Tag Archives: PEI lobster

My Island Bistro Kitchen’s Seafood Bubbly Bake

Seafood Casserole
My Island Bistro Kitchen’s Seafood Bubbly Bake

When you live on an Island where fishing is one of the main industries, it means you have access to wonderful fresh seafood. Yes, we are spoiled! Here in Prince Edward Island, where I reside, I make good use of seafood in my diet and in my recipe creations as I have done here with my Seafood Bubbly Bake. Continue reading My Island Bistro Kitchen’s Seafood Bubbly Bake

Food Day Canada 2015: A Tribute to PEI’s Great Foods

The Bistro's Food Day Canada 2015 Menu
The Bistro’s Food Day Canada 2015 Menu

With its beginnings in 2003, Food Day Canada has grown and evolved.  Today, it is a country-wide initiative designed to showcase how a delectable entire meal can be made using Canadian-produced food.  It’s a tangible and visible way to celebrate the wonderful variety of foods produced in Canada and recognize our farmers, fishers, other food producers, chefs and, indeed, those of us who are home cooks bringing locally-produced food to our tables on a regular basis.  I like to use fresh locally-produced food products which have not traveled days to reach us and, at the same time, it gives me the opportunity to put dollars into the hands of local food producers to keep the local food movement alive and sustainable.

Preparing a meal using Canadian food items is no great challenge for me since I use local food products every day of the year.  In summer, our garden is the source of much of the food we eat.  Off season, I patronize my local farmers market in Charlottetown.  We have a number of farmers who grow produce year-round in their greenhouses so it’s great to have that ready source of local, fresh produce.  If you follow my blog regularly, you will have read stories I have written on several PEI food producers.

Living in PEI, I have lots of choices of foods that are representative of the Island.  For my 2015 Food Day Canada menu, I have chosen items from both land and sea and, as a tribute to our Island potato industry, am featuring potato salad, an all-time favorite summertime dish on PEI.  Potato salad is often found at backyard barbeques, picnics, and other summer get-togethers across the Island. You can get my recipe here.

My Island Bistro Kitchen's PEI Potato Salad
My Island Bistro Kitchen’s PEI Potato Salad

So, today, I am happy to share with you the menu I have prepared and photographs of the PEI foods that are on my table for Food Day Canada 2015 along with the sources of the products. This is my version of a typical down home PEI lobster supper.

Food Day Canada Menu 2015
Starter
PEI Mussels steamed in apple juice, garlic, and a medley of fresh herbs
and dipped in melted butter
Fresh Homemade Rolls

Main
PEI Lobster in the Shell
PEI Potato Salad
Green Garden Salad with Cranberry-Pear Vinaigrette

Dessert
Glazed Strawberry Pie with Whipped Cream

Wine Pairing
Little Sands White Wine, Rossignol Estate Winery, Little Sands, PEI

Pre-dinner Beverage:
Product and Source: Rhubarb Slush made with rhubarb from our garden

Rhubarb Slush is my latest drink creation and it is my signature drink for summer 2015.  It’s very tasty and refreshing on a hot summer day.  We have a large rhubarb patch and it’s another way to use the rhubarb.

Rhubarb Slush
Rhubarb Slush

Starter
Products & Sources:
Mussels – Prince Edward Aqua Farms Inc., Springbrook, PEI
Butter – Amalgamated Dairies Limited (ADL), Summerside, PEI

Mussels are one of the main products harvested from PEI waters.  While they are used in different ways such as in chowders and even salads, they are most often steamed and eaten right out of the shell, dipped in good PEI hot melted butter.

PEI Mussels
PEI Mussels

Today, I simply steamed the mussels in a small amount of apple juice, some garlic, and a small handful of mixed herbs from my herb garden.  The key to good steamed mussels is to use as little liquid as possible to steam them as too much liquid dilutes their flavor.

PEI Mussels
PEI Mussels

I made a fresh batch of rolls this morning and, with a good slather or ADL butter, they make a lovely accompaniment to the mussels.

Main
Products & Sources:
Lobster – Fished off of Tignish, PEI, and sourced through MR Seafood in Charlottetown, PEI

Butter – Amalgamated Dairies Limited (ADL), Summerside, PEI
Potatoes – Jewell Produce, York, PEI
Lettuce – From my own garden
Tomatoes – Vankampen Greenhouse, Charlottetown, PEI
English Cucumber – Schurman Family Farm, Spring Valley, PEI (these are the absolute best flavored cucumbers I have ever tasted!)

We are truly blessed on PEI to have fine quality lobster.  The lobsters on my table today were fished off the shores of Tignish in the western part of the province.  One of my favorite places to buy fresh seafood is at MR Seafood on Thompson Drive in Charlottetown and that’s where these were purchased. Lobster may be eaten hot or cold. My preference is to eat the lobster meat cold but dipped in melted butter.

PEI Lobster
PEI Lobster

The potatoes that I used to make the potato salad came from Jewell’s Produce in York, PEI, just outside Charlottetown.

My Island Bistro Kitchen's Potato Salad
My Island Bistro Kitchen’s Potato Salad

Our lettuce has been very slow to grow this year but I was able to get enough from the garden to make a green salad for our dinner.


Dessert
Product and Source: Strawberries from the Schofield Farm in Lady Fane, PEI

Strawberries are nearing the end of their season here on PEI but, as a finale to the strawberry season, I am including my glazed strawberry pie for dessert.

Glazed Strawberry Pie
Glazed Strawberry Pie

Wine Pairing
My wine of choice for today is Little Sands White Wine that comes from Rossignol Estate Winery in Little Sands in the Eastern part of PEI. Rossignol is PEI’s oldest winery.  Click here to read the story I previously wrote about my visit to this winery.

So, this is how I am celebrating Food Day Canada 2015.  What Canadian-produced foods are on your table today?

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Labour Day Picnic by the PEI Seaside with Lobster Croissants on the Menu

I’ve had a great summer of picnics this year!  Haven’t gone on this many picnics in many years.  I had forgotten how much fun and relaxed al fresco dining can be.  This posting will feature my Labour Day Weekend Picnic but, first, a little trip down memory lane.

One of my favorite summertime memories involves a picnic.  I was visiting a neighbour playmate and we were probably about 8 or 9 years old.  We took a notion one hot summer day that we would have a picnic by the little stream across the road from my friend’s place.  The two of us stood by the friend’s mother at the kitchen counter as she whipped up some gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, placed them in an old tin school lunchbox, filled a thermos with Kool-aid (anybody remember Kool-aid?), and sent us off on our big adventure to the picnic by the stream.  Off we went across the little country road, down through the cow pasture to a little stream which, at its deepest point was probably all of 4″ or 5″ deep.  We situated ourselves, had our picnic, and probably returned to the house all in the span of about 15 minutes, no doubt ready for another activity!  Yet, we had been on a picnic adventure and made a memory.  That was back in the days when kids played outside all day and found numerous ways to amuse themselves and none of them involved cell phones or computers.

I will admit my picnic adventures have progressed and become a bit more sophisticated.  There are so many options for picnic foods, particularly when it comes to sandwiches – there are traditional sandwiches with any number of different kinds of breads as options, wraps, baguettes, different kinds of rolls, bagels, etc.  For my picnic by the sea today, I have chosen croissants.  They are tasty and have a nice, soft texture.  Because I live near the water and close to a small fishing village that has a fresh seafood market open daily in the summer, lobster was a logical choice for a croissant filling.  The late summer fishing season has opened in Victoria-by-the-Sea on the south shore of PEI so buying lobster at the seafood market means the lobster is really, really fresh.  Take a look at this 1 1/2+ pound lobster that I took home with me to make the filling for the croissants!

I don’t really have a defined recipe for lobster filling for sandwiches or croissants.  I chop the lobster meat into fairly large chunks as I like to see good-sized pieces of lobster in a lobster roll or croissant — no mashed-up or shredded pieces of lobster meat will do for me!

I add a bit of celery, some pepper, some fresh chopped chives, a splash of fresh lemon juice, and some homemade mayonnaise – just enough to hold the meat together and give it flavour.  That’s it, nothing more as I don’t like anything that detracts from that rich lobster flavour.

I buttered the croissants, added a bed of fresh lettuce from our garden and then heaped on the lobster filling.  Yes, it was very yummy!

A little closer look….

And, this is what I mean about wanting to see nice big pieces of lobster in the sandwich.  Isn’t it mouthwatering and colorful!

Add some potato chips and picnic fare doesn’t get much better than this, particularly when the picnic location is beside the water.  With something as special as lobster, the menu does not have to be extensive.  Let the lobster star all on its own!

Croissants are so easy to handle and eat…particularly when filled with lobster 🙂

My August Cookie of the Month was the chocolate drop cookie.  They were dessert.

I added some fresh fruit – this time, some green grapes – and the picnic basket was ready to go.

I always like to take along some props to dress up the picnic spread, regardless whether it is at a picnic table or on the ground as is the case here by the beach.  It doesn’t matter whether I am in my dining room setting a formal table or outside, I like to think of setting the stage for a feast for the eye as well as for the stomach.  A few props really can make an ordinary picnic a bit more special.

For my seaside picnic, all it took was a blue-checked cloth, a stylish matching wicker picnic basket, a lantern with a blue candle, and some seashells and starfish, to dress up the dining experience.

I love the patterns in the pink-red sandbars on PEI.  Our Island beaches are extraordinary – on the south side, they tend to be more the pink-red color you see in the photo below while, on the north side, the sand is more of a soft pink color.  This is definitely a dining room with a water view!

However, the sky began to look somewhat ominous so we thought we had better hurry up and eat in case a rain shower came along and spoiled the picnic.

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I hope you have enjoyed some of the scenes from our seaside picnic that featured PEI lobster.  Enjoy your Labour Day weekend.

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