Entries categorized as ‘Confessions’
Disclaimer: this post is not about chocolate. I’m sorry. I know you’re all eagerly awaiting another snarky post about some chocolatier gone wrong, but you’ll just have to wait.
In the meantime, I present you with a list of things that I ate last week while showing a friend around the city. Split this list between two people…and it’s still a ridiculous amount of food. Also bear in mind that we walked the equivalent of a marathon (42 km, or 26 miles) and hiked up Grouse Mountain last week, so I think we worked off a few of the calories that we ingested.
Without further ado, this is what I ate last week, in the order that my memory came up with:
- 6 xiao long bao
- 9 spicy wontons
- 1 bowl of spicy beef noodle soup with hand-pulled noodles
- 3 turnip cakes in rice flour pastry
- 1 cone of pink grapefruit-campari sorbetto
- 1 cup of passionfruit guava sorbetto
- 10 crepes with summer berry compote
- 1 grilled cheese sandwich (contained 4 kinds of cheese)
- 1 fennel salad with candied walnuts
- 1 bacon truffle
- 1 raspberry truffle
- 5 pieces salmon sashimi
- 5 pieces tuna sashimi
- 5 pieces toro sashimi
- 2 negitoro cones
- 1 spicy tuna cone
- 1 scallop cone
- 2 oysters motoyaki
- 3 cubes agedashi tofu
- 3 cubes spicy pan-fried tofu
- 6 pieces BC rolls
- 6 pieces avocado rolls
- 6 pieces yam tempura
- 6 pieces assorted vegetable tempura
- 2 dishes neopolitan ice cream
- 8 pieces toast
- 6 eggs, scrambled
- 10 slices of 4-year aged cheddar
- 2 bowls of pho with rare beef and cooked flank
- 2 deep-fried Vietnamese spring rolls
- 2 Japadogs (one oroshi, one okonomi)
- 2 bowls of my mom’s seafood soup
- 2 desserts from Boneta: bowl of local cherries with Aztec chocolate ice cream, cherry foam and elderflower jelly; lemongrass baba with chantilly, local blackberries, blackberry sorbet and crispy cookie
- 1 granola bar, kindly donated by a stranger on the Grouse Grind
- 1 baguette
- 1/2 wheel of Moonstruck Cheese ash-riped camembert
- 1 bowl of kalamata olives
- 1 homemade pithivier
- 1 plate of Najib’s Special from nuba
- 2 pistachio baklava
- 8 shiu mai
- 5 fish balls in curry sauce
- 2 dishes fried noodles
- 9 pieces of scallop and shrimp takoyaki
- 1 skewer of grilled pan bread
- 1 skewer barbecued shrimp
- 1 skewer barbecued chicken
- 1 custard-filled Taiwanese waffle cake
- 1 sheet of egg-shaped waffle dessert thingies
- 4 shrimp dumplings
- 3 shrimp rolls
- 3 pieces pan-fried turnip cake
- 3 pea shoot dumplings
- 3 shrimp-chive pan-fried dumplings
- 2 apple tarts
- countless bowls of fresh Okanagan fruit (cherries, blueberries, apricots)
- handfuls of wild blackberries, plucked off spiky vines wherever we found them
And this is what we drank (it isn’t nearly as impressive a list):
Looks like a week of salad and iced tea. Anything green, really. I think I might have scurvy.
Categories: Confessions
Tagged: cheese, chocolate, japadog, sheer-gluttony, vancouver, wine
Sometimes I feel like an animal at the zoo, or maybe the aquarium, in that I have to bribe myself to do things. This is particularly pronounced on beautiful sunny days when I’d rather be running around outside, but am sitting inside staring woefully at a computer screen.
You know how you can train a dolphin to do flips in exchange for, I don’t know, sardines? Way back when, I trained myself to work by rationing out bits of chocolate at set times. During university, I ate an M&M every time I finished reading a page. Sometimes when I was feeling crazy, I’d switch to peanut M&Ms, or – gasp! – Skittles.
Clearly, the grown-up equivalent is to bribe myself with nice chocolate.
It’s tricky, though. I have piles of beautiful artisan chocolate that might as well have been made by the hands of blue-haired pixies, and it seems like such a shame to “waste” it by using it as an absent-minded chocolate bribe. I tried buying high-end grocery store chocolate, thinking it would be okay…and sadly, it isn’t. I’ve ruined myself. It all tastes like wax and sugar to me.
It’s gummy bears and jelly beans from here on out.
Categories: Confessions
Tagged: candy, chocolate
It’s a pastry chef’s secret that if you’re making something chocolate-flavoured, a little bit of coffee acts like an invisible flavour enhancer. This is true for chocolate cake, chocolate icing, chocolate pudding, chocolate pastry, chocolate pudding pie, chocolate souffle…wait, what was I talking about?
Oh, right. Chocolate and coffee.
When used properly in chocolate recipes, you don’t even taste the addition of coffee. But there’s something about it that makes the chocolate taste more robust, more chocolatey, more kick-ass. As if it needed any help.
This is one of the few cases when I’ll actually advocate the use of freeze-dried coffee. No longer the stuff of camping trips, a teaspoon or two can make a surprising difference.
When I have the time and inclination, I’ll make a batch of espresso and then boil it down until it’s a thick syrup. I keep it in the fridge and add it to recipes that can accommodate the extra liquid.
So there you go. The cat’s out of the bag.
Categories: Confessions · Food science
Tagged: chocolate, coffee
Sometimes, the universe is subtle and coy. And other days, it literally hits you over the head and asks why you have your eyes closed.
I was walking home last night and had an insatiable craving for a grilled cheese sandwich. Now, I went on a grilled cheese kick about a month ago, where I couldn’t get enough of artisan sourdough, whole-grain mustard and a delicious mixture of Gruyere, Emmenthal and caraway Havarti.
Well.
Last night, I was craving a grilled cheese sandwich made of Wonderbread and Kraft Singles. Thankfully, the grocery store was closed. Another disaster averted.
And this afternoon on Ye Olde Twitter? @fizzpoptweet asked people to name their top guilty pleasures. Okay, universe, I get it. Guilty pleasures.
Read more about it in my post for Foodists.
Categories: Confessions · Links
Tagged: bread, cheese, foodists, sandwich
Chocolove was an exhibitor at the IACP last week, and generously donated a few samples for ye olde blog. I picked up a few more flavours here and there, since this Boulder-based company has its wares in most of the gourmet food shops here.
I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about the ritual that I used to have with my friend Sarah. We would rent girly movies and stockpile junk food. One of our favourites was Skor bites. They were balls of toffee (sugar and artificial vanilla flavouring) surrounded by cheap, mass-produced chocolate (sugar, hydrogenated soybean oil, caranuba wax). We would eat them until our bellies and teeth hurt equally.
Anyway, back to the present. I’m going to buck my usual dark chocolate snobbery and boldly say that Chocolove’s toffee & almonds in milk chocolate is sinfully delicious. The milk chocolate is just sweet enough without being cloying, and the crunchy toffee-almond bits remind me of a Skor bar. A Skor bar, all grown up.
Incidentally, I’ll be in Toronto this week to see some peeps – Sarah being one of them. It’s been a while since our last girly chocolate marathon, but I’ve stockpiled some Chocolove toffee bars, just in case.
Categories: Confessions · Product reviews
Tagged: almond, chocolate, chocolove, toffee
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