Kenk

Hello carswell, Smoked meat is essentially corned beef that has been smoked(essentially the same as pastrami). The Montreal Smoked meat is found in all corners of montreal in all nieghbourhoods. Most of the smoked meat is overly processed water pumped mass of goo. I have made brisket in a smoked meat style. I brined the brisket in a salt and sugar brine and added; pepper coriander allspice cloves bay leaves hot pepper other things too but I can't recall. Essentially a generic pickling spice mix you would use to make bubbie's salt brined pickled cucumbers. I let it sit in the fridge for 5-7 days then put it in the smoker for most of the day or however log your patience can take. I finished of the meat by steaming it and then hand slicing it for sandwiches. MMMMMM. I just want to express what most people from Montreal should know is Smoked Meat (and pastrami) should be cut by hand not sliced in a slicer. It tastes better and has a better texture. By the way it will be a long time before I have smoked meat at Dunns. The last time I was there the meat had the texture of a sponge. You could not tell that it was meat at all. Brisket is a little stringy, not one bit of stringyness was there. It was more like the dreaded evil flavoured tofu. Blech

Why would anyone what to eat at that restaurant after that second episode. I read the menu and find nothing of any great interest. It seems to be a basic old fashioned menu for an American Italian mom and pop restaurant. Better off going to your local. I am not familiar with NY NY prices but the prices seem a bit high. The show showed the fried stuff delivered to guests in paper drive in cups with a minimal of food in them. Why would you go there?

I ate the chuck I marinated last yesterday, grilled it on a hot flame MMMMMMMM. The outside had a really nice char, it was cooked medium rare. Most of the piece of meat was nice and tender the rest I tore into and chewed it into submission MMMMMMM. Had some steamed asparagus, a tomato salad with onion cucumbers topped with fresh basil and fresh oregano and dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinager. Selecting the right cut of the Chuck is important if you are looking for tender roasts or steaks(this of course goes for any cut of meat).

My favorite is; St Ambroise Oatmeal Stout from McAuslan breweries in Montreal. Nice dark chocolate espresso full taste. The head is a nice brown colour. Makes Guinness taste like a light beer. www.mcauslan.com/en/products/stastout.html www.beeradvocate.com/top_beers.php?id=13

I just started marinating my chuck(blade roast/steak) in; Kejup manis soya sauce Sherry chili flakes Sriracha sauce garlic sesame oil It is going to hit the charcoal later this evening with all the fire and smoke I can generate. My canine teeth are there for a reason!

Hello Steve, Yes the wizzer is a black and decker $15-25 rotary grinder. I have been considering getting a good burr grinder but other priorities have taken hold. I was an occasional coffee drinker but am drinking more of it now. I cannot drink coffee at work. Makes me even more jumpy than anyone wants. I will give Caffe Vivace a try next time I am in Seattle. I hope to make it some time soon. Are there any Spanish coffee brands being imported into North America?

I have a Gaggia Espresso, I am getting very good results from it. I like having to fool around with all the variables. My grinder is a wizzer type grinder, I usually use Lavazza coffee and find it can be excellent. I hate the burnt tasting overpriced crap from northwestern based coffee marketers. It is easy to make you coffee consistant when it is all burnt. My target is to get a smooth creamy fragrant taste I have had in Madrid, some paces in Italy and in Cafe Italia in Montreal.

Go ahead and grill it. In my family we often grilled chuck. Chuck is made of many different sections, some are more tender than others. It is usually best to select a piece of chuck that is closest to the rib. This cut will have a section that is as tender as ribeye. It is the same muscles as ribeye. The better the quality(fat content, aging, how the animal is raised, etc..) the better the taste and tenderness of the meat. You may find that some parts are quite chewey. This is good to keep your carnavor's tools in shape. I don't usally marinate the meat but this is a good idea. Choose a marinate that will enhance the chuck's tenderness. I often take a chuck roast and cut it along the fat and muscle separations and grill the meat in sections. This way you can also snack along he way. By the way I just bought a couple of really good looking chuck today and will be grilling it on hardwood charcoal tomorrow.

My favorite Chinese restaurant in Ottawa is Mandarin Ogilvie. 1137 Ogilvie Road just east of St-Laurent phone (613) 749-8838 The dim sum is very good too.

I have been working on learning how to make a good Thai curry for the last little while. The best way to learn is probably from your mother. My mother did not make Thai curries so I have been trying to figure them out by myself, and the help of books, TV shows and of course e-gullet. Mamsters article was one of the things that pushed me to get deeper into it. I started using preprepared pastes. I found it hard to control the saltiness of the dish with the pastes. I then started making the pastes myself. With homemade pastes you can get a fresher taste which I think is the most important qualities Thai cooking should have. You can also adjust the highlights of the curry, as you want. Of course you must include and balance the saltiness, sweetness, sourness, and bitterness of the dish. Another reason I have worked on my Thai curry was to make a kosher version of it for some friends of mine. I make it at their place, make a pot of curry chicken and then freeze the leftover paste that gets used to liven up other soups and stews. Another good reason I like making Thai curry dishes is that after the curry paste is made, if you make a curry chicken for example, you do not need to brown the chicken in advance of cooking it. Then cooking time is also relatively short.

The main reason you still see raw materials at some outlets is it takes time to install the freezer units needed. If I was a fanchisee, I would fight hard to keep my doughnut making equipment and keep the freezers out. Timmy's should note Krispy Kreme is comming and Dunkin Donuts is going. (The shmoes running Tim Horton's (Wendy's) know about delivering the most mediocre food at the highest prices possible) I have avoided going to Krispy Kreme up to now, I now have respect for the franchise. I will go to the place that is at least trying to sell a fresh product. There is nothing as good as a fresh greasy chocolate doughnut. No frozen timlike frozen pastery product can compare.

Hi All, I had a good source tell me that Tim Horton's is now selling doughnuts and muffins made in Toronto, shipped frozen to outlets accross the chain. I believe this will explain all the lack of quality and taste and texture these products have had, as has been reported all over. In the name of consistency portion control you get mediocrity for a basic simple item. The new Timmy's slogan should be; "delivered freshly thawed to you every week!"

Where is Elio's? I may want to be a Elio's fan.

This is from Julia Childs. http://www.recipesource.com/baked-goods/pa...01/rec0174.html Video http://pbs-juliachild.virage.com/cgi-bin/v...yword=croissant

Schwartz's, The Main, Abbie's make their own Smoked Meat in Montreal. Many others do also. Not only that, many restaurants in Montreal that serve smoked meat be it industrially made in a major food processor or made in the back cut their briskets by hand. All the more known deli's cut their meat by hand. Machine slicing Smoked Meat/Pastrami is barbaric.

I like Pho Bo Ga on Sommerset. By the way, What city are you talking about. My comment is for Ottawa.

It is good to here that Krispy Kreme has what sounds like a quality product with good taste entering the market. The next chance I get I will get a dozen. I have long ago given up on Dunkin Donuts. I found the taste is way too artificial. I have noticed that Dunkin Donuts have been disappearing throughout Montreal. and strangely enough I know of only one Dunkin doughnut store in Toronto. This is strange because I think Toronto has a bylaw that requires there to be at least 1 doughnut shop every 500 m on any major thoroughfare. One of the great thing to do in Toronto is drive out to the Krispy Kreme shop in Missiaaauga, set up a lawn chair acoss the street, and watch the people in the drive through start to fight. Is this going to be the draw to L'acadie Blvd?

I agree with Leslie that most pizza places are getting worse. Alot of pizza places are cost cutting and replacing cheese with low fat cheese(rubber) or even worse process cheese. BLECH!!! I also make my own pizza but I have been in a pizza making funk. I am either making my tomato sauce too bitter or the balance between topings and sauce and cheese is out of whack, or my cheese is not quite right. I was making the crust too hard. I was not used to my oven and over cooked the crust, the bottom heat was too high. I now watch my pizza closer and layed some quarry tile on my oven rack to reduce the intensity of the bottom heat in my oven. The cheese thing is driving me crazy. I know if you use mozzorella to use full fat. Do not use the el cheepo block of cheese, the salt content is way too high and your body go out of wack for a day. I use Tre-Stella balls usually. What kind of cheese mixture can I try?

I would like to know what pizza places you like? Pizza is very regional and every body in that region likes different versions of the pizza of the region.(can you call this terroir???) Montreal pizza usually uses a sweet and spicy sauce, the toppings placed on the sauce and the cheese on top of that. I like the pizza with lots of sauce hot with real full fat cheese so when you pick it up a log string of cheese has to be contained. When you eat a slice, a saucy line of grease rolls down your elbow and drips off the tip. I have not lived in Montreal for a while so I can't give a favorite right now. The next time I visit I will work on my pizza place. I am now living in Ottawa my preference here is Mort's in Bell's Corners. Tastes very much like a good MTL pizza. What pizza place do you like?

The restaurant is to open friday at noon. Beckta Dining & Wine at 226 Nepean St. Ottawa Ontario(Call 238-7063.) See this article that was published yesterday in the Ottawa Citizen. http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen...67-DD3C2C3F67A3 The website that is not super informative, but gives address tel and a simulated tour. OOPs missed the post above.

I just brought a friend in Toronto some maple syrup I bought in Ottawa that is Kosher. This is the brand; http://labontehoney.com/home.html The thing that could make maple syrup not kosher is, fat (yes it is the kind of fat used that makes the problem) added to the surface of the maple sap to keep it from boiling over when evaporating the water. Belly button shots are probably the best way of eating maple syrup.

I think the FoodTV Canada can use a good show produced in Montreal. Maybe with an excelent pastery chef as its host. Seems like a good Idea to me! The last english, Montreal produced cooking show I can think of hasn't been made in years. It might be the Pol Martin series.

I like Cook Like a Chef. You can easily find fault with the way the chefs in the show come accross on TV, for TV hosts these Guys make good Chefs. And for the most part come accross pretty well on tv. I couldn't even imagine how hard it would be to be both a good chef and look good doing it of TV. As for FoodTV Canada these guys set Ken Caustic as the star of their network. I could elaborate but any further discussion on this point may get me in big trouble from Lesley. Apart from that because FoodTV Canada is based in Toronto we get what the media gurus in Toronto think is good. One of the telling point about the food media in Toronto was when I read a very prominent food writer there say that "the most important thing about food is presentation".(style no substance) I think FoodTV Canada has been getting better because of Cook Like a Chef. I hope FoodTV Canada get into producing better documentry or information based shows where lots of good quality information is given, a little less tavelogue. Cook Like a Chef is made in Toronto but produced by Chris Knight of Ottawa.

Hello Jin and Lesley, I think Ottawa, the Ottawa valley, and Outaouais region should be liberated from the Toronto posting region. Although the Toronto Maple Leaves, and Blue Jays claim The Ottawa Valley as their territory, I reject this classification. I reject the Maple Leaves. Toronto is 4.5 hours away by car. Montreal is 2. Ottawa has some excellent quality lamb, and produce, some even on the Ontario side. Although most of the better restaurants are on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river it is still part of the same community. Maple syrup is abundant and inexpesive, and the application of the food handleing laws is in evidence. It is a good cool winter and there is nothing better than going for a skate and then downing a warm spicy melt in your mouth beaver tail. MMMM.

Cabrales I think I got them from; http://www.lobsterman.com/ They where live. I didn't use anything special to carry them just a couple of plastic bags, with my carry on luggage. I did ask the store how they reccomend carrying them. Granville Island is a very short distance from the airport, on the way from almost anywhere you are coming from in Vancouver. I was flying from Vancouver to Montreal, no customs, when the delays were minimal. I went straight to the airport and from the airport home. The travel time was about the same as a normal day going to the market. The geoducks were then placed straight into a pot, LIVE, like any clam, added a dash of water and white wine, just enough to ensure the geoducks would not scorch, cooked untill open. I didn't want to cook them too much because they were going to be sauted after that.