2020 - What the Hell Was That

Lockdowns, food shortages, food delivery going from luxury to necessity, restaurant closures, facemasks, outdoor dining - saying the past year was unlike any other is an understatement. In a year where COVID-19 dominated everyone's life, some things in the world of food may have escaped your attention. Now is as good a time as any to comment on those stories as part of the process of putting some closure to the year 2020.

The end of racist food marketing
Aunt Jemina, Uncle Ben, and the Land O Lakes woman all got their walking papers in 2020 after food companies decided that racism was no longer necessary to sell their products. Inspired (or shamed) by the Black Lives Matter protests of George Floyd’s death, PepsiCo decided to change the name and brand image of its Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup, and other food companies soon followed.  The usual suspects bemoaned these changes as cancel culture, which is ironic because whining that you can't enjoy your meals without seeing a racial stereotype on the packaging sounds like the snowflake behaviour they normally don't condone.

Sourdough
Back during the early days of the pandemic when being forced to stay in your home for long periods was still new and unfamiliar,  many people tried their hand at baking. With so much time on their hands, a lot of those bakers channeled their anxiety about not being able to find toilet paper into perfecting the sourdough starter needed for the popular bread. As one of the few food bloggers to have not made or eaten sourdough in 2020, I had no idea it took about seven days to make a starter, and then another two weeks for it to become active. It also explains why this trend died out as people adapted to pandemic living over the year. There's no waiting for three weeks for a loaf of good bread when you have Zoom meetings to attend in between troubleshooting your kid's online schooling issues.

Popeyes' Chicken Sandwich Launched In Canada
A year where restaurants were either temporarily shut down or closed outright for various COVID-related reasons may not be the ideal time to debut a new sandwich but the demand for the Popeyes fried chicken sandwich was just that high. With no reports of the chaos that happened in the United States when the sandwich debuted there, the launch went better than the current COVID vaccine rollout. When I finally got the chance to try the sandwich, I didn't have the religious experience I was promised in the commercials but instead had the pleasure of eating something that lived up to the hype surrounding it. It's a damn good fast-food sandwich, definitely give it a try if don't want to make your own. Popeyes' competitors have a lot of catching up to do.

Dangerous criminal portrayed as friendly sausage maker
Normally when someone drives a truck filled with weaponry through the front gate of Rideau Hall, they are described as a terrorist, or at the very least, a threat to the safety of the people around them. But in July 2020, the media chose to play up the sausage-making abilities of the person who did that very act. Described as a "good community member" known for his friendly demeanour and for the garlic sausage he made for his customers at his meat-producing business in northern Manitoba, the Royal Canadian Artillery veteran is currently facing 22 criminal charges, including uttering threats and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. If found guilty, maybe he will be allowed to work in the prison mess hall so his culinary skills don't go to waste. I won't be crying any tears if they do.

Adamson BBQ
When the yahoos who make up FordNation turned on Premier Dad, it wasn't pretty. Owner Adam Skelly decided that the rules everyone else had to follow didn't apply to him, forcing police to arrest him after he continued to allow indoor dining on the premises of one of his restaurants. What makes this story even more absurd is that Skelly's restaurant never should have been allowed to operate in the first place, as this businessman never bothered to get a business licence for his business. Claiming he defied the law to challenge the government's Reopening Ontario Act, Skelly will have his day in court in March of this year. I'm sure being a cause célèbre and a poster boy for the anti-mask crowd won't help his cause, but Skelly seems to believe any publicity is good publicity. I believe hearing more about a restaurant owner's shenanigans than about his restaurant's food isn't a good sign, so I'll spend my money at some other BBQ joint the next time I'm in Hogtown. I don't know much about the Toronto barbeque scene but this was not a good introduction to it.  

Wu-Tang helps Ottawa Foodbank
It's always good to hear positive stories about hip-hop artists, as the media usually tends to focus on the who-got-shot, who-got-arrested, who-got-who pregnant type of stories; sex and drugs are only cool when it involves rock n roll and white guys playing the guitar. Reminding everybody that they ain't nothing to fuck with, the Wu-Tang Clan helped raise over $170,000 for the Ottawa Food Bank last April. It all started with Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein agreeing to donate $1 to the Ottawa Food Bank for every retweet of one of his tweets, up to $10,000. Adam Miron, an Ottawa entrepreneur and the co-founder and director of HEXO put in for $10K as well and asked others to spread the word on Twitter. One of those others was the American rap group, or at least whoever runs their Twitter account.  They spread the word and sent a donation as well, and soon enough money was raised to provide one week of meals for 24,300 people. The collaboration with the Wu and the Ottawa Food Bank led to the "A Better Tomorrow" campaign in May that raised money for the Ottawa Food Bank, the Ottawa Mission, and CHEO. I probably have as many black T-shirts as George Stroumboulopoulos, so I passed on getting the sold-out OttaWu tee, but I did get a chuckle seeing Mayor Watson wearing one. Even though cash rules everything around him, Jim doesn't look like much of a Wu-Tang fan.

What does 2021 have in store for us? Stay tuned...

DIY Fried Chicken Sandwich

The creation of a fried chicken sandwich from Popeyes has caused fried chicken lovers across the United States to lose their damn minds. The hype over this sandwich has caused people to pull out guns upon learning their local restaurant has sold out of the sandwich; because of the different partners and suppliers used in this country, Canada won't see this sandwich anytime soon. So what's a hungry Canadian supposed to do in the meantime? One could wait until the sandwich makes its way up here, or they could go across the border and hope for the best, but I propose that people save time and money by making the sandwich with the recipe below. It may not be the real thing, but you can make it Louisiana fast and enjoy it until Popeyes gets its act together.

Ingredients:

4 hamburger buns or medium-sized brioche buns
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
720-960 mL canola oil for frying
240 mL buttermilk
5 g each paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, salt
240 g flour
120 g corn starch
15 g each paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper
5 g each salt, pepper
120 g mayonaisse
5 g hot sauce
5 g paprika or cajun or taco seasoning
2.5 g garlic powder
Sliced pickles

1. Pound the chicken breasts in between two pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Cut each chicken breast in half crosswise to make 2 small pieces of chicken about the same size as the bun.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the buttermilk and the 5-gram portions of the paprika, garlic powder, salt, and black pepper. Add the chicken to the mix and place in the fridge to marinate up to 24 hours or use right away. 
3. In a medium shallow bowl, whisk the flour, cornstarch, and the 15-gram portions of the paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne pepper (if you want it spicy) together. Drizzle 2-3 tablespoons of the buttermilk batter into the flour mixture and mix it through with a fork.
4. Heat oil in a large heavy-duty skillet or pot on medium temperature or until the temperature reaches 176°C. Working with a piece at a time, dredge the chicken in the flour mixture and press some of the flour on the top of the chicken breast to form a thick crust. Transfer the chicken to hot oil and fry for 3-5 minutes per side or until the outside is crispy and golden and the internal temperature reaches 75°C. 
5. Melt some butter in a large saucepan and toast the buns face down until golden and crisp. In a small bowl whisk the mayonnaise, the hot sauce, and the remaining spices together and spread a generous layer of the spicy mayo on each bun. Add the chicken and the pickles and serve immediately.
   
   Note: Popeyes might disagree, but I like to add some bacon and some shredded lettuce when I feel like a fried chicken sandwich. 

For the Love of Popeyes Chicken

Most people when they hear the name "Popeye", they think of the lovable spinach-eating sailor man from Saturday morning cartoons, but it makes me think of my favourite fried chicken fast food restaurant. Established in 1972, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen has been making mild and spicy fried chicken along with sides such as red beans and rice, Cajun fries and mashed potatoes that beat anything that the Colonel has to offer. The first time I ate at the apostrophe-free Popeyes was back in 1991. I was in New York visiting my cousins, and we stopped there before going to see "Boyz in the Hood". I remember loving how tasty and non-greasy the chicken was, and lamenting that we didn't have a restaurant like that back home. I didn't get another taste of "Louisiana Fast" until over a decade later when I discovered there was a Popeyes in Toronto during a visit with my future wife. She too became a Popeyes convert. I made more converts when I took a trip to Detroit with some friends sometime later when we were visiting a friend living in London at the time; to this day, one of my boys says he'd take "a bullet in the ass" for some Popeyes. My love of this place may have caused me to oversell its greatness, as some friends of mine who have tried the food there didn't think it was as amazing as I described it, but even then, they agreed that it was better than the chicken they had at KFC (or Dixie Lee, or Church's for that matter). But now that Ottawa finally has a Popeyes location, with another now at Orleans location to taste for yourself. (Updated: Feb. 12, 2015)

NOTE: I have not been paid by AFC Enterprises to produce this blog entry, but if Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen wants to send some free food my way because of this, I won't object.