February 13, 2008
This is what happens when you:
You end up eating this for lunch: Malaysian leftovers and two frozen shrimp quesadillas.
Sad, I know. Don’t do it.
August 19, 2007
This is a che ba mau, made of red beans, green shreds of Vietnamese jello, yellow mung bean, coconut milk and ice. I suppose it’s a dessert and drink in one. It’s also known as a “three colour drink” or “rainbow on ice.”
I’ve never understood or enjoyed the Asian concept of beans in dessert. As a little kid, I watched my mom cheerfully dig into red bean slush with vanilla ice cream in the summers. Gross. The standard “dessert” at lots of Chinese (Cantonese mostly) restaurants is hot red bean soup. We can invent fireworks and build a Great Wall - but THAT’s what counts as dessert? Ugh.
Jason on the other hand is more than happy to try any bean dessert that looks interesting. So the che ba mau was entirely his idea.
To me, it was a weird mix of cold, sweet, crunchy, mushy and slimy. I suppose it’s moderately better than most bean desserts I’ve tried, if only because of the coconut milk.
You can get che ba mau at most Vietnamese restaurants.
July 30, 2007
Thirsty? How about some Pocari Sweat? It’s an ION SUPPLY DRINK from Japan, available for $3.78 at your local Asian store.
More clarification from the label: “Pocari Sweat is a healthy beverage that smoothly supplies the lost water and electrolytes during perspiration. With the appropriate density and electrolytes, close to that of human body fluid, it can be easily absorbed into the body.”
I think that means it’s designed to be more of a sports energy drink. Though I’m not sure how helpful the first two ingredients of water and corn syrup can be.
Bottom line, it’s very flat and tastes faintly of lemon flavouring, like weak Fresca or bland Gatorade.
I’m a little disappointed Pocari Sweat is so unremarkable when it has such an unforgettable name.
July 20, 2007
So the Calgary Stampede is finally over and the city has returned to its senses. I did go to see what all the fuss was about. There’s something about record-breaking heat, a midway and ridiculous numbers of people in ridiculous cowboy hats. It means one thing. An excuse to eat things on sticks and gorge on overpriced greasiness.
This is the first year that all fried food on the Stampede grounds was cooked in oil free of trans fats. But really, who are we kidding?
First stop, corn dogs! A hot dog coated in cornbread batter and deep fried in hot oil. Sweet golden outside crunch, hot doggy insides. You either hate it or love it. I love it. But only once a year.
Did you know they’re called pogos here in Canada, dippy dogs in Australia, hot dogs in South Korea, amerikan doggu in Japan and toasty dogs in Europe? Corn dogs ($4) get around.
Someone at work came back from Stampede raving about a new product in the Big Four building called a porksicle. So of course I had to seek it out. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to find the porksicle was just a BBQ rib with one end of the bone as a stick. Man did I get suckered. Plus it was $7 with a side of fries.
But no matter what, I knew the mini donuts (2 bags of 15 for $5) would make everything okay. It’s kind of fascinating as well as morbid for me to watch the dough circles roll down the little chute, float into the pool of hot oil and then get counted out and coated with cinnamon sugar.
I know I just watched them get deep fried and yet there they go, down my gullet. Always save “those little donuts” for last, and eat them fast. Otherwise, they really suck after 15 minutes.
No time to try the deep-fried Coke (spongecake soaked in Coke and deep-fried) this visit. Maybe next year.
July 15, 2007
I have a strange fascination with trying animal parts. The weirder, the better. Part of it is novelty, but I also never know what wonderful things I’m passing up if I don’t give it a try.
As soon as I heard about Banu and its eclectic menu, I knew it was my kind of place. Banu - which means dame or lady - is an Iranian kebob vodka bar, run by three siblings. The cool blown-up images around the restaurant are actually of their mom and other family.
Two sisters run the front of the house, and the one brother is the chef in the kitchen. They’re trying to re-create the heady ’70s of pre-revolution Iran when drinking vodka and socializing went hand in hand. Banu and the owners give off a wonderful vibe that makes me and my sister and our significant others feel immediately comfortable.
The guys get safka, saffron-infused vodka made in-house and mixed with sour cherry juice and pomegranate seeds. From the extensive vodka list, I get a Youri Dolgoruki Cristall vodka from Moscow with a chaser of pomegrante juice. Banu presses three fresh juices every day and they’re delicious.
We have a great start with the Nan o Paneer ($11), sheep’s milk cheese with barbari sesame bread, sour cherry reserves, walnuts, slices of watermelon and fresh mint, basil and tarragon. The different tastes and textures together are impressive.
The menu sternly tells you to “eat your greens, they are not only intended to make your plate pretty,” but we don’t need much prompting. The fresh herbs set off everything on the plate so well, it makes us wonder why we don’t eat more herbs at home like this.
Every dish comes with the fresh herbs and a thin flatbread called lavash. Banu does not serve rice; the menu says it’s because rice will make your stomach expand, not go well with vodka and give you a tummyache. No rice? More vodka? Okay.
Zaban ($11) is next, braised cow tongue with a cardamom tomato saffron sauce. I’m used to Chinese-style cow tongue served with soupy tomato sauce and spaghetti. This is decidedly better. The zaban is amazingly tender and yummy.
Then what I’ve come here for - Banu’s “urban oysters.” The dom balan ($13) are lamb testicles, marinated for two days in vodka and shallots, and then grilled. Predictably, we make jokes about balls, giggle like kids and then dig in.
They are bigger than we expected, and soft like tofu. There isn’t much of a taste though, faintly like kidney. But it helps to smother the dom balan with the yogurt-shallot sauce and lime, and wrap it in lavash and fresh mint. The balls are all right.
But Banu is more than tongue and balls. The bal e jouleh ($14) chicken wings are tangy thanks to the saffron citrus marinade. And the chenjeh ($25) is a unanimous winner, a perfect tender kebab of beef tenderloin marinated in citrus and yogurt.
These are served on a communal platter with some grilled tomatoes. They come with two yogurt dips, one with cucumber and one with walnuts and rose petals. I like the sharing, since we’re all family now.
All the meats here are organic and come from the Healthy Butcher just down the street.
With no warning, one of the sisters comes over with a tray of vodka. “This is the only way I can drink too,” she smiles, and we down some chilled Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka from Poland. It’s a wonderful surprise - slightly sweet and almost vanilla-like - and very refreshing. It’s infused with sweet bison grass and each bottle actually has a blade of grass from the Białowieża Forest. This vodka has catapulted to my list of favourites.
We can’t resist getting some chai tea from the samovar in the corner. It comes with dates and little cookies. The pomegranate sorbet ($5) is huge and refreshing. We’re having such a good time that we also get a blackberry hookah to sit back and relax with.
Everyone who comes into Banu seems to be greeted with a big hug and kiss. It’s one big family here and it’s really really nice to visit.
Banu, 777 Queen St. West, Toronto, (416) 777-2268. More info here.
June 17, 2007
I’ll file this under “foods that make you go hm.” We were over at a friend’s house for dinner last night and for fun, he pulled out this jar of traditional pickled walnuts.
Of course, my first question is why would anyone pickle walnuts? After tasting one, I’m still not sure. It’s ugly, mushy and puckery. Very puckery.
The recipe for this involves picking young walnuts while the the outer shell is still soft, then soaking them in brine. The walnuts dry to a black colour and are marinated in malt vinegar and spices.
The pickled walnut is apparently a delicacy from England, commonly cooked in with beef dishes or served with cold cuts and cheese. Does anyone out there count this as a childhood memory or favourite?
Charles Dickens mentions pickled walnuts in The Pickwick Papers, written in 1836:
“… the first faint glimmerings of returning animation were his jumping up in bed, bursting out into a loud laugh, kissing the young woman who held the basin, and demanding a mutton chop and a pickled walnut. He was very fond of pickled walnuts, gentlemen. He said he always found that, taken without vinegar, they relished the beer.”
Mutton chop, yes. Beer, yes. Pickled walnut, no thank you.
February 23, 2007
My 84-year-old grandfather made this for Chinese New Year’s dinner at home. It’s fish stomach braised in broth with some shrimp and pepper.
It’s a Hakka dish, native to his village. Textures and seafood are big in Hakka cooking so the fish stomach fits both bills. It was soft and springy with a crunchy undertone.
Since Hakka flavours are usually quite simple, there wasn’t much to it taste-wise - more of a fish broth flavour.
This fish stomach came all the way from Sha Tau Kok where it sells for about $108 per pound, according to my dad. He also said, “It’s the real thing and not some fake made-in-China stuff.”
Who knew fake fish stomach was a thriving industry? Shudder.
Anyway, since almost everything served on Chinese New Year is supposed to bring fortune and prosperity, I now deem this lucky fish stomach.
January 14, 2007
I haven’t been doing much on the eating and travelling front lately, but Jason’s been on the road near Chicago and sent me these photos from his cell phone. He has a strange affinity for mini burgers, so he felt compelled to pull off the interstate highway because he saw a sign for White Castle.
Living in Canada, we knew little about the fast-food chain other than it’s the inspiration for the hilarious Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
I did a little Internet research. White Castle uses frozen square patties. It cooks them using its “steam grilled” method. The patties are placed on top of a bed of dehydrated onions as heat and steam rises up from the grill. They’re not flipped. If you look closely you can see four holes in the patty. That’s to speed up the cooking.
So here’s Jason’s (paraphrased) account of his White Castle experience:
“The girl that came and helped me was in the middle of scrubbing some kind of bucket… Then she went over to the steam bath and started flipping burgers.
The hamburgers were 51 cents each. It was just a plain old dinner bun, and the patty was so thin. I ordered four of them. They looked just pathetic.
The burgers taste like boiled meat - boiled dog food, if I had to guess what it tastes like, I’d guess that.
I also noticed they had some kind of other sandwiches that looked like they were made of chicken nuggets, I bet they were gross too.”
I guess I didn’t miss much.
White Castle, various locations in north-central and northeastern U.S.
December 20, 2006
Sweetbread is neither sweet nor bread. It’s the thymus gland (in the throat) or pancreas (near the stomach) of young calves or lambs. The Oxford English Dictionary says “the reason for the name is not obvious.”
To some people, that might sound gross. To me, that’s intriguing. I’m always open to trying strange animal bits and what better place to do it than Black Cat Café, my friend Shawna’s favourite restaurant.
It’s an intimate spot where you can tell they enjoy serving people who love food. Black Cat seats about 30, so it feels like walking into someone’s beautifully underlit dining room. In the summer, there’s a nice patio for about a dozen more people.
We grabbed two seats at the bar where owners Richard and Remy stopped periodically to chat. They’re extremely gracious.
We started off with an amuse of mascarpone fingerling potato salad with truffle oil, then shared an appetizer of pan-roasted cremini mushrooms with chimchurri butter, sherry flambé, shaved idiazabal cheese and baby coriander. Very comforting and yummy on a cold night.
My crispy veal sweetbread arrived with clove-infused butternut squash puree, sundried cherries, pickled shallots, fingerling potato, brown butter jus, and tatsoi leaves.
The sweetbread itself was kind of spongy and tasted surprisingly mild. I don’t think it’s something that can stand alone like a steak so I really enjoyed the sundried cherries and pickled shallots to provide a balance of texture and flavours.
Shawna had the crispy skin roasted duck breast with five garnishes: apple butter, glazed fennel, poached pears, coriander roasted endive, and espresso bean roasted parsnips.
She gave me a bite with the apple butter. It was excellent. I wanted more but you don’t take food from a pregnant lady.
She didn’t want any sweetbread.
Black Cat Café, 93 Murray St., Ottawa, Ontario, (613) 241-2999. Open for dinner Mon-Sat 5:30-9:45 pm. Reservations recommended.
December 7, 2006
I eat tripe once in a while at dim sum, a little dish of tripe braised in broth and ginger or with black bean and garlic sauce. It’s like chomping on a rubber band until it breaks down into digestible pieces. Yum.
Tripe is the name for the stomachs of various animals but beef tripe is the kind most people eat. Cows have four stomachs, I’m most familiar with honeycomb tripe which comes from the second. Apparently it’s meatier and more tender than the other stomachs.
I always take tripe for granted. It has to be meticulously cleaned - sometimes even bleached - and then cooked for hours to make the cow’s stomach tender enough to chew.
The natural question is why bother. I dunno, but it’s a United Nations innard, showing up in Vietnamese (pho), Mexican (menudo), and French (andouille sausage) cuisines and proving we’re really all just the same.
November 11, 2006
This candy made me wonder so many things. Why is it shaped like a fried egg? Is it supposed to taste like an egg? Why would anybody buy this?
For Jason, I guess lining up for two hours for an oil change led to him losing his better judgement at the nearby 7-11. He was pretty excited about his plastic baggie of nickel candy.
I tried this fried egg. The white part feels and tastes like styrofoam. The yolk is slightly better with a hint of sweetness to the gelatinous disgustingness.
September 15, 2006
You may have heard of McCain Foods. It makes one-third of the world’s frozen French fries, employs 20,000 people and has 55 production plants in 12 countries. The McCain family started it all in this village called Florenceville, about an hour and half drive northwest of Fredericton.
Potatoes are such a big part of life here that school starts two weeks early so students can take a two-week potato break to help in the harvest.
I learned a lot about potatoes today. The Potato World museum is full of facts and old harvesting equipment.
It’s also home to the very creepy Talking Tubers. They’re the strangest cartoon characters I’ve ever seen.
Trevor on the left speaks English. His sister Pierrette speaks French. Only their lips move. I suppose they teach kids about spuds. But why do they have to look so menacing?
Potatoes should look carefree and friendly, not like they’re going mug you.
Potato World, 385 Centreville Rd., Florenceville, New Brunswick, (506) 392-1955.
Open daily May to October 10 am - 6 pm.
August 8, 2006
Bubble tea is like an Asian version of a power shake. With bubbles.
Flavouring, sweetener and creamer are shaken with red or green tea until a layer of bubbles comes to the surface, then balls of tapioca are added which sink to the bottom. Bubbles on the top, bubbles on the bottom!
Chewy like gummy bears, the tapioca is cooked for about an hour and expand into the size of marbles. Sometimes they’re called pearls.
Created in Taiwan in the 1980s, it’s so popular, the Taiwanese defence ministry actually used “a cup of pearl milk tea for national security” as a recent slogan.
The “flavouring” can range from fresh fruit to syrup - hence hundreds of flavours including strawberry, taro root, lychee or red bean.
I tend to go for the basic milk red tea, and on hot summer days, the fresh watermelon or pink grapefruit green tea. Always with the balls.
I don’t think you’ve had a real bubble tea until you choke back your first tapioca balls from the big wide straw.
March 24, 2006
Congee is a traditional Chinese rice porridge. It’s served with anything from seafood to chicken to pork. My mom enjoys the pig’s blood congee. She likes to say the congealed dark red cubes are good for women because of the iron and for “cleansing the system.”
I’ve tried pig’s blood a few times. It tastes faintly like liver and has the consistency of firm tofu. You can also get it without the congee. Just a big bowl of pig’s blood cubes. Not something I rush to order though.
Chicken feet, on the other hand, I do order regularly at dim sum. It looks intimidating but really it’s like eating chicken wings but with less meat.
Most of the time the feet are marinated in a black bean sauce, and then steamed. I think they’re delicious. My boyfriend says they’re like “steamed skin” but he still eats them.
November 7, 2005
Fried. Dried. Smelly. Tofu.
Yeah that’s what it says.
