Montreal’s first Poutine Week seemed to have been a big success. Over 30 restaurants took part, putting out poutines en masse for the public’s vote. I had big poutine-plans at the beginning of the week, but really, it’s hard to eat a lot of poutine! In the end, I made it to two restaurants to try their entries in the big poutine contest: Fabergé’s “breakfast poutine” and Blackstrap BBQ’s “burnt ends poutine.” Who won?

For our first poutine, we wandered out into the cold, windy Saturday morning (early afternoon) to try out Fabergé on Fairmount and their breakfast poutine. I have been wanting to try this poutine for a long long time now, ever since I had first seen a photo of it on Foodspotting. It seems like an almost natural dish – potatoes, topped with cheese, hollandaise sauce and an egg? Sounds ideal to me.

After a brief wait for a seat in the bustling, busy restaurant, we settled in and planned our meal. Three breakfast poutines and a plate of fried chicken and waffles, and plenty of coffee….The fried chicken and waffles was a pretty lackluster dish – the chicken, while crunchy and crisp, was bland and there were only three tiny chicken nuggets on the plate. The waffles were thick and nice, and the housemade BBQ sauce had a great tang, but overall, a pretty boring plate. It also came with a mound of potatoes, but given that each of us a bowl the size of our heads filled with potatoes, we didn’t even touch it.

But, our reason for even going – the breakfast poutine! A mound of seasoned and roasted breakfast potatoes, caramelized red peppers and onions, bacon ($2 extra), lots of cheese curds, a velvety hollandaise sauce, all topped with an egg, its yolk just waiting to be burst. I really liked the idea, and mostly enjoyed the poutine. However, it’s texture was unappealing after a little bit…everything was just soft and mushy. Something with a bit of crunch may have made it a little more interesting. However, cheese, hollandaise and eggs…how can there be anything really wrong in there?

Later in the week, we went to try out Blackstrap BBQ. I’ve been wanting to try this place ever since it opened and given they were taking part, I finally got out there.. It appeared as though the restaurant was often running out of the poutine, so we ran out right after work to get there in time. Our efforts were not wasted.

Blackstrap BBQ is a few blocks down from the de L’Eglise metro station in Verdun. It’s not a very big place, but it is warm and welcoming. For our meal here, we opted to share the burnt ends poutine, a ½ rack of ribs and the deep fried macaroni and cheese.

The poutine was a star! The fries were excellent – many of them still crispy, thanks to their triple fry, but the ones under all the deep dark gravy were soaking up just the right amount of moisture. The cheese curds were enormous, and some of the best curds I’ve had on poutine in this city. But the best part were the rib tips, some slightly charred, some actually perfectly cooked, swimming in the gravy. This was a champion poutine and my obvious winner in the is poutine battle of two.

The ribs, a dry-rubber version served with some pickles and onions and sweet and spicy sauces, were equally stellar. These are not those messy, juicy ribs that require eighteen napkins. Nope, these are tender, pull-off-the-bone, and only need about four napkins. Loved them, and I was more.

The deep fried macaroni was also right up there. Super-crispy outside, so creamy on the inside, and perfect with a squeeze of that sweet BBQ sauce. I am looking forward to making my way to Blackstrap BBQ again to sample the rest of the goods.

The obvious winner for me was the burnt ends poutine at Blackstrap BBQ, but I did appreciate the fight.

Fabergé
25 Avenue Fairmount Ouest, Montreal

Blackstrap BBQ
4436 Wellington, Verdun, Montreal

After two weeks off during the holidays, what do I have to show for it? Not too much, unless you count the three bags of recycling in our backroom that mainly consist of wine bottles. A few vodka bottles are also there, for good measure.

Christmas was filled with the usual good foods that only make their appearance during the holidays (and in excess!):

Pastrami rolls and bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with nuts and parmesan:

More dates, deviled eggs and a hot artichoke dip:

Meatballs, cheeses, little eggy tarts, baked beans:

And don’t forget the quintessential pork buns, and the spinach pies and the raisin bream-ham-cheese bake! There were also many, many desserts, and I will be posting some of those recipes over the course of January.

We also enjoyed various other foods…lots and lots of food.

We had an amazing and simple meal at L’Express. It was our second time going there in under a year, and three of us shared the bone marrow appetizer, but had it served with our hangar steaks and fries.

After a night of extensive wine-enjoyment, Soli went out for lunch to Pho Tay Ho, our favourite Viet resto in the city. He came home with a raw beef salad and an all-dressesd pho for me. So sweet, so needed.

And the mandatory pizza, necessary for any quality holiday:

Speaking of said pizza, this one took three hours to get to us, because we ordered it one the day of Montreal’s record-breaking snowstorm, which threw 43-cm of snow on us. Soli worked hard shovelling a pizza path for the poor delivery man.

And some quiet evenings and/or mornings with great scotch and great cats.

Before stepping into the new year, here’s a quick look back at some of the dishes we made in 2012 that I loved. Here’s my top 5 list, in no particular order:

1. Coconut Cheesecake with Honey-Roasted Pineapple

2. Chocolate Cinnamon Caramel Cookies

3. Banana Chocolate Chunk Toffee Muffins

4. Gazpacho with Roasted Peppers and Watermelon

5. Pasta Carbonara with Bacon and Peas

Also, as usual, I attempted the 50 Books in 1 Year Challenge, and as usual, I did not even come close. I did better than usual though! Below are the 37 books I did get through. The ones in bold are the ones I thoroughly enjoyed.

1. The Zombie Survival Guide – Max Brooks
2. On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan
3. Dust to Dust: Stories – Timothy Findley
4. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
5. Made Hope – Heather Birrell
6. A Certain Grace – Binnie Brennan
7. Our Daily Bread – Lauren B. Davis
8. Whirl Away – Russell Wangersky
9. Dance Dance Dance – Haruki Murakami
10. The Hunger Angel – Herta Muller
11. World War Z – Max Brooks
12. Story of O – Pauline Reage
13. Good to a Fault – Marina Endicott
14. Drought and Other Stories – Jan Thornhill
15. Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James
16. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – John Boyne
17. Forgive Me – Amanda Eyre Ward
18. Plainsong – Kent Haruf
19. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
20. Submarine – Joe Dunthorne
21. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
22. Talking It Over – Julian Barnes
23. The Sisters Brothers – Patrick deWitt
24. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
25. Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran – Shahrnush Parsipur
26. The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami
27. The Best of All Flesh: Zombie Anthology
28. Never Let Me go – Kazuo Ishiguro
29. Daybreak – Brian Ralph
30. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Besiary
31. Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami
32. Room – Emma Donoghue
33. Runaway – Alice Munro
34. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
35. Mercy Among the Children – David Adams Richards
36. Alone in the Classroom – Elizabeth Hay
37. The Walking Dead, Compendium 1 – Robert Kirkman

I met Soli six years ago! The “middle of March” is what I consider our anniversary…our first date was a sushi night, preceded by beers at Dieu du Ciel. It was a great first date, and the following six years have been wonderful and exciting, to say the least. They’ve been filled with food, but also many other adventures, so I thought I’d do a brief recap. Our life together has been full and happy, and I think we’ve made the right choices along the way.

In the past six years, I’ve lived in 4 1/2 homes. I was living in Verdun when I met him, but within a few weeks after our first date, I had taken up residence in his apartment on Parc, visiting my place only occasionally to wash our clothes and pay my rent. In less than one year, I signed for a very loft-like apartment for us to live in on Hotel-de-Ville while he was away on a ten-day meditation. We lived there for a few years, until we were asked to leave (someone bought the building and wanted to move in to our spot). We found a place on Brebeuf and spent a few more years there together, but eventually found it a bit too small and dark for our liking. This past December, we moved into a new home right off of Prince Arthur (one with a backyard and a basement!) and we’re planning on spending a few years here.

We’ve accumulated three cats. Kitin, the grey one, has been with me for about thirteen years now. We adopted Buuda (the black one) from a rescue network and Benedict walked into our Hotel-de-Ville home one morning and just never left.

We’ve travelled around a bit. Our first vacation, about eight months into the relationship, was a sleepless 10-day trip to Vancouver, eating sushi and riding motorcycles.

Our second summer together, I went to New York City for the first time. We started the trip with witnessing an abduction across the street and ended it with patching the axle of the car with bandaids.

The following summer, I took Soli canoe camping, fully expecting him to know how to canoe. We ended up going down rapids backwards in our canoe, losing an oar, and sleeping in a tent with only one dry sweater between the two of us to act as mattress, pillow and blanket. Once you can live together in a cold, damp tent with nothing to do but draw TV screens in the sand and paddle down a river with an oar made out of a tree branch and a trowel, you know you can weather any storm.

Next summer, we took a roadtrip to the Magdalen Islands, a journey through New Brunswick, and then a stop in Prince Edward Island where I insisted on throwing lobster shells out one mile down a dark country road.

Les Isles de les Madeleines? A ferry ride to the place where all beautiful seafood lives. Our bag of scallops and lobster tail snacks were the epitome of great food.

This past summer, we spent time in San Francisco. I thought California would be hot….it isn’t. We scootered around and ate everything we could.

But that was only after spending three weeks in Hawaii…first on Big Island, where we walked across volcanoes, climbed the “highest” mountain in the world (from sea level) and stuffed ourselves with kimchi crabs.

And then on Kauai where we flew in helicopters and I got sick on boats, hiked to waterfalls and woke up to a view of rainforest, dozens of waterfalls and rainbows.

Of course, there’s been a lot of food in between…but sometimes, life is more than just food.

About a year ago, I found a recipe for a cake on someone’s blog that I knew would be the perfect cake for my mom’s birthday. I made the cake, my mom loved it, and I posted my photos of the cake, along with the recipe and about 4 links to the original recipe and words of praise to the site where I found the recipe. At no point did I ever say, or come close to implying, that the recipe was my own.

Within a few days, I received a lengthy email from the person who owns the site from whom I had taken the recipe. She told me I should not be posting her recipe as my own, which I hadn’t done, but because I hadn’t changed enough words in the recitation of the recipe, in her opinion, I had stolen her recipe.

I removed the post from my site.

Even though she hasn’t posted anything in almost a year now, I obviously still think about it. I am not a “real” chef or baker. I follow recipes and only occasionally alter them. Sometimes I mix and match. This blog does not exist because I hope to become the world’s best food-maker, but because I want to keep track of the things I make and because I want to share these things with other people, and exactly in that order. I want to remember a successful cake, I want to remember the day I made it, I want to remember what was good and what was bad. I’m not trying to gain anything with this site except for sharing what is delicious to me.

Is this wrong? I do not earn a cent with my site…in fact, I pay for its domain. It exists so that i can keep track of the food I’ve made. I love to take photos of food and I enjoy remembering and perhaps sharing these foods. Is it a harmful thing to post a recipe you’ve gotten elsewhere, with credit given? I feel privileged when someone makes something I’ve posted…is that weird?

What happened to sharing? I never pretend to have created a recipe, and always give credit where credit is due. Is that enough? What do you do with your food blog? Am I wrong?

Whenever I pass by the olive bar at the grocery store or the veggie markets, I am drawn in. I cannot resist them – the black olives, the green olives, the garlic-stuffed olives. I always bring some home and I always end up eating them all by the end of the evening. Given this love for olives, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I tried Dorie Greenspan’s herbed olives. It’s a simple recipe, doesn’t call for many ingredients, and just amplifies any olive!

I don’t think I’ll be able to bring home olives again and not heat some oil, toss some herbs and spices in, and wait a few hours. They become so much more interesting with just a few flavour-boosters tossed in there! Feel free to use whatever olives you end up having, as well as any herbs or spices you are partial to.

Herbed Olives
From Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table

2 cups olives
3 rosemary sprigs
3 thyme sprigs
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, split in half
2 bay leaves, cut lengthwise in half
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 strips lemon zest, pith removed
Salt to taste

1. Place the olives into a 1-quart jar (canning one is great). Remove the leaves from 2 of the 3 springs of rosemary and thyme and chop them finely.

2. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat, and when it gets hot, add the coriander seeds and peppercorns. Turn them in the pan just until they become fragrant. Place them in a small bowl.

3. Let the pan cool a bit, then put it over very low heat. Pour in half of the olive oil and all the remaining ingredients (spices, herbs, the two intact rosemary and thyme sprigs, lemon peel). Heat until warm and fragrant, about 3 minutes.

4. Pour the warm herb oil into the jar with the olives. Add as much oil as needed to cover the olives. Mix and let stand until it reaches room temperature. Let sit in the fridge – the longer you can hold off heating them, the better they will be! They will last about 2 weeks in the fridge.

As some people have realized, I’ve moved the series of Hawaii posts. If you do want to read them, you can see them here:

Big Island, Day 1 (Puako)

Big Island, Day 2 (Puako to Captain Cook)

Big Island, Days 3 & 4 (Kona to Hilo)

Big Island, Days 5 & 6 (Volcano and Mauna Kea)

Kauai and Waimea Canyon

Kauai and Getting to Hanalei

Kauai – The Last Week

And here’s our two days in San Francisco!

We’re off on a 3-week vacation soon…two weeks in Hawaii (Big Island and Kauai) and one week driving the California coastline. We’ll be visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, with stops along the way.

This is a call to the Internet! If you’ve eaten delicious food in any of these places, resto or market, please give me recommendations! I’ve been doing my research online, but I would love to hear more. I’m really looking for those hidden treasures, or those local spots that offer the things I don’t get up here in Quebec (especially seafood!)

I was one of the lucky winners of La Cuisine d’Hélène‘s Kraft giveaway! I have never won a giveaway like this, so I’m understandably quite excited. I received a big package in the mail at the beginning of the week, packed to the brim with some excellent Kraft products:

Caramilk Secrets
Cadbury Buttons
2 x Kraft Signature Dressings (Mango Chipotle and Masala)
Kraft Peanut Butter Whipped
2 x Crystal Light (Raspberry Peach and Mixed Berry)
3 x Brown Rice Crisps (Mesquite, Sour Cream/Onion, Salt/Black Pepper)
2 x Peak Freans Lifestyle (Peach and Yogurt and Banana Chocolate)

In addition, I was given a bunch of coupons for some free Kraft products:

KRAFT Shreds Mozza-Cheddar Light LE
Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Dill
Cracker Barrel Block Havarti
Kraft Refrig Pure Ranch
2 x Jell-O Mousse Temptations (Chocolate Indulgence, Crème Caramel)

Talk about a lot of food! Opening this package was like Christmas in May. I have tried the two salad dressings and the rice crisps, and I’m definitely enjoying it all. I’ll definitely be posting some more posts about this giveway as I eat my way through all the food.

A big thank you to Helene (who has some amazing food on her blog!) and to Kraft Canada!

These aren’t the best photos I’ve taken, but this Irish lamb stew is definitely one of the best stews I’ve eaten, so I feel like I have to give it a moment of glory. You can probably tell, but we don’t cook with much meat in this house. This is particularly true of me. I think this is probably only the second stew I’ve ever made. I know though that I wouldn’t want to make any other ones though; this is truly the perfect Guinness Irish stew!

I used this recipe as the base recipe. I was drawn to it because I loved the idea of roasting all the veggies to cook them, rather than have them simmering in liquid. Roasting vegetables, especially when they’re drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and cook with lots of rosemary and garlic are always going to be better than veggies that have sat around in liquid for 2 hours. I didn’t use parsnips, but upped the amounts of the carrots and the potatoes. I added lots of onion and celery to the roux, and the most important step I believe I added was marinating the lamb for a good 30 minutes before starting to cook it. I loved its slightly sweet, slightly salty flavor, and of course, the garlic and rosemary didn’t hurt at all!
I topped my stew with a puff pastry lid, much like a chicken pot pie. The sauce is rich and buttery, and the crust is perfect for sopping all the extra juice up. With big chunks of veggies, the tender lamb and the distinctive bite of Guinness, this was one hearty, amazing dish.

Guinness Irish Stew with Lamb and Roasted Vegetables and Puff Pastry
adapted from Food Network

Marinade for lamb: olive oil, Worcestershire, soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds lamb shoulder, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups onion, sliced
1 cup celery, cut into thick slices
1/2 cup flour
4 ounces unsalted butter
1 cup Guinness beer
3 cups beef stock
1 cup tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced (I used one can of San Marzano tomatoes)
1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 ½ pound russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
4 cloves garlic, cut in half
3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, plus 1 tablespoon chopped
1 cup peas, shelled (I used frozen)

Puff Pastry and beaten egg for top

1. To marinate the lamb, combine a few tablespoons of olive oil with a few teaspoons on Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce in a large bowl. Chop two cloves of garlic and the leaves from one sprig of rosemary and add to the liquid. Place lamb in the liquid, toss so all pieces are covered. Refrigerate in marinade until ready to cook.

2. In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the lamb and brown evenly. Remove the lamb from the pot and set aside. Add the onions and the celery and saute until soft. Add the butter and melt. Add the flour to make a roux. Turn the heat down to low, and cook the roux until it is brown, about 15 minutes. Whisk in the beer and stock. Add the tomatoes and the reserved lamb, bring to a simmer, and cover. Simmer, covered, for 1 1/2 hours.

3. While the lamb mixture is simmering, combine the carrots, potatoes and garlic in a large bowl. Toss with remaining olive oil, salt and pepper and rosemary sprigs. Place the vegetables in a roasting pan and place in a 400-degree oven. Roast for 45 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Remove the vegetables from the oven and discard the rosemary sprigs. Add the roasted vegetables and the peas to the lamb mixture. Add the chopped rosemary. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Roll out the puff pastry to fit over the stew dish. Place over dish and puncture a few slits in the top with a sharp knife. Brush top with beaten egg.

5. Place in 400-degree oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until puff pastry puffs and browns. Remove, let cool a bit, and serve!