it ain't pretty...

This is my New Year fish. I have no idea what it is called in English. In Chinese, it is called "lang yu" and I only get to have it once a year - at Chinese New Year. I believe it's imported from China, but since I have no idea what it's called, I can't Google anything about it. My grandmother makes it every year on New Year's eve, but we have to wait until the New Year to eat it - old superstition about how abundance (Chinese word sounds like the word for fish) in the old year will lead into abundance in the new year.

It's an extremely boney little sucker. The bones are extremely sharp and are forked, so swallowing one could be really uncomfortable. It takes a lot of patience (and a lot of silence) to eat one of these properly. Pan fried with just a bit of light soy... yum... my fav.

cooking for one can be fun...

As much as I love to cook, cooking for one is a really big pain in the ass. There are always leftovers to contend with and sometimes freezing said leftovers isn't a viable option. (I refer you to the infamous freezer incident of 2006.)

My self-restraint at portion control is nonexistant and because I tend to want to use up all my ingredients (i.e. say the WHOLE bulb of fennel instead of HALF the bulb of fennel), I tend to make much, much more than the recipe promises. I have authority issues. Following directions is extremely difficult for me. And I pay for it by having to eat the same thing day after day for about a week. Not an ideal situation in my world.

Last week, I took advantage of having the kitchen to myself (FINALLY!!) and cooked up a storm - mushroom strudel, homemade red wine vinaigrette, bouillabaisse with fresh, crispy (store-bought) baguettes. My friends and I went to town, gorged ourselves silly and in the end, there was still had a ton of leftovers. But the leftovers were so good the next day... and the day after... and the day after that.

bouillabaisse schmassion style

INGREDIENTS

1 small bulb of fennel - diced (reserve fronds)
1 - 1.5 cup chopped onions
couple of cloves minced garlic
1 - 1.5 cups peeled and chopped tomatoes
1 lb or so of small white potatoes - cubed 1"
2 - 3lbs of seafood (cubed salmon, mussels, clams, scallops, etc.)
0.5 cups white wine
stock (chicken or fish or both)
a few good splashes of gin/annisette etc
salt & pepper to taste
2 sprigs of thyme
hot chili pepper (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Heat up some oil in a large pot. Throw in garlic, onions, fennel and cook until soft. Deglaze with the white wine. Add tomatoes, cook some more. Splash in some gin/annisette etc, cook a couple of minutes and throw in potatoes, fennel fronds, stock. Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are tender. Throw in thyme and the whole chili pepper (optional, for spicier, cut open and throw in deseeded pepper... pepper seeds can be nasty).

Here's where you have options.

If you don't have perpetually late friends (unlike me), gently slide your seafood into the soup. I kid. Just throw it in according to size and required cooking time. Simmer until seafood is done, remove thyme and chili pepper, season and serve.

If you have perpetually late friends, simmer the soup until they get there. Bitch about it when they get there, and maybe drink the rest of the bottle of white wine while you wait. Depending on how late your friends are, you might want to pour in more stock or wine if your soup base has simmered away. Bring to a boil, throw in seafood as above.

Feeds a party of 6 with 4 days of leftovers for 1.

And for dessert on Day 4 of leftovers... swirly choco chip cookies... YUM!

cross post because this one really rocked

I had a lot of fun making this cake and I'm pretty damn happy about the way it turned out. Next time, the body will get a little more shaping, but hey, I was hungover from monkeyco Christmas party and didn't even feel like baking.

Now taking orders.

mimolette… a cheese of cannonballic proportions

Cheese is the food that I crave on a daily basis. Even if it’s just a nanosecond of the day, the desire for the luscious milky goodness of cheese is intense.

My foray into the world of cheese did not begin at an early age. I grew up on Mini Baby Bels and Kraft Singles donuts – a slice of Kraft Singles folded neatly in half, a bite taken out of the middle of the fold, and unfolded to get a toothy hole in the middle of the orange square. It wasn’t until my early teens that I experienced anything other than mozzarella, cheddar and the occasional piece of edam. A small wedge of camembert at a monastery lunch and I’ve been hooked every since.


Mimolette (or “Boule de Lille”) caught my eye during Tuesday’s lunchtime trip to the market. Frankly put, it looks like a cantaloupe. The outside rind is a textured, pockmarked beige-brown while the hard cheese on the inside is a bright carrot orange. I asked for a taste and then… WOW. Blown away.

It is a cheese that crumbles and melts away slowly in your mouth. There is a buttery, salty nuttiness to the flavour but also a hint of something fruity or perfumey; maybe even a touch of caramel if you think about it hard enough. The finish is clean with no lingering cheesy memories on your breath (note to self: good date cheese!).

where: chris’ cheesemongers (st. lawrence market)
caveat: $$ at $63/kg, it's not cheap! yikes!

where was my camera when i needed it?!

Like a bad little almost-foodblogger, I forgot to take pictures of the many, many amazing meals that we had in Hawaii. Our exuberance for the food overtook us, and never was there enough time to snap a quick pix before all the morsels had disappeared. We tried everything from crack seed to poke to seaweed musabi. The only thing I could not bring myself to eat was spam. I hate spam.

I could recap every single meal, but for pure laziness sake, I'll leave you with the top three... none of which I have pictures of. Instead, the pictures you see sprinkled throughout are ahi poke with fresh seaweed (Lahaina), baby green salad with a vanilla vinaigrette (Hana Hotel) and pumpkin soup (Hana Hotel).


1. Mama's Fish House (Pa'ia, Maui)

We went for the Sista's birthday on her last night in Hawaii. The beachfront restaurant with it's tiki torch lined walkways is romantic (too bad for us), but while the ambiance is great, the food is even better. The fish is incredibly fresh with the name of the fisherman and the boat on the menu du jour... opah, ono, mahi-mahi, a'u, ahi... all caught the same day. Can you imagine? I love fish... I was in heaven!

The ahi, mahi-mahi and opah panang curry was one of the best curries I've ever had. Rich, but light (how is that even possible?!), accompanied by a banana and mango salsa, it was an amazing blend of asian and Hawaiian flavours.

If only I could find something like Mama's at home.



2. Blue Shrimp and Seafood Co (Honolulu, Oahu)

Street food at it's best. Actually, more truck food than street food. The Blue Shrimp and Seafood Co. is permanently parked in a parking lot just off Kuhio Ave. We went on recommendation from the limo driver that drove us down from Diamond Head Crater when the maternal one refused to walk back to Waikiki.

The sesame encrusted ahi salad was fabulous...a giant piece of nicely grilled ahi (enough for two people!) on top of a greek salad lightly sprinkled with feta. If I hadn't been so full (of ahi and russian snow crab legs), I would have definitely tried to back for seconds!

Hands down for best street food.


3. Tiki's Grill and Bar (Waikiki, Oahu)

Two words... taro bread. Honestly, that pretty much did it for me. The rolls were warm and fluffy, tinged with the slightly purple hue of taro, and tasted heavenly with the banana butter that accompanied it.

Also good was their version of sangria. Who doesn't love pineapple wine? Especially pineapple wine with mango. Yum.

Go there. Better than Duke's.

sweet seduction

I’m late to this bandwagon. I’d been hearing about the Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz since the summer, but wanted to muddle through my existing bottles of red before adding to my growing “collection” of alcoholic bevies.

Silly me.

By the time I was ready it was nowhere to be found. LCBO stores across the province were sold out, what few cases that remained (in Sudbury) were on hold. I tried almost everything to get my grubby little hands on a bottle. I tried all of my various hookups… I even tried namedropping.

Nada.

Finally last weekend, I managed to score two bottles. At $17 a pop, it was one of the best wines I’ve had in a very, very long time (the last one being a gold label Ruffino 1999?? I forget…).

Smokey, spicy, a little blackberry, a wisp of vanilla; there is a recognizable depth to it and smoothness like you wouldn’t believe. Ok. I’m exaggerating. I’m not really a wine connoisseur, but I know what I like. This, I like… a lot.

Go forth and hunt, my friends, go forth and hunt.

where: your local LCBO…

when: next shipment reaches land in about 2 weeks… be patient…

sweet nothings

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to learn how to blow glass. As children, we'd get dropped off at Harbourfront and left to wander the artist studios for hours upon hours. I loved the burning heat of the glass studio, and was facinated by the way the glassblowers would turn glowing orbs of molten glass into free flowing pieces of suspended whimsy.

Learning how to blow sugar is so much better. Not only does one have a similar ability to create something out of apparently nothing, but it tastes amazing as well.

I came out of the workshop with two scorched thumbs and a whole lot of ambition.

Inspiration has struck, and I know what what I want to do. Now, I only need to go to Home Depot for a blow torch and a heat lamp... and to the grocery store for a whole lotta sugar.

where: Bonnie Gordon sugarworks workshop...

hangover sandwich extraordinaire

If ever in Pittsburgh, definitely make it a point to stop by Primanti Bros for the world's best hangover cure. There's nothing like grilled meat, cheese, fries, coleslaw and a whole lotta goodies slapped between two pieces of soft, chewy Italian bread after a good night of drinking. Washed down with a cold, cold glass of Coke and a couple of Advil's, one almost feels human enough to partake in a marathon Grove City shopping excursion...

My kolbassa and cheese was almost as good as that late night hamburger sandwich from a truck somewhere in Nimes, France - the one we had to go back to the next day and almost missed the train to Paris. And if memory services, I think there were fries in that one, too... trend?

where: market square

chocolate shiraz... part 2...

I make these only because of the intoxicating smell of chocolate and wine that hits me when I open the oven door. It makes my toes tingle.

The cupcakes taste pretty damn good too, but that's just a bonus.

[This time stuffed with whipped cream (easy peesy thanks to my new apple corer), dipped in chocolate ganache, and topped with more whipped cream and a sprinkle of dried cherries...]

indulgence

I'm a little hard pressed to say which one of this weekend's cupcake experiments turned out better. Cupcake A is a remake of a blueberry lime curd cake (sans blueberry) that I tried a couple weeks ago and bombed. Cupcake B is a decadent chocolate shiraz that I pulled out of a book and altered slightly.

Cupcake A, according to the cousins and the cousins' beaus, is absolutely fabulous and the best cupcake they've ever had. The cake is airy and light, and the tang of the lime curd filling is perfectly complemented by the whip cream frosting.

Cupcake B, (not yet tested by anyone other than myself at the moment) is smooth and chocolately and absolutely decadent, with the fullest hint of the shiraz that was used. Chocolate AND wine... can there be anything better? I think not. Only downer is the super-sweet water icing. I wanted it to look a certain way, but I think I'm going to have to tweak the icing a bit when I do this again. The taste of the shiraz gets a little lost amongst the flavour of pure sweetness. Still, the cake itself is amazing... and, it's pretty.

what a waste of cuteness!

So incredibly easy to make, I can't believe people actually charge $0.75 a piece! Nothing more than royal icing and a little colour, piped onto parchment paper and then stuck onto a sugarcube.

I love the effect, and want to make a lot more, only I don't know what to do with them once I've made them. Do people really eat them? Put them into their tea or coffee?

Maybe I should take orders... $0.50 a sugarcube... it's a bargain! Anyone?

cupcake math for the geek in me

+

=

&

cafe supreme...at yonge and queen

Smoked salmon and cream cheese in a whole wheat grilled pita, stuffed with just enough capers, sweet onions and black olives. Accompanied by a side of sun-dried tomatoe couscous, and a spicy asian slaw.

For under $10.

What the heck took me so long to try this place?!

Their sandwiches look amazing and their soups are better than the run-of-the-mill-fresh-out-of-the-can type that everywhere else in the vacinity offers.

Henceforth known as my new go-to place near the office (besides the Victoria St. diner, of course).

where: SW corner of Queen and Victoria, just nestled behind 1 Queen St E.