Wok it Out

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My standard tofu stir-fry dinner

If a genie came up to me one day and granted me three wishes, my answer to him would be as follows:

1. An unlimited collection of Christian Louboutin shoes

2. Island properties in the Maldives

and….

3. The ability to master Asian cookery (or speak various Asian dialects….either/or)

 

Growing up Italian, even though my mother often cooked foods from around the globe, our family didn’t eat a lot of Asian food. When we did it was stir-fry, or Americanized Chinese takeout from Mandarin (which was also usually stir-fry). It was only during my university years that I discovered the joys of late night ramen at Kenzo, impeccably fresh sashimi at Sushi Couture and the infamous dumplings from Mother’s. With an apartment right in the heart of Chinatown, I also explored the different markets and vendors flanking Spadina.

After trial and error, I found the best place for Asian ingredients was Oriental Harvest. The only issue remained the whole language thing—which still prevents me from fully understanding what I’m buying. Unless the packages, bottles or signs have some English on them, I’m completely lost. And that’s just during grocery shopping. Actually taking this stuff home into my kitchen to put together a dish, with some semblance of authenticity, is really challenging.

What usually ends up happening is me half-hazardly throwing together a protein, some veg, and a few spoonfuls of any of the following condiments I have in my fridge: soy sauce, hoisin sauce, generic stir-fry sauce, mirin, chili oil, bean paste, chili paste, pimento paste. Then I toss in some grated fresh ginger, chopped green onions, perhaps some dried red finger chilies, stir-fry the crap out of everything, and serve on white rice. There is no magic formula. I don’t follow a recipe. The results are sometimes good and sometimes bad.

I’ve never handmade dumplings out of fear I’ll botch the dough and I’ve only tried my hand at green onion pancakes a few times, with lacklustre results. I never seem to get bibimbap just right. I would also probably ruin fileting fresh tuna and hand-pulling noodles.

All of this is pretty funny – given how confident I am trying my hand at recipes/dishes from any other cultures. Despite the tender coaxings of Martin Yan and other Tv-friendly Asian chefs who make it all look so easy, I still approach this type of cuisine with trepidation.

Jiro is a boss

In March I visited the TIFF Bell LightBox to watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi – an excellent documentary following the story of a man considered to be one of the best sushi chefs in the world. His extreme attention to detail, reverence for the culinary history that comes alongside sushi culture, and his fanatical approach to only serving the most fresh and pure ingredients completely turned me off meddling around with Asian cuisines at home.

My conclusion? Perhaps it’s better left to the pros. Plus, there is such a thriving Asian population in the Greater Toronto Area that finding delicious Asian food is easy peasy – from steamed bao to kimchi to green tea pastries. Funny enough my new office is located at Hwy 7 and Leslie in Markham, giving me so many options for great Asian eats over my lunch break.

Now if only I could read the menus….

(EDITOR’S NOTE – I got my inspiration for the title of this article as follows…)

Guess Who’s Back…?

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For those of you who have been wondering why there hasn’t been new content on my blog since January, the reason is simple. I was unemployed. And when I was unemployed, I was stressed. And when I am stressed I simply have no desire to cook or eat – let alone produce blog posts about doing so. It’s not that I don’t love food when I’m not busy, because I really do. In this case, it was related to how awful I felt physically and emotionally. As someone living with Irritable Bowel Syndrome that is aggravated by stress, the pressures of the last six months no doubt exacerbated my condition – to the point where I lost around 10 pounds.

And as a young woman starting her journey into the career-world, being restructured out of a job I truly loved was beyond heartbreaking. In comical fashion it inadvertently triggered a chain of similarly depressing events. To recap, around October I a) lost my job b) had my partner of two years suddenly break up with me and c) had my best friend [and practically sister] announce that she was packing her bags to go teach in London, England. In those six weeks I felt I had lost everything, from my clients, to my love, to my girls’ nights, to my source of reliable income. Of course, my loss of appetite followed suit.

So from October to March I elected to take a self-proclaimed mental health “time-out”. This included a lot of soul-searching, self-reflection, and surrounding myself with friends and family.

During these months I pretty much stopped writing, watched a lot of TV, did a lot of aimless walking around the city, and sent out a helluva lot of resume packages. This course of action probably wasn’t the best idea – and I’m sure my writing skills will temporarily suffer because of it. But as someone who either had part-time, full-time or freelance editorial work since the age of 16, I just needed to take a moment to stop churning out content like a madman and focus on processing what I was feeling.

It really wasn’t an easy time. It actually sucked. Big time.

But I waded out of this ocean of fail, a much stronger and more relaxed woman. Heck – I was even spontaneous. In February I took a last-minute trip overseas to visit my best friend and help her get settled in the UK. I also began playing guitar again, took up boxing, began dating again, spent more time with my parents, enjoyed lazy Tuesday-morning brunches in Parkdale, and re-watched seasons one through five of The Wire for the third time.

This April, I even started a new job as a content editor with a wonderful digital media company. With some sense of normalcy back in my life, my appetite returned. Much to the delight of my friends, I began baking and cooking things again. I stocked up on back issues of Lucky Peach, wandered around the markets, and even made specific trips downtown to quell impromptu poutine cravings.

As I start this new chapter in my life, I look forward to sharing my future culinary adventures with all of you. Stay tuned for more original content. I promise I will do my best to keep all of you inspired, and hungry, along the way…

PS – A special thank you goes out to everyone who has been so supportive since all of this poop went down. You have no idea the ways in which your help, kindness and empathy touched me.

Adventures in Sacrilegious Pasta Preparation

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Okay so here’s the deal.

This January I turned 24 years old.

Somewhere, during these 24 years, I managed to avoid trying Original Kraft Dinner. My mother never brought it home growing up. She wasn’t a health nut either. We had Twinkies in the house when I was a kid. But that little blue box of Kraft Dinner was always absent from the pantry. When she took me shopping, I didn’t ever dare to look in its direction at the grocery store. But sometimes, when my mother meandered into the cleaning aisle to grab paper towels or air fresher, I would sneak into the pasta aisle, pick up a box of Kraft Dinner, shake it, and imagine exactly what this fast-food Canadiana staple tasted like.

After having coffee with a close friend today, the subject of Kraft Dinner came up. I explained to her the first and only time I tried a form of Kraft Dinner was when I started living on my own. (Side note – I once used white cheddar KD to craft a recipe for a campus newspaper in university – but never actually tried the final product. My father was the designated taster) Fast forward to sometime early last year. I purchased a fancy baked KD gratin kit from a supermarket in Michigan, where my uncle lives, simply for the fact I had never seen a product like that in Canada before. It just seemed strange; something fun to keep in the pantry as a reminder of how bizzare American food culture can be. One day I took a leap of faith and made it at home according to package direction. There was the mixing the pasta with the cheese packet, pouring the whole mess into a dish, adding the contents of the bread crumb packet, and broiling the top in the oven.

It tasted like shit.

Mise En Place

My friend implored me to go home straight after our coffee and prepare a package of Original Kraft Dinner, according to the package directions. I opted for the stove top method – keeping it as classic as could be. I ignored the package direction to boil the pasta in 6 cups of unsalted water for 7-8 minutes. 4-5 minutes in 3 cups of salted water brought the pasta to a more al dente state. After draining the short, miserably-shaped noodles, my precisely measured 3 tbsp. of salted butter and 1/4 cup of whole milk were tossed in the pot along with the entire packet of glowing orange “cheese” powder.

This all seemed so wrong. But I trooped on. Mixing everything together was simple enough, but the pasta seemed to be soaking in some bizarrely wet cheese substance. Shiny, neon-y, and a slightly terrifying.

Au Natural

I approached my first bite with trepidation. And I was right to do so. Like the baked version, this stuff also tasted like shit. I’m also fairly positive that I will wake up tomorrow morning with a third eye, from some sort of food colouring poisoning.

The next bite went down with a splash of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, and its vinegary/pepper tang helped mask the salty cheese taste.

 

With Ketchup

The last bite, featured a drizzle of good ol’ fashioned Heinz Tomato Ketchup. I hear that’s what all the cool kids do. But that was not a good idea, either. In another bizzare twist, the KD seemed to taste better the closer it came to coagulation at room temperature. I also heard through the grapevine that some people put cut up hot dogs in their Kraft Dinner, but that just sounded like absolute insanity. Finally, in quite possibly the most gauche of culinary suggestions, a family friend (who will remain unnamed) suggested that I add cut up spam pieces into the KD, adding it would taste “like money.”

So there you have it, everyone. At 24 years old I have officially tried Original Kraft Dinner. And it is absolutely disgusting. Or as my coffee friend so bluntly put it, “Hmm, well then I guess you are just weird. Everyone loves KD.”

FYI – for the same price (if not less) you can make a beautiful pasta dish with olive oil, spaghettini, hot pepper flakes, fresh garlic, bread crumbs and some freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley. Try this recipe from David Rocco. It’s excellent stuff.

And please, for the sweet love of God, don’t buy Kraft Dinner. Even if they do tell you it’s healthier with ground cauliflower in it. Riiiiighhhht……

Deliver Me

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When I first moved into my west-end apartment, I always joked to my friends and family that I lived in a delivery dead-zone. If you wanted food brought straight to your front porch, the pickings were really slim. Aside from top chains like Pizza Pizza and KFC (which aren’t really good choices to begin with), it seems no driver is willing to boldly go near the High Park area. Heck, even Mandarin won’t deliver to my apartment.

As a self-professed foodie, I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of finding: a) local restaurants offering delivery in my neck of the woods and b) figuring out whether the food was, in fact, decent. After all, the idea of enjoying a tasty, restaurant-quality meal at home, in my pajama pants, watching old episodes of Breaking Bad and not dealing with people, seemed too good to be true.

I asked those I knew living in the area for their top picks, Googled the crap out of local joints, and even submitted my postal code to those online delivery websites. It became my personal mission to scope out the good, the bad and the ugly of delivery cuisine. Over the last month I’ve had some hits and misses with resto-to-door eats.

Here’s my roundup and ratings!

1. Cantonese Gourmet

“Oh my God you have to try this Chinese place. My sister’s brother goes there like every second night” – Etobicoke Best Friend #1

“Yeah we always order Cantonese Gourmet. When I don’t want to cook. The boyfriend loves it” – Etobicoke Best Friend #2

What I Ordered: Chicken fried rice, General Tao Chicken, Spring Roll

How Long It Took: 45 min

How It Was: Maybe the men in my friends’ lives don’t have the best palates. The rice was super bland, lacking some sort of seasoning (maybe salt), but the chicken hit the spot. Not too heavy, real chicken, chunks of green pepper, non-greasy breading. They gave me an egg roll. Everything was cold.

The Verdict: Won’t order it again. Bland, bland, bland all the way around.

2. Swiss Chalet

I think this qualifies as a chain…but bear with me here. The last time I ate Swiss Chalet was at my ex-boyfriend’s parents’ house. Maybe that’s why things didn’t work out between us. This time, I decided to give it another shot….but I definitely felt guilty afterwards for eating non-free-range chicken.

What I Ordered: 1 Festival Special (white meat) + Greek Side Salad + Side of Fries

How Long It Took: Took: 30 min

How It Was: I’m convinced the quality of “Chalet Sauce” has gone down over the years. The fries were pathetically soggy, while the chicken skin was pleasantly crispy. Paying an extra 50 cents for a Greek salad that sucked, sucked. The white roll, cranberry sauce, and the Lindt Chocolate box were delicious (though not eaten ate the same time).

The Verdict: My penance for this meal is watching Food Inc.. My cats were happy with the leftovers.

3. Mersin Mediterranean Cuisine

I found this place via Just Eat. It had the highest reviews and seemed to have a fairly authentic Turkish Menu.

What I Ordered: Chicken Shwarma Plate, Large Lentil Soup, Tzatziki

How Long It Took: 15 min

How It Was: Firstly, there was enough food to feed a small nation. The chicken was served alongside carrot-flecked rice and savoury potatoes. A little container of hot sauce boosted the flavours and worked well with the creamy garlic sauce. The chopped salad with cabbage and cucumbers was crispy and refreshing. The real standout here, though, was the lentil soup. Creamy, garlicky and piping hot, it was perfect with the side of pita for a chilly December night. The only thing I didn’t like about this meal was the Tzatziki – which had the consistence of water. And like water, it also went down the drain.

The Verdict: I’d order again – spring for more of the traditional Turkish dishes and skip the liquified Tzatziki.

4. Westwood Grill

This place sounds like it serves burgers and fries. In reality, they serve up Chinese food to the Bloor West Village area.

What I Ordered: Veggie fried rice, Chili Pepper Chicken, Egg Roll, Hot and Sour Soup

How Long It Took: 40 min

How It Was: This is some of the best veggie fried rice around – bits of crisp rice interspersed with other soft grains. Big chunks of real veggies. Thick pieces of egg. Great soy overtones. I could have eaten the whole, massive container. The egg roll was still crispy and filled with fresh shreds of veggies but the hot and sour soup had the consistency of Draino. Way too much cornstarch in a broth that was neither hot nor sour. The chicken was passable, but I would try another main dish next time around. Too much poultry grizzle and not enough actual meat.

The Verdict: I’ll be ordering again – mainly for the kick-ass rice – and will try to find a main dish that I like to go alongside. Extra points for piping hot food, and extra fortune cookies.

***

The Moral of this Whole Story: Unless it’s 11:30 p.m. and you need basic delivery pizza to soak up up all the Beau’s Lug Tread you and your buddies have been drinking, it’s best to skip delivery all together. It never exceeds expectations, and is usually cold and overpriced to boot. No matter how much of a pain it seems (especially when it’s pissing rain and dark at 5:30 p.m.) put on a pair of pants, find your Metropass (or car), get out of your apartment, and grab take-out instead. Your taste buds will thank you.

Coming soon…

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Over the last year, many people asked whether I considered starting my own food blog. The answer was always, no. But now, after a major life change (and a lot of reflection), I figured I should stop waiting and finally give this whole personal food blogging thing a shot. Stay tuned…

- Noelle Munaretto