & Crown. I might have it again!

Best Petite Bread Award

I was out for a friend's birthday a while ago and we stopped by Maxwell's Bistro on Elgin where he was bound to bump into other friends. Half a beer and a couple conversations later, my friend asks "Hey, you hungry? Want some bread?" I'm not one to refuse food, but I hesitated just long enough for them to explain that his friend here Johnny Scratch is the chef, has quite the skills, and that I must try his bread.

I clung onto every word while the history of the bread was explained and ten seconds later a bun dropped into my outstretched hand. I was now holding the heaviest little piece of bread I'd ever seen. It looked like it was designed to soak up mean steak juices. I snapped a quick bad flash-lit pic and promptly ate.

I'll have you know, I can be far too enthusiastic when I talk about food (?), but it's not often that I get emotional about it. This did the trick, Johnny's Sweet Pepper Bread. It was dense yet retained the flaky flavorful honest to goodness quality of bread; it melted in my mouth and my taste-buds were instantly fist pumping each other. I almost cried! "That's a day old. You should try it when it's fresh."

I can remember the last time food affected me in such a way, (begin dream sequence) it was at Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta after my first soul food experience, in April 2006.

So there is no actual award for the Best Petite Bread, but if there was it would be in the shape of a beating heart and it would go to Johnny's Sweet Pepper Bread.

"Does your whole family cook like that?"

Yes. ..
From what I can remember of my early childhood, my parents were a little granola in their eating habits. Carob chip cookies were a regular occurrence and my first recollection of white sugar was when my grandma Thériault added it to my rice krispies & homogenized milk somewhere around the age of three. I loved going to both my grandparents, their traditional meals always ended in a confectionery sugar induced coma.


My father later remarried and suddenly we were six kids instead of three. We enlisted a daytime nanny for the better part of my youth, and she prepared dinner most nights and made fresh bread every Tuesday. She would usually make slow-cooker fare or root vegetables & meat, sometimes corned beef, all of which were seasoned well and tasted good, but when my dad prepared dinner the kitchen became an experimental culinary lab of unusual and tasty sorts. When I went to my mom's, her style was still very healthy, fresh grilled things tossed into a thin crepe, ending with gooey fruity desserts.


An endless story shortened, we had a very eclectic foodie background. (I tried meatloaf for the first time in my twenties, it was superb!) So this one's an ode to my extended family; my brothers and I definitely picked up on your cooking habits.


Here's what one of my brothers made for the family on Easter weekend, after we moved him and his gf into their new apartment.



Three hours of prep almost always yield a-m-a-z-i-n-g results. Glazed Easter bunny carbonara, and Macadamia nut crusted mahi-mahi over sauteed mushrooms and red peppers. The hunk of pasta on the left is the carbonara, which I'd be hard pressed to describe as anything but sublime.


The fish was perfect, but I was partial to the Easter bunny because it's slightly blasphemous and more so because I willingly ate those leftovers for three days. It had everything I shouldn't be eating, sour cream, cheese, sausage, blasphemous bunny, and more sour cream and cheese.


Next day he made spinach stuffed portabello mushrooms with Gruyère, fiddleheads my dad brought up from the Maritimes...




... and more bunny.





I didn't do much in the kitchen that weekend other than unpacking, prepping and hiding in the empty space where the dishwasher should be under the counter, then jumping out as soon as someone would dirty a glass. (That's my brother's joke, except in his version I was bone thin and had a bucket of fish heads to mow down.)





Even if I found Maple Cotton Candy at the grocery store while in Quebec City that weekend, my parting thoughts are all about the bunny.. you will not be forgotten roasty-bunny!

Egg Poaching vessels

I was on the hunt for egg poachers for a while, but since I discovered the Saran Wrap method, I didn't see a need for them at all.

Here's how it's done:

You place a square piece of plastic Saran on a small pinch bowl or ramekin. Crack an egg into it. Gather the corners above the egg and tie with an elastic or twist tie. Poach in boiling water for 4 minutes. Remove from water, gently open the Saran and place the egg on your fancy sandwich bread.

Then one day not too long ago I ran out of 3$ Saran. Since this is pretty much the only thing I use it for (thanks to my arsenal of Tupperware), I thought of taking another look for egg poachers. It's not that I needed another one-use gadget, but I could see myself using this often; maybe it's usefulness was worth my 6$, so I bought two and started assembling.

You'll need:

eggs

green onions

bread

prociutto (or other meats if you dare, I added Montreal style oven roasted Turkey)

oilive oil

arugula

s&p

a good poaching method

and.. this recipe here.

Alright, alright, the poachers I purchased were 2$ each, plastic and they half-sank when I tossed them loaded with the egg in the simmering water; they immediately took on as much water as a paddle-boat on a stormy lake. The eggs tanked, basically.

My breakfast was tasty, but I prefer my poached eggs on the perfect side. Those darn plastic cheap poachers ruined it for me. They're so bad I can't find a picture of the product on Google. That's sayin' somethin'.

Should have gotten the poach pods. Or used Saran. Or my ramekins. Or a ladle.

Green Tuna Sammie

Most folks put celery or green onions in their tuna sandwich for added crunch and flavor, but I'm partial to frozen peas. Why? They have a nice "pop" if you don't over cook them.

1 can of chunk tuna

1/2 cup of frozen peas

a pinch of fresh grated garlic

no fat mayo to taste

pepper

bacon salt

buns, lightly toasted

As an added bonus, I'll share this tidbit with you: The only way to eat Kraft Dinner is with a can of tuna and half a can of peas. Mmm.. I'm not kidding. And no ketchup unless you eat your KD straight up. Maybe it's nostalgia, it's how my dad made KD while we were growing up, but I've convinced at least one person of our delicious theory. I guess one person isn't very convincing at all.. Hmm.. But I'm telling you, and that should be enough.

Bacon Everything!

Woohooooooooo! It was a long time coming, but I got my hands on some Bacon Salt seasoning, thanks to the boyfriend who gets 97% his giftmas presents at ThinkGeek.

I've been hearing for while that you can put it on everything to give it delicious fat free bacon flavoring and wow, I am discovering just how true that is. Of course you can top the obvious options, a baked potato, an egg sandwich (or any sandwich for that matter), omelette's, but it's amazing what bacon doesn't go with. Nothing.


I had a hankering for apples the other day. I cut it up into nice slices, turned around, and there it was, the Bacon Salt, looking at me. I had to do it.

Low and behold, it was quite delicious with a light dusting on my apple. Next time: Apples, 5 year old cheddar (which is lactose free) and bacon salt.

New Pho Bo Gaffe La

For the record, I thoroughly enjoy Pho, especially the all mighty Pho battles that occur when people debate who makes the best in the city. Which is why I made a deal with the beau that if he was late for our dinner date, I would get to choose the restaurant in part 1 of Battle Pho.

New Pho Bo Ga La on Somerset was easily my top choice, it had been the locale of many delicious outings in the past. The pho was as I expected, delicious broth as always with fresh herbs and ingredients.

What I didn't expect, was the extremely off tasting sandy texture of the shredded pork rice rolls. Oh wow, what is IN it? Neither of us could stomach to finish one. The rice noodles were normal, the shredded pork was normal, the lettuce was normal, but mixed in was this ew flavored thing textured like sand. The delicious dipping sauce did nothing to improve the taste or dryness of the wrap. When we later asked what ingredients were in the roll other than noodles and pork, the only offered answer was "pork, shredded".

Yes, I get it, but how do you ask again, politely, for them to pinpoint what tastes so bad. We left it at that.

I realize the flavour of my rant may be that the specific ingredient was not to our liking. Since I've never had it before, it's entirely possible that it tasted "right" to other patrons. All I'm saying is that I wish I new what it was so I could properly avoid it in the future. I'll also stick with what I trust, their amazing rare beef pho soups.