Entries tagged as ‘ginger’
Photo credit: Rick Levine
Seth Ellis Chocolatier makes these ginger truffles that like like Jackson Pollock gems. The coloured spatter is beautiful, but doesn’t seem to be anything new. I mean, lots of chocolatiers decorate their chocolates with colours. I’m pretty sure that the standard yellow colour is made of Yellow Dye No. 5 suspended in cocoa butter. Decidedly not organic.
Now, remember that Seth Ellis chocolates are certified organic. How’d they manage to do that and get a yellow spatter? They used turmeric. I think my eyebrows almost left my forehead when I found out. Yet another example of creative problem solving.
Enough about the spatter. The inside of these truffles is beautifully smooth, almost velvety ganache. There are two kinds of ginger inside, a Hawaiian ginger that provides a warm base, and a crystallized Australian ginger that dances on top of it. I could eat a whole box of these.
Seth Ellis chocolates are available at select locations in the Denver/Boulder area, and that page will soon be updated to reflect the five NYC Whole Foods that now carries them. You can also buy them online through It’s Only Natural Gifts or through Foodzie.
Categories: Product reviews · Travel
Tagged: boulder, chocolate, ginger, seth-ellis
I’m reviewing a selection of chocolates from ChocolaTas, and so far I’ve covered their dent-du-midi (almond praline) and Earl Grey chocolates.
I’m not a big fan of milk chocolate. I find most milk chocolate – even the high-end stuff – to be slightly cloying and slick on my tongue. The one exception is Valrhona manjari milk chocolate, which tastes like caramel and butterscotch. Nom nom nom.
But I’m not one to be a chocolate snob (no, really). I figured I’d take the plunge and try ChocolaTas’ four-spice milk chocolate bonbon. It’s quite pretty, with fancy cocoa butter swirls all over it. The four spices are cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and ginger but I couldn’t taste all of them. The cinnamon and nutmeg came through, but I got too distracted by the milkiness of the milk chocolate. That says a lot, given what strong flavours ginger and pepper are. I think the choice to have a milk chocolate base was probably wise, since dark chocolate would overpower the delicate spices. Even still, the recipe needs a bit of tweaking: either more spices, longer infusion time for the spices in cream, or a different (less cloying) milk chocolate.
ChocolaTas
151 – 1669 Johnston St.,
Vancouver, BC
V6H 3R9
604-488-1226
Categories: Product reviews · Restaurant reviews
Tagged: chocolate, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, milk chocolate, spice, cocoa butter, pepper, chocolatas
I love brunch. Actually, I love breakfast but I’m rarely able to enjoy breakfast. And on the weekends, I love to sleep in – which means that breakfast becomes brunch.
Anyway, I’m having my two oldest friends over for brunch today. By oldest, I mean that I’ve known one girl my entire life, and the other since I was eight. We don’t see each other nearly often enough these days, so I’m looking forward to seeing them.
I’m making French toast with boozy bananas (dark rum or orange liqueur? I can’t decide) and honey-glazed bacon. We’ll finish with lime-ginger sorbet, and wash everything down with mimosas.
The combination of good friends, food and stories – it’s going to be fabulous.
Categories: Homemade
Tagged: bacon, banana, champagne, french toast, ginger, honey, lime, orange juice, rum, sorbet
Steamed whole fish
Serving a whole fish symbolizes prosperity. The fish, usually a whitefish like tilapia, is steamed in a shallow dish with soya sauce, ginger and green onions. Someone gets to “carve” the fish, which involves serving everyone a piece of the top side of the fish, deftly removing the backbone, and then leaving the bottom side of the fish in the pan.
Do not, under any circumstances, try to get to the bottom side of the fish by flipping it over. My family never observed this rule while I was growing up, and in grad school, I almost did this at a friend’s New Year’s Eve dinner. He flew across the table at me, arms flailing, his mouth open in a slow-motion “nooooooo……..” as he stopped me before I damaged the table’s prosperity.
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Categories: Events · Homemade
Tagged: chinese, chinese new year, fish, ginger, green onion, lettuce, soya sauce
If you read my post yesterday, you’ll have read about my love for Pho Bo Ga LA’s beef broth. Their salad rolls were pretty good, too. But there were other places in Ottawa’s Chinatown that I visited, for very specific things.
Just across the street from Pho Bo Ga LA, Meexim is a Vietnamese restaurant that’s run by Cantonese people. This means that their pho broth isn’t nearly as good, and that their menu features more rice and non-soup noodle dishes.
I ate one thing, and one thing only, at Meexim: their noodle soup with pork. The noodles are decent, the broth is passable – but the pork is out of this world. On first taste, you get sweetness, which mellows to the zing of ginger and the savouriness of soy.
I’m having phantom taste bud pains right now. And phantom stomach pains. My God, I would kill for some of that pork right now.
Meexim Restaurant
781 Somerset Street West
Ottawa, ON
613-567-1188
Categories: Restaurant reviews · Travel
Tagged: ginger, noodles, ottawa, pork, soup
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