Thursday, March 29, 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I just learned about this documentary on Jiro.  I first learned about Jiro from watching Anthony Bordain's No Reservations.  Apparently he is regarded as the world's greatest Sushi chef with 3 Michelin stars under his belt (the same as Gordan Ramsey).  The documentary is currently playing at Tinseltown if you want to catch it.


Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Dine Out for Life

If you eat out this Thursday, you will be helping people living with HIV/AIDs!  What's this? - you ask?  Well, 215 restaurants in Vancouver and Whistler will be donating 25% of their sales to help support those living with HIV / AIDs.  So not only will you be filling your tummies with delicious goodness - people who are less fortunate will be getting some help too!



Here are the restaurants that will be honoring this: http://www.diningoutforlife.com/vancouver/restaurants

Interesting restaurants include: , Burgoo, C Restaurant, Cru (which I reviewed), Diva at the Met, Gothams, Hawksworth, Hy's, Las Margaritas, Memphis Blues, The Pear Tree, The Reef, Salt Tasting Room, Stephos, and The Tea House.

Officially an Urbanspoon Food Blog

Woot! Ed's Food Blog is now an official Urbanspoon featured food blog!

Now I have to work on my ranking.

Ed's Food Blog Vancouver restaurants

Monday, March 26, 2012

Barley Risotto with chicken, exotic mushrooms, caramelized onions

My co-worker ran up to my desk last week.  Quick Ed!  I have guests coming and I want to make something to impress them, but it has to be quick and easy!  I started tossing out ideas and she shot them all down until I said - Risotto with Chicken and Wild Mushrooms.  

So here's a demonstration of how I do the risotto.  One thing I did though was changed it up from using Arborio rice to using Barley.  I like using Barley as it's a whole grain and it has a bit more texture than rice.  I like that grainy texture in multi-grain bread so barley gives that same sort of feel but in rice form.

So what you need is a package of exotic mushrooms, chicken breast, onions, parmesan cheese, and the barley/arborio rice.

First thing you want to do is slice up the onions and get it on the stove in some olive oil on medium low.  Sprinkle some salt on it to help draw out the water.

Then get some chicken stock simmering.  You'll need about 1/2 to 3/4 of the carton for 1 serving.

Then cut up the chicken into chunks, season with salt, pepper, and thyme and sear on medium high.  Once you put it on the pan don't touch it for at least 2 min!

Finally heat up some olive oil on medium and then toast the barley or arborio rice.  1 portion is about 1/2 a cup.

Here I'm toasting the barley, searing the chicken, caramelizing the onions, simmering the chicken stock.


Flip the chicken over and cook the other side for at least 2 min.  Then check if it's done.  If not then keep cooking until they're cooked, then set aside.

When the chicken is cooked, start browning the mushrooms in the same pan.  Give it a rough chop.

After the rice / barley is toasted a bit, pour in some dry white wine unti it's just covered.  Let it cook off and then start ladling in the simmering chicken stock 1 ladle at a time while stirring, stirring, stirring.  Let each ladle of chicken stock cook off before ladling in more.

Let the onions keep caramelizing, stirring it every once in awhile.

When the mushrooms are browned enough, bring down the heat to low and return the chicken to the pan just to keep them warm.


After about 20-25 min of cooking the rice / barley, taste it.  It should be cooked but not mushy.  Sort of al dente but instead of pasta it's rice.  Turn off the heat and then stir in the chicken and mushrooms.  Stir in shredded parmesan cheese.

Plate the risotto and place the caramelized onions on top, and garnish with chopped parsley.

In this picture you can see I messed up the onions.  I didn't think it was getting caramelized fast enough so I cranked up the heat.  It ended up being more like crispy onion straws instead of soft sweet caramelized onions.  Next time I'll keep the onions at medium low.  From start to finish it took around 40 min.  But that didn't include clean up time!


Thursday, March 22, 2012

Cru

There's a really nice restaurant located down the block from work that has a lunch special.  3 courses for $24.  Nice!  While browsing through the menu posted outside the restaurant I was actually looking at the dinner menu and I was super excited.  3 choices from this menu for $24!  I'm in!

But when I got seated and was handed the menu I saw that the lunch menu is a lot more limited:

OK, not as nice as the dinner menu but I can work with this.

For my first course I got the soup which was a Tomato Bisque:
Topped with some parsley cream, croutons, and a drizzle of olive oil.  This turned out a lot better than I thought!  I was nervous about the tartness of the tomatoes but the chef offset the tart flavours with smoked paprika which gave it a smokey spicy quality to counter the tart tomatoes.  Very flavourful and balanced.  The crunchy croutons also added that extra textural element to the soup.  Very nice.

For my second course I ordered the duck confit:
Topped with a bacon vinaigrette sitting on top of a goat cheese cabbage hash.  I think the chef did a really good job with this one.  The natural fattiness of the duck leg was controlled really well with most of it rendered out.  The meat was super tender with the leg bone sliding right out when I gave it a gentle pull.  The duck skin was crisped up nicely.  After my own failure with cooking duck before - I know this can be tricky and the chef nailed all the elements that makes a good duck confit dish.  The bacon vinaigrette was interesting.  The only thing I had issue was the goat cheese cabbage hash.  In my mind I imagined the pairing to be great together but when I tasted it - it just did not work out perfectly as I thought it would.  I don't know how to describe it - it was just off somehow.

Dessert: Chocolate Cardamon Panna Cotta served with stewed dried fruit and shortbread cookies.
Panna Cotta is on my list of things to learn.  I see it being served a lot on TV and from the recipes I've seen it's super easy.  The combination of cardamon with the chocolate was really nice.  It gives the panna cotta that extra spiciness (not hot, more like cinnamon/nutmeg type of spiciness).  The only issue I had was the texture of the Panna Cotta had a bit of a grainy quality.  Maybe from ground up cardamon?  Not sure.

Overall I really enjoyed my lunch at Cru.  It's not something I want to do everyday, but I'm willing to spend a bit more once in awhile for the sake of my food blog readers!


Cru on Urbanspoon

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The American CheeseSteak Co

Time for a restaurant review!  It's time for lunch today and I wanted to go to one of my favorite places reasonably near my work.  The American CheeseSteak Co was a short bus ride across the Granville Street bridge from me.  Yes - if it's worth it I will commute on my lunch.  And believe me this place is worth it.


When I was in Philadelphia for work a few years back I made it a point to try a Cheesesteak there, and I was seriously disappointed.  This is a philly cheesesteak?  Some fried up beef topped with cheese whiz in a bun.  I never knew what the hype was all about.  Then I came here and then I understood. Sorry Philly, your cheesesteaks got nothing on what we have here in Vancouver.

At the American CheeseSteak Co, they use shaved prime rib.  And they give you heapings and heapings of meat.  Not super cheap though with regular size cheesesteaks at $10 and large being $12.  

This is the large size Cowboy Cheesesteak with crispy fried onions, BBQ sauce, and parsley.

Half way through.  Starting to slow down.

Almost didn't finish but I made it!

Here's the bill:

$3 for a Coke in a glass bottle.  Yeah it's not worth $3.

So overall it was really yummy.  I recommend it if you ever get a chance.  A good alternative to a burger.

The American CheeseSteak Co. on Urbanspoon

Monday, March 19, 2012

Taiwanese 3 Cup Chicken

So my foray into asian cuisine continues!  In the first episode of the 2nd season of Top Chef Canada 'Sarah Tsai' - a Taiwanese contestent - tried to make '3 cup Beef' which unfortunately ended up overcooked.  Since my ethnic background is Taiwanese this immediately looked interesting to me.  However when I looked online, I found that 3 cup Chicken is actually the traditional dish.  3 cup Beef must be Sarah's own variation of the dish.  3 cup stands for the 3 equal parts of soy sauce, sesame oil, and Chinese rice wine.

Ingredients:

  • 1 package of chicken thighs
  • 1 package of chicken drum sticks
  • 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
  • 1/4 cup Sesame Oil
  • 1/4 cup Chinese Rice Wine
  • 1 small red chile pepper, sliced up
  • a couple of cloves of minced up garlic
  • some sliced up ginger
  • some basil leaves, chiffonaded




  1. In your wok, heat up the sesame oil on medium
  2. Saute the garlic, ginger and chile pepper in the oil until fragrant
  3. Turn up the heat a bit and then brown the chicken
  4. Stir in the cooking wine and soy sauce
  5. Bring down the heat, cover and simmer for 5 min
  6. Uncover and turn the chicken over. 
  7. Continue cooking until the sauce is reduced a bit
  8. Stir in basil and serve!


This picture turned out pretty blurry.  :(

It was pretty tasty!  I was afraid that it would be really salty from the soy sauce but the fragrant sesame oil and the rice wine mellowed that out a lot.


I hope Sarah does well on Top Chef Canada.  I'm hoping she'll keep introducing me to more Taiwanese food to try out!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Chawanmushi

My first entry in my food blog!  I'm graduating off Facebook / Google+ photo albums and trying this out.  I was having problems with Google+ / Facebook not presenting my write-ups very well, as well as reordering my photos.  Also, one of my co-workers wants me to try writing a real food blog - so here goes!

For those who watch Top Chef - I was excited that Paul Qui won.  Asian cuisine seems to be getting more and more recognition recently with Paul being a Japanese chef and Floyd Cardoz (Indian cuisine) winning Top Chef Masters.  The head judge - Tom Colicchio - said that the Japanese inspired food Paul cooked in the finale was the best meal he has eaten in any Top Chef finale - including Masters.  That's high praise!

The dish that Paul served as his appetizer 'Chawanmushi' looked interesting - and is also something that I've never seen offered in any Japanese restaurant in Vancouver.  Which is not surprising.  If you've been following my food posts from Facebook/Google+ you know that I have issues with the 'American Japanese' food being offered by the mostly Chinese/Korean owned and operated Japanese restaurants in Vancouver.  So I thought why don't I give it a try?  I'm not very experienced in asian cuisine as most cooking resources I have feature French / Italian food.  But I learned French / Italian cooking mostly by researching on the Internet so I just had to do the same thing right?  I just don't have any 'Gordon Ramsay' videos to follow but I found: Cooking with Dog!
  1. First marinate diced chicken pieces and shrimp (peeled and de-veined) in miran wine with a splash of soy sauce
  2. Create your dashi stock:
    1. Combine bonito flakes and konbu seaweed in a pot of water
    2. Bring up to a simmer on medium.  Don't let it get to a boil.
    3. Strain through a Chinois lined with a coffee filter
  3. Beat 2 eggs with some white pepper.
  4. Combine eggs with dashi stock
  5. Put the marinated chicken and shrimp pieces at the bottom of a ramekin
  6. Pour in the egg/dashi mixture.
  7. Top with the parsley leaves
  8. Steam at high heat for 3 minutes, then bring down the heat to low for 15 min
So I liked how the steamed egg portion turned out, but the shrimp and chicken ended up overcooked.  I would probably cooked it for 10 min instead next time.  It's a very comforting dish.

Season 2 of Top Chef Canada is starting tomorrow night (March 12)!  I'm excited!