Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

When it comes to turkey, many people would make a face and tell me they hate it. “The bird that tastes like cardboard? No thanks!”. Unfortunately, all of my family, which including ET, are not big fans of turkey. The funny thing is I, on the other hand, love turkey. I could eat it as often as chicken. I believe that turkeys could be moist and delicious if they are cooked properly. I admit I have an obsession with cooking turkey. Being someone who is crazy about cooking, it could be my innate desire to conquer any food, especially those that are yummy-challenged. I try to find every excuse to serve turkey – at Thanksgiving, Christmas, even at Chinese New Year! Finally my family has had enough of the bird, or to be exact, they had enough of my turkey obsession. For this Thanksgiving, after getting some very strong hints from ET, I decided to serve prime rib.

I was glad that I made prime rib instead of turkey. The most difficult part about making the prime rib is waiting for it to be roasted in the oven. There was almost nothing to prepare at all. The results were satisfying, well at least that was what ET told me anyway (although I suspect he would compliment on anything I serve for Thanksgiving as long as it’s not turkey).

Set oven to 350F.

To start, prepare a Mirepoix, which is a fancy French term for a combination of onion, carrot and celery. To make my Mirepoix, I cut 1 onion, 3 carrots and 1/2 celery into big pieces. Place the vegetables in the bottom of a roast pan. Into the vegetables add:

- 1 cup of beef broth
- 1 tbsp of thyme
- 1 tbsp of rosemary

I bought a prime rib with two ribs and I asked the butcher to give me a piece of fat. You might think asking for a piece of fat is strange. By placing the fat on top of the beef, the meat stays tender and juicy during roasting.

Place a roasting rack on top of vegetables. Place the prime rib on top of the rack. Place the fat on top of the beef.

When the oven is ready, put the beef into the oven. Roast at 350F for 1.5 hours. Turn the temperature to 425 and roast for 1 hour. The time and temperature specified here cooked the beef to medium. To be accurate, use a meat thermometer to check the meat after roasting for 2 hours.

When my meat thermometer read medium, I took the beef out of the oven and covered it with aluminum foil. I let the beef rest for 1/2 hour before carving it. While waiting, I prepared the potatoes.

The potatoes in this recipe were served with black trumpet mushrooms. Black trumpet mushrooms are commonly used in French cuisine and they have a unique fragrance which some people say smell like apricots. The mushrooms I used are dry and therefore I soaked them in water ahead of time. Finely chop 1/2 cup of mushrooms. Stir fry the mushroom for 1 minute with 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of minced garlic. Set the mushroom aside when done.

Take 4 red and 4 yellow nugget potatoes, quarter them and boil them in salted water until they are fork-tender.

Drained the water from the potatoes and let the potatoes to dry off. On a non stick pan, melt 2 tbsp of butter. Put the potatoes into the pan, lower the heat to medium and pan fry the potatoes until they are crispy. Mix in the mushrooms, add in freshly ground pepper and 1 tbsp of salt. Turn off the heat when the mushrooms, salt and pepper have been thoroughly mixed into the potatoes.

The last thing to prepare is the gravy. This is easily done by using the juice from the roasting pan. Drain the juice from the pan into an oil separator. There should be 2 cups of juice. In a quart pan, melt 2 tbsp of butter. Create a roux by mixing in 3 tbsp of flour:

Pour the juice into the pan from the oil separator, leaving the oil behind. Let the juice boil until it is thickened. Taste the gravy and add ground pepper and salt to taste. To make a richer gravy, melt 2 tbsp of cold butter in the gravy.

The prime rib was tender and we all really enjoyed it. I still miss my turkey though. I found some fresh young turkeys at Safeway which are slightly larger than chicken. It won’t be long before I put one of them in front of ET

Location: Kirin Seafood Restaurant   
350 Gifford Street, New Westminster
604-528-8833

Author: My Husband

Kirin on Alberni and Kirin @ Starlight are our favorite Cantonese restaurants in metro Vancouver. Usually, picking a favorite restaurant (ok, two restaurants in our case) is like picking a favorite child – it is (nearly ) impossible to do…

Through the 1990s, the market for haute Chinese cuisine in Vancouver was split between the Kirin group and the Sun Sui Wah family of restaurants – arguably the heaviest hitters in terms of Cantonese food in the city. The captains knew you by name, the wait staff was friendly, and the food could always be counted on to be tasty. When Christina and I were dating, we were perfectly happy to eat at both chains.

In the early part of this decade, Christina took a job as well as an apartment downtown. And because of that, we found ourselves eating at Kirin on Alberni more often. It didn’t hurt that Christina’s neighbour was a captain at the restaurant, and that every time we went, we were comp’ed certain dishes. The convenience, the “extra” service, and the fact that we found Sun Sui Wah’s standards to have slipped, meant that we pretty much ate exclusively at Kirin on Alberni through the 2000s. Sure, we tried the Shiang Gardens, the Sea Harbours, and the Fisherman’s Terraces occasionally, but Kirin on Alberni remained our standby. It was the place where we hosted out-of-town guests, the spot we picked for Chinese New Year dinners, the… well, you get the idea.

Then Christina and I got married and we settled in Richmond. And suddenly, Kirin on Alberni wasn’t quite as convenient anymore. To avoid driving across town, we thought we’d give the Kirin on 3 Road in Richmond a try; we found the kitchen staff to be competent, but the magic that was in the dishes @ Kirin on Alberni was missing. Somehow, the little extra oomph that made us like the food at the downtown Kirin so much did not exist in the plates that came out of the Kirin Richmond kitchen. As a result, whenever we felt like Chinese fine dining, we would make our way to Alberni Street and accepted the inconvenience that entailed with good humour. The things we do for food…

So imagine our delight when our friend the captain told us about the opening of a new Kirin in New Westminster. He said the ownership group was really paying attention to the details for the new place, and that the food should be as good, if not better, than Kirin on Alberni. Happily, he would also be working at the new place several days of the week. When the new Kirin opened earlier this year, we dutifully went to try it out and came away impressed. The food was comparable to the Alberni location, but the ambience of the new place really blew the rest of the Kirin restaurants out the water.

Kirin @ Starlight is one of the few restaurants in Vancouver that has a comfortable waiting area. The main dining room has an open feel and is blessed with lots of natural light flowing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The secondary dining room is darker, with lots of wood and red/gold fabrics that lends it the feel of a set on a Zhang Yimou film…

Two weeks ago, Christina and I visited Kirin @ Starlight for a light dim sum, and here’s what we had.

“Pineapple” bun with a charsiew (BBQ pork) filling. The crumbly “pineapple” top contrasted texturally with the sweet charsiew insides – one of the better examples of this dim sum dish we’ve had.

Beef brisket and tendon cheong fun (rice noodles). The brisket and tendon were stewed in gravy spiced with star anise and szechuan peppercorn, and the resultant meat was extremely tender and flavorful. The tendon, of which I’m a fan, was just slightly firmer than jello – a wonderful texture. We thought this dish was lip-smackingly good.

Chicken and shark-fin buns. Predictably, it was mostly chicken with a few slivers of shark-fin. There was a little too much dough for our liking, but at least the chicken filling was flavorful. Overall, not bad.

Finally, Ma lai (steamed) cake. It has a strong buttery flavour, but it didn’t have the fluffiness or lightness that a good ma lai cake should have. It was probably the least successful dim sum that day.

Our friend wasn’t working day we visited, but we were well taken care of nonetheless. Eating at Kirin never fails to put smiles on our faces or warm feelings in our stomachs – we’ll be back soon enough.

Location: All Starbucks Stores

Author: My Husband

Several weeks ago, I received my Starbucks Gold Card in the mail and I’ve been using it for my in-store purchases ever since. It works just like the regular Starbucks card, except that for every 10 drinks you buy, you get one on the house. That works out to an overall 10% savings, which is pretty neat, and very much appreciated.

Gold card holders also receive “perks” every now and then, and I got my first one via email two weeks ago – a coupon for a complimentary Salted Caramel Signature Hot Chocolate. All I had to do was print the coupon out, present it along with the gold card to the Starbucks cashier, and – presto! – I get a free drink.

Let it be said that I am a big fan of drinking chocolates. Ever since I had my first cup of thick, rich and luscious cioccolata calda in Rome years ago, I’ve been hooked. I’ve also had the pleasure of drinking some really excellent chocolate chaud in Paris. But alas, I have never been able to find the equivalent of such drinks in North America. Hot chocolate here is thin, watery and – more often than not – gritty because of the mix used to make the drink. Since I didn’t manage to find the stuff I like in Vancouver, I convinced my other half that we should try making it at home. So we went and bought mixes from MarieBelle and Schokinag (not bad, but nowhere near what we had in Europe), looked up and tried different recipes from the internet, and used all manner of kitchen tricks to recreate the dark rich consistency that characterizes Euro drinking chocolate. Through trial and error, Christina eventually came up with a brew, made by whisking melted bittersweet valrhona, cocoa powder, cream and milk together, that tasted really good. The downside was that it took a lot of work to prepare!!

When Starbucks introduced Chantico in 2005, we became quick fans of the drink. Its smooth, lush texture, as well as the quality of the cocoa, really made it stand out in a sea awash with mediocre products. Suffice it to say, we drank quite a lot of Chantico until it was withdrawn from the market in 2006.

It has taken Starbucks two years to develop a proper replacement for Chantico (imo, the regular hot chocolate doesn’t count). The new product – actually, a line of products – finally hit the market in September 2008 and is supposed to address some of Chantico’s shortcomings. For instance, the new drinks – collectively referred to as Signature Hot Chocolate – are available in different sizes. Also, they are customizable (i.e. whole milk, 2%, skim, soy, with/without whipped cream). I didn’t view the inability to customize Chantico as a shortcoming, but well, it was withdrawn from the market, so what do I know? The timing for the introduction of the new Signature Hot Chocolate couldn’t have been better. With the chill of autumn setting in, who could resist a cup of hot chocolate or three?

Buoyed by my fond memories of Chantico, I redeemed a Salted Caramel Signature Hot Chocolate for a quick taste test last weekend. The drink mix was prepared in a plunge pitcher and poured into a steel pitcher for steaming. The concoction was then transferred to a cup, topped with whipped cream, drizzled with caramel, and sprinkled with salt. Curiously, the barista had problems working the salt shaker, which resulted in a rather meagre amount of salt being added to my hot chocolate.

I took a sip and knew I wouldn’t be ordering this drink much. Too bad. In terms of consistency, the drink was slightly thicker and richer than regular hot chocolate, but it was no match for Chantico, much less cioccolata calda. On the mid-palate, it had some sweetness and was pretty chocolaty, but lacked any sort of complexity. I only got a very faint hint of the salt, but that wasn’t surprising given how little of it was sprinkled on my drink. I also thought it didn’t finish well; there was an after taste that reminded me of… scalded wax in a paper cup.

A Chantico, this Signature Hot Chocolate is not. For now, I’ll have continue getting Christina to make her special concoction just to tide me over until our next trip to Europe…