I am behind in my blogging. I had good intentions of writing about various holiday festivities but just didn't get around to it. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Before Christmas, G & I spent a fun day together, just hanging out. It had been a while since we'd done that. We checked out the newly opened Alimento Fine Food Emporium. It's a grocery store focusing on all things Italian and a restaurant. We didn't buy anything. Okay, that's not true. I bought chocolate (what else is new?). They carry Muzzi, which I have never tried. Love the packaging. Reminds me of the old tobacco pouches my Dad used to have when he smoked a pipe. There were some interesting products I would like to try out when I cook a good Italian meal.
We had Lunch there. I had a Negroni & G had a Campari with Soda. We were being very Italian. We split the Potato Pizza, which was a little bland in flavour & definitely not as good as Buca's, a Croquette with Cheese & Prosciutto (this was yummy), a Roasted Mushroom Salad with unexpected hazelnuts & Tiramisu (with a strange lemon flavour that I don't think belongs in Tiramisu). I think if I were to go again I would just do a cheese & meats platter with wine and call it a day.
Magic Pony is showing art by Team Macho & I think their stuff is brilliant.
G's favourite was Fizzlekitten and he doesn't even like cats.
Their Swing Kids appealed to the true crime aficionado in me because if you look closely, some of these kids are bleeding and one girl has a knife & a swinging studded club in her hands.
Checking out some Vintage Stores for furniture, I saw this gem of a painting:
John "Duke" Wayne and his huge rifle. It cracked me up. Obviously this would need a very special place in your house if you were to buy it.
G hadn't been to the new location of Soma Chocolatemaker so I took him. Of course that meant we had to drink a Hot Chocolate and eat some chocolate.
Mmmm, creamy goodness. Their Holiday Gingerbread Toffee Chocolate was so so good. Quite gingerbready. Damn G for opening it because we just wanted to keep eating the whole bar.
My Dad had a big birthday over the Holidays. We celebrated at (where else?) a Chinese restaurant. My cousin came from Montreal for Christmas and had heard about Judy Cuisine in Richmond Hill, so we took my Dad there. All info for the restaurant said they took reservations (I was skeptical) and when I called to make one, the guy dutifully took down my information and said he would see us that night. Flash forward and NO, they do not believe in reservations, as the rude Chinese hostess said to me when we arrived. I wasn't offended because basically ALL Chinese hostesses are rude and I really never believed we would get a table just by making a phone call. So we waited for about 15 minutes and then scored a corner table, away from the hustle & bustle.
The food was very good & very reasonably priced. I think we had 5 dishes & 4 bowls of rice (my cousin is a big eater) plus Dessert for under $100. I love that about Chinese food. You can eat tons in a group and pay very little (compared to Western food).
We came for their Fried Milk with Oysters. Wow. SO GOOD. The milk had a hint of sweetness & coconut and was creamy & delicious. Interesting pairing with the oysters, which were huge, btw.
I really love Steamed Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce. It's like a Cantonese staple. My Dad used to make this a lot growing up. Judy Cuisine's version was excellent. Great sauce (even though the ingredients are like what you would find at any Cantonese restaurant, the sauce tasted better than most).
The Dessert was Sweet Walnut Soup with Glutinous Rice Balls stuffed with Dark Sesame Paste. Fantastic. They bring you a big casserole dish of the stuff. I think my cousin had 3 servings. I must look up this recipe in my Chinese cookbooks. No one in my family made this, though we did have Black Sesame Soup (Zi Ma Wu) a lot.
So as you can gather, a lot of eating was done while my cousin was here. I think we basically either ate out every night or cooked something delicious. Hence why I started this side blog to keep me accountable about losing some weight.
Another night my cousin treated me to the terrific Tacos (like how I did that?) at Grand Electric. Man, the food there is off the hook. No reservations so you leave your phone number, like so many other restaurants in town, and they call you when a table becomes available. We went for a drink at The Parkdale Drink which I like a lot. Seating became available at the bar so we were seated within 1/2 hour. Not bad at all! My cousin drank beer while I had a few different Bourbons (Maker's Mark and Four Roses). We started with the Guacamole & Chips, which I kept liberally dosing with the homemade salsa verde in a squeeze bottle. Then basically we went crazy with the taco ordering. You get 3 for $10 so we tried all 4 types, Spicy Arbol Chicken, Beef Cheek, Pork Belly al Pastor and Baja Fish. I think my favourites were the Baja Fish & Beef Cheek. I liked the Spicy Arbol Chicken but it was really really hot. And the hotness was not dissipating even after I drank water & waited for a bit. One was enough for me. I wanted more fattiness from the Pork Belly, which is why it didn't rank up there. So all in all, I ate 5 tacos. My cousin ordered some MORE and ended up eating 10!!! We also ordered the Chicken Frito which was fantastic. Chicken fried (but no batter or anything) and then covered with a tasty sweet & tart sauce. Really great. We used our fingers. My cousin insisted we try Dessert, even though I was stuffed, so we had the Key Lime Vaso, which was like Key Lime Pie in a glass. It was too dark for pictures to turn out on my cousin's Samsung Galaxy S (which for some inexplicable reason, didn't come with a flash). Lately I don't feel like taking pictures in restaurants so I leave it to my cousin - ha.
Christmas was nice. We had a lot of food, as usual. I made a Corn & Crab Soup to start. Mom made the Turkey, which was very juicy, a Chestnut Rice Stuffing, Ribs (yes, Ribs, and I must say they were really melt-in-your-mouth), Carrots and Mashed Potatoes. I made a Spinach Lasagna with fresh spinach pasta sheets from the Market. So good. I layered with Bechamel, Ricotta & Spinach, and Goat Cheese & Cream. Um, not so low calorie but hey, vegetarian! I also made Dessert which was a Cappuccino Trifle.
Very rich & delicious. Soaked marble pound cake with rum & chocolate hazelnut coffee, then layered with custard/sour cream/shaved chocolate and whipping cream. It was definitely a hit.
I made most of my Christmas presents, as usual. I always do chocolates. This year I did a lot of preserving too. Prune Butter (sounds gross but is actually a great, healthy way to bake without using butter), Rhubarb Ginger Jam, Apple Butter, Plum Ketchup, Apple Cider.
Cherry-Vanilla Bitters on the left, which I made with a Scotch base and Apple Pear Ginger Jam on the right. I used the apples & pears from Mom's garden.
I made about 6 different chocolates. I must say I was very happy with my molded chocolates this year. I tempered well so they looked great.
These were the White Chocolate Vanilla Bean molded with Dark Chocolate. I used gold lustre on the tops.
These were Raspberry & Rosewater Dark Chocolate.
Oh, I finally finished my Mom's needlepoint. It only took, what, 10 years?? I never want to needlepoint again. I don't know why it uploaded sideways (it is the right way on my hard drive) and I don't feel like correcting it. But you get the gist. She was really happy with it. I was just glad to get it out of my life.
Checked out Parts & Labour and I loved their Roasted Marrow Bones with Caramelized Onions, Parsley & Radish Shallot Salad & Bread. Yum, yum, yum. I was crazy and ordered their Pig 5 ways (was originally going to have the Whitefish). It was, surprise, very heavy. But I loved the Head Cheese Croquette which used part of the Pork Hock for texture within. Fabulous. The Strasbourg Sausage was also good. I'm not a big fan of Sauerkraut so I didn't eat it. Evidently there was Pork Hock meat inside (which another friend who ordered the dish told me). Can you see why I gained weight over the holidays?
Oh, and of course I ate some more for New Year's Eve.
A friend cooked Dinner: Beef Tenderloin (a perfect medium rare), Carrot & Turnip Puree, Roasted Potatoes (with lots of Buttery flavour), Yorkshire Puddings (yes!) and a delicious Gravy. So so good.
I think I will leave my usual personal "Best Of" list for another post.
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