Mar 27
lindsayrgwattFood recipe
Way back in 2005, Wen and I were living in Toronto and we stumbled onto the now-defunct Toba for brunch. There I discovered a dish that I have not seen since: the duck and hoisin crepe (a.k.a. Moo Shu Duck).
Peking duck.
Hoisin sauce.
In a fresh crepe.
What more could you want?
I’ve been mourning and missing it ever since (and yes, I’m aware that I probably could have googled either a recipe or a restaurant that serves it at any time during the past six years, but I’ve got a complicated relationship with food).
So imagine my surprise when I found myself making it on Saturday afternoon.
Why?
Knife skills.
Wen signed us up for a knife skills class at The Dirty Apron. She told me that we were going to make clam chowder in addition to learning about how to chop, dice and julienne.
The class is highly recommended. I now know how to properly cut an onion plus I got to spend a few hours in the Dirty Apron’s awesome test kitchen (12 mind-blowing Wolf ranges plus the demo area below):
Imagine my surprise when it turned out that in addition to the clam chowder, we were also going to make my beloved Moo Shu Duck that I’ve been pining for for half a decade.
I figured I’d burn the living hell out of the crepes, but all turned out okay:
Here’s what the delicious Hoisin-soaked, stir-fried interior looks like:
I can’t wait to cook this at home; it won’t be five years until I try it again.
Here’s the recipe for those who are interested:
BBQ Duck and Fine Vegetable Stir-Fry
Ingredients:
- 250g BBQ duck meat (shredded)
-
- They get all their duck from Lee Loy. It’s about $18 a duck, but if you bargain like mad you can get it for $13
- 20g Cashew nuts
- 2 Cloves garlic
- 4 Shitake mushrooms (julienne)
- 1/4 Carrot (julienne)
- 1/2 Small onion (julienne); can use 1/4 red onion
- 30 ml Oyster sauce
- 50 ml Hoisin sauce
- 1 tsp Toasted sesame seeds
- Salt & pepper
Directions:
- Heat oil in a saute pan, allowing the pan to get very hot. Add the small onion, mushrooms, and garlic to the pan. Stir-fry on high heat for about 2 minutes.
- Add the hoisin sauce, oyster sauce to the ingredients and stir-fry for another minute. Next, add the carrot, cashew nuts and sesame seeds and then cook for 1 more minute.
- Add the BBQ duck meat at the very end and remove from the heat.
Star Anise Crepes
Ingredients:
- 2 Eggs
- 220 ml Milk
- 20 ml Melted unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup Flour
- 1 tsp Star Anise (finely ground)
- 2 sprigs Italian parsley (finely chopped)
- 1 tbsp Butter (room temp for cooking)
Directions:
- Combine the eggs, milk, butter, and flour then whisk together until mixture is smooth and free of lumps. Add the parsley, star anise, and salt and pepper to the batter. The batter should be the consistency of cold cream.
- Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat. When the pan is hot, brush it with a little butter.
- Use a ladle (about 3 tbsp) to put the batter into the center of the pan. Tilt the pan from left to right to cover the entire surface. Cook the crepe until the edges begin to brown and then flip the crepe over to cook the other side. Remove from the pan
It’s not stated above, but you fold the stir-fry into the crepe just like it was a burrito and serve.
Mar 21
lindsayrgwattRandom, Science
Wendy is currently reading Bill Bryson‘s A Short History of Nearly Everything . From it comes the following passage, with possibly the best metaphor ever for the slow pace of geological time:
…If you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth’s history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 a.m., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixth over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 p.m. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 p.m. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.
Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 p.m. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughoutt this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minutes, somewhere on the planet this a flashbulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It’s a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummelled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.
Mar 13
lindsayrgwattFood
Vancouver has an awesome food scene: great chefs, great restaurants and great food shops. Since we’ve arrived here, Wen and I have wanted to check out the stores that exist beyond the downtown/Granville/Kits core. On Satruday we finally got the chance, with a long walk from our place through East Van.
Here’s my attempt to take you on the ride.
The first place we went – and yes, I know that it’s not technically in East Van – was Benny’s Market. Benny’s has been around since 1917 and is worth a visit. At first glance, you might be dismayed: from outside it looks like a neighbourhood bodega, not a temple of Italian food. But when you go inside and venture into the bowels of the store you’ll find their broad selection of Italian delicacies: coffee, pasta, antipastos, meat, etc.
We left with a bag laden with pasta (including the elusive lazy man’s gourmet meal: Ripienissimi stuffed pasta), sauces and pancetta. The orecchiette ended up becoming our dinner:
We weren’t hungry enough for a sandwich, but we’ll be going back; they’ve been making sandwiches there since 1917.
Next stop was the East Van outlet of Les Amis du Fromage. Walking inside, we fell in love with the deep, competing smells of the different cheeses. We were tempted by the goat cheese below, but we settled on an Austrian Karotten Kase instead (it’s a hard orange cheese; hence “Karotten”).
They were sampling rose, orange and lemon-flavoured olive oils; if you ever stumble across these, be sure to try them. You wouldn’t want them every day, but they’re delicious.
We’re also going to have to go back to their wine bar, Au Petit Chavignol, which is right next door (one of the few places in Vancouver where you can get raclette).
At this point in began to rain and we did what any self-respecting Vancouverite would do: we went for coffee. Our chosen stop was Latin Organics. This tiny little cafe really is a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day: it’s all white walls with orange highlights and the most tasteful use of bamboo I’ve ever seen.
The spirit of the store is Colombian, so I had a coffee con leche and a corn arepa; Wendy had a delicious London Fog (Earl Grey tea, shot of vanilla and steamed milk).
Latin Organics is right next to the Gourmet Warehouse, which lives up to its name and stocks everything you could ever need to cook anything. Looking for 15 variants of cast iron griddles? Your choice of 80 different cooking knives? The Vosges bacon chocolate bar? Duck? It’s all there.
If you were to look at these last few stops, you’d notice that they’re all on East Hastings. This is the same one that’s home to the poorest postal code in Canada just a few kilometres away; oddly it’s a food paradise if you keep following it and know where to look.
In fact, our next stop was also on it: the East Village Bakery. We were tempted by their cheddar fougasses, but they were way too big to carry with us on our tour; we opted for a cheddar and kalamata olive loaf instead.
Our last stop on East Hastings was Moccia. I had been hankering to go here for a while: many of Gastown’s restaurants and many of the food stores we’d already visited sell Moccia’s meats.
When you step in the spare interior of the store, you notice immediately that they take their meat seriously. The stamps behind the butcher’s stand are a solid clue:
It was really tough to choose from amongst the many types of sausages, bacon and various cuts; we settled on some porchetta and breakfast sausages.
Thus ended the East Hastings portion of our tour. We backtracked a bit and went up Victoria Drive to the South China Seas Trading Co’s store.
This store might just pack the most cooking punch per square foot anywhere in the world. In the tiny store you can get an incredible array of spices sourced from over 10 global suppliers. We picked up some szechwan peppercorns; I’ve never seen them for sale anywhere else. They also were selling kasuri methi (dried Fenugreek), which I’ve never seen outside of India.
Incredibly, not only is this a store, it’s also a cooking lab; I’ll likely be coming back in April to learn how to make four types of noodles.
This was followed by a walk over to The Drive and a trifecta of Italian stores in quick succession.
First, JN&Z Deli. Meat lovers heaven; I couldn’t count all the hocks hung high from the ceiling; one of the most beautiful-smelling places on earth.
A hundred feet or so away was La Grotto Del Formaggio, where the sky-theme ceilings stare down on all things Italian: not just cheese. Much like Benny’s, we’ll be going back for a sandwich sometime.
Right next door is the Fratelli Bakery, where you can get your cannoli on.
By this point we were bushed, so we headed over to Prado for another coffee injection.
This place is one of Vancouver’s cutest cafes: lots of light, brushed aluminum navy chairs, whitewashed walls, wooden floor and – rare for Vancouver – brick. And the coffee’s great too.
It was a great day. Here’s what the haul looked like; call me if you want to eat well this week:
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