Ling

^That recipe you posted is a lot different from the one Patrick S posted! Are there 2 versions of the CIA Mudslide cookies floating around?

I haven't been to Magnolia Grill, but here's a coconut cake thread. The recipe for the famous Peninsula Grill cake is here. I don't know if it's been adapted, since this is an Epicurious recipe. Coconut cake thread The first time I made the cake, I modified it after reading that some of the reviewers thought the cake was too heavy. I reduced the amount of cake (scaled down the recipe by about 1/4) b/c I thought that perhaps the "less cake/more filling" ratio would take away some of the heaviness. The second time I made the cake, I followed the Epicurious recipe (except I didn't cover the cake with as much coconut), and I used an Italian meringue icing (birthday girl's request). Of the two versions, I much preferred the one I modified (less cake).

I made another chocolate cake...oh man, I love chocolate cake.

I had three students 13 years old and younger today (I'm kind of afraid to ask my teenage students for fear that they'll roll their eyes at me. ) ************* Boy, age 13 --he likes to eat. A LOT. We're always talking about food. His "snack" after school is a McDeal meal, super-sized. Breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage Lunch: "That really expensive burger that you told me about a few months ago! The one with short ribs and duck liver!" (He means the ones offered at Feenie's and Diva at the Met--Vancouver's answer to Daniel Boulud's extravagant creation.) Dinner: a large pizza with cheese, ham, onions, peppers, olives, anchovies, sausage, beef, and bacon snack: Spicy Cajun Explosion Pringles, McDonald's french fries ************* Girl, age 12--she likes it when I make her hot chocolate. Breakfast: Teriyaki chicken wings, Pizza Hut personal Hawaiian pizza Lunch: Coke, salmon sashimi Dinner: fish, stir-fried Taiwanese cabbage, rice, ribs ("It has to be pork ribs!"), and a whole chicken (Me: "It has to be a whole one?" Her: "Yes. A whole one." Me: "A roast chicken?" Her: "It doesn't matter. As long as it's a whole one.") ************* Girl, age 11--self-proclaimed "pickiest eater in the world". She never eats anything I offer her, except for these double chocolate cookies that I bake, which she absolutely adores. Breakfast: milk, and bread with anything you want on it Lunch: cheese pizza, gyoza, and fried rice Dinner: egg and ham with rice snack: popcorn

^Everything looks delicious, particularly the tuna and beet dish! The Benedictin blue cheese is one of my favourites.

^You were so creative with the mold, and the cake looks beautiful!

Yes, Urban Fare has truffle products (oils, jarried chopped black truffles, etc.) in a locked cabinet near the baked goods area. Les Amis du Fromage also carries those products.

This is a really fun thread! I will be contributing more throughout the week...I teach about 15 different "kids", but some of the "kids" I teach are two years younger than me. (I tutor English...some of them are university students.) I will post a few more menus as the week progresses, but only from the kids, say, 13 years and younger.

I love ribs...I've had ribs three times this week already! My favourite rib dish when I was 9 (and still one of my favourites) is the Korean dish "kalbi". But there was only so much I could fit into my one-day menu...maybe I should've done away with the Corn pops, and added the ribs in there. Yeah, hashbrowns, sausages, eggs, and a side of ribs. Now that's a breakfast!!!!

Today...(Saturday) Lunch Take-out from Parker Place Meats. Soy sauce chicken, roast pork (siew yook), char siew (bbq pork), and rice. My parents usually buy me lunch when they're grocery shopping, since I work on the weekends and don't really have time to cook something for myself. Dinner #1 My parents got take-out for themselves tonight, and I ate dinner with them since I had a late reservation at Mistral. We had coconut curry brisket and Hainan chicken from Deer Garden in Richmond...like I've posted before, it's a bi-monthly thing. Dinner #2 I ate dinner with a few friends at Mistral tonight. Reservations at 8:30pm, and we were seated at 9pm (drinks on the house due to the wait--they were incredibly busy!) We started off with a couple plates of the duck platter--pate, foie gras terrine, a slice of duck prosciutto, rillettes, onion jam, and cornichons. The favourite at the table was definitely the pate--it was coarse, and very flavourful. (I am unfamiliar with the term "crepine"--the pate was wrapped in some sort of fat that looks like caul fat to me, but I'm not sure exactly what type of fat is used in a "crepine".) The onion jam was sweet and appropriately tangy, and the rillettes were very smooth and a bit underseasoned. (I would also have preferred it to be more coarse, and less like a duck-flavoured butter. Not that there's anything wrong with that, fud. ) I drank a Grey Goose "martini" and a glass of the Noble Chardonnay. We moved on to a few dishes of the mussels in saffron curry--large, plump orange mussels bathed in that rich, mildly spiced sauce. It was easily one of the best seafood dishes I've had recently. This was our favourite dish of the evening. After the luscious sauce was mopped up, we had the warm goat cheese, salad, and prosciutto with pears and the pissaladiere. The goat cheese was a bit disappointing in that it wasn't as tangy as I had hoped it to be. The prosciutto was moist and of excellent quality. The pissaladiere was one of my favourites--an almost paper-thin crust laden with soft, browned tangles of onion redolent of anchovies. The evening ended with coffee, the soft-centered chocolate cake and lemon tart with raspberry mousse--both ordered after reading the recommendations on Egullet. The texture of the chocolate cake was incredible--soft, delicate crumb that almost melted into a fudgy sauce with the ice-cream. The lemon tart was good, but I would have preferred a tangier curd. The crust is buttery, but not very crisp.

^Also, was the "celery heart" like a celery-infused coeur a la creme?

Do the torch thing! Kind of dangerous, kind of sexy...

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? Food was always extremely important to my family--it was a way my Chinese parents expressed their love. My mom was born in Shanghai, and was raised in Hong Kong and Taiwan. She came over to Vancouver in her 20s. My dad was born in Canton, and immigrated to Calgary when he was 9. Food was an integral part of both households--my paternal grandparents owned a few restaurants in Calgary, so my dad and his siblings grew up in that environment. My grandparents were always busy running their restaurants, and my dad's afternoon chore after school was to peel a hundred pounds of potatoes everyday--(is this like one of those "I walked uphill to school in 3 feet of snow, bothways!" stories? ) When my dad was a teenager, he bussed tables at various restaurants in Vancouver, one of them being Hy's Encore (a higher-end steakhouse). My mom has always loved to eat, and was alloted an allowance when she was in school in HK. Unfortunately, she would spend almost all of it during the first 2 weeks of the month on American chocolate bars (quite a novelty when she was growing up in the 60s,) dumplings, soy milk, and mangoes, and would have to beg her older brother for money for the rest of the month. My grandparents owned a large textile factory, and were moderately wealthy. My mom and my uncle would eat dinner prepared by one of the family cooks. Was meal time important? Yes, very important. My mom always prepared a well-rounded breakfast for me when I was too young to cook. Teachers in elementary school exclaimed over my rather elaborate (and hearty) lunches. We always ate together as a family at dinner. Was cooking important? Yes, cooking was very important. My parents make almost everything from scratch, although I have had the occasional canned soup and Kraft dinner for lunch, like most kids. For birthdays and special occasions, my mom would take a few days off work and start doing the prep work for the dishes at least three days in advance. On the special night, there would be at least twelve meticulously-prepared, traditional Chinese dishes on the table, and at least two soups. The man who developed our pictures once asked my mom which restaurant we were ordering all this food from, since it always looked so good and there was such a variety. I started baking when I was about 11 (cookies, cakes, fillings, and frostings from scratch) because I've watched my mom do it for so many years, and she finally thought I was responsible enough to use the oven without assistance when I was 11. Since then, she has left all the baking up to me, although she does make Chinese desserts still. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? None, but we weren't allowed to have the TV on during dinner. Also, if I finished eating before everyone else, I would have to say: "May I please be excused from the table," before I was allowed to bring my bowl and chopsticks to the sink. Who cooked in the family? Both my parents cook--my mom is great at preparing Chinese dishes, and my dad makes "Western" dishes. My dad's parents owned restaurants that served "Western" food (like schnitzel, roast beef, mashed potatoes, etc.) so that's the stuff my dad knows how to do quite well. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occasions? Restaurant meals were common--every Sunday after church, we would go out for dim sum. There were several "banquet-style" Chinese meals a year. In high school, I would chose either Greek food or Japanese food if I were given the choice. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? Yes, but that's because our dining table is too small to fit 20-plus people. Plus, the kids like to sit together anyway. (Actually, I still sit at the kiddie table! ) When did you get that first sip of wine? Probably in grade 8, when I drank some from my dad's glass. Was there a pre-meal prayer? Not as a family, but I did pray with my siblings before dinner up until I decided I was atheist. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? No, but weekends meant "special" meals (i.e. ANYTHING NON-CHINESE!! ) when my dad would cook! Usually it was prime rib (his favourite, and one of my favourites too!) How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? I currently still live with my family, but when I moved out for about 6 months last year, much of what I cooked was simple, everyday Western/French-inspired food. I made Chinese food too, but perhaps only twice a week. I did a lot of classic bistro dishes, and easy things like baked salmon, roast chicken, roast potatoes, etc. (I did de-bone my own chickens, render the skin for schmaltz, and use the carcass for stock, though!) Now that I'm back at home with my family (with a much bigger kitchen, thank God!) I have more space to bake, so I try to take advantage of that. Growing up, I didn't eat at my friends' houses very often (partly because I went to a private school in Vancouver and lived in Richmond, so I didn't live very close to anyone). I took it for granted. I thought all my peers ate as well as I did--live seafood killed hours before dinner, bird's nest soup whenever I did well in school, abalone in the congee as an "everyday" lunch (served, of course, with salted duck eggs, Chinese donuts, pickled cucumbers, dried "pork fluff", and a variety of other "sides"). Now that I'm older, I have a much greater appreciation for what my (middle-class) parents sacrificed in order to feed us so well. I hope to extend that same love to my future family, and continue the love and respect my parents instilled in me for food.

My student (9 years old) is waiting to get picked up by his mom, so I asked him this question. He says: Breakfast those Chinese buns with a weiner baked right inside scrambled eggs Lunch McDonald's (Supersize fries, McChicken, Coke) Snack chips (BBQ flavour) Dinner cubed, fried Spam on rice, with lots of soy sauce Coffee Crisp *** If I were 9, I would've picked: Breakfast Corn pops and milk poached eggs sausages hashbrowns (the frozen kind is OK...just as long as they get good and crispy in the pan!!) snack at school Chinese coconut bun, or sour cream and onion Pringles Lunch pork schnitzel with gravy, mashed potatoes with lots of butter, corn on the cob chocolate-covered Digestive biscuits chocolate milk Snack Cinnabon cinnamon bun, warmed in the microwave and with that extra plastic container of cream cheese icing Dinner blue-rare steak (or prime rib with gravy) rice with butter and the meat drippings chicken and abalone soup my mom's Cream horns (puff pastry made from scratch)...at least 3 pastries, pretty please!

I don't think it would make a difference...I do this all the time. The shortening cookies may stay softer for a bit longer. If you really want to be precise, a cup of butter weighs 227 grams whereas a cup of shortening (or lard) weights 205 grams.

^Those beef patties are STUFFED! I love it! That looks 100x better than the Jamaican beef patties I buy from school. I had curried short ribs (also ate them for a midnight snack last night ). And a box of Glosette peanuts.

I had a similar vile "sangria" that was wine, sprite and hawaiian punch. ← AT LEAST YOU HAD SOME CARBONATION IN YOURS! All I got was an ice cube.

Abra: I love your blog. The quesadillas look especially good! Regarding the "lamb shank" photo--I had dinner at a top restaurant a few months ago and even though I was wearing my nicest dress, I sucked the marrow out of the bone. (I did take a discreet look around the room to make sure no one was looking in my general direction before I did that, but how can I leave all that unctuous marrow behind?)

I can tell by reading that recipe that these cookies are out of this world. I will have to try these and the CIA Mudslide cookies next week! Thanks for posting.

Absolutely nothing! I love them all, but agree with the ubiquitous overly-gelatinized mango pudding at restaurants, so I only have it when someone makes at a potluck. Have not been to Shanghai Chinese Bistro, but that's a good sign if they have real pieces of mango! Agreed. I love the crusty brown "skin" on top too. Also love it at Sun Sui Wah. Dinner at 7pm. Payment: a big smooch on the cheek from Noah.

Ahh...you echo my sentiments regarding the marrow. I thought it had too much filler. It was also a bit underseasoned for my taste.

^I was also at Patisserie LeBeau looking for lemon tarts, but the sign on the door said that they are closed and have moved to another location. (I think it also said something about doing wholesale? Or no longer selling to the public?)

Maybe they use berry sugar? I love seeing Chinese dim sum desserts that are a little different from the baked tapioca, "ma lye go", and mango pudding (although baked tapioca, especially with lotus paste or red bean paste, is pretty high on my list as a favourite dim sum dish!) That tofu and celery dish...my mom could make you a whole plate. She makes it all the time.

^No, but that's what I was thinking when I was looking at FoodMan's beet cake. Parsnip would interesting, I bet! I love roast parsnip, and does have a more interesting flavour (to me) than carrot.

Aww...lunch sounds and looks great. I'm sorry I missed out today! The beignets are calling out to me. They remind me of one of my favourite things to get at the Chinese bakeries (the really airy, eggy donuts with the big holes in them that are rolled in sugar after frying), only those don't have red bean paste. Is this a vote for Shanghai Wind?