canucklehead

Dude - that is looking like Banquet Quality!

Dude - your 100th post and you use the word 'bacon' - well done!

How can adding fries be wrong when it would taste soo right?

Kent - what an intersting treatment of eels. Much lighter and 'cleaner' than I've seen normally in Chinese cooking. I thought you or your family were from Shanghai... I was expecting the classic braised brown sauced Shanghainese style. Your treatment is a nice twist.

Your observations really highlight Kylie's weaknesses with cooking Chinese food - that is she cannot leave things well enough alone. She garnishes EVERYTHING with sliced red chili peppers - no rhyme or reason to it. Sichuan Pepper/Salt mixture is used for dipping anything into - not a good idea for 'wet' foods as the pepper/salt mixture would quickly turn into a sticky mess. There is certainly alot of room for innovation in Chinese food - incorporate local ingredients, lighten up on the oil or certain seasoning - but what she does is almost an 'illiterate' form of Chinese food. Alot of style over substance - chili peppers, sugar, vinegar, fish sauce are added to everything. Short cuts to real cooking and coaxing out of true food flavors. I know I sound harsh - but I don't mean to. She is entertainting to a certain degree - its just her food has just about zero appeal to me. Ah Leung - have you gotten further along in your video project? Something that I hope eG makes available.

Has anyone been to Sushi Hachi in Richmond (Pacific Place Mall facing Cambie Road) - alot of stuff flown in from Japan. Very focused on high qaulity sushi and sashimi. Went for dinner tonight - and we let the chef bring out what he thought was best. Everything was pristine, sweet, and fresh - some of the best oysters I have had ever. Saba, madai, kanpachi, salmon, yellow tail, local scallops... all tremendous. $85 for two before tip - very fairly priced. Some of the best sashimi I've had all year. Owner and his wife are Japanese are running things at a high standard but at a small scale so that they can spend time with their family. Service is relaxed and friendly - very low key. Dinner only 6-9pm, closed Mondays. I'd be interested to see if anyone else has been and what they thought.

Has ayone tried Chocolatas? I've seen Wim Tas on City Cooks - but I have not tried their product. Looks interesting - and my client can get a 15% discount if the order is large enough. Located out in the Fraser Valley (Langley I think?)

Here's a picture of the Gai Lan with perserved meats at Sea Harbour. I love it! I've also ate ALOT of Chinese chaucruterie lately - need to lay off of it for a little while.

Perhaps a little cliched now - but Delilah's martini list is crazy long.

I was under the impression that 'carbonade' orignally referred to the cooking method with coals being under and laid on top of the cooking pot (much like a dutch oven).

I think Patisseire Dore was mentioned upthread - but I can't find the exact listing. I picked up some baking from them last weekend and it was excellent. The owners are Asian and it shows in the lightness in the products. The croissants and pain au chocolate were satisfying - a decent richness and a leaf-like quality which shows hand turning of the dough. I also got a selection of little patries, cassis mousse cake, hazelnut chocolate cake (which was oddly decorated with pistachios and pecans), dark chocolate mousse cake (which is described as 'cheese' cake), and a white chocolate cake. They were all very good (as *deborah will also testify). The flavors were clean and distinct - the white chocolate cake actually tasted like white chocolate instead the usual blank sweetness. The execution was very well done - and though not as ambitious as Ganache - the results were excellent. Worth stopping by this Main St spot (even though its at 55 Kingsway) as an alternative to hoofing it downtown or into Kits when looking for fancy little cakes. Here's what the Vancouver Sun said about a year ago in their listing of good little coffee joints:

Flying Tiger opened a while back in the old Living Room Bistro space and there was a ripple of buzz that seemed to dissapate quickly. I went for dinner tonight and was very pleasantly surprised. It has the kind of menu that usually spells d-o-o-m to me - Pan Asian cuisne which included everything from kalbi and sushi to vindaloo and satays. But this is an instance where the chef's skills beats the concept and acutally delivers the goods in a big way. Tina Fineza (ex Bin and George) does not dumb down the food and the flavors are big, bright and spicy. The better dishes are the Malay and Philipino cuisine that build on contrasting sweet and sour tastes. Sambal Prawns had a sweet start that built up to a hot hot heat. Sambal green beans had a sweet freshness was also lifted by spicy heat. The Indonesian braised chicken had a mellow coconut sweetness and was served with a nicely balanced nasi goreng. The purri bread was tremendous - fried to a crisp hot puff without any greasiness - sprinkled with salt and tangy mango powder - and at $4 an order - our table shared two generous portions. Dessert was a chocolate ganach stuffed deep fried banana drizzled with a lime caramel - I know, it sounds slightly pornographic. Gooey and delicous. The prices were very reasonable - most of the larger shared plates hovered in the low teens, smaller plates were well below $10, and various sides were about $4 each. The table shared a bottle of Joie PN Rose for $35 - an extremely fair price. Tina is there for the next while - I think that it is a worthwhile place to check out if you are in the neighbourhood. Certainly the tapas style menu outshines higher profile places like Stella in my mind.

I think the fun thing about the Enroute listing is that it attempts to rank restaurants across the country. In its way - the rankings makes restaurants in in other parts of Canada - especially Quebec, seem closer and more accessible. The list makes me excited about what is going on in Canada Is there another publication that lists out restaurants across the country? Knowledge about what's going between various regional food centres in the US is common - why not Canada? You may argue the merits of the restaurants and the various city rankings. But at least there is dialogue. It is good to get out of our little pond once in a while. Congratulations to those who were named. I look forward to seeing some of newer places listed next year (ie: Salt).

Whole Foods has organic turkeys for $3.50 a pound.

If they were safe toeat and they were on sale - Chinese people would eat them into extinction in American waters pretty quickly.

We should do a comparison with the locally produced stuff from Dollar Meats in Vancouver. They are well known even in HK for the quality of their cured meats. Chris' stuff looks amazing - and his recipe has described the texture that you should be looking for in the final product perfectly. Unfortunately for us in Vancouver - it is very hard to find unsalted wine - so I am not sure if I could ever really try to make it here. The liquior control board will not allow the Chinese wine to be sold in a non-government outlet without it being heavily salted so that it cannot be drunk.

My aunt is a restaurant owner - and said that they are banned from importation in Canada due to their invasive tendencies (as noted by jhirshon) and parasites in the 'hair' of the crabs. The penalties are pretty heavy duty - and I have never ever seen them for sale anywhere. Not even even frozen or pre-cooked - let alone live.

Chris - beautiful lap yuk! Try a few thin slices tossed into rice as you steam it - the fat will melt into the rice as it cooks. Also - I've seen thin slices used in stir fries. A local Hunan restaurant uses a smoked version of lap yuk and stir fries it with Garlic Chives. I am guessing he stir fries to lap yuk first to crisp it up and render that fat - then the garlic chives are stirred fried in the fat and then everything is tossed together. I've posted about this dish before. I hope you will post some pictures of how you ended up using your lap yuk.

Oh - BTW - the yellow fruit with the papery skin is a ground cherry - I think. Did it taste of pineapple and tomato. Same family as tomatillo (I think - someone will correct me if I am wrong!)

With the safari plaque - was that done with a mold? And does the chocolatier have to make the mold themselves? Amazing stuff - I particularly liked the stuff from entry #8. Very zen japanese. Chomp.

Katie - what a fantastic trip report. I think that you hit just every food highlight you could possibly hope for. In fact, you've eaten at a few places that I have not gone to. So very glad that you had an excellent time. Hope you come up this way again soon.

Well - it was Ling who steered me in the right direction - and remember its just claypot rice - but when you have a craving for something - you just want it! The preserved meat had LOTS of lap cheung and just a few bits of lay yuk and lap ap - just enough to flavor the rice nicely. Still - given all the cured meats - it was a pretty salty lunch and I am still downing water to clear my system. The other offerings seem pretty good too. The secret really is that its freshly made and the ingredients are good quality. What some people do is that they pour the soy/oil sauce that comes with the clay pot over the rice and then close the lid to let it steam and settle a little bit more. Its a cheap and hearty lunch - and 20-30 min wait for it to be cooked to order. Have fun with it.

The place is called "James Snack" - oddly enough. My Aunt also confirmed that this was a good clay pot rice joint. I went today and it was very good. I am not quite sure if they fully cook the rice in the clay pot - but there was a very good crust and the rice was very fresh and fluffy. I had the preserved meat rice - came with preserved sausage, duck and pork belly- 50 cents got you a big pile of veggies also. It was excellent - about $6 in total. The fat and flavour of the preserved meats had full permeated the rice. Yum! Other add ons include eggs, salted duck eggs, and salted fish. They had beef rice, pork rice, free run chicken rice etc.... They were very secretive about the cooking process - they had a series of screens that hid the kitchen from the take out counter. Very weird. End product was quite satisfying though. Thanks for the heads up.

^^ Anna Magazine's website it www.annamagazine.ca

Noticed something called "Anna" on the newstands this week. Looks like it is out of Winnipeg. Takes the Donna Hay approach to food journalism - desserts look good though. PamR - any background on this? Looks like you can order cakes through 'Anna'.