Passover Follies!

Soundstrack: Maroon 5 "She Will Be Loved"

A belated Chag Sameach to my Jew Crew!

So a bit of a rundown for those of you who aren't familiar with the Jewish holiday of Passover. We celebrate Passover to commemorate the story of the Israelites (we weren't Jews at that point yet) being freed from slavery under the Egyptians over 3,000 years ago. G-d is supposed to have brought down 10 plagues on the Egyptians to help convince the Pharoah to let them go. The final plague was the killing of the first-born son; which the Israelites avoided by painting lamb's blood on the doorposts of their houses so G-d knew which houses to "pass over", hence the name. That was the final straw for Pharoah and he told us all to get the heck outta Dodge ASAP. In preparing food for the road, there was no time to let the bread rise, so in celebration of that Jews around the world who follow the tradition don't consume anything that rises during the 8 day festival. This includes bread, legumes, barley, even peanuts are off the table. Of course, this means that we're cooking at home all week and most alcohol is off the table.

Anyway, on to my day yesterday. You know when you're keeping Pesach (Passover), but sometimes a bit of chametz (non-Passover food) sneaks in there? Yeah, that was me yesterday. And by a bit, I mean a lot. And by chametz, I mean beer. The picture below is not from last night, but for the effect, you know.

I started out the day by going to the One of a Kind Show at the Direct Energy Centre with my parents. Oh boy, oh boy you guys, we had such an amazing time! We actually did it in two blocks. We arrived in the morning, went for some lunch at The Rhino (where they had Granville Island's excellent Lion's Winter Ale which I first tried while out at Canadian Music Week with some of my colleagues and was completely impressed), then came back to keep browsing.

 

Among my booty picked up at the show: The most beautiful tin of foie gras from Les Canardises, Henderson Farms' delicious fig-rhubarb marmalade, pistachio butter (like peanut butter, but with pistachios) from Hawberry Farms on Manitoulin Island, some amazing magnets (I have a thing for fridge magnets...), some awesome organic granola as well as this incredible salve that seems to cure all from Matter: Outdoors. Plus, my father bought me a fancy hat. The picture is a bit blurred, but voila!

After the show, I met up with my dear friend Reethi for a drink at Bar Volo. We ended up making some new friends, Isabelle and Hacene. We had a gay old time! In the end, the Gladstone's karaoke night sucked us in. Hacene had been talking about wanting to sing Maroon 5 for at least an hour before, and my musical selection today is a tibute to our new friends!

So, seeing as I completely broke my Passover dietary restrictions yesterday, I thought I would share the recipe that usually gets me through the 8 days. So here you have my reipe for Matzo Bagels, which is essentially the recipe from Second Helpings Please!, but with a few tweaks.

Matzo Bagels

1/2 cup oil (something neutral)
2 cups water
2 cups matzo meal
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
3 or 4 basil leaves, chopped fine (ish)
5 eggs

Preheat your oven to 400C. Boil the oil and water together, then add all the other ingredients except the eggs. I find this works better if I mix all the dry ingredients (and herbs) together before adding them to the liquid. Remove from the heat and allow to cool (covered) so the eggs don't scramble when you add them; about 15 - 20 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time and stir them in so your mixture gets fluffier.

Put about a tablespoon or two of oil in a little bowl - which you will regularly us to grease your hands to avoid sticking while shaping the bagels - and start forming your dough into flattened circles and put on a greased/lined cookie sheet. I like to actually make them bagel-sized so I can have sandwiches during the week.

Then use a greased chopstick or greased back of a wooden spoon to make holes in your bagels. The holes allow your dough to cook evenly. My mother tried my recipe this year without the holes and found that her buns were overcooked on the outside, but still raw on the inside.

Bake them in your oven for 50 - 60 minutes until brown. I find I usually get about 6 matzo bagels when I make them the size I like.

I very carefully cut them open length-wise with a serated knife when I use them and then put all manner of things on them such as butter, cream cheese, tomatoes, leftover brisket, spinach etc. Also, you can change up the herbs as you like; I've also had great success with fresh chives chopped fine.

Sri Lankan Adventures in Scarberia and a Chinese Yarn

Soundtrack "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You" - George Benson

So I decided on a whim to head east instead of west after work today. My friend Reethi told me about this amazing Sri Lankan take out place on Ellesmere (at McCowan in Scarborough) called CanBe Foods. She has had food from them in the past at backyard summer get-togethers and I simply fell in love with their rolls. I've been there myself once before a few months ago and simply powered through their chicken, fish, and vegetable rolls as I was walking away to the bus stop; vowing I would be back as soon as I could, despite the unearthly long commute back home (over an hour of buses).

Well, today turned out to be that day! Somehow I wasn't excited about the quick recipe I was planning to post here tonight and wasn't ready to post about my Niagara trip last weekend (I promise, it's coming!) so I guess the little lizard on my shoulder (Let's call her Gertrude. She wears pearls and carries a black patent handbag) was whispering in my ear "Don't go home. Have an adventure and procrastinate". I try not to listen to Gertrude as she's usually telling me how horrible I am, but I decided I really did need an adventure.

So off I went on the 95 York Mills bus with the George Benson song you see above running through my head. Truly CanBe, nothing's gonna change my love for you. Sadly, I didn't bring my camera but work with me here. A long steam table with dozens of dishes, samosas, rolls, roti, rice etc. They also have a wall with a freezer on it (as well as a straight up fridge) where you can buy some of their frozen dishes, including desserts to take home. This place is dead cheap folks. Everything I bought ended up being less than $12, total.

The rolls themselves are kind of like egg rolls but with a mealier outside. I bought chicken, fish, and mutton.

I love dipping them in CanBe's tamarind sauce. It's like tamarind chutney, but way more liquidy.

I decided to try their Chili Chicken today and bought two pieces of roti bread - one regular and one stuffed with egg.

 

The one at the very bottom of the picture above is the egg roti.

 

Close up of the amazing, delicious, delectable Chili Chicken curry. It was spicy, tart, sweet, delicious.



Biggest revelation of the night (and I'm going to amble off course here). After the hour and a quarter it took me to get home, I unpacked everything on my counter to take a look. Of course three rolls had already been demolished on my walk from CanBe to the bus stop (This is becoming a CanBe tradition for me...), so I put the other rolls and the tamarind sauce to the side to plate up my new treasures.

The egg roti bread in particular was calling my name so I broke that bad boy open to see the filling and here is what I found (hope you can see it properly, I'm not nearly as adept at photography as Karina, who did the photos for my hot pot entry):

Beautiful, delectable scrambled egg folks. I tried one bite and fell in love. It tasted just like the jian bing (煎餅) crepes I used to get for breakfast when I was teaching pre-schoolers in Suzhou, China. Basically, jian bing is Chinese streetfood. Vendors are on the street from the early hours of the morning until maybe 10am if you're lucky.

My local guy had a portable stove with a flame and a flat top. I would wander over to the little shopping street where the street food vendors used to gather in the mornings. The man poured the crepe batter on the flat top and swirled the batter to cover the surface with an implement that looked like a miniature version of a squeegee one might use to clean one's car windows. He would then crack an egg on top and scramble it around. He would flip it over very carefully and then paint the cooked side he had just turned up with hoisin, sprinkle with cilantro, green onion, and chili paste. He would then fold the whole thing up and put it in a thin plastic bag. You can see the whole procedure here.

Jian bing have always been one of the things I missed most about China, but have not been able to find in Canada. Man I loved those things. I'd eat them any chance I got. I remember one fateful train trip with my roommate Rosalind that we took to buy fabric and run errands in Shanghai. We were in such a rush to catch our train that I didn't have time to eat breakfast. I saw a jian bing vendor outside the station who was making hers with you tiao 油条, strips of deep fried dough that the Chinese love to eat for breakfast dipped in soy milk. I've never liked you tiao personally (too oily) and never ate them but I was so hungry, I just grabbed one from her - not noticing that she hadn't cooked the jian bing fresh as I was used to with my local guy. I could taste that there was something off about it and thankfully only ate half.

I was so, so sick on the train to Shanghai. I don't know if any of you have ever been sick in a toilet on a train in China or a country like it, but it was not fun or easy; especially given how hot it was. I was trying so hard not to fall into the squat face-first! We still tried to go to the fabric market (the old one, not the new fangled air-conditioned one now in place). Poor Rosalind. She was so worried about me. I kept running to the toilet to cast up my accounts. To add insult to injury, it was a pay toilet!!

Still feeling lousy and roasting in the heat, I knew I was not going to be ok to help Rosalind run her errands but they had to get done as we had come all the way to Shanghai. We were walking along the Bund (Shanghai's old European business centre, seen below)

and I begged Rosalind to leave me there on a side street in the shade to rest while she ran her errands. She reluctantly did and I leaned against a building to rest. Not long after she left me, a Chinese family happened upon me and pantomimed what I thought was asking if I would hold their baby. My Mandarin was not very good at the time, so I had no idea what they were talking about but smiled and nodded like a good, obliging Canadian girl should in these situations. They thrust their baby in my arms and started gathering around me, taking pictures with the poor, sick waiguren (foreigner). When Rosalind returned after they had left, we had a good laugh over this and - feeling much better and still loving jian bing - we wandered home to Suzhou.

So long story short, I've put the egg roti in the fridge to save for tomorrow's breakfast. Happy adventuring folks!

Michelle xoxo

Hot Pot Over Here, Hot Pot Over There!

Soundtrack: John Coltrane "Blue Train"

Sunday night, I got together with some dear friends and made my very first Chinese-style hot pot! Hot pot is like Japanese shabu-shabu whereby pre-prepped ingredients are dipped in soup and cooked. You can have different dips for when your items come out of the pot such as sesame oil, finely chopped garlic, chili oil...the list goes on. Each person has their own little bowl where they can make a dip to their taste. I've eaten hot pot in the past when I lived in China (including a memorable meal in Chongqing with two Korean girls I met at my hostel), but never made it myself. My friend Sylvia from choir and her husband hosted me and Chris - another choir friend - at their place. They have done hot pot a few times for company and wanted to try it again.(Her table only fit 6 so we're sorry we couldn't invite more!)

Chris, Sylvia, and I met up earlier in the day to go shopping at T&T Supermarket for all of our ingredients. We went a little bit mad and bought way more than we needed! I include for your perusal our final booty:

- baby bok choy
- king oyster mushrooms
- assorted fish balls
- beef balls
- soy bean sprouts
- watercress
- assorted dumplings
- white radish
- sliced beef rib-eye
- sliced fatty pork
- spring onion
- cinnamon head mushrooms
- chayote
- winter melon
- bean curd cubes
- dried cloud ear mushrooms
- lamb shoulder slices
- pork loin slices
- enoki mushrooms
- fresh ginger root
- lotus root
- Napa cabbage
- shiitake mushrooms
- snow pea greens
- beef tendons (I recommend getting the pre-cooked ones as ours never quite softened)
- calamari
- whole shrimp (which somehow disappeared once we got back to the house, never to be seen again)
- glass noodles (which never got used in the end, we were too full!)
- a cold cucumber and chili salad
- egg custard tarts

Plus, Sylvia had some homemade spring rolls a friend gave her. I also brought some beer from my trip to Niagara the day before (post in the pipeline) from a new brewery called Silversmith Brewing that was just perfect! It was their Bavarian Breakfast Wheat beer. Mmmmm... Then, we proceeded to prep it all.

Sylvia's husband graciously spun tunes and her daughter Karina took the amazing pictures you will see all throughout this post (Thanks hun!). As you can see above, the hot pot itself was essentially a wok on a single gas burner with a few slotted spoons on the side for fishing things out.

A few days earlier, I had sent Sylvia a recipe for the broth. Several members of our party can't have too much in the way of spicy food, so the recipe I sent her is not.

Hot Pot Broth

2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
3 quarts chicken stock (2 quarts initially and then one to keep topping up throughout the meal)
salt to taste

Right before serving, add

1 halved ripe tomato
the whites of two scallions chopped into 2 or 3 sections

Bring the broth to a boil, turn down the heat to a good simmer and start adding ingredients at your leisure. I've found it's best to add in the things that take longest to cook first, plus we added in bits of the slivered ginger to add flavour to the broth.

You can make up your own ingredient list based on what you like, but the above was just what we had. I'd say that between 5 of us, we only ate 1/3 of what we bought in the end. Fun night!!

Finding time for what is important in life - Friends!

Soundtrack: Blue Rodeo's cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"


So I had yet another amazing meal at The Whippoorwill with my friend Christophe (one of these days I'll actually take pictures...). Amazing soul music all night, great service, drinks and food; as usual. I hadn't seen Christophe in months so our catch up dinner ended up lasting 3 hours!

I have to say that I've had to find ways not only to save money and calories, but also to ensure that I'm saving time so I can be with good friends like Christophe. One of the ways I deal with this is to make all my lunches for work ahead of time (usually on Saturday or Sunday) so I can just pull a Tupperware out of my fridge in the morning as I'm getting ready all week long.

One of the meals I made last week was a pork chop with simple, plain roasted veggies, which I present to you now.

Make-Ahead Pork Chops and Roasted Vegetables

Chop up any mixed veggies you like so they are all the same size and cook evenly so that you end up with 3 - 4 cups of veg. I love to do root vegetables like regular or sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, or parsnips. Plus sometimes I'll toss in chunks of red pepper, onion or entire peeled garlic cloves.

Vegetables:

Preheat oven to 400F. Toss vegetables in the oil and salt; put them on a sheet pan so they're in one even layer. Cook 45 - 60 minutes until they're fully cooked and browning nicely. Make sure to stir them two or three times during the cooking to brown evenly and so you can tell when they're done.

Pork Chops:

4 x 4 - 5oz pork chops (mine were fairly thin)
2 tbsp Original Diana sauce (or your favourite BBQ sauce)
salt
1 tbsp oil

Heat oil in pan on high heat. Coat chops with sauce and salt lightly. Sear pork chops in the very hot pan, 3 - 5 minutes each side. My chops were thin enough that I only needed a few minutes and didn't have to turn down the heat. If your chops are thicker, sear on both sides until they get a nice crust on them and then turn the heat down to medium until they aren't raw on the inside.

Voila! Lunch for the whole week for me!

Getting Back On Track and Staying Mindful of My Physical Well-Being

Soundtrack: Arcade Fire - Suburban War

So I've been trying to be more mindful in my eating of  late (says she who is currently munching on Party Mix). I've been a chubbier girl most of my life; certainly from adolescence onwards, though by no means am I the "f" word but I do tend to be over a healthy BMI for my height. I've struggled with depression over the years and one of my coping mechanisms has always been food. Plus, eating is a huge source of pleasure in life for anyone. I take great pride in cooking an amazing meal for people and I love trying new restaurants. Food is a way for me to travel without springing for a plane ticket.

I've had some medical issues over the last decade or so and wasn't able to be as active as I might like, which also made it really easy to sit at home watching DVD's and stress-eating. I used to demolish a pint of a certain brand of ice cream from Vermont in one or two sittings on a regular basis.

I had to have surgery in December 2008 and again in April 2009. This forced me to weight myself as the anaesthetist requires that info. I was forced to confront the fact that I was inching my way closer and closer to 200 lbs, which was a shock (I'm only 5'3. Well, 5'2.5 but it's easier to say 5'3).

Starting in early 2009 (as soon as my doctor cleared it) I began to make a conscious effort to walk more, plus I began taking salsa dancing lessons. I was living in Vancouver at the time and it was very easy to be active year-round. In May 2009, I had lost 15 lbs on my own when I realised I needed help to move beyond that. I joined an internationally recognised diet company and started attending weekly meetings. By June 2010, I had lost 60 lbs in total and felt great.

Unfortunately, the last two years or so have been really rough for me personally and I've been slowly creeping back up. Lately it's been creeping up at an alarming rate. I think you can all understand why I've needed to be more mindful recently - or at least try. I can't afford to go back to weekly meetings, but I do know the strategies and how the program works. I'm attempting to go it alone in my own way bit by bit but without the rigidity I had when I first started the program. I just don't have the will or discipline to limit myself like that. This blog is part of my strategy. It's forced me to actually prepare my own food instead of eating out - saving me calories and money.

So in the interests of being very virtuous (as well as trying to get in more veggies) I bring you:

Spinach Salad with Strawberries and Walnuts

2 cups raw baby spinach
4 strawberries, washed and chopped into bite-sized pieces
5 walnut halves, chopped

Toast walnuts in a dry pan at med-high heat until they smell toasty and get a little brown, making sure not to burn them. Remove from pan and put to the side to cool a bit so they don't wilt your spinach.

In a bowl, rip up the spinach and put the chopped strawberries on top. Sprinkle with walnuts and top with about a tablespoon or two of your favourite balsamic vinaigrette.

Serves 1 person as a side or add some chicken to make it a meal.

I didn't make my own dressing this time, but I often do (I'm assuming I'll likely post an actual recipe at some point in the future, but today is not that day). If you are, I suggest making the dressing in your serving bowl before adding any other ingredients. That way, you can save on washing one more dish. I usually do a 3:1 oil to balsamic vinegar ratio and add some sort of mustard and a little salt. Make sure you use good-quality oil or you might as well just use store-bought. I'm serious about this. I've found amazing bottles of salad dressing-quality (ie. Not to be cooked with, only to be used raw) extra-virgin olive oil at my local gourmet market for $10, so it is possible to find good-quality oil at a discount if you're on a budget. Most gourmet markets have oil and balsamic vinegar samplings on weekends so you can try before you buy.

Anyway, enjoy my efforts to be virtuous (but not too virtuous!) and eat well.

Missing China and some provincial fusion

Soundtrack: Al Green "Let's Stay Together"

Hullo all!

I went for dinner last night with a friend after an afternoon of thrift shopping. We checked out the amazing Whippoorwill Restaurant and Tavern at Bloor and Lansdowne. It was my first time there and the food was fantastic! The staff couldn't have been nicer, and I know we'll be back there soon.

Earlier in the day, I'd been combing Chinatown in an unsuccessful mission for a jar preserved ya cai, which is a sort of Chinese mustard green pickle that comes all ready to go (I've found it before so fear not). I use them for Sichuanese Dan Dan noodles, plus there are a host of other dishes you can use them for. I've been re-reading "Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper" - Fuchsia Dunlop's incredible autobiography about her time living in China lately, and that has had me missing China and wanting to make old favourites from her phenominal cookbook "Land of Plenty" which is a staple reference in my kitchen.

Well last night, I got to chatting with Tyler Cunningham - who is the chef at Whippoorwill - as he and his sous Adam were trying to come up with some future menu items. I started reminicing about my days in China and all the amazing food (including Over-the-Bridge Noodles, which I have yet to attempt but want to desperately in future).

So long story short, I'm home sick from work today but even so, a girl's gotta eat. I wanted something easy, not hugely involved. I remembered that I bought a new sauce in Chinatown, had some leftover white rice in the fridge, and had roasted off some Sichuan peppercorns before I left the apartment yesterday. So I now bring you my own lazy twist on my beloved Dan Dan Noodles, incorporating a fermented black bean chili sauce from Guizhou province, and Sichuan peppercorns:

Michelle's Chinese Provincial Fusion Fried Rice

1 tsp chopped ginger (I cheated and used jarred ginger. Hey, I'm sick. Don't judge me)
1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns (toasted in a dry pan, cooled and ground to powder)
2 tbsp Guizhou Black Bean Chili Sauce

5 oz ground pork
1 1/2 - 2 cups baby spinach (I tore it into smaller bits but you can chop it if you like)
3/4 - 1 cup cooked long grain white rice (I love basmati, but use any good quality rice you like)

Saute ginger, peppercorn powder, and chili bean sauce for about a minute in a med-high pan or wok so the ginger cooks. Add in the pork and cook until it is no longer pink.

Toss in the spinach and cook until slightly wilted. Add the rice and cook until rice is warmed through, the spinach is cooked and everything is incorporated. Season with salt if need be, though I didn't need any as the fermented black bean sauce has some saltiness to it.

Yields 2 smaller portions or one huge portion.

This one turned out amazingly well and I would love to make it again. I might add some shitake mushrooms or some bok choi as well as the spinach next time just to add some more nutrition. Enjoy!

Layers

Soundtrack: Basia Bulat "Go On"

Good morning all!

I had meant to post something new a couple of days ago, but there have been a lot of stressful changes at work this week, so I've been giving myself a pass in terms of how much I've been requiring myself to get done over the last few days.

I've been thinking a lot about layers this week. Layers of bureaucracy, layers of management, layers of emotion, layers of music. I'm part of an amazing choir that meets every Tuesday at a bar here in Toronto. Every week, our fearless leaders teach us two songs, we drink beer, catch up with good friends, make new friends, and laugh A LOT. No matter how shitty your week was, you know you'll have at least one night in your week where you will feel pure joy and love. We divide into three groups - lows, mids, and highs - then we layer each part and finally, finally record it and post what we did that night on Soundcloud.

So, how does me being inspired by layers translate to food? I have a favourite dessert/light breakfast/snack that is a staple in my food rotation and I thought I'd share the goodness! I offer this picture as an amuse-bouche:

Excited yet? As a single gal, I'm going to offer this up as a single-serving recipe.

1 square (12.5g) Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate (or the equivalent of whatever dark chocolate you like). Dark chocolate is the way to go on this one as the rest of the ingredients are so sweet.
3/4 cup lemon-flavoured yogurt (I used Liberte brand)
1 cup blueberrries (I used blueberries this time, but raspberries are particularly lovely. Blackberries or strawberries would also be wonderful)

Chop the chocolate (as in the picture above). In a bowl, layer fruit and yogurt as you like, then sprinkle with the chocolate. Feast!

I also do this with granola instead of the chocolate and call it breakfast. I like a nice thick Greek-style yogurt as it feels more indulgent and satisfies me more.

Have a great week guys!

Michelle xoxo