Scalloped potatoes

Before there were Scalloped potatoes, there were Pommes de terre au gratin.

Scalloped potatoes was a French dish first. The dish got its name because it was prepared in a shallow baking dish and once it was baked, it had a crust called 'gratin'.

Scalloped potatoes is basically a layered potato casserole that's made with everyday ingredients. There are many different ways to prepare the dish and of course you can customize it to your liking for consistency and flavour. I added bacon to my dish because I had some on hand and bacon only make things better!

Ingredients:

4 cups thinly sliced potatoes, about 6 to 8 medium potatoes
2 tbsp flour
salt
pepper
butter
slices of cooked bacon
2 cups scalded milk
shredded Cheddar cheese

I added the salt and pepper to the flour for even distribution.


After I washed the potatoes, I used a mandolin to slice them evenly. I buttered a 9x13 dish and lined the bottom with the first layer of potatoes.

I sprinkled half the flour mixture over that layer of potatoes.

I added a second layer of potatoes and sprinkled the rest of the flour over it. Then I added a third and final layer of potatoes.

I scalded the milk on the stove top by heating it until it formed a skin then I poured the milk over the potatoes. As the milk was heating up, I crumbled the bacon and added dots of butter to the top of the potatoes.

I sprinkled the cheese on the top and popped the dish in the oven at 375 degrees for about an hour.

Review:

I love scalloped potatoes. Potatoes, butter, bacon, cheese and milk - what's not to like!

Unfortunately I only liked this dish and didn't love it. This was because of the consistency, not the taste. I would make a few changes next time I make scalloped potatoes in hopes that the dish would be a little bit more of a casserole and a little more creamy.

I would use baking potatoes instead of new red potatoes. I would add 2 1/2 cups of milk instead of 2 cups.

I would also add more cheese and a sharper kind!

Leftover scalloped potatoes are great for breakfast the next day!

Baked beans

Baked beans have been around a long time and their flavours differ depending on where you are in the world. Some are tomato-based, some are sweeter, some are more tangy, some are spicier, some are lighter, some are darker, some have meat in them and some don’t.

True ‘baked’ beans refer to beans baked in a ceramic or cast-iron bean pots. Traditionally, the pot can be buried in the ground, placed over a fire or put into an oven of sorts. I suppose the beans I made aren’t 'traditional' since I used a slow cooker but I’m still going to refer to them as baked beans.

I did a bit of research to figure out how to make baked beans. I knew what I wanted them to look and taste like but I didn’t quite know how to get there. So I made up my own ‘recipe’ based on my research and hoped for the best.

Ingredients:

1 bag of navy beans (900 grams, dried)
1 onion
1 ½ cup water
1 cup ketchup
¾ cup maple syrup
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
¼ cup mustard
1 tbsp dry mustard
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
5 slices of thick sliced unsalted side pork

The beans needed to soak for a minimum of 10-12 hours so I started this process on a Thursday night. Before I went to bed, I placed my biggest pot in the sink and placed the beans into it. Then I filled the pot with water. I let the beans soak for about 20 hours until after dinner the next night.


On the Friday night, I drained the water and filled the pot with fresh water and boiled the beans for one hour.


As the beans were boiling I prepared the flavourings: pork, onions and sauce.

I debated for many days if I should use bacon or salt pork in the beans or if I should go meatless. A chat with a butcher helped me figure it out and confirmed my research: avoid using salt in the beans because they won’t soften. He suggested side pork for the pork flavour without the salt. The side pork that I purchased had a rind (skin), He told me to remove it before cooking it.


After removing the rind, I chopped it into little slices.


I browned the pork without any additional fat.


As this was cooking, I chopped the onion then sautéed it in the same pan in which had cooked the pork.


With the pork and onions set aside, I prepared the sauce. I measured the water in a bowl and added the ketchup, maple syrup, brown sugar, molasses and mustard to it. I whisked it all up.


I spooned in the dry mustard and Worcestershire and whisked that in too.

Once the beans had boiled for an hour, I drained them.


I put the beans in the slow cooker and mixed the sauce in.


I stirred in the onions and pork.


I ‘baked’ the beans eight hours overnight from Friday to Saturday on the ‘Low’ setting. The machine automatically kicked into a ‘Warm’ mode when the programmed cooking time had elapsed. The beans were kept at this setting for about two hours.

Review:

I could not have asked for a better version of what I had envisioned for my baked beans. They were phenomenal!

The texture was great! - the beans were soft but not mushy. Some of my research said to boil the beans one hour and the bag the beans came in stated to boil only them only 10 minutes. I would attempt maybe boiling them for 30 minutes next time. Beans that were a little firmer would have been fine too. It would take less time and energy to reduce the boiling time.

The flavour was awesome - I wanted delicious little pieces of pork that weren’t fatty and beans that were a little sweet and a little tangy. I'm guessing the pork would have been fattier had I not rendered some of its fat when I browned it. I would definitely prepare the pork the same way next time.

The color was spot on - I wanted medium to dark brown beans. A little part of the bottom of the slow cooker had caramelized sauce stuck to it. It was delicious and I scraped it into the beans.

I wanted little sauce and that's what the final product had.

I was really weary of the beans when I first put them into the slow cooker. It looked like bean soup with a bright red broth. The flavour wasn’t promising either. Bland beans and a blend of watered down sweetened ketchup-mustard. But at that point I had nothing to lose… just ‘bake’ them and see!

This batch of beans cost about $9 and made about 7-8 cups of beans.

Petit Bill's Bistro

A friend and I recently brought our big love of food to Petit Bill's Bistro for dinner.

This restaurant is located in a very nondescript brick building in the Westboro area of Ottawa. With its ocean delights and meaty dishes, the menu reflects influences from French cuisine with a Newfoundland flair.

The dining area is separated in two, well actually three. On one side is a lounge/bar area, with small bar-height tables and stools. This area offers a glimpse into the kitchen.

Regular-height tables are on the other side. Curtains are located in the middle of the area and can be drawn for more intimate gatherings. The walls are sprinkled with pieces of art that is for sale.

As we were deciding what to have for dinner, the server brought us some bread and maple-ancho butter.

My friend and I shared two appetizers and a dessert and we each enjoyed a main dish.

One of the appetizers was the Cajun Style Crab Cakes. It was a great sharing dish because there were two crab cakes. They were lightly breaded and seared and were served with a roasted garlic aioli and fresh tomato salsa.

The other appetizer we shared was the Dirty Dozen Escargot, but the half-dozen portion. The escargots were served in a white wine garlic sauce that had tomatoes, kalamata olives, green onion and leeks in it. It also came with a puff pastry pinwheel.

My friend had the Open-Faced Steak Sandwich. The steak was a rib cut of certified Angus Beef that had been poached in clarified butter and grilled. It was served on a fresh baguette and topped with flash fried marinated peppers and onions. The sandwich came with fries.

I had the Lobster Club. The sandwich filling included lobster, crisp prosciutto, lettuce, tomato, papadum and remoulade. It was served on a whole wheat flat bun. I had the choice of salad or fries as a side dish and I chose the salad. It was made up of greens, julienned peppers and a honey citrus vinaigrette.

The dessert that we shared was a Maple Meringue Cheesecake with strawberry purée.

Review:

I'll start my review by saying that I'd dine here again.

Having said that, out of the five dishes I sampled, I would only have two of them again. I wouldn't have the escargots, sandwich or club on a repeat visit, only the crab cakes and cheesecake.

The butter that came with the bread was out of this world! Maple and ancho - what a flavour combo!

I have to share my two cents about bread. I wish that restaurants would do one thing differently. Provide the same ratio of bread per person. If there are two diners, give them two, four or six pieces, not five. An unbalanced ratio can make for an akward situation. This is what happened on this occasion so I ended up asking the server for one more piece of bread. She looked at me funny, with a touch of a smile (or was that a smirk) and obliged. So many restaurants serve bread without the respect of this ratio - it drives me nuts! Of course, there will always be people that gobble the bread up without taking an inventory of bread-per-person, so then my philosophy would be irrelevant! Anyways...

The crab cakes were amazing. They were fresh and beautifully flavoured. They were just a little crispy on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth on the inside. The crab really took center stage; the crab cakes weren't overpowered with the Cajun spices or the coating. I've had crab cakes that were glue-like and doughy before and these couldn't have been further from that consistency.

The escargot were tender and plump. The broth was extremely flavourful but a little on the salty side, I'm guessing from the olives. I didn't appreciate the sogginess of the ends of the pinwheel that were sitting in the broth. But the puff pastry itself was oh-so-butterliciously-flaky! The dish was tasty enough but I found it sort of randomly put together.

I LOVE lobster. Love, love, love it! I enjoyed the Club, but unfortunately I didn't love it. You could taste the lobster a little, but I would have liked to have tasted the lobster alot. It sort of got lost a little as it was competing with quite a few ingredients. I did appreciate the thin bun (and bonus, it was whole wheat!), which I'm guessing was chosen to let the lobster shine through and make the sandwich less doughy. I guess I chose this menu item for the novelty and I'm glad I did. It was novel.

The sandwich was ok, but nothing spectacular. The fries were good. The highlight of the dish was the pile of tangy onions and peppers - they were great. They tasted like the Red Hot wing sauce and really brightened up the 'meat on bread'. I think the sandwich could benefit from a sauce.

Coincidentally, the friend I was dining with is from Newfoundland. I asked her if the place felt like home and she said no.

The atmosphere is warm and the service is friendly. We were asked multiple times by who we thought was the manager if everything was ok. I always like it when the person in charge does that.

My friend an I both pretty much had the same opinion on the food.

There is plenty of free parking on the street. Keep in mind that this is a busy area.

Paul's Steak & Ceasar Famous Garlic House Dressing

I don't usually state where I buy a product since I normally link to its website where one can find this info and more, but this product is different. This product doesn't seem to have a web presence, until now.

I bought a jar of Paul's Steak & Ceasar Famous Garlic House Dressing at my local Produce Depot. I had looked at it a few times before and knew that it was made locally.

See, I LOVE dipping meat in a sauce. Any meat, but not into just any sauce. I especially love dipping it into thick creamy garlicky sauce. I admit, it's one of my worst food habits.

I've made my own aioli-type sauce in the past and I've bought other brands of local and mainstream garlic dressings and sauces. Some are hits, some are misses.

I really like trying new ones so this one didn't last too long unopened in the fridge.


Review:

This dressing was great. It was tasty, smooth and loose. By loose I mean that it had the consistency of mustard, as opposed to anything thicker or more fluid.

It was perfect to use as a dipping sauce. It left a nice coating on the dipped food without leaving gobs on it. Sometimes creamy oil-based dressings have a little bit of a congealed consistency, but this one didn't.

I've also used this product as a salad dressing but next time I would use a lettuce with more strength and body. I used a Spring mix because that's what I usually buy and what I had on hand but next time I would use a Romaine.

The flavour is tangy and creamy and has the perfect amount of garlic and spices.

The price of the product was average at about $4-5 a jar. I would definitely buy it again.

All about artichokes

The artichoke is a vegetable and like many, it's green. It's covered in leafy scales and it can grow on a stalk up to 2 metres tall. It's a food, a beverage flavouring, a landscaping element and a remedy:

• Artichokes can be eaten solo or used as a ingredient in salads, sauces, stuffing, casseroles and more. They can even be stuffed themselves!
• Artichokes are made into herbal teas and they also flavour an Italian liqueur.
• Artichokes do flower and they are quite attractive, so some people use them to decorate their exterior.
• Artichokes are believed to help the liver, digestion, improve cholesterol and produce bile. They are also packed with anti-oxidants.

I've enjoyed artichoke hearts in jars and cans for years and I've looked at them among the produce when I shop. One day my hand reached out and put two in my basket. It was time to figure these green monsters out.

After giving the artichokes a rinse, I used scissors to snip the ends of the leaves because they can be hard and prickly. Next I used a knife to cut off the top of the artichoke. It's faster and easier to do this with a knife as opposed to finishing the job with the scissors.


I cut of 1/8 of an inch off the end of the stalk and discarded that piece. Next I peeled the stalk's skin and then removed all but 1 inch of the stem. I kept the piece I cut off to steam along with the artichoke.

I set up my steamer with salted water and placed the artichokes in the steamer basket. I steamed them for approximately 45 minutes. They are done when an outer leaf can easily be pulled off.

To eat the 'meat' on the leaves, I held the cut tip in my hand and lightly bit down about 1/3 - 1/2 of the way up the leaf. I scraped the meat off the leaf with my teeth by pulling the leaf away from my face and pulling my head back. Don't expect a mouthful; you'll scrape off about 1/2 teaspoon per leaf. The meat should be tender but keep in mind that the outer leaves are not the best. The meat gets better as you go through the layers.

You can eat the meat solo or dip the tip of the meaty part into something tasty. I dipped some of the leaves in a little melted butter and the others in a creamy garlic sauce. Both were yummy!

When I got closer to the middle of the artichoke, I bit through the leaves and ate them because they we're so tender.

Unlike the pre-packaged artichoke hearts that you don't think twice about gobbling up, fresh ones are a little different. As the leaves get thinner, the shape of the veggie changes. Once the leaves are all gone, the choke, or the cream-colored hairy part, needs to be removed and discarded because it is inedible. I used a spoon and scooped it out then continued eating the rest of the veggie.

Review:

I'm glad I conquered this small thorny mount. It looked a little intimidating but really, it was fairly straightforward to prepare after doing a little research.

The artichoke isn't very filling but it is tasty. It sort of has the texture of broccoli, like the inside of the stalk and floret stems. It doesn't have too much of a strong flavour but it is distinct.

If you aren't planning on cooking these right away but you want to prepare them ahead of time, you can trim the tips and the stem and place the artichokes in water with lemon or vinegar to prevent browning by oxidation.

Buy artichokes that are green and have little brown on the leaves. A little is ok, but not too much. The leaves should be mostly closed, especially the centre ones.

Chicken Piccata

I've always thought that Chicken Piccata was 'fancy', meaning only real chefs could make it. It was something I would have at a restaurant once in a while and not think twice about making it at home.

The last time I enjoyed the dish, I finally decided that it was time to 'un-fancify' it and make it at home myself!

Ingredients:

6-8 boneless chicken breasts
½ cup flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup white wine
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup capers
2 tbsp cornstarch

It turned out that prepping the chicken was alot of fun! Once the fat was trimmed, the chicken had to be flattened. Since it takes a little muscle to get it flat, it was a perfect opportunity to relieve some aggression/stress! To flatten the chicken, the tool of choice is usually a meat tenderizer, but I prefer to use an empty wine bottle. I placed the chicken between two sheets of parchment paper and wrapped the bottle in plastic wrap. I find it more sanitary to wrap the bottle even though it doesn't touch the meat.

The chicken should be evenly flattened and not paper thin in one spot and thick in another. If you’re using a long tool like a bottle or pin, the trick is to switch directions as the meat is getting flatter.

I placed the flattened pieces of chicken in a dish.

To assemble to coating station, I mixed the flour with the salt and pepper and spread it out on a plate.

At this point, I measured the lemon juice and wine and set them aside.

I heated the butter and oil in a large frying pan while I dredged the first piece of chicken in the flour on both sides.

I coated all the pieces in flour and then browned the chicken on both sides until it was almost cooked through. The four will make a very light coating on the chicken and work as a thickening agent for the sauce.

I added the broth and lemon juice to the pan and brought the liquid to a boil for about 2 minutes. I removed the chicken and added the wine. I cooked the sauce over high heat for 5 minutes until the mixture was reduced by about half.

The mixture should thicken as it reduces but it didn't thicken to my liking in this case, so I spooned out some of the liquid and mixed it with the cornstarch. Then I whisked the mixture back in. I plated the chicken and spooned sauce on top of it.

Review:

You can prepare half of this recipe in advance. Do the steps up until you brown the chicken then set your browned chicken in the fridge until you're ready to make your sauce and serve.

This is really easy-to-make and it's a crowd-pleasing dish. The dish had alot of flavour and is not heavy. I made this for six people and everyone liked it.

I would use better chicken broth next time because I didn't like the flavour of it in the dish.

Next time, I would also add some finely chopped lemon zest, double the amount of capers and add about 1/2 cup of wine.

The chicken breasts that I was using were really, really big and I think I could have flattened them more. What I would do next time is cut the chicken into smaller piece before flattening it. I think it would be easier to uniformly flatten a smaller piece of chicken to the desired thickness than a bigger piece.