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gus_tatory

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Everything posted by gus_tatory

  1. Lovely thread! (I am a Montrealer, so biased.) To answer your query upthread, the 'local' shrimp here come from Matane in the Gaspesie.
  2. This is hilarious--I just made a delicious hummus with a can of "salad bar bean blend"!
  3. I use the same harissa, in tubes ("Le Phare du Cap Bon" from Tunisia). My understanding is that the concentrate (what we buy) is meant to be used sparingly, and with more harissa ingredients (cumin, coriander seed and leaf) added, as you would use curry paste perhaps. If I use it in marinades, it's about a tablespoon per serving, with olive oil or lemon juice or both. It is very nice and fiery! :-)
  4. I love this topic! But I have a question... The enclosed image is a liner from a container of gochujang. As you can see, the manufacturer has written 'NO!'..., and I was hoping someone could help me out with what the Korean says in English? Thanks in advance, gus_tatory :-)
  5. Those Chinese fried bread batons, you tiao, are awesome.
  6. You don't say if you're Canadian or American, and I'm looking solely at practicality: I live in Montreal and have for most of my life. Americans find Spanish more useful as a second language and Canadians French, for the reason that it's simply more spoken. Good luck! I speak English and French and am looking for a third language with which I can speak about food!
  7. You know, if I have dulse that really dries out (I prefer the moister, leatherier dulse), I'll whizz it in the food processor with kosher salt, and it makes this great seafood condiment!
  8. gus_tatory

    The Egg Sandwich

    my .02$: my platonic dream of an egg sandwich is: oozy yolk on the fried egg, lacy almost-burnt filigree on the edges of the white, crusty Portuguese roll, crispy bacon and HP sauce (brown sauce to the Brits). in the 'gilding the lily' category, i would put caramelized onions, capers thrown in the brown butter from the fried egg then on the roll, cracked back pepper, mayo...
  9. that has to be a mistake--that's like 15 pounds.
  10. I really enjoy the green teas--but especially the Japanese green teas--with a grassy, 'blond' hay-tasting aroma. Subjective enough for you? I also like genmaicha, green tea with roasted rice, because it has the same grassy taste, but with a bit of earnest toasted rice in there that makes it smell/taste almost popcorn-y.
  11. At all my Asian groceries (in Montreal) I see Szechuan peppercorn labelled as 'prickly ash'... if that helps anybody trying to find it... edit to add: LINKPrickly Ash / Szechuan peppercorn
  12. There are several wide-spread consumer implementations of sous vide: --As someone says below, boil in bag; --Those FoodSaver things you see on the infomercials; --A lot of pricy bistros, delis and charcuterie type places, as well as caterers, sell not only sous vide cheese and pates, but also hot meals with protein, sauce, carb and veg all plated, ready for mike oven or boiling water. The other thing is when we remove air from a wine bottle and 're-seal' it, or when we add a thin film of Saran Wrap to the top of a custard (to prevent skin), or when we squeeze the air out of a bag of potato chips before closing, we're kind of doing sous-vide there too, which is to prolong the life of foods due to reduced contact with air. 'Sous vide' just means 'vacuum-packed', and any use of it to indicate a trend or cooking method is incidental.
  13. Congrats, Leslie! You are among my favourite Montreal food writers and 'personalities', and you and Sarah Musgrave are the first 2 people I read in the Saturday Gazette. Good luck! (Don't hold out to become a millionaire from Google Ads, though :-( )
  14. i found this topic because i was looking for XO sauce recipes after having a gorgeous shrimp and scallop on XO sauce dish tonight. can anyone comment on, when buying conpoy, they have the little, small, dry cheap ones, and the big, expensive ones? i can't see, if you're going to steam and shred them anyway, what difference it would make, but i could be wrong? thanks in advance for any info.
  15. confession: the reason i asked about the chicken deboning post was because i haven't gotten around to it yet, and wanted to give it a shot this weekend. your guide is really helpful, and it'd be nice if we could get it 'pinned' somewhere (eG administrators?)--but this time i CTRL-D'd (bookmarked it) so now i can find it again. this isn't ramen or pho, but the 'Chinese wonton soup' (#182 on their menu) at Beijing on de la gauchetiere is one of my favourite cheap soup lunches, and hangover cures too! it's a big bowl (enough for 2, but i always finish it...) and there's a few leaves/stems of gai lan, about 10-12 cute little dumplings with chopped coarse (not pureed, pasty) shrimp-y goodness in the dumplings, and their broth is really, really good, with a few drops of sesame oil on top. i keep on going back for the broth, because it is clear yet has body, it tastes of good, fresh hot chicken (not salty, or msg, or Magic Chicken Powder...), and it is one of the best clear soups of any nationality i have tried. i have worked extensively at making good chicken broths at home, and i have come close, but i never got one as good as theirs. i do now, however, drop 1-2 star anise in my chicken broth now for that delicate evocative taste. interesting point you make on the waves of restos that start out brave and seem to end up resembling each other after a while...
  16. I'm seeing and hearing about: --Savoury chocolate 'tastings', i.e., pairing not-sweet great chocolate with savoury ingredients --Korean, Goan and Uyghur food [in Montreal] seem to be the next big things --Kitsch nostalgia food (70s dinner party food, basically) --Herb infusions in sugar syrup for cocktails, iced teas, deserts, etc. --Functional foods and nutraceuticals (Coke with vitamins, anti-oxidant enhanced foods) --...
  17. Did I tell you at the time how appreciative I was? I hope so! And now back to the noodle topic: Do you foresee Montreal having the kind of noodles/ramen 'war' that they are having in NYC? I would love for more and better noodle-soup shops to open here! --Time Out NY article on 'Ramen Wars'... click --Eater.com article on Ny 'Ramen Wars'... click
  18. wattacetti-- great, great photos and reportage! do you ever go to pho places in Chinatown? there's at least 2 on St-Laurent between Viger and de la gauchetiere that are ok... also, off topic: was it you (I can't remember which eG member did this) who posted a great, great tutorial somewhere on this site about the "glove method" of deboning a chicken a little while ago? i've been looking and I can't find it... It's the way of deboming a chicken from the inside and without making many--if any--cuts...
  19. This is the most beautiful thread--so inspired by your cooking, everyone. I love Korean food~! I would not object if someone wanted to do a pictorial of a pajeon (green onion pancake), as I have not had great success with these (holding it together in one piece)...
  20. i am soo relieved that the majority of us seem to have come down on the side of the resto critic. Mr. Morentzo's actions were bully-ish, rude and uncalled-for, and crass. you don't buy a good reputation, you earn it. and yes, maxanon, this topic smells bad, but i have to pop in every few weeks and make sure the Big Steak House Bullies aren't getting the upper hand.
  21. This recipe uses a really nice garam masala that is sprinkled on the chicken before and after cooking: stony_curtis' butter chicken from Ambala restaurant Montreal... clicky...
  22. i) Sriracha/sambal oelek ii) Tabasco red, green *or* other/habanero iii) Frank's Red Hot iv) Piri-piri (Portuguese hot sauce) v) ...?! - - - [Famous dates in hot sauce history]
  23. Um yes. Queue de Cheval is known as a bit of a poseur-ish, show-offy place for those who like to light their Cuban cigars with 100$ bills. And again, the money comes out for this "bounty", so-called. Could it be that Mr. Morentzos is upset he can't buy a good review...
  24. Montreal used to have a number of de facto gay restaurants spread around the city. In the late '70s, for example, there was Au Jardin, a vegetarian restaurant on the Plateau, and TipTop, That Great Canadian Cafe and, if I recall correctly, the Limelight (not the disco of the same name) in western downtown plus others in the Mile End and nothern Plateau neighbourhoods. In the years since, the booming gay scene has become concentrated in the so-called Village east of downtown, where there are restaurants galore. What's interesting is how many of them are mediocre or worse and yet do a land-office business. Is it because of the captive audience (ghetto mentality)? Dining taking a back seat to convenience (proximity to bars, saunas, shops, community organizations and home)? Your theory that good food is not necessarily the raison d'être of such places? Probably all of the above. There are also parallels to be drawn with the city's hetero see-and-be-scenery strips like St-Laurent north of Sherbrooke and Crescent between Ste-Catherine and Sherbrooke: a handful of decent dining spots in a sea of dreck. ← Hi Carswell-- Yeah, I don't get this. There are basically three kinds of "gay restaurants" in Montreal: --Gay owned and operated and neighbourhood places, like La Paryse, the hamburger joint on Ontario that is a sheer delight, and has been for many, many years. --Places that happen to be in gay neighbourhoods (may or may not be gay owned/operated) that serve *awesome* food, like Miyako on Amherst, or Brunoise in the Village, but then you have... --...The mystifying Category Three restos, which are in gay neighbourhoods, and may or may not be gay owned/operated, but where the food is just short of awful! I'm not trying to put anyone out of business here, but quite a few of the restos on Ste-Catherine in the Village (Piccolo Diavolo, Mi Burrito, Saloon, Est Asie, &c.) have food that is opver-priced and just not very good. This is especially mystifying to me considering the pervasive stereotypes that gay men (and lesbians to a lesser extent) are supposed to have so much disposable income, and to be so discriminating with re: to food and drink, etc. The best example of this is the resto at Sky, called Food. OMG their food is soo rude, not fresh, not interesting, expen$ive, over-salted and their wine is marked up like 400%. I feel so embarassed and badly for the hardworking folks in the kitchen there... This is a total mystery to me.
  25. Without citing statistics and stuff, it seems to me, Mr. Shaw, that you are absolutely right. Looking at the second half of your topic-starter, we spoke in the puu-puu platter thread clicky here... about how that Polynesian restaurant standby gave people a little taste of a lot of things, a sense of the exotic (fire at the table! dipping sauces! ), and an entry/entree to a cuisine from a perceived as far away and exotic place. Buddakan is the new Trader Vic's because, even though we're more experienced and less naive now, and we've had wider experiene with food, it retains the showmanship, the flash, and the sense of having a Night Out Somewhere Far Away. I'm not comparing Buddakan to EPCOT, and none of the EPCOT restaurants are great, I don't think, yet they are all little microcosms of the places they ostensibly represent. If some of the chain places like Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, TGIF's, &c. got a bit more serious about their food, and had decor that reflected a locale or theme, they would also be getting close to what Trader Vic's was... It's a contradiction, but what these places sell is a 'unique experience for the masses'...
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