Mexican Pineapple Water – Agua de Pina

This is what you call refreshing and fun you can make this drink with almost any fruit.

Add the remaining water to your pitcher and mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if more is needed. Also add additional water if needed. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

Variations:
• Agua de Melon – Use cantaloupe or any other melon
• Agua de Sandie – Use watermelon – Check out Linda’s Watermelon Aqua Fresca recipe
• Agua de Fresa – Use strawberries – Check out Liinda’s Strawberry Agua Fresca
• Agua de Papaya – Use papaya with the addition of some lime juice
• Agua Fresca de Pepino – Use peeled, and seeded cucumbers with the addition of lime juice.

Ingredients:

1 ripe fresh

Add the remaining water to your pitcher and mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if more is needed. Also add additional water if needed. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

Variations:
• Agua de Melon – Use cantaloupe or any other melon
• Agua de Sandie – Use watermelon – Check out Linda’s Watermelon Aqua Fresca recipe
• Agua de Fresa – Use strawberries – Check out Liinda’s Strawberry Agua Fresca
• Agua de Papaya – Use papaya with the addition of some lime juice
• Agua Fresca de Pepino – Use peeled, and seeded cucumbers with the addition of lime juice.

NOTE: It is hard to give precise measurements on this recipe, because the size and ripeness of each pineapple varies. The amount of sugar needed will vary depending on the sweetness of the fruit, and also your taste. Sugar substitutes may also be used if desired.

Preparation:

Cut of ends of the pineapple. With a sharp knife, quarter and then cut into eights. Cut off the outside or skin of the pineapple. Then cut the pineapple pieces into cubes.

Place the pineapple cubes, sugar, and 1 cup of water in the blender and liquefy (the liquid will be quite thick and frothy). Depending on the size of your pineapple, you might need to process in the blender in more than one batch. NOTE: Use only enough water in the blender to liquefy the fruit. Strain the pineapple liquid through a fine sieve or strainer into your pitcher.

Add the remaining water to your pitcher and mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if more is needed. Also add additional water if needed. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

Variations:

• Add the remaining water to your pitcher and mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if more is needed. Also add additional water if needed. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.Variations:
  • Agua de Melon – Use cantaloupe or any other melon
  • Agua de Sandie – Use watermelon -
  • Agua de Fresa – Use strawberries -
  • Agua de Papaya – Use papaya with the addition of some lime juice
  • Agua Fresca de Pepino – Use peeled, and seeded cucumbers with the addition of lime juice.e addition of lime juice.
• Agua de Fresa – Use strawberries – Add the remaining water to your pitcher and mix well. Taste and adjust sugar if more is needed. Also add additional water if needed. Chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.Variations:

Bistro Nolah Facebook Page…………….

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bistro-Nolah-3669-Boul-St-Jean-DDO/344547112240713

Bistro Nolah Ceviche

Bistro Nolah – Dollard-des-Ormeaux Restaurant | Cajun & Comfort Food Restaurants | RestoMontreal.ca

Bistro Nolah – Dollard-des-Ormeaux Restaurant | Cajun & Comfort Food Restaurants | RestoMontreal.ca.

Pangasius i found this article and decided to share it…………………..

You can do the research for yourself, and see if this info is accurate the region this fish is farmed is definitely not the safest area to eat from.

Cheap cheap fish! The above is an ad (from one of the large supermarket chains in France) for the fish known as Pangas (also called, Pangasius, Vietnamese River Cobbler, Basa Fish and White Catfish, Tra, Gray Sole). It was a reminder to tell you about the dangers of this strange but increasingly popular fish. I learned about them and how they’re raised a while ago on an informative documentary online here: Documentary about Pangas. (which is in French. If you don’t speak French, read below.)

Would the French call it Poisson ou poison?

Industrially farmed in Vietnam along the Mekong River, Pangas or whatever they’re calling it, has only been recently introduced to the French market. However, in a very short amount of time, it has grown in popularity in France. The French are slurping up Pangas like it’s their last meal of soup noodles. They are very, very affordable (cheap), are sold in filets with no bones and they have a neutral (bland) flavor and texture; many would compare it to cod and sole, only much cheaper. But as tasty as some people may find it, there’s, in fact, something hugely unsavory about it. I hope the information provided here will serve as very important information for you and your future choices. Here’s why I think it is better left in the shops (and not on your dinner plates):

1. Pangas are teeming with high levels of poisons and bacteria. (industrial effluents, arsenic, and toxic and hazardous by-products of the growing industrial sector, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), DDT and its metabolites (DDTs), metal contaminants, chlordane-related compounds (CHLs), hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCHs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB)). The reasons are that the Mekong River is one of the most polluted rivers on the planet and this is where pangas are farmed and industries along the river dump chemicals and industrial waste directly into it. To Note: a friend lab tests these fish and tells us to avoid eating them due to high amounts of contamination. Regardless of the reports and recommendations against selling them, the supermarkets still sell them to the general public knowing they are contaminated.

2. They freeze Pangas in contaminated river water. Ew.

3. Pangas are not environmentally sustainable, a most unsustainable food you could possibly eat – “Buy local” means creating the least amount of environmental harm as possible. This is the very opposite end of the spectrum of sustainable consumerism. Pangas are raised in Vietnam. Pangas are fed food that comes from Peru (more on that below), their hormones (which are injected into the female Pangas) come from China. (More about that below) and finally, they are transported from Vietnam to France. That’s not just a giant carbon foot print, that’s a carbon continent of a foot print.

4. There’s nothing natural about Pangas – They’re fed dead fish remnants and bones, dried and ground into a flour, from South America, manioc (cassava) and residue from soy and grains. This kind of nourishment doesn’t even remotely resemble what they eat in nature. But what it does resemble is the method of feeding mad cows (cows were fed cows, remember?) What they feed pangas is completely unregulated so there are most likely other dangerous substances and hormones thrown into the mix. The pangas grow at a speed light (practically!): 4 times faster than in nature…so it makes you wonder what exactly is in their food? Your guess is as good as mine.

5. Pangas are Injected with Hormones Derived from Urine – I don’t know how someone came up with this one out but they’ve discovered that if they inject female Pangas with hormones made from the dehydrated urine of pregnant women, the female Pangas grow much quicker and produce eggs faster (one Panga can lay approximately 500,000 eggs at one time). Essentially, they’re injecting fish with hormones (they come all of the way from a pharmaceutical company in China) to speed up the process of growth and reproduction. That isn’t good. Some of you might not mind eating fish injected with dehydrated pee so if you don’t good for you, but just consider the rest of the reasons to NOT eat it.

6. You get what you pay for – and then some. Don’t be lured in by insanely cheap price of Pangas. Is it worth risking your health and the health of your family?

7. Buying Pangas supports unscrupulous, greedy evil corporations and food conglomerates that don’t care about the health and well-being of human beings. They only are concerned about selling as many pangas as possible to unsuspecting consumers. These corporations only care about selling and making more money at whatever cost to the public.8. Pangas will make you sick – If (for reasons in #1 above) you don’t get immediately ill with vomiting, diarrhea and effects from severe food poisoning, congratulations, you have an iron stomach! But you’re still ingesting POISON not poisson.Final important note: Because of the prodigious amount of availability of Pangas, be warned that they will certainly find their way into other foods: surimi (those pressed fish things, imitation crab sticks), fish sticks, fish terrines, and probably in some pet foods. (Warn your dogs and cats and hamsters and gerbils and even your pet fish!)

Watch this Report on Pangas (in French) (Video excerpt from Capitale on M6, which aired about 3 months ago)

Links: Buying fish in France, Le Panga, nouvelle abération de la mondialisation ?

http://www.dietmindspirit.org/2008/01/30/why-you-shouldnt-eat-this-fish-pangas-pangasius-vietnamese-river-cobbler-white-catfish-gray-sole/

Bistro Nolah.

Sustainable Fish advice

wouldn’t it be more ecologically sensible  to eat farmed fish that is plentiful because it is farmed?

The phrase “there are plenty more fish in the sea” is obsolete. There just are not. In my own lifetime (I was born in 1974) global consumption of fish has doubled – 84% of all wild fish stocks are overexploited or depleted. Fishing vessels are so huge they scoop up their entire seasonal quota in just six weeks. Quotas have proved to be as effective as clowns transporting water in leaky buckets.

You probably already eat more farmed fish than you imagine. Some 40% of the seafood we consume will have been farmed in some way. Farmed salmon, tilapia, trout and mussels are extremely common in the UK. By 2020, the UN says, we will need to farm half the fish we consume globally.

So far so logical. Except that conventional fish farming typically feeds its progeny on wild fish. To produce 1kg of healthy farmed salmon requires 4kg of wild caught fish. You see the catch? Far from rescuing precious wild stocks, it has the capacity to put the boot in to an even greater degree. Conventional fish farming has also become famous for the transfer of disease and parasites, both among its farmed creatures and on to wild fish through escapees, antibiotic and chemical use, and pollution.

According to Don Staniford, the wild-salmon activist who set up the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture, this is an entirely accurate depiction of industrial fish farming. And yet that venerable eco organisation, the WWF, which instigated the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) tick for wild-caught fish from sustainable fisheries is slowly introducing the ASC (Aquaculture Stewardship Council) tick for farmed fish. Right now a tilapia farm in Indonesia is being audited with a view to winning the first ASC tick.

According to the WWF and others, farmed fish has the potential to provide sustainable protein free from land conflict, chemical and oil use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Breakthroughs are reported in feeding farmed fish on yeast and, according to the industry, on developing medicines and vaccines to tackle sea lice and other pests. While I appreciate that I’m making it sound as if a trouble-free, ethical source of your favourite fish could be around the corner, I suspect it will take a while until this particular boat comes in. In the meantime are you sure you can’t develop more of an appetite for less popular wild-caught varieties, such as pollock or red gurnard?

Bistro Nolah Review

 Bistro Nolah

Posted by admin

in Restaurant Review

From time to time, I crave variety. It is on those occasions that I seek out restaurants whose home cuisine is a bit unusual to my palate. I’m not talking here about anything too wildly outside of the box — simply food that’s neither Italian, French, Japanese nor any other cuisine that is currently à la mode. Understanding this background explains why, when a friend mentioned that “there’s a new kind of bistro that opened on Saint John’s in the West Island,” I replied thus: “Not another bistro.” But that was then and this is now. That was before I knew that the Bistro Nolah offers a variety of tasty dishes inspired by the southern United States.

 

STYLE, DECOR AND AMBIANCE

The restaurant is located on Saint John’s Boulevard in Dollard des Ormeaux, an area that doesn’t lack for an abundance of eateries. Indeed, the small shopping centre where Bistro Nolah is located already includes three other restaurants. Small, with only 15 tables, this newest addition to the space features a simple decor highlighted by walls decorated with replicas of musical instruments that recall the melodies of Louisiana. The kitchen is open and you can see the chef and the cooks in full preparation. A small bar is, oddly, located at the entrance. When we visited, a single customer sat there, sipping his drink. The bulk of the restaurant’s clientele was couples. Cajun aromas floated in the air. The wait staff was dressed in traditional black and white.

 

MEALS

Soon into the dining experience, our waitress came by with delicious homemade rolls that were baked in the shape of small mushrooms. To start, my guest ordered a gumbo with sausage. Hearty, tasty and well seasoned, this gumbo respected the traditions of its southern US beginnings. For my part, I ordered the ceviche. A scallop ceviche prepared with very fresh main players that were marinated simply in citrus juice, onions, salt and pepper, this dish was just about as exemplary in its tastes as in its presentation. For the main course, I ordered the shrimp jambalaya. The chef has found a much more attractive means of presenting this Cajun staple than simply tossing the mixture into a bowl. Instead, he chose to serve the rice, sausages and shrimps all separate on the plate. It was a very good idea. The dish was tasty without being too far out with the spices, as is too often the case. My guest is crazy about scallops, so she ordered accordingly. It was served, to my surprise, on a bed of sweet potatoes and topped with salsa verde. Again, a simple dish was made special with ingredients that were as fresh could be.

 

SERVICE

Throughout our experience here, the service was polite, courteous and very professional. The restaurant had been open for merely three weeks when we visited, but the waitress already knew her menu very well, and made excellent recommendations from it before we ordered.

WINES

We loved the fact that many wines were available by the glass at Bistro Nolah. A map was offered so that a client could find a wine that serves as an accompaniment to the spicy dishes of Louisiana.

 

PRICE

For two, it will cost you around $ 140 for a meal that includes two starters, two main courses, wine, tax and service.

Will I go back? Absolutely!

Mesa Grill, Chef Bobby NEW YORK

Restaurant LA SALLE À MANGER Montreal, Quebec