Whilst snacking on some Cervelat salami and cheddar cheese. I saw my food looking back at me. One little guy seems to have accepted his fate, while his friend seems a little more concerned about being consumed!
Sour Face
Tea for Me
There’s something soothing about making a cup of tea. Filling the kettle, selecting a mug, choosing a tea from my over stocked tea shelf and putting the elements together. I’m more of a one cup at a time instead of a whole pot kind of girl. If I go for a second cup, I’ll switch to another tea. I’m fickle like that and vari-ah-tea is the spice of life!
My first choice lately is Earl Grey Cream, a gift from my friend Banquette, it came with the mug pictured as well. The silicone tea infuser/stirrer was a present from Exec Chef and it is handy-dandy and aquamarine, two very good traits to have.
I think what I like most about a cup of tea is that you have to pause the chaos of your day, sit down, inhale the aroma and take the time to sip. At work, fixing a cup of tea is an island of sanity in a sea of crazy. In the summertime, I make glass after glass of iced tea. The convenience of a hot water selection on the coffee maker and a freezer full of fresh ice cubes makes it a snap. But, takes long enough for me to catch my breath and recharge my batteries.
Here’s to the restorative powers of a nice cuppa! Lord knows I’ll need more than a few to get me through this year.
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French Toast Frenzy
My darling Executive Chef husband was showing off some of the photos above to his restaurant team to taunt them with his weekend brunches at home. There is nothing like being woken up by the blissful smell of bacon goodness and heavenly hash browns, or so I’ve been told. I’m the one making the aromas come to life, cartoons blaring in the background.
Not to be immodest (since my modesty is one of my best qualities), but I make a pretty damn fine brunch. The last time I had a good brunch at a restaurant, I told the cook responsible that his hash browns were almost as good as mine. As he tried to compute the comment, Exec Chef helped him along by acknowledging that this was highly complimentary.
While my brunch menu always has bacon and hash browns on it, the third partner is a rotating one. Waffles, pancakes and French Toast take their turns on the dance floor. When I had my sourdough starter, pancakes had priority on the rotation. But, lately the boys are asking for the French Toast. Can I blame them? No, I can’t. It’s pretty darn good.
The key is the bread. I will only use sourdough. I usually pick up a loaf from Save-On-Foods since I have yet to find a decent bakery nearby. I usually only use half a loaf for Frenchies, so I use the rest for croutons or freeze the remaining slices to use on another Sunday morning. My deep freeze is like a treasure chest, just colder and with less dubloons.
My preferred topping is the darkest maple syrup I can find. Once, I had a bottle of this amazing maple syrup that is aged in a former bourbon barrel. I tried to make it last, but it was too good to resist. Exec Chef, on the other hand has only salt and pepper on his, albeit only kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Junior Chef has been known to create a snowscape with powdered sugar and then ask for maple syrup on top!
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Garlic Bread Jamboree
Do you love garlic? Because I do. It’s pretty dang amazing. I send my regrets to anyone who has an allergy to garlic. My condolences. I don’t know what I would do, besides pout a lot. I grew up with my mother worshiping garlic on a daily basis, it could cure anything and often did. Her theory was that if the whole family ate garlic then garlic breath wouldn’t be a problem. She did tend to overdo it with the raw garlic sometimes. But, man, if you complained that you had a cold coming on, she’d dose you up good and the sniffles would disappear. She would actually eat multiple cloves of raw garlic on toast with a bit of olive oil. Yeah, I’d just blow her a goodnight kiss from across the room to be safe.
Roasted garlic is a thing of beauty, and a sweet mellow way to enjoy Allium Sativum (that’s MR. Garlic to you). But today, I want to introduce you to TOASTED garlic. It’s half way between the spark of raw and the lush sugar of roasted. It’s a quick and easy way to take the bite out of the beast.
Separate the cloves, but leave the skin on, toss them in a hot dry pan and shake them around until there are touches of black on every side. Let them cool down a bit, then skin and dice the cloves. This can be used as a substitute for raw garlic in any recipe where you want to tone down the garlickiness or a sub for roasted garlic if you don’t have an extra 45 minutes.
One of the fastest ways to enjoy the toasty loveliness is to mix it up with some softened unsalted butter, freshly grated parmesan cheese and salt to taste. Slather it on the crustiest bread you can find, give it a fresh grind of black pepper and slide it under the broiler for about 10 minutes until it is golden and bubbly.
The best dance partner for this crusty loaf is a saucy tomato of a dish like spaghetti and meatballs, or chicken with a tomato pesto sauce on polenta. Dang, shouldn’t write this on an empty stomach. Good thing I’m making some tomorrow to go with lasagna!
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Tomato Time
The most common reaction, when I tell someone (who isn’t in the restaurant biz) that my husband is a chef, is a loud intake of breath, then an exclamation of “Aren’t you lucky!”, or some similar sentiment. I see the glint in their eyes as they picture me arriving home to a spotless kitchen filled with bubbling pots, a table set with fine china and my husband putting the finishing touches on an artistically arranged salad. I have to resist the urge to yell in their face, in my best Borat voice, “NOT!”
People, please. Stop for a moment and let reality sink in, like teeth sinking into a thick slab of warm fresh brioche. He works nights, minimum five, maximum seven. So, the most meals we will have together in a week is four (his metabolism can only handle two meals a day, plus snacks). Given that he slaves over a hot stove/cold cutting board for at least twelve, but maybe more like sixteen, hours a day how many times do you think he’s woken up early and jumped out of bed just to create a multi-course rose-in-the-vase breakfast-in-bed for his loving wife? Approximately, no wait , PRECISELY, zero.
I’m not saying he NEVER cooks at home, I would classify it more as hardly ever. I’m not bitter about it. I accepted it a long time ago. Besides, I like cooking on the weekends, and of course we like to support our local restaurants. The upside is now that he’s added the owner slash to his “chef” title if I want to be fed by him I can mosey down and belly up. Of course, I still have to pay, no free rides, baby. But, when I play my cards right and bat my eyelashes fast enough I might get an extra course or a sample of a new dish.
The point is, when he does fire up the tongs at home I try to kick back, relax and enjoy every moment. The smartest move I made this year was the charcoal grill I got him for his birthday, which led to a lovely summer of BBQ’ed deliciousness (I just had to supply the potato salad and the limeade). So, when he brought home a paper bag filled with Sun Gold tomatoes from Stoney Paradise Farms, I had visions of sweet tomato-y recipes dancing in my head. Sometimes when you have such a lovely ingredient to work with, especially at the tail end of the season, it is hard to commit to just one dish.
My dilemma was solved when the Executive Chef of the house took dinner by the reins and put his Junior Chef to work. I was demoted to photographer and documentarian. Since our boy-named-sous(chef) is a carboholic (he’s addicted to carbohol!), pasta was an easy choice. While I have a shelf with a varied selection of dried pastas, the boys decided to make some from scratch.
Now, there are not many things I enjoy watching more than an expert practice his craft, but I can say that watching said expert share his knowledge with the next generation definitely tops it. The big rough hands marked with scars and burns wearing a battered wedding band, guiding the cute little hands in kneading the pasta dough is on the top of my list for things that make me go *sigh*.
While Exec Chef demonstrated his wicked knife skills on the folded pasta dough, Jr. Chef ran out to our basil plant in the backyard for a fresh herbaceous touch for the dish. The sauce was just the tomatoes with olive oil, butter, basil and some Parmigiano-Reggiano.
It’s the simple dishes that make the best use of extraordinary ingredients and it’s sharing the simple pleasures that make the best memories.
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Caesar Seizure
When I met my husband, he was not yet the Executive Chef I know and love today. He was an apprentice line cook at a semi-veggie restaurant in our provincial capital. I loved taking my friends and family on Wednesday nights to sample his latest dish that he had created for their weekly appetizer special. My best gal, Lassette, STILL talks about the corn broth with cheese filled raviolis, even though it was over a (gulp) decade ago that she sampled it.
One of my favourite things about those days was when my boyfriend (tee hee) would call me at the end of his shift to see if he could bring me anything. Most nights I would reply with,”Oh, you know what I want, baby.” And he did, and he would deliver. He’d come home, I’d hear his key in the lock and cross the room to the door before he even had it open. I’d give him a kiss hello (if I remembered) and grab the bag from his hand. I’d already have our only mixing bowl out on the counter with utensils nearby. The first container held fresh, crisp romaine leaves that almost filled the bowl. Next, a smaller container chockfull of house made croutons, that started their life cycle as focaccia bread and then where blessed with copious quantities of garlic and olive oil. After that came the dressing (two containers if I was extra lucky), thick, creamy golden goodness to be scraped out over the leaves and croutons. Then I tossed it all together gently, to spread the dressing around in order to delicately coat each leaf and crispy cube of golden bread. Finally, the last container holding freshly grated Romano cheese was sprinkled over the slick surface.
Forgoing plates, and armed with forks, we’d take the single step to the couch and eat directly from the bowl. Those were the good old days, before we had a car, a kid or a clue. I think of those days fondly, and when I get to reminiscing, I am usually seized with a craving for that Caesar Salad of yore. Fortunately, the restaurant published a cookbook with their Caesar Salad dressing recipe. It’s pretty much the only way I can get my Chefs to eat salad without complaint (or conversation, we are all to busy enjoying). I usually add chicken to make it the full meal deal.
The croutons themselves are snacktastic. I don’t make them from focaccia, I use either sourdough (left over from making French Toast) or Italian (the bottom half only, the top gets used for garlic bread). I’ll freeze the cubed bread if I’m not using right away and let it fully thaw before letting them soak in olive oil flavoured with garlic, salt and pepper. I tend to snack on them while making the dressing, just the ugly ones of course.
I have the ingredients for the dressing memorized: roasted garlic, fresh garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, dijon mustard, capers, anchovies, salt and pepper. The roasted garlic is easy to do: cut off the tops of two whole heads, place it in the centre of a square of aluminum foil, douse it in olive oil and s&p liberally, pop it in the oven at 450 for 45 minutes (I love the symmetry of those numbers). I measure everything else by taste. Once the roasted garlic is ready it goes into the blender (well, right now I’ve been using my immersion blender, apparently I wore my pastel yellow Kitchenaid blender out). Half a lemon gets its juice squozen in (yes it’s a new word, feel free to use it), one large, or two small sliced cloves of fresh garlic, a nice pile of parmesan falls gently from the grater, a squidge (second vocab word of the day) of dijon mustard, five or six capers,one single anchovy (oops, suddenly not vegetarian), a few grinds of pepper, a generous pinch of kosher salt and a splash of olive oil. Then the blending/tasting/blending/tasting begins! The quantities are never exact because the flavours change with the season, or the brand. Somtimes I use oil packed capers and anchovies, sometimes salt packed. This changes the intensity of the flavour and the impact to the dressing. Lemons can be sweeter or drier, garlic can be subtle or strong. This is where the tasting comes in.
Once the first round of all the ingredients are in and all blended together, a tiny spoon drops a taste on your tongue. Whatever ingredient you can taste individually doesn’t need to be increased. So, just keep adding more of everything you don’t taste until it’s a beautifully balanced blend of all the players. The best way to tell when you’re done is when you just start eating, rather than tasting, the dressing (you just may be too hungry to care, but that’s fine). Leftover dressing makes a great dip for carrot sticks or croutons the next day. Just kidding about the croutons, they wouldn’t last more than a day around my house!
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Snackimals
When visiting Richmond, once I’ve filled my belly with Dim Sum at Fisherman’s Terrace , I like to wander around the Aberdeen Centre rubbing my belly. I took a friend there a while ago and she was fully in awe. Yes, she is from the Northern Territories, so anything other than Canadian Tire is pretty exciting to my friend Raisinette. So, the reason her excitement was notable was that she had just returned from a multiple week vacation in Japan. But to see the sparkle in her eye as we entered Daiso you’d think she’d never been outside the Communities of the Yukon. I have never been to Japan, but I guess I always assumed it would be MORE exciting than a store in Richmond that sells the majority of its stock with a two dollar price tag. Judging by Raisinette’s reaction, this is not the case.
Some of my previous $2 finds have included: a child-size chair, a stainless steel mug with a yellow plastic handle, soy sauce containers shaped fishies and cutesy chopsticks. Our big find on this trip were the Fruit Picks. Another way to get kids to eat more fruit (or anything really), skewer it with a cartoony animal pick. It makes snacks less messy and more fun (always a winning combo with small children). We also bought kid-size chopsticks with a case for Young Fresh Chef’s lunch kit. He has already taken cucumber rolls in his lunch (which was my first attempt at sushi rolls, I don’t think Tojo has anything to worry about).
Our other stop in the mall was Qoola. Young Fresh Chef and I had already been to their Denman location to sample their wares. So, we already knew to order the mochi as a topping on their tangy frozen yogurt. The nice thing about Qoola is that it is not a direct rip-off of Red Mango, like a certain colour & fruit monikered chain. Qoola also offers waffles and slushes and has more of a health/eco ethos.
To balance that, we also hit Beard Papa up in the food court (best food court in the known universe, at least the parts of the universe that I’ve known). Beard Papa is right next to Frappe Bliss, a Taiwanese shaved ice milk treat that Young Fresh Chef and I tried before, but haven’t been back. I think the proximity of Beard Papa MAY have something to do with that! Anyway, Beard Papa sells fresh oversize cream puffs. I remember asking Exec Chef if he knew why it was called Beard Papa, I got my answer the first time I saw our son dive into one. When he came up for air, the lower half of his face was covered in whipped-cream custard and icing sugar, the only thing visible was his huge grin. Raisinette was pretty hyped about the cream puffs, apparently, she hadn’t encountered any of their 230 outlets in Japan. I was starting to doubt that she had actually been there at all.
Of course, she did bring back gifts as proof. Manga stickers for Young Fresh Chef, and for me, she knows me so well, fruit picks topped with hearts! There was her evidence, there’s no way you could find anything like that outside of Japan, right?
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Dim Sum Dilemma
My first introduction to Dim Sum gets major points for ambiance, but negative twenty for actual taste. On our first trip to San Francisco (do NOT call it ‘Frisco or San Fran, everyone who lives in Northern California just calls it “The City”) we wandered through Chinatown and soaked in the atmosphere. There were boxes of live frogs squirming together like a plague just waiting to be released, turtles patiently climbing over one another and giant sized vegetables of every description. Stores extended past their doors and windows to encroach on the sidewalks, almost forcing people to walk in the streets, or run the risk of accidently placing your foot in bucket full of glistening eels. The size, density and variety made Victoria’s Chinatown seem like the tiny little corner that they added into Old Towne in the Royal BC Museum.
Overwhelmed by the hoi palloi, we slipped into some random restaurant and pointed to some Dim Sum items through the finger prints on the menu. My memories of this first Dim Sum consist of a few sensory impressions: cold, dry, greasy and stale. So, it was a dining option we didn’t explore further until years later.
Fast forward about four years when I began venturing out in Vancouver to explore the diversity of Dim Sum, as there are plenty of options. This time I did some research and tried out Sun Sui Wah on Main. A big banquety space with carts racing around and the chatter rising up to fill the high-ceilinged room it was worlds apart from that first random incident. The cart approach is good for first-timers and large groups. You just take a whiff and a glance then point to what you want to try. The hard part is trying to remember what you liked for the next time. It’s a lot of fun with large groups of adventurous friends, or somewhat picky eaters who are looking to expand their horizons. I’ve taken a few Dim Sum Virgins to Sun Sui Wah and everyone got into it. It was fun first foray, but the carts were starting to lose their appeal.
My husband, the Executive Chef of my heart, told me about the Imperial on Burrard. He’d been there with some co-workers and he liked the dishes better than Sun Sui Wah. Wanting to do it right, I organized an upcoming birthday do for my two friendettes with back to back birthdays for a Dim Sum adventure. The Imperial is in a beautiful old building down by the water with a typically gorgeous Vancouver mountain/ocean view. The room was more elegant than Sun Sui Wah and without the perils of being run over by runaway carts. Ordering from the menus wasn’t the sensory experience of having everything brought by for inspection, but allowed more discussion and planning. A word about my friendettes, they get just as giddy over food as I do and it just makes me love them more than I would anyway. My b2b b-day girls were my Sushi Friends back in the day and could always be relied on to join me in a couple of rolls whenever the desire struck.
Back to the Imperial, well I did go back a couple times and the food was better, but I still wanted something more. I liked all the flavours and textures, but I still wasn’t finding the freshness. Eliminating the middle men running the carts was a step in the right directions. But, I was looking for more umami , something that would curl my toes and turn my raincoat red (I don’t know what that means, I just like the alliteration. Also I don’t know that I really want curled toes).
Exec Chef knew a guy who was related to a guy who ran a Chinese restaurant called Fisherman’s Terrace in Richmond (of course! I should have been looking in Richmond all along.). We went for dinner one night and had this amazing crab dish that was a whole crab covered in a dry “sauce” of crunchy bits of goodness. I could see the glint in his eye that means Exec Chef is gathering inspiration that will result in a new dish. All the dishes were tasty, but what really impressed me was the bright and fresh quality of the flavours. We went there a couple more times for dinner before it dawned on me to try their Dim Sum!
The next time we found ourselves near Richmond around lunch time we headed to the Aberdeen Mall for Dim Sum and Daiso. We had our son, Young Fresh Chef, with us and we had to wait with the rest of crowd that spilled out into the mall. When we finally got a table and a pot of Jasmine tea, we were presented with a paper menu list and a pencil. I ticked the items that tickled my fancy (including sticky rice and shrimp dumplings for Young Fresh Chef) and passed it to Exec Chef for his perusal. While waiting for the food, they boy and I wandered over to the fish tanks to check out their residents. The restaurant is huge and busy, the atmosphere a cross between Sun Sui Wah’s hustle/bustle and Imperial’s dignified calm. Back at the table, when the food arrived, I was overcome by the heady scents. I dove right in and only came up for air to help Young Fresh Chef unwrap his sticky rice and give him a shrimp dumpling refill.
This was it! This was what I was looking for! The flavours were big, bold and balanced (the 3 B’s of flavour, according to me). The fried items were hot and crisp, the BBQ Pork Buns were clouds of dough filled with sweet and smokey goodness. There wasn’t a clinker in the lot. All the classics I’d had before were the best version I’d had and the “doughnuts” in a noodle wrapper were a revelation. It’s hard to describe in print, it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. It shouldn’t be good, but it is, IT IS.
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The Perils of Peach Pie
I *heart* pie. The phrase, “It’s high-time for pie!”, runs through my head with awkward regularity. I’m not sure where it comes from, I only know it means I should be looking for something with crust and a fruity filling. This is not to say that all pie is created equal. They need to be in season, no pumpkin at a summer picnic or cherry by the winter fireside, and the filling shouldn’t be too saucy (unlike me) or too dry (like my wit). While the filling is important, what makes a pie a *PIE* is the crust.
I will now share something with you, I fear the crust. Not on the plate, but in my hands. It strikes fear in my heart. Duh-Duh-DUH. I decided to face my fear, with the support of my Junior Chef and an excess of ripe peaches. Armed with my scale and copy of Michael Ruhlman‘s book Ratio. I tried to remember everything I’d read about pie crust method from Jeffrey Steingarten‘s The Man Who Ate Everything. For the filling, I referenced Baking Illustrated. I decided to forgo the poaching and skinning of the peaches (reeks of effort, I did take the time to remove the pits) and I didn’t have the recommended potato starch or tapioca starch, so I used corn starch, but cut down the amount to keep the pasty taste at bay.
So, my first peach pie AND my first lattice top crust! When the pie finally cooled, I dished up some slices and served it to Chef. He took one bite, said I’d done a great job, then informed me that he doesn’t like peach pie. Well, I guess after 13 years together we still have a lot to learn about each other. Fortunately, Young Fresh Chef was a fan of the pie and it only took a couple of days to finish it off. I think he especially liked taking it to school in his lunch!
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Banana Dippers
My junior chef is always looking for ways to make fruit more fantastic. Inspired by Lik-M-Aid. The comic features JC’s current top three dips. It’s really fun to rummage through your cupboards and try different dipables! So far we’ve sampled:
sprinkles – way fun
malt powder – in my top 3!
skim milk powder – good for combo dips
hot chocolate powder – another top 3 for me
grape koolaid – not so good if it’s unsweetened
Real Lemon and Real Lime powder – tangy and mouth puckering
ground almonds – subtle flavour with a nice texture
shredded cocoanut – rounding out my top 3
Combo dips make it even more experimental.
It reminds me of the potions we used to concoct as kids, then dare each other to try. I find that Junior Chef consumes much more fruit when there are dippers present and he is smiling and giggling the whole time. Further variations include: Pear Dippers, Apple Dippers and Green Grape Dippers. So, go check your cupboards and commence dipping!
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