ottawa foodies

Does anyone know where I can find some blue cornmeal in the area? My wife is requesting I recreate a dish she had at Mesa Grill, and I can't seem to find it anywhere.

The wikipedia entry on cornmeal says:

"Blue cornmeal is made from the rarer blue corn or by adding blue food coloring."

Given this, I'd bet most of the blue cornmeal we encounter is food coloured. You could try making it yourself using yellow cornmeal and a good dose of blue food colouring. No guarantees though. :-)

Have you tried Chilly Chiles (in Navan)?

I tried Chilly Chiles, I just placed an order the other day, but alas, no blue cornmeal. I'm hesitant to add blue food colouring to regular cornmeal. I've found it on a few US sites like gourmetsleuth, but shipping/customs etc looks like it will be painful.

Maybe you can call up Mesa Grill and ask them. It doesn't hurt to try. You might even be able to get the recipe too!

I suggest trying one of the Mexican grocery stores in town. There's "Little Latin America" on Somerset near Booth and Mercado Latino on Montreal Rd just west of the Vanier Parkway.

what's the dish?

witchypoo - Mesa is a famous restaurant in NYC owned by Bobby Flay. Although I'm not sure if he actually cooks there, I don't know how keen they'd be on handing out recipes!

The dish is BBQ Duck filled blue corn pancakes with Habanero sauce. The recipe is easy, as I picked up The Mesa Grill cookbook last month. I just found the sources page in it, so I think I'll try that.

"Bob's Red Mill" produces blue cornmeal and a number of their products are usually found in the Loblaws "Organic" section, so you may find some there. In the US it's often found in health food stores as it is very often an organic product. Maybe try Herb and Spice ? When we travel to New Mexico we just can't get our fill of blue corn enchiladas....blue corn posole mmmmmmmm..... BBQ duck filled blue corn pancakes sound delicious!

This discussion begs the question: Does blue cornmeal taste any different from yellow cornmeal? Or is it just a visual thing like brown vs. white eggs.

I know those mixed tortilla chips (yellow, blue, red) all taste the same but they're pretty much guaranteed to be food coloured. It's the naturally blue corn that I'm curious about.

FF, to me blue corn does taste different, almost nuttier flavoured. It is usually also denser and grainier, (hmmm is that a word?) so maybe that makes the flavour a bit more intense? I've read that it is higher in some nutrients than some of the yellow corns too. That said, I'm not sure that in a blindfold test I could tell the difference against a good quality yellow corn. Some red corn tortillas are coloured with beet juice, but there are some good true red corn products out there as well.

There is a large selection of Bob's Red Mill products at the Farm Boy on Bank Street near Heron. They might have it.