Another foodie thread

I'd go!

Owen Sound had a Writer In Residence (arranged through PEN) who was an exiled Iranian Poet and at one of my women's breakfasts (women speakers - co-ed attendees) we had an Iranian breakfast. It was really good!

Sounds delicious!

Geez, sorry to hear that news. Sandwiches made from canned salmon, mayo, and onion are a comfort food for me.

I'm going batty over Michelle's restaurant description. Does the subway go up that far?

Though I want even more to find a recipe for Ghormeh Sabzi. Will be googling. Would be good if I could conscript Amir (Khadir) or someone from his extended family to take me on a shopping expedition at the best Iranian shop here, Akhavan (which is in NDG, the other end of town).

I rarely cook red meat either, Michelle, but I'm doing a rolled blade roast (palette) in red wine and stock. Should be Barolo, but that isn't realistic here - if I have Barolo, I'm sure as hell drinking it. The wine is a deep read Argentine cheapie, not bad though, and not too unlike a Barolo, though rougher of course. I really don't think it matters so much after four hours of low-heat cooking.

 I noticed the rise in cost last summer.  The same size jar in the store that actually carries it is now closer to ten bucks.   I now just make my own because the cost of buying it just made it not worth the time I save anymore.  My homeade hummus is pretty much a staple my diet so I didn't want to stop having it.     It's way, way cheaper and really easy if you  have a food processor. 

  The recipe is about a 1/4 cup of vegetable or other oil like peanut to 1 cup of raw seeds. 

 Roast the seeds in a 340 degree oven for about 15 mins and stir them a couple of times during the process.  Don't let them brown though you can have fun getting different tastes with the different degree of toastiness. 

 Let them cool a bit.

 Put about half the oil in the processor. Add the seeds and blend on high for a few minutes. You have to stop and start and clean the sides with a spatuala to make sure the paste stays down over the blades.  When it's pretty broken up add the rest of the oil  and blend until you get the consitency of paste that you want.  Of course the amount of oil can be adjusted to get a thicker or thinner paste which is something that I really like.   

  The whole process sans oven time now takes me about 5-10 mins including washing up the sticky paste before it dries. 

  It keeps for about a week in the refrigerator.  

  I use a pretty small cheapo food processor that isn't really that fancy. Cost about 35-40 dollars. I figure that just with the savings on the tahnini alone it's more the paid for itself.  

  Michelle, 

  Yep it works with olive oil. That's mostly what I use.   It works with any oil. It's really just comes down to prefrence to the taste and consistency.  Some oils are heavier then others and the final product is different, though I find it's pretty subtle.  

I'm using my slow cooker more, but haven't found any vegetarian dishes (other than soup) for it yet - I'm cutting down on meat this year. There's a Facebook group for slow cookers, but they're all meat recipes so far.

 A request for all the foodies out there.   I'm looking for new and interesting things to do with eggs beyond just the common stuff.   My chickens are laying like crazy now, I'm getting about a dozen eggs a day, and I'm ready to start doing some exploring.  

 Yesterday I made Ceasar salad dressing from scratch! It was awesome. 

As I mentioned in the other food thread, I'm experimenting more now, thanks to The Food Network (which I watched in the 1990's, disconnected in 2002, and just a week ago re-connected to my satellite feed). I'd describe myself as 'a thirty minute almost-gourmet chef' mostly because I don't spend a lot of time in preparation, nor do I have the facilities nor the essential ingredients to do a better job - I do the best I can with what I have.

PS: Michelle, thanks for the invite!

Looks good. I've tried a similar recipe in my slow cooker.

Actually, boom boom, you'd be better off going to Lyon than Paris for authentic French food - not just culinary stars like Bocuse or les frères Troisgros - there are a lot of more modest places where the food is excellent, cheaper and more generously served than in Paris. Paris (like London) has the benefit of being an extremely cosmopolitan world capital, but as in Britain, you'll find better traditional cooking in smaller cities.

And then there is Birmingham, the Balti capital!

Though nowadays, there are a surprising number of very authentic French (not Québécois) restaurants and bistros right here in Montréal, and in Québec City.

clersal, you are lucky to have an excellent restaurant, of any cuisine, in your village.

Venice, while it is wonderful, car-free and full of cats (they are sort of strays, but people feed them in honour of their role in keeping rats at bay), is one of the worst tourist-traps in the world. There are a few authentic restaurants but you pretty much have to know them. 100 ties worse than Québec in that respect.

A lot of the really good Québec City restaurants are slightly outside the old city walls, in adjoining neighbourhoods that would be the oldest thing in town in 99.5% of North America. Yes, there are a lot of shameful tourist traps.

Toronto?  No, I live on Quebec's Lower North Shore, in a tiny community called Kegaska (originally Quegaska) just below the Quebec-Labrador border, and on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The population of our village is about 100. There are no connecting roads between many of our villages, so in winter we use skidoos to get around, and the rest of the year we travel on the supply ship, fishing boats,  and the airline service. Our variety of foodstuffs is quite limited, and it's ridiculously expensive to send out individual orders to the grocery stores. I've lived on the LNS since 1995, and brought a house here in 2006.

hi all

Just discovered this mouth watering thread. Iranian is new to me-- we recently discovered Pomegranate, north side of College just east of Bathurst. Incredible. 

Boom Boom, your post brings back memories of my BC equivalent: Bella Colla, five hundred KMs north of Vancouver, 1,000 Km by road and 500 KMS from the nearest traffic light. 2,000 people spread through a valley 80kms long, Aboriginal and non trying to get along, sometimes sucessfully, sometimes not.... and finding commonality in river-caught salmon smoked or BBqed in the back yard, moose traded from the interior plateau, berries picked in the forest, homemade jam to go with endless bannocks when the February wind hit -30 and the sun never made it over the mountains. The warmer climate at least allowed veggie gardens, some cows and some chickens, but everything else was trucked in over a (back then) gravel road and down a very steep one lane unpaved hill with a 1,000 foot freefall (no exaggeration) on one side. It's good to hear about life in Quebec; much of that province/ nation is still a mystery to this transplanted westerner.

I just watched two hours of grilling and barbequing on The Food Network, and some of it was just insane (especially "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives"), while some was quite good ("Grilling On The Road" and "License To Grill"). I got heartburn just watching Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, especially where host Guy Fiera samples truly horrific-looking chili dogs in Baltimore. At one place in Minneapolis, he sampled a deep fried Polish Sausage that was then cooked on the grill and then put into a hot dog bun with sauerkraut, horseradish, sour cream, and onions. Ugh. There was also, at the same place believe it or not, a fried egg served with a huge helping of chili with sour cream on top. I doubt I'll ever try deep fried Polish Sausage on a bun with sauerkraut and all that other stuff, but the fried egg with chili and sour cream loooked good.

As I mentioned earlier somewhere, I used to vacation in many of the southern states, including Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and I've had a lot of what would be called "exotic" here, the best probably in Albuquerque, Neew Mexico, where I had a platter of Mexican food generously topped with delicious guacamole. I have a photo of this dish somewhere.

Damn. I wish I could afford to travel again.  

People living in Ontario might be interested in this newly revamped website.  It was just launched this past weekend.

One of the features that will be growing is a local food locator so that eaters can find family farmers selling food from their farms.  It is still a work in progress, but I would recomend bookmarking it.

www.nfuontario.ca

On a different note, I am in Toronto for meetings.  I just went for a long walk in this city I love and hate so much to find some non chain resturants.  I just had some of the best Greek food I have eaten in years made with Ontaio lamb and Ontario grown root vegetables in this little hole in the wall place on way down on Queen east and then north a bit.  I have no idea what the dish was called - it was all Greek to me - but it was inexpensive and after talking with the Chef I know that the farmer actually made a decent amount of the price I paid.  So if you like food there is hope out there.

I try not to find the same place twice when I am out on my explores so I really don't keep track.  That's a significant part of the fun for me.  I don't even know what street it was on.  I just walked along Queen for a while turned north when the mood struck, wandered around some more and there it was.  I am pretty sure it had Olympia in the name, but that does not exactly narrow down a Greek resturant now does it!  There couldn't have been more than a dozen and a half tables in the place, but it looks like it has been around for some time.

It was a beautiful evening for a stroll.  Now if someone would turn off all, or even some of the non-saftey oriented GD lights in this city it might get dark enough that I could get to sleep. 

I fill small bowls with kalamata olives and eat the whole works straight.  What's odd about that?

One of my favourite olive experiences was eating assorted olives that I bought from a market vendor in the village of Remoulins (they have bullfights!), which is in Provence, near the Pont du Gard, west of Avignon.  Ce sont extra.

I almost flipped when I saw the mounds of olives in a market in Cannes, about three blocks from the Mediterranean.  Hey, most varieties were locally-grown.

I'm not sure what qualifies as a 'gourmet' dog. I used to hit Kwinter's regularly when I was in the area, and still buy them occasionally at the grocery. Does that count? Their All-Beef dogs are mighty tasty.

OTOH, I had my first and last veggie dog on the weekend. I can't recall ever having had anything as disgusting in my mouth before. The taste was only marginally worse than the texture; all around it was an entirely unpleasant experience. The veggie burger I had at the same meal was quite passable, though.

I love veggie burgers and veggie hot dogs - I used to have them when I visited a friend who is a Seventh Day Adventist - I think (but am not 100% sure) they do not eat meat at all. If I could get them here, I'd never eat meat dogs and burgers ever again.

I once had a bratwurst on a bun from a sidewalk vendor in Toronto - I took one bite and spit out and threw the rest of it away. Far too spicy for me, but I suspect it was mostly too much salt. Truly an awful thing.

I'm going to email the Seventh Day Adventist folks and see if they will ship their veggie products here.

From: http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/loma_linda_foods.php

In the early 1900s, Seventh-day Adventists were working actively in Southern California in the areas of diet and health. In about 1902 the Southern California Conference opened a health food store and vegetarian cafeteria in San Diego.