10 posts tagged “food”
I suck at updating this thing. Unfortunately, or should I say fortunately, real life has been much more involved than the interweb lately :)
You know how I love food. This book talks about food and how we relate to food, what they mean to our body, our minds and in general, our relationships with ourselves and each other.
It's very good so far. I'm halfway through it right now.
Tomorrow we head out to Vancouver Island for a little family R&R. I love riding on the ferry, it's such a beautiful ride. Hopefully the weather gets better. It's been pretty miserable here for a June month and I miss California sunshine horribly. It's one thing if its the winter time but damn this June freezing cold weather. It's just not right!
Ok, more real life to attend to. Happy Weekend!
Oreo Cakesters. I bought some and have been eating them.
They taste like evil. Delicious, yummy, addictive evil.
Evil Evil Evil. You know what's more evil.. .Kraft Mac & Cheese in a box. I love drizzling white truffle oil over it. Hahaha.. I am a ghetto foodie.
Which reminds me... I should try out this recipe
I'll let you know how it went :)
Another restaurant that we checked out for Dine Out Vancouver was the Watermark at Kits beach.
The food was exceptionally good and the service pleasant even though they messed up on our order twice. However, they were very apologetic and graciously comp'ed our wine. I started with the West Coast chowder and my dining partner has the Minted Smashed Chick peas. The chowder was great.. not too heavy and a great way to start the meal. For my main, I ordered the Pacific Northwest Bouillabaisse and they were very accommodating to my food allergy and replaced the shrimp. My partner had the salmon on lobster risotto.. nicely cooked.. and the risotto was cooked perfectly.
The desserts were ok, nothing spectacular but very good. The best thing about the restaurant is definitely the view of Kits beach, the main seafood dishes and the great service. We'll definitely have to go back again.
On Friday, we met up with our friend and his wife for a spot of tea and dinner. Both of them are born and bred Vancouverites so it was so great to hang out, get the historical low down on various things Vancouver and also talk about the upcoming wedding plans. After dinner, they took us down to La Casa Gelato. It is seriously the most fascinating gelato place I've ever been to.. they have 218 flavours available to pick from, and over 300 revolving flavours.. everything ranging from the rather plain hazelnut chocolate to pear with gorgonzola cheese.. and to my utter delight, durian and jackfruit gelato. OH.. the tastebuds were instantly transported back to childhood hot humid days in Malaysia.
The great thing about La Casa Gelato is that you could try any flavour you want. No questions asked. I tried the pear and gorgonzola cheese, chilli chocolate, durian (of course), jackfruit, longan, passionfruit ... and I forget how many others before settling on a scoop of durian and jackfruit.
If you're ever in Vancouver, go check out La Casa Gelato. And come pick me up on your way there :)
One of the few notable restaurants we've visited lately...
Anyways, enough of the commentary... back to the food. SALT is an interesting small plates restaurant that focuses on cheese, wine and chatucherie goods. We were here for Dine Out Vancouver so had a great tasting menu of a 3 course meal for $25. We had the Roast Tomato & Smoked Paprika Soup, the Artisan Cheese plate and I had the Dark Chocolate Mousse w/ Caramel & Raspberry Jam for dessert while my partner had the Trifle with Seasonal Fruit & Sherry-Soaked Sponge Cake. YUM. The cheese we had were a P.E.I Avonlea Cheddar with a side of Cornichons, a UK Stichelton Blue with a balsamic reduction, and a Quebec Chevre (goat cheese) with olives. My favourite, and I was surprised that it was a favourite, was the blue cheese... since I've always found blue cheese to be very overpowering. But this blue cheese was delicious. We paired our meal with a flight of BC wines.. a Quail's gate Chemin Blanc to start with the soup.. a Cedar Creek Pinot Noir with the cheese, and a Quail's gate Late Harvest optima with our dessert. My tastebuds were quite deliriously happy by the end of the night :)
More exciting restaurants later..
We made a Swedish Hash (Pytt I Panna) today for dinner (not the recipe I linked but a Gustav Anders recipe but I'm too lazy to type it out)... on a whim, I saw a thing on the telly where Jamie Oliver did these Roasted Balsamic Potatoes and Onions and decided to put together some roasted veggies too. It was a modified version of his recipe as I used parsnips, potatoes, carrots, garlic and onions. Par boil the potatoes and parsnips prior.. heat a pan in the oven at 400F in the meantime. When potatoes/parsnips are done, take the pan out. Throw in a dollop of butter and some olive oil and lots of rosemary. All the veggies go in, mush them all around, some balsamic vinegar (buy cheap) till its all nicely coated and salt and pepper for seasoning. Throw it back in the oven for about 40-50 minutes, easy peasy. :)
It turned our reaaally good. I was going to take a photo of the Pytt I Panna before I devoured it, but oops. :D It's traditionally served with a raw egg or a fried egg on top. We used fried eggs and it was delicious. The roasted potatoes/parsnip/onion/carrot/garlic mix was unbelievably good too. Nicely caramelized. I strongly recommend trying it out. It's a great twist to regular roasted potatoes/veggies.
Enjoy!
One of my Christmas presents that I received was a Creme Brulee torch.. lovely gift!
Today, we went bought gas fuel for it and I took a stab at making some classic Creme Brulee.
It was an easy and simple custard recipe.. two egg yolks, 1 tsp of vanilla, mixed with 1/3 cup sugar. Scorched a cup of cream on the stove. Whipped everything together.. and cooked it in the oven in an hot water bath for about 35 minutes. The custard was a little uneven since I didn't sieve the mixture so its got some little bubbles on it.
Here's a shot of the first little guy right out of the oven.
After the ramekins cooled down, I had to cover them up and stick them to chill in the fridge.
A nice little shot of my tiny fridge... with the little ramekins covered in foil in there. After about an hour and half or so, out they came. 50/50 granulated sugar/brown-sugar mix was used for caramelization. Sprinkled the sugar over the custard, and fired up the torch. The first one came out a little uneven but after figuring out the best angle and how fast the sugar caramelized, the second creme brulee came out great.
Here it is. :) Yummy.. smooth custard, crispy sweet shell.
Totally easy to make.
Next.. to try out some of the other types of Creme Brulee ;)
I made an excellent Potage Bonne Femme soup yesterday. It's basically potato soup with croutons and melted Gruyere cheese on top. It's a great soup for cold weather. Here's the recipe from the Vegetarian Planet cookbook. In retrospect, using fresh herbs would've been better but I was lazy and had only dried herbs on hand.
2 T olive oil
3 cups chopped onions
6 garlic cloves, minced
3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled cubed in 1/4" cubes
1 cup light beer (I used Corona.. mmm)
7 cups water
2 tsp minced rosemary (dried or fresh)
2 tsp minced tarragon (dried or fresh)
2 tsp minced thyme (dried or fresh)
1 tsp salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
6 slices of good white or wheat bread. (I used the country demi loaf from Cobs bakery, sliced thick)
4 oz imported Gruyere cheese, sliced thin into 6 slices (I used cave aged Swiss Gruyere from Market Meats.. sooo goood)
Directions.. In large pot, heat olive oil. Throw in onions and cook for 10-15 minutes till onions begin to caramelize. Add garlic, cook another 2 minutes. Add potatoes, beer, water, rosemary, tarragon, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring soup to boil. Then reduce heat to low, cover the pot and let simmer for 40 minutes
While soup is simmering, toast those slices of bread in a toaster or using your oven at 400F.
Just before serving your soup, lay cheese slices on bread/croutons. Ladle soup into bowl, lay each crouton on top of each bowl and serve. YUM.
I have this recurring dream about a Malaysian dessert called Onde-onde. It's basically glutinous rice balls filled with gula melaka (coconut palm sugar)... and oh my god, soooo good. In my dreams, and they often differ... I try and fail miserably in search of Onde-onde.... like the universe tried its best to stop me from getting my fill of Onde-onde. It's really quite funny. I remember during Ramadan month, all these little hawker stalls would crop up to cater to the people who broke fast. That's the best time to get delicious kuihs ie. Malaysian cakes.. and such yumminess such as Onde-onde.
I searched around and found this recipe and this one for Onde-onde from fellow Malaysians. I can't wait to try to make some.. I'll probably fail miserably, but oh well. Now, my next task is to find a bakery or restaurant here in Vancouver that carries Malaysian/Nyona desserts..... *hopefull*
we went for lunch at saffron noodles and sate. nadine had the spicy drunken noodles, and i had the tom yum soup rice noodles. the drunken noodles were very good, but not as good as celadon though, i think. the tom yum soup noodles were delicious but not tom-yummy enough.
for my other reviews in general, check out my yelp page. :)
