Chana Masala

Chana Masala or Chickpea curry, well I actually don’t know too much about it. I’ve had it a few times from restaurants but all I know is it’s boiled, soft chickpeas in a curry sauce. Alongside it, I had some frozen Paratha which I cooked up. I had some rehydrated chickpeas and kidney beans and prepared them according to this recipe from all recipes. I had some problems with the spices, and probably added too much of something, which caused the dish to be powdery. On top of that, the chickpeas would not soften, no matter how long I boiled it. According to my mom, the trick is to just let it sit overnight (off the heat) and it’ll be soft the day after. It was bad. Pretty strong contrast compared to the wonderful meal I had the night before :(.

Sorry, now that I don’t have anymore entries in queue, I’ve lost the urgency to finish posting these.

Common in presentations for Belgian endives, they can be used as “boats” or little bowls to place food on. As well as steaming the endives, I took a small bundle of enoki mushroom, dipped in egg spiced with some cumin, tumeric and salt. Once the mushrooms have been dipped, I shallow fried them so that the egg cooked, leaving the appearance that the mushrooms were wrapped in an egg blanket.

Endive Boats

Before dinner, on my way home I decided to drop by Whole Foods in Yorkville one of the only two Whole Foods in Ontario. Whole Foods is a large chain of supermarkets from the US, and is always seen on the tv show Top Chef, which is where I heard about the store. I grabbed some Gruyère and Blue Haze cheese as well as some fresh lemon & pepper fettucini.

The second I got home, I set the pot to boil and prepared some fresh alfredo sauce, substituting some of the Parmesan with Gruyère and Blue Haze. Throwing in some sage and portobello mushrooms. It was, the most delicious dish I had ever made.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Fettuccine Alfredo

On my first grocery outing at the beginning of my 28 days, I grabbed a Carnival squash, unfortunately I don’t have any “before” pictures of the squash.

I needed about half the squash for the risotto, which meant I had the other half to use for something else. With plenty of sage left that was starting to go bad, I decided to make some carnival squash chips with sage. After cutting the squash in half and removing the seeds, I thinly sliced the squash with a peeler. I placed the chips on a tray with a baking sheet and brushed them all lightly with some olive oil and sprinkled finely chopped sage and salt on top. I let the squash slices bake until they were dry (probably left them in a little too long). Regardless, the chips were great and I finished them all while I was preparing the squash risotto.

Baked Carnival Squash Chips

I sliced the other half of the squash, removed all the seeds, placed it face down in pan filled with 2 cm of water and baked it at 190°C for about 20 minutes. Once the squash is soft and tender, I cut it up into 1.5 cm cubes and started to make the risotto. I prepared my risotto differently from my usual recipe by sauteing half an onion (diced) and the squash and putting it to the side once the onions have turned clear. I then followed the recipe and added the onions and squash back in when I started to add the broth to the risotto.

Carnival Squash Risotto

This made the risotto flavour much more intense. With the addition of the squash, it made the risotto extremely creamy and buttery and so much more irresistable. I’m definitely making both these dishes again.

It’s nearly impossible to find a nice place in Yorkville for lunch on a Sunday. After walking around for what felt like eternity, Jamie and I ended up in the Village at Cafe California next to where Zelda’s used to be. Definitely a lunch place, browsing through the brunch menu I ordered the pappardelle and shared some bruschetta. The food was mediocre and average — nothing spectacular, but it did the job of filling us up since we were so starved from looking for a spot to eat.

Finally, Saturday means that I get to sleep in and catch up on some rest. It also means that I get to spend plenty of time preparing some delicious food!

For brunch, I followed this recipe for some crepes, I prepared the batter with Baileys instead of Frangelico. After a few failed attempts of creating proper looking crepes, I figured out the trick was to take the pan off the element for a few seconds to let it cool off, then scoop the batter in the centre as quickly as possible and then  rotate the pan to spread the batter around. Lifting the pan off heat lets the pan cool off a little to prevent too much batter getting cooked in the centre, making it too thick in the centre.

Asparagus Crepe

Once I finished preparing all the crepes, I prepared them in two ways and two other ways the day after:

Asparagus & hollandaise sauce – Boiled white asparagus and hollandaise sauce
Dessert crepe – spreading some chocolate sauce in the crepe, filled with berries, dusted with icing sugar and drizzled with Bailey’s
Mushroom & mozzarella – Sauteed some mushrooms and poured it right on top of the mozzarella cheese
Crepe salad – Baking the crepe in a bowl so that it keeps it’s shape. It adds a sweet little chip-like bowl to the salad

Berry Crepe

After a trip to Pacific Mall, my friend Mike and I were up for some Korean food for dinner. After some recommendations, we went to Ga Bin Korean Restaurant at 633 Silver Star Boulevard. The service was amazing, extremely polite and friendly. The portions were extremely generous and the number of side dishes was amazing. As you can see I ordered Bibimbap as usual as well as an appetizer of agedashi tofu. The meal also came with side dishes: noodle soup, soup, kimchi (surprisingly spicy), natto beans, kimchi, seaweed, fish cake, pickled cucumber, candied potatoes and bean sprouts. All the food was delicious and extremely good value as well.

Ga Bin Korean: Before

It was a huge meal, but we definitely finished it all.

Ga Bin Korean: After

After another visit to the grocery store, I grabbed some more Arugula to make some salad, since I’ve been eating pretty heavy lately. Waking up early in the morning, it’s time to prepare lunch yet once again. After washing and tearing some arugula, I added some diced tomatoes, parmesean petals, crushed pecan and cracked black pepper. Adding a slice of lime to bring along, lunch is prepared! (I also added some sweet chutney that we had in the fridge for dressing).

Arugula Salad

Before heading home, I dropped by the Longos Market and grabbed some salad. Wheatberry Grain Salad, which I’ve never had before but wanted to try since it looked interesting. The texture of the wheatberries were rather chewy and have a flavour similar to brown rice.

Wheatberry Grain Salad

The most important part of sushi is the rice, since it makes up so much of the dish. It can’t be too soft or too hard, too dry or too moist. The rice also needs to be seasoned properly to complement what it’s paired with.

For lunch today, I prepared Inari sushi. Inari is Japanese for their sweetened tofu. The tofu are little pockets that are stuffed with sushi rice. Inari sushi is a great meal for lunch since they’re small two-bite pieces that can’t get damaged in the transportation process (unlike my sushi last time which got crushed in the transportation process :( ). To make it a little more interesting, I added some wakame salad before stuffing the pockets with rice. The sushi rice is seasoned with sushi vinegar and lightly with aji nori furkikake (seasoned seaweed & sesame mix).

Inari Sushi

After a visit to the grocery store, I bought some Belgian Endives, with no idea how to prepare them at all. After looking up a few recipes with them, I noticed quite a few involved steaming the endives and cooking it with chickpeas. I decided to throw some kidney beans into the dish as well, just for the sake of variety.

In a small pot, take about 1/2 a cup of rehydrated chickpeas and boil them with just enough stock to submerge them. After boiling for about 15 minutes, the chickpeas should be slightly soft. After separating the leaves of the endives, place them on top of the chickpeas, adding tablespoons of stock as required. Once they have cooked throughly, crack an egg on top and steam until the egg white turns opaque. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and that’s it!

Chickpea, Kidney Bean and Steamed Endives

Burdock root is part of a plant that can be prepared similar to carrots. It’s common in Japanese cuisine and is known as gobō. You might recognize the plant as those purple fuzzy things that sometimes get caught on your clothing when you’re hiking through the woods.

I usually eat this as a side dish, it’s quick and simple to make and has a crunchy texture that I love. My mom also makes burdock root soup, but I’m not too fond of it prepared that way.

Preparing the Burdock root

The recipe that I loosely follow is Kinpira Gobo. I usually add a bit more sugar and replace the sake with white wine if it’s not available.

Stir-fried Burdock Root

Most of the flavour comes from the seasoning, but the burdock root also provides some flavour and a wonderful crisp crunchy texture.

After the disappointing bowl of Creamy Tomato soup from Panera, I was in the mood for a real cream soup and decided to make some of my own mushroom soup. Since I still had some white asparagus to finish off, I decided to make a cream of white asparagus and mushroom soup. I used a recipe for asparagus cream soup and mushroom soup, combined and modified them by not blending and adding portobello and brown mushrooms and omitting some of the herbs. The soup turned out ok, a little too fatty tasting for me, which tends to be a problem with all the cream soups I make, I’ll need to find some foolproof recipes for cream soup.

Cream of Asparagus and Mushroom Soup

After dinner, it’s not dessert but instead I usually have some fruits. Today, my dad and I had made some almond tofu. Almond tofu, is ground up almond powder that is then mixed with some other ingredients and water which solidifies and creates an almond flavoured jelly. The way we serve almond tofu at home is that the tofu is sliced into large cubes and mixed with a can of mixed fruits. Usually, I add some of my own fruits to top it off or add juice to add more flair to the dessert. My favourite is adding champagne or Sprite which gives the dessert a nice bubbly effect as well.

Almond Tofu