Cooking tips, tricks, and advice from professional kitchens
Review of 2001 Flavours Pizza
Jan 19th
I’m sure they’ve never had 2001 flavours of pizza, but the 6 or so that they generally have in the window are consistently delicious. This isn’t your typical next-to-Skytrain dollar pizza joint. Around lunch, this place will be packed, especially in the Summer. That’s generally the sign of a great local eatery.
For vegetarians, artichoke, garlic, mushroom slices can generally be found in the window, alongside the usual meat lovers, pepperoni, and ham and pineapple. The crust is crisp, and relatively thin. The sauce is basic but tasty and there are always a good amount of toppings and cheese.
Really, what more could you ask for?
Slices range from $1.50 to $2.25 I believe, and whole pies bring the price per slice down even more.
If you don’t think the stuff in the window looks good enough, or they’re missing whatever you’re looking for, the pizza chef [the owner, I believe], is always willing to bake off a new one. Try it, eat it, love it.
KimHo over at I’m Only Here for the Food has his own review from last year, complete with photos.
Fresh, home made chili powder
Jan 19th
Chili powder, commonly found in the grocery store, often isn’t simply powdered chilies. This Tex-Mex seasoning is a blend of dried ground chilies, garlic powder, onion powder, powdered cumin and coriander seed, oregano, allspice, and salt. As with most spice blends there are countless variations on chili powder.
I am guilty of buying this premade, but only because I go through so much of it. In a pinch, chili powder can be easily made at home, and it will be more aromatic and flavorful than the blends on grocery store shelves. If you can get your hands on powdered chilies, you can make a wonderful, smoky and rich spice mix. If not, simply use cayenne and paprika.
Recipe for home made chili powder. Yield about 1 cup (250ml):
| 4 tbsp / 60ml | Ancho chili powder |
| 2 tbsp / 30ml | Chipotle chili powder |
| 2 tbsp / 30ml | Paprika |
| 2 tbsp / 30ml | Ground cumin seed |
| 2 tbsp / 30ml | Onion powder |
| 2 tsp / 10ml | Ground coriander seed |
| 1 tbsp / 15ml | Mexican oregano |
| 1 tbsp / 15ml | Garlic powder |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Ground allspice |
| 1/2 tsp / 2.5ml | Ground cloves |
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Azia Restaurant Review – Quantity vs Quality
Jan 19th
I tried Azia restaurant with my mother a few weeks ago, and what a mixed bag it was. First the setting. The restaurant itself is new and stylish; the wine cabinet looks nice, all the items inside fit with the theme (pan asian), but right above the bar, I guess for the bar crowd, are 3 giant plasma TVs. I was sitting facing them at the opposite side of the resaturant and let me just say that they were very distracting. I couldn’t care less about college football, but when it’s flashing at you right above your fellow diner’s face, it’s distracting. I think most other seats in the house would be fine, but the television didn’t enhance my dining experience.
Onto the food. We got a “large Sopporo beer” to split, and it was decently priced at $8 on special. We both got the set menu, hidden somewhere on their website, of 3 courses for $25. Both our meals were very good value, if you value quantity over quality. Plus, the set menu is the best ‘deal’, considering the regular meal prices. At many places (such as All India on Davie) a prawn appetizer will have 3 prawns. Not here. My Ebi Mayo appy was about 5 or 6 large prawns perfectly fried in a light batter.
My appy, as with all my other courses, arrived a good 10 minutes before my Mom’s. That’s not cool. She was okay with it, but it’s still bad form. The restaurant had one other table when we got there, and they were getting the bill. There are no excuses for delays to happen for every course. Yes we went at an odd time, 4.30 on a Monday, but if you’re open, you should be able to serve food properly.
My Mom got the spring roll app, which was okay. The garlic shrimp roll was very heavy on the garlic, and the peking duck roll was really greasy, but they were all okay. I’m pretty sure the dipping sauces, black bean and plum, were from a jar. For a $25 set menu, what do you expect?
On to the entrees.
I got the Kung Pow Prawns. Again, lots of prawns. Also lots of chunks of lemongrass and whole serano peppers. I thought they were there for presentation, but they were also mixed in with the veggies. I managed to avoid the peppers, but the lemongrass was unavoidable. The prawns were slightly undercooked. Just slightly. Maybe 30 seconds to a minute, but it was still noticable.
My Mom’s “Sambal Green Seafood Curry Hot Pot” was again heavy on the seafood, with lots of fish, prawns and scallops, but light on the sambal and the curry. Her prawns were better cooked than mine, as they should have been, having arrived 10 minutes after mine.
Both desserts were incredibly dissapointing. I know you don’t go to Asain food places for the desserts, but still.
I got banana tempura, which came with freezer burnt bought in vanilla ice cream – it tasted like it probably wasn’t that good before the freezer got to it, and canned whippy, which I hate at the best of times. It also came drizzed in chocolate sauce which was as bad as it ever is. The banana tempura itself was pretty bland and soft. I think it had been sitting at the pass for a while as the ice cream was pretty melty too.
My mom’s wasn’t much different or better, same ice cream, whippy and sauce only over a coconut crepe which was not a lot better than my tempura.
All in all a completely arbitrary score of 4/10
Spaghetti squash and vegetable ragout, confit garlic and roast tomatoes
Jan 18th
It’s cold, it’s rainy, and I’m tired. I also have virtually no groceries in the house. Now I need to be a little creative.
Here’s what’s in the fridge:
Spaghetti Squash
Zucchini
Carrots
Garlic
Artichokes
Tomato sauce
Garlic Mushrooms
Caramelized onions
Grape Tomatoes
These grape tomatoes are grim looking. They’re wrinkled and dry, so what better way to use up than roasting. Preheat your oven to 325F, put the tomatoes on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 30-45 minutes or until somewhat dry.
Grape tomatoes drizzled in olive oil and seasoned. Ready for roasting.
Cut the ends off the squash – carefully. Cut it lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds and pulp. Place it on a microwave safe plate cut side down, and microwave on high for 7 minutes. Remove when done, let cool, and with a fork, scoop out the strands of squash.
Place a few garlic cloves and olive oil into a small pan or pot. Cover, or nearly cover the garlic with oil. Heat over medium low heat for about 15 minutes. Do not let burn. Remove when garlic cloves are soft and golden brown.
Shread carrots and zucchini, or cut into spaghetti like strips with a mandoline.
Cooked spaghetti squash, julienne zucchini and carrot
Heat your tomato sauce in a pan, add carrots and simmer briefly. Add zucchini after about 2 minutes. Simmer 30 seconds, and add precooked mushrooms, roasted garlic.
Heat up a little butter in a pan, toss in the squash, season. Sautee to reheat. Add your ragout. Garnish with basil, confit garlic, roast tomatoes, and garlic oil.
Spaghetti squash and vegetable ragout, confit garlic and roast tomatoes
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Perfect caramelized onions
Jan 17th
For totally perfect caramelized onions, it is best to use a mandolin slicer to get even and super thin slices. Even slices are important for even cooking.
Peel the onions and cut in half through the root end. Using the mandolin, and watching your fingers, cut to form thin semi-circles. The thinner, the more fine your end product will be. Keep in mind that the onions will cook down to aproximatly 1/5 – 1/10 of their starting weight.
Pre-heat a large enough pot to hold however many onions you’ve cut with about 1-2 tbsp of canola oil. Add the onions, with a 1-3 tsp salt. The salt will draw moisture from the onions, allowing them to caramelize once enough of the water has evaporated. Stir to coat all the onions in oil and cook over medium-low heat. Stir often and make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan.
The onions will take up to an hour to cook down nice and slowly. With this method you don’t need to add any sugar to cheat on caramelization. The low heat and little bit of salt will do the trick as long as you are patient. Once you pass through the sweating stage and most of the moisture has evaporated, you need to pay a little more attention, and stir more often than before. Cook until the onions are an even color of your liking.
Store cooled extras in zipper bags in the freezer for up to 3 months or so.
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Butternut squash and zucchini curry with fresh spices
Jan 11th
This dish may not be traditional, but I tried to build it using some traditional Indian cooking techniques. Now, when I say ‘Indian cooking’, I realize that it is a huge country, with countless regional culinary variations. This dish is probably closest to west Indian, Gujurat or Rajastani food – hot, vegetarian, flavorful, and mildly sweet.
There is no curry powder used here, only fresh ground or whole spices. This gives the cook the ability to adjust the dish as needed. Its hard to screw up a curry dish, since you can always correct it as you go. The only golden rule is to never burn your spices. Keep watching your heat.
| Ingredients: |
| 2 tbsp vegetable oil |
| 3 red chilies |
| 4 green cardamom |
| 3 inches cinnamon stick |
| 1 1/2 tbsp cumin seed |
| 2 tsp fennel seed |
| 1 white onion, diced |
| 2 tsp ground ginger |
| 4 cloves minced garlic |
| 1 tbsp ground coriander |
| 1 tsp turmeric |
| 1 cup of diced tomatoes or halved grape tomatoes |
| 1 cup zucchini |
| 1 cup cream or omit for a lower fat version |
| 1 cup butternut squash diced |
| sprinkle of dried fenugreek leaves |
| 1 tbsp yogurt |
| brown sugar to taste |
| Fresh coriander for garnish |
Before proceeding, heat up a pot of salted water. Peel and dice the butternut squash and blanch it until soft, probably 4 minutes if diced into 1 inch cubes, less time for smaller cuts.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a pan over medium heat until it begins to shimmer.
- Break off the stem of your red chilies and crack them in half. This way they wont explode and splatter you with oil. Sautee them until the skin begins to crackle.
- Add cardamom pods and cinnamon stick. Let toast in the pan for about 60 seconds.
- Add the cumin seed and toast it until you can smell the toasty lemony scent.
- Add fennel seed and toast.
- Add onion and cook until translucent.
- Add garlic and ginger, saute briefly.
- Add coriander, turmeric
- Toss in the tomatoes and briefly cook out
- Add zucchini and cook briefly, then add cream and cook over medium heat until thickened.
- Add your blanched and drained butternut squash.
- Sweeten with brown sugar, and finish with yogurt if you wish.
- Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.
Now, I know that seems like a long recipe, but once you do it once, it really becomes the same old flow over and over. The summary – toast and saute your spices, add your aromatics [onions, ginger, garlic], build sauce with tomatoes/cream/whatever, add veg, finish and plate. The plating would have been nicer, but I had to clean up a major spill in the kitchen while cooking.
Building the sauce, tomatoes added
Almost done, cook the zucchini
Add the butternut squash to reheat it
Finished and plated
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Use lecithin to keep your bread fresh longer
Jan 8th
Have you found that your home made bread just doesn’t stay fresh as long as the loaves you buy from the store?
It is typical for home made bread to stale faster than the store bought stuff. Commercially produced breads have many shelf life extenders added to them to keep them nice until the end of the week. These chemicals have all kinds of chemical and trademarked product names to go into, but if your bread is still soft a week after you bought it, at least a couple of them are in there.
A home baker probably couldn’t easily get their hands on them even if they wanted to, but there is one additive you you might want to use when baking your bread.
Lecithin is an extremely common and very useful substance derived from soy and found in egg yolks. It is an emulsifier, which is a substance that allows fat and water to mix. In a chocolate bar, lecithin keeps the cocoa butter and solids together. It is also what allows oil and water to mix when making mayonnaise.
Adding it to bread will keep the fats in a stable emulsion with water and keep the moisture in the crumb of the bread, thus postponing the staling. Lecithin is also a surfactant and lubricant, so it will make the dough easier to work, allow ingredients to disperse more easily, and relaxes the gluten for a chewier loaf.
To use lecithin to improve your bread dough (rather than buying some expensive dough improver product), use about 3/4 tablespoons of lecithin granules per cup of flour, and mix it in with the dry ingredients. If you have liquid lecithin, 1/2 tablespoon per cup of flour, added with the moist ingredients should do the trick.
This and other molecular gastronomy ingredients are available at Le Sanctuaire. Lecithin can also be found at GNC, as well as other nutrition and health food shops.
If you find your newly shelf stable bread is going mouldy too fast, let it cool THOROUGHLY before packing it away in any type of airtight container. Warm bread is still giving off small amounts of moisture, which if trapped in an airtight container will settle on the bread and provide the perfect breeding ground for airborne spores.
Make your own fresh Cajun seasoning and rub
Jan 4th
Cajun seasoning can be purchased in basically any grocery store or supermarket these days, but if you have a well stocked spice cupboard there is no reason to buy a prepackaged mix. Using freshly ground mustard seeds, freshly ground oregano, thyme, and cumin seed along with paprika and cayenne that isn’t stale will give you a much more fragrant blend than what’s been sitting on store shelves for months.
There are literally limitless variations on the standard Cajun spice blend, with ingredients added and omitted, and combined in various ratios. Here is a simple recipe that can be tweaked to your tastes:
| 3 Tbsp / 45ml | Paprika |
| 2 Tbsp / 30ml | Salt |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Mustard seed |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Onion powder |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Garlic powder |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Cayenne pepper |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Ground black pepper |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Thyme |
| 1 tsp / 5ml | Oregano |
If you’re using this recipe as a dry rub, add 1 Tbsp brown sugar. As a marinade, add 2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil and substitute onion powder and garlic powder for fresh onion and garlic. Use 3 tablespoons minced onion.
For the freshest tasting Cajun blend, crush red pepper flakes and substitute for cayenne, crush mustard seed rather than using powdered mustard, and crush dried thyme and oregano rather than using powdered.
Cajun spice mix. From top, clockwise: mustard, paprika, oregano, thyme, black pepper, cayenne, salt, onion powder. Garlic omitted.
Simple technique for great nut or seed brittle
Jan 3rd
Nut or seed brittle can be a wonderful accompaniment to many dishes. I love a piece of pumpkin pie with pumpkin seed brittle as a garnish as it adds a great crunch. Pumpkin seed brittle sprinkled with sea salt is also nice with coleslaw.
Pecan brittle broken up into little pieces is great in a green salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries.
Brittles are quite simple, but they can be go so very wrong. Too sweet, grainy, too hard… there’s so much room for badness.
A simple technique for brittle is:
- Make a simple syrup (1 part sugar, 1 part water, brought to a boil).
- Wait for the syrup to cool a little, and simply toss your seeds or nuts in the syrup. There shouldn’t be too much extra syrup – just enough to coat the nuts and hold them together.
- Spread the mix on a cookie sheet lined with a piece of parchment or a silpat, then bake at 325ºF for aprox. 15 minutes, or until the nuts around the edges start to brown. The brittle will set up once cool. If it’s too soft, put it back in the oven for a few minutes.
If stored in an airtight container, they should keep for a week or so, but I’ve never had any around that long.
