Bookchan Soon Dubu

Bookchan Soon Dubu is unanimously the best place to get soft-tofu stew (Soon Dubu) in Toronto. And maaaan it is so good. There's always a line to get in to the restaurant, but it's so worth it. Two days after Miwako and I went for the first time, we were already craving it again!



The banchan they provide: Not a lot, but it's all good, especially the kimchi - sweet, fresh and not sour, but not too fresh - just perfect.
This is the second time we went - I ordered the vegetable soondubu (ab0ve), and Miwako got the kimchi, beef and pork soondubu again.


They give you rice in stonebowls, then they take the rice out of the bowl for you, and fill the stonebowl with water, which you can mix up with the rice left in the pot and eat afterwards if you like.


This was Miwako's bowl by the time she was done.


This was my bowl by the time I was done. Dry as a bone. Miwako now aspires to learn how to eat soondubu like I do. Every time we go, we're gonna keep a tally of how much dryer her bowl is at the end of the meal...

The Bloor Street Diner

We went here to celebrate Allison's birthday - I got the tortellini at near the bottom and it was good : ). I also forced everyone to le tme snap shots of their food before they started eating. Miwako and I shared the "Chocolate explosion" at the bottom of the page - you can't tell from the picture, but there are chunks of cheesecake mixed into the cake.






I thought that food wasn't bad, although Miwako didn't like her fish very much. A downpoint - our waitress was clearly in a bad mood.

foil grill salmon

Dad wanted to try this Campbell soup recipe. It is a cinch to make and to clean up. You just have to put thinly sliced veggies (I have carrots, mushrooms and green peppers) on tin foil. Top with the salmon fillet and pour low fat condensed cream celery soup mixed with juice from a lemon. Garnish with fresh dill. Seal the pouches and placed them on a cookie sheet and either bbq or bake. I bake them in the oven at 400 for 23 min. Everyone gives it a thumb up.

Beard Papa's cream puffs

I decided to buy some cream puffs that was featured in the Vancouver Sun. It was located at the food court at the Aberdeen Ctr. I waited in line for approx. 20 min and while I was waiting, trying to figure out how many I should buy. Six? A doz? Well, there is a sign saying that you should eat them the same day so I settled on 6.
Three green tea custard and 3 vanilla original. I ate one of each. Michael said "I'll have one after my hockey practice. I really shouldn't eat them." He had such will power after school and waited till he came home. Although he didn't stop at one. He ate another. Kim ate the vanilla one first (before dinner) and said "I shouldn't eat another one" But she did, she ate the last one in the box. Oh yeah, dad didn't get any...he wouldn't want them anyway...

The Cookie Massacre...

The Crimescene: 9:13 pm

Victim 1: Unidentified Chocolate Chip Cookie A
Victim 2: Unidentified Chocolate Chip Cookie B

Description: Two Chocolate Chip Cookies, barely out of the oven, found badly mutilated on cookie sheet.
Note: Also several scattered unidentifiable cookie parts - perhaps more victims?

The Suspects:

The neighbouring cookie, who coincidentally was not damaged at all? Looks like he's pretty nervous, sweating like that...

"It wasn't me! I swear!"


The cookie's jealous unbaked cousins?

"We've never even been on that cookie tray!"

The spatula?

"Hey, I was just doing my job!"

Ruling: Accidental death. Spatula charged with abetting manslaughter.

Notes: When recipe says "let cool on sheet", they probably mean for longer than five seconds.

Zocalo

So.... went to a mexican restaurant on broadway and main on friday night... it was pretty good, but I'm just like my mom in that I usually enjoy the appies more than the mains...... the white trash margarita was very good.. refreshing just as advertised and the chicken tacos and papadas diablos were my favorite appies... I would go again, but I would only order appies :)

Banana Bread From Memory

Soooo I figured that I've made banana bread enough times that I should be able to do it from memory. I thought 35 minutes at 350 F would do the trick. Well, as you can see from the picture, maybe 30 minutes would have been enough. Burnt piece #1 looks like an wolly mamoth and burnt piece #2 looks like an obese giraffe. Other than that, it tastes pretty good. I used the following spices: ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves. For those of you wondering, yes, baking the banana bread was a form of procrastination as I suddenly felt like I HAD to have banana bread while I was studying.

Kim remembered to take this picture of her dinner prior to eating...we are getting better with this food blog thing.

racks of lamb

I tried this lamb recipe Kim showed me in a New York cookbook. The ingredients are mostly olive oil and fresh herbs and bread crumbs. It was super easy to make in a oven proof pan. Even I liked it!

Cinnamon buns...er, without the cinnamon

[the finished product]

[before baking]
[before second rise]

Yeah. I ran out of cinnamon. So these are really ginger-nutmeg buns. And actually I didn't start out with the intention of making cinnamon buns, I just decided half-way through, when I had already made the dough for normal sweet rolls.

Apple Cake

Ingredients:
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter

2 eggs

1 c. and 2tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c. vanilla soy milk
2 large apples, peeled, cored, diced

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 deg. F.

Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in the eggs one at a time. Dump the rest of the stuff in and stir. It will seem like a ridiculously large amount of apples for such little batter. Don't worry about it. Load it into a greased loafpan.

Bake for approximately 50 minutes, take out and let cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely.

Personally, I think this cake tastes better the next day...

Room 642 Thanksgiving Dinner!

We had our Thanksgiving Dinner today, and it was not nearly the disaster I had feared it would be! (Muaha, my roommates didn't know that I had anticipated disaster)

[the whole spread: sticky rice, gravy, salad, pumpkin cheesecake and turkey]

First of all, the Turkey. So intimidating. Even though we didn't even buy a whole Turkey, there were still several unidentifiable turkey parts. For instance, what the hell are these?

[unidentifiable turkey innards]

But anyways. As unfamiliar as I am with Turkey anatomy, I was actually the most knowledgeable[1], and I knew that Turkey's ought to either be injected with butter, or brined. So Miwako and I brined the turkey in water with salt, honey, garlic, rosemary (substituted for Sage, because all of the grocery-store Sage was gone!), whole peppercorns and thyme the night before. The recipe also asked for celery leaves and allspice berries, but I couldn't find either of those, so left them out. I also starting soaking the sweet rice for the sticky rice.

[turkey breast, still on the bone, in a bag]

[brining in our fridge]

Today I fried up lap cheong, choong choi, mushrooms and ground turkey, seasoned it with salt, sugar and soy sauce, and then layered it with the pre-soaked sweet-rice in the rice-cooker.

[lap cheong]

[choong choi]

While I was wrestling with mushrooms that stubbornly did not want to reabsorb any water, Miwako and Mélissa started making the pumpkin cheesecake.

[graham crackers for the crust, ground ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg, and the pumpkin puree]

Ahahaha, we only realized belatedly that we didn't have a proper pie-plate to bake the pumpkin cheesecake in, so we made mini-pumpkin cheesecakes in a silicon muffin-tin, and used the rest of the graham cracker crust and cheesecake batter in a loaf pan.

[mini-pumpkin cheesecakes – not yet baked – Mélissa, Miwako and I were trying to be s0mewhat artistic]

[the result of Miwako being super!fancy with the loaf-pan cheesecake]

[mini-pumpkin cheesecakes – after baking]

After the mini pumpkin cheesecakes were done baking, we began struggling with getting the Turkey into the oven. No pictures for this, as I was elbow-deep in turkey juice, but by then the sticky rice had finished cooking:

[sticky rice – not as good as gung-gung's! ]

Once we had gotten the turkey into the oven, we started on the gravy. We started with a roux, then added in chicken stock. After the turkey was finished roasting, we took the drippings, skimmed away the fat, and poured the turkey drippings into the gravy and let it boil till thickened.

[thickening gravy]

Miwako made a salad while the gravy was finishing up, and approximately four and a half hours after we started cooking we started eating!

[the skin of the turkey burned, but it was weird because it didn't smell burnt…]

[another shot of the turkey]

[my dinner plate]

[1] It was actually the first time Miwako had roast Turkey! And the first time she ever had gravy!

dad's thanksgiving turkey

Dad's butterfly turkey was very juicy and tender, yum!

So Uncle Nelson brought a Jamaican Ginger Cake (delicious!) with pear compote and whipped cream... mmmmm whipped cream.....

Dad made not only turkey, but also a bone in prime rib that was rubbed with garlic, dijon mustard, rosemary and lots of other good stuff... I don't really remember....

I made or attempted to recreate a salad that I had at Meinhart, a winter squash salad with spinach and goat cheese (meinhart's had feta cheese but I think goat works better) and walnuts that were toasted in the oven first.... next time.. I need to choose better squash though, butternut squash was too wet inside and not sweet enough... next time I will try acorn, buttercup or kabocha squash instead.....

Mom made her bruschetta special again of course and as usual, we had leftover for days!