ottawa foodies

Omigosh I wish I had photos to show you! A just got back from a buddy's place. He's from Newfoundland, and his parents are in town celebrating the recent birth of his first child. So they invited a lot of friends over and his mom spent the day preparing a huge scoff!

There was turkey, and a type of dressing like I'd never seen before. It was light, fluffy, and almost powdery. Reminded me almost of couscous actually.

There was salt beef, boiled with cabbage, carrots, potatoes, parsnips and turnip.

There was boiled pork.

There was peas pudding, which I'd never had before.

There were home canned beats (canned by his mom last week).

And there was gravy. Oh man, was there gravy! My friend asked his mom to "make lots", so of course she obliged. She made the whole roasting pan full of it - had to be 7 or 8 litres of gravy!!!

I ate a great big plate, and forced myself to go back for another big plate.

Just stuffed. But oh-so-wonderfully stuffed! It reminded me a lot of me own ma's cookin'

Sounds awesome.

I dated a newfie girl in highschool for a couple years. Thats how I learned those buckets of naval beef at the grocery store aren't just to take up space :-)

/made jiggs dinner last weekend

I'm still so stuffed I'm sitting here actually debating whether or not I have room for a nightcap of beer ... maybe just a half glass :-)

Zym - Sounds absolutely wonderful... nothing like home cooking. Bet the whole time you were staring at that pan of 7 or 8 litres of gravy and thinking of our fellow OF poster Vorpal... maybe down east momma would like to adopt a hardworking Ottawa guy? Ya should've asked. LOL
;-)

Zym - I am from Newfoundland and my mouth was watering/I was jealous of your feast! The dressing you refer to is the traditional Newfoundland dressing (I believe) which is made of bread crumbs (usually from fresh or day old bread), onions, butter, salt, pepper and dried savoury. There is, in fact, a savoury farm not far from my parents' place in NL.

Pease pudding is just yellow split peas put in a cloth bag and boiled with the boiled salt pork....but boy is it ever good!

The savory farm near Jules parents place is most likely Mt. Scio Farm. Famous for their savoury for years and years.

There was always a package of this savory in my moms cupboard. She preferred it over the savory from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, which was closer to her. The smell of a roasting chicken or turkey in her kitchen always had a savoury smell to it.

Speaking of a Newfoundland Scoff...

I now got a hankern' for a Jiggs Dinner .... and a big old horkin' cabbage goes for only 99 cents at this time of year. (But I do find cabbage nowadays doesn't have as much flavour.)

I never had a Jiggs Dinner with parsnip in it .... just the usual salt beef, cabbage, carrot, turnip and potato. The only seasoning I have used was bay leaves and peppercorns.

Why does Jiggs Dinner go sooooooooo well with plain ordinary yellow mustard ?

Does anyone know where I can get a 'Heritage' cabbage ... one that will stink up my house when it is cooked and will be quite tastey ?

Yellow mustard - no thanks. Mustard pickles - yes!

They have some 'frilly' cabbage at the Parkdale Market. Last week my buddy's mom was looking for 'real' cabbage to make cabbage rolls, and she found it there. At a stall about 2/3 the way towards the Carleton.

What is frilly cabbage? Is that Savoy? :-)

/mustard pickles, I wants some now

Google images tells me "yes" :-)

EDIT : I can give you my mustard pickle recipe if you like

Please do, I'd like to give that a go. I usualy buy the supermarket stuff but they use too much cauliflower :-)

BTW, the newfies at the dinner the other night said that you have to buy the salt beef at Sobey's, because the stuff from Loblaw's doesn't cut it.

BTW, a lot of Newfoundlanders find the term "newfie" derogatory. Just saying.

Yes, I know. But most of the ones I know (which is quite a lot) use the term liberally

I didn't think much of it as all the ones I kwow use the term too.

Thanks for the salt beef tip. I've noticed varying quality but I only buy it once or twice a year so couldn't remember the brands.

LOL, All those that I know "from the rock" freely use the term newfie. So I guess I`ve never known it was offensive... but then who am I to say anything different, I`m a proud Canuck-Hoser-Blockhead. Now that we`ve cleared that up... could someone pass the screetch!
;-P

.... and as Stompin' Tom Connors sings "You might think its goofie, but the man in the moon is a Newfie".

I checked with some of my Newfie buddies. They all don't mind being called Newfies ... in fact a few some are right-some-pround to be labelled as such.

I've only seen one brand of salt beef Cured Naval Beef)sold in Ontario. It comes from Global Meat products Ltd. in Guelph,ON and has a map of Newfoundland on the label. See my scan of an empty pail.

I also tried some (unidentified) salt beef from Mugena's Carribian/African store Aladdin Convenience once and found it too lean (go figure).

Those white pails from Global (there used to be two sizes) are sometimes hit and miss on the amount of fat/tallow in them. I once got a pail that was almost 3/4 fat/tallow and grissle. Good thing I was making a two pail batch that time.

Another time a friend brought me a pail to cook up. The meat came out with a weird texture. He said he got it at the Great Canadian Stupour Store in Westboro. I later found out that they store the pails of salt beef in their freezer. Probably a big no no.

I wonder if Sobey's sells a differnt brand that I'm used to seeing ? No matter what brand they sell I bet they don't store them in a freezer.

Savoy cabbage is not the authentic style for Jiggs dinner. I'm still looking for regular green round cabbage with old time flavour and smell.

Not to be a big party pooper on the Jiggs dinner but I just read the nutrition information on my Global Meat Products salt beef pail.

Looks like a 100g (edible) portion contains a whopping 208% of ones recccomended daily sodium intake. WOW !! ... and that does not include all the nitrates in there. And who is only gonna eat just 100 grams during Jiggs Dinner scoff ?

No wonder there is a elevated occurance of heart disease in Newfoundland.

see ---> ww2.heartandstroke.ca <---

... and don't forget Newfies' like their salt (pork) riblets and salt cod.

Um, Captain, that's why you boil it in water. It boils out most of the salt. I'd wager you couldn't even eat the stuff without boiling it.

Mind you I'm sure that after boiled it's still high in salt. But not nearly THAT high.

I soak the salt beef over night and change the water twice the next day before cooking. And it still comes out very salty tasting.

My newfie friends do at least an overnight soak and some even do a change of water or two.

I nibbled on some uncooked salt beef once and yes it's waaaay too salty.

I'm under the impression that the nutrition values are based on prepared or cooked product and not raw.

The only instruction on the pail is "COOK THOROUGHLY".

I can't seem to find any web presence for Global Meat Products but they do share the same Postal code of Cargill Meat Solutions Inc., so I sent them an email.

Yeah, they are salty. I've put my finger on a raw one and then to my lips, it is just loads of salt, plain and simple.

I remember the Sobey's in halifax just put the buckets on the shelf, not in the coolers. I assume thats how well preserved by salt they are, it is 'naval' beef afterall.

The suggestion is to soak overnight but I just boil it and change the water about 3 times over an hour period.

I spend alot of time trimming off the fat too :-)

Basicly, that stuff aint healthy.... it is fat and salt. Oh so good though.

I love how that Global bucket specifies that it's Navel Beef. Must need to go through a lot of cows in order to get one pail's worth!

I don't understnad your comment. (maybe I'm missing something) Why alot of cows? I think the 'naval' term refers to the fact that it is so heavily salted that it could be preserved without cooling, and it was used on ships long ago where no cooling was provided. Isn't it just heavily salt brined rib cuts? ...i think?

Momomoto - Good for you to catch that. LOL
Any plans for sending this one into Jay Leno?

Peter - Hint... it's in the spelling NAVEL vs NAVAL. I'm guessing they meant one but wrote the other.

"Naval" is not the same as "Navel," see.

"Naval" means "pertaining to ships and the sea."

"Navel" means "belly button."

/slapping forhead

Peter - LOL, the Jiggs up... ya could've had a V-8.
:-)

Which BTW, would be a heck of a lot healthier than this scoff!
(all puns are intentional).

Funny they call it Navel Beef when there is usually a number of rib bones in a pail.

I'm not aware of any beef cattle having ribs near their belly buttons.

Gawd .... I am soooooo cravin' a Jiggs Dinner !!

..... and another thing.

The left over liquid from making Jiggs Dinner is referred to as 'Pot Liquor'. Some of my Newfie buddies like to drizzzle it over their Jiggs Dinner.

I use it to make a Jiggs Dinner Soup the following day. Just cut up all the left over meat and veg and place it in the left over pot liquor. Mmmmm Mmmmm Good !!

(If I wash down these sodium bombs with enough beer will it dillute it enough to make it a bit safer/healthier ?)

Captain C - Ab-sa-fric-in-lutely, Beer & Wine is the nectar of the Gods, and as such will redeem anything it is teamed with (and that includes people sometimes). LOL

Now I'm carving Black Horse Beer from The Rock !! (And after the Jiggs Dinner some Old Sam (dark) Rhum)

Huh! Folks in the "Deep South" call the liquid left over from cooking collard greens "Pot Liquor," too! I wonder if this evolved separately, or if they're etymologically from the same origins.

And now I also wonder what would happen if you took the pot liquor from a Jiggs Dinner and the pot liquor from collard greens and mixed them. It sounds dangerous, and may result in a catastrophic explosion.

Brewers also call their hot water "hot liquor".

if anyone has this recipe to share, my late hubby used to make a wonderful "mustard salad" its been years, but I recall it was pretty much mashed potatoes with yellow mustard, Ive tried to make it many times, just not the same, can anyone share their recipe?

Here is the response back from Cargill, parent company of Global Meat products.
I asked whether the nutritional information on the salt beef pail was for cooked or un cooked product.

"Thank you for contacting Cargill Meat Solutions and especially for your patience in our response.

The nutritional values stated on our products are based on raw product. I hope this relieves some of your sodium concern but of course this product is cased in a brine which does increase the sodium. I expect you will have to enjoy in moderation only, but hope you do enjoy.

Sincerely,

Linda Godwin
Customer Service
Cargill Meat Solutions"

Will drinking lots of liquids (i.e. BEER !!) along with a Jiggs Dinner reduce the impact of all the sodium intake ?

Reporting nutritional information for the complete raw product is the norm in the food industry. The only deviation from this seems to be with canned food, where they sometimes specify that the nutritional info is for the *drained* product.

Companies have to do this because they have no control over how people will cook it. For example, bacon is super high in fat but if you drain the fat or allow it to drip off as it cooks you end up with significantly less fat in your meal. I guess this means we should take the nutritional labels with a grain of uh.... salt. ;-)

FF: That totally makes sense .... But that leaves the consumer to guess just what the nutrional value is after cooking.

In this case the 100 grams of precooked salt beef contains 208% of ones daily reccomended intake for sodium. With the soaking of the salt beef and the long slow simmer, who's to say what the true sodium intake would be.

I think they should print a typical ( and maybe a range) of nutrional information post cooking along side the precooked information.

What are we supossed to do as consumers ? Set up our own nutrional labs ?