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Posts Tagged: Chicken

Miku Restaurant

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Miku Sushi
Vancouver is world renowned for it’s fresh sushi and Japanese restaurants. In the downtown core, you can find a Japanese restaurant on every block so it is very hard to differentiate. Miku Restaurant was opened by Seigo Nakamura in October 2008 and has since been the talk of many foodies, bloggers, and media in Vancouver.

Miku is participating in Vancouver Dine Out April 26 – May 6 so you can see for yourself how special this restaurant is.

I was excited to come in to learn more about Japanese food and cooking from a Japanese chef/business owner! As an added highlight to the day, I also met Chef Takuya Motohashi. Chef Takuya Motohashi is from Victoria where is parents ran a Japanese restaurant. He trained in restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka before returning to Vancouver and joining Miku. Thanks Chef Takuya Motohashi for translating and showing us how the food is prepared at Miku.

Seigo Nakamura took over the family business (Tora Corporation) of nine traditional sushi restaurants in Japan and wanted to do something different and innovate as he expanded to North America. Seigo decided that the restaurant would specialize in Aburi sushi. Aburi style is when fish is partially grilled topside by a blowtorch. In order to keep the gas smell away from the food, they add charcoal.

There are no other restaurants in the world that serve and primarily feature Aburi sushi. The sushi is also served in block form, using an oshibako. This kind of pressed sushi is called oshizushi and is popular in the Kansai Region.
Miku Sushi

Interview with Seigo Nakamura

Seigo Nakamura What is your inspiration for Miku?
I want to use very traditional techniques and styles. But as a business strategy – innovate and do something different.

What do you cook?
I love to cook everything! My job is company management but cooking is my hobby. I like to cook for my family and my partners and employees and invite them to my home. Chinese, Japanese, Italian…everything.

What is your advice for people that starting to cook home?
Don’t be afraid to take on the challenges. You’ll make food that tastes bad sometimes. You have to keep cooking and learn and work at it. There will always be people who will eat your food, so don’t worry if it tastes bad.
You should enjoy it. Enjoy is best!

What is your favourite tool in the kitchen?
My hands. My hand is very very important…

What’s next?
We will be opening another restaurant in North America by end of this year.

Chicken Nanban

From our talk with Chef Takuya and Seigo Nakamura, I learned that sushi is not commonly eaten in most Japanese households but only saved for special occasions. I wanted to learn more about what is cooked at home in Japan. Miku features a common comfort food dish from the Miyazaki prefecture called chicken nanban. It’s deep fried chicken served with different sauces like tartare or mayonnaise-based sauce which can be found everywhere in Japan and Vancouver. The Chefs informed me that what makes the Miku one special is that the chicken nanban is marinated after it is fried. Also, it helps that Tora Corporation comes from Miyazaki where it is their featured regional cuisine.

Miku Secrets

egg sushi
Sauces are important at Miku and also a secret. The unique thing about eating sushi at Miku is that the pieces are seasoned enough that you don’t need to use soy sauce or wasabi. We could not get our hands on the special Miku sauce recipe which is found on many of their dishes. Seigo informed us that he came up with the sauce by accident when trying to make something else. They can tell us the ingredients but the process of making the sauce takes special care and effort. Even at the restaurant, not all the chefs know how to make the sauce.

Another closely kept secret at Miku (and all other Japanese restaurants and households) is the Rice. I noticed that the rice texture at Miku is very different from other restaurants and asked about it.

Our sushi rice is very traditional. The method has been passed down from generation to generation. It doesn’t change and only a few of the chefs know the exact recipe. The amount of water, the amount of time, the temperature – everything has been calculated and done like we do so in Japan.We get the rice directly from Japan which is more expensive but it’s such an important component of our sushi. It’s so special that not everyone here is allowed to cook it.

I found a great blog post on how to make rice like the Japanese do and it sure is way more time consuming than making Uncle Ben’s minute rice. There’s a lot of time and care taken to soak and clean the rice. I asked Chef Takuya if they get Shinmai (newly harvested rice) but he said that it’s not the only factor in making good rice and does not necessarily make the best tasting rice.

One more not so secret recipe for success at Miku are the fresh ingredients. Miku participates in Ocean Wise and indicates which fish is Ocean Wise certified on their menu. They also get fresh fish right from the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo! If only we could get such fresh fish at home…
Fresh Tuna

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Chef / Chicken / Dave Woolfall / Restaurant — View Comments
7
Apr 10

La Pommeraie Bistro: Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie at La Pommeraie
Driving through the rolling hills of Cowichan Valley, we went in search of Merridale Estate Cidery in Cobble Hill. We arrived at our destination after making a few turns off Highway 1 and following the small Merridale apple signs. Merridale has been open since 1990 with a few recent additions which make it a culinary treat! A brick oven was built outside by the patio and is now used to make all their bakery goodies by their Master Baker Alain Bousseau and to make pizzas during the summer months. A major addition to Merridale was La Pommeraie Bistro, which was opened in 2005 to serve food that would highlight the already popular ciders being offered at the ciderhouse.

Chef Woolfall and the brick oven

We decided to enjoy our lunch out on the sunny enclosed patio where we could see rows and rows of apple trees. The menu is simple and they incorporate seasonal changes. We settled on three dishes to try: the Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie and the Lamb Burger, and a special Seafood Pot Pie.

Of course, we couldn’t eat here without also ordering the cider flights.

Cider Flights

It was fun to try all the different ciders and to taste the flavour and textural differences. It was a collection of 6 ciders arranged in order from the very dry Cidre Normandie to the sweet Cyser. The Somerset cider really did taste like champagne and the Merri Berri, a cider mixed with unfermented berries and fruits, was a general favourite and can luckily be found in most liquor stores.

We were happy to get a chance to meet Chef Dave Woolfall, who came out to talk to us. We never expected to meet such a skilled chef of international fame right here on Vancouver Island. He has been cooking for 30 years in London, France, Israel before recently coming to White Rock and now Vancouver Island to be reunited with the love of his life from highschool. He has also ran restaurants with Michelin Stars and AA Rosettes in London!

He imparted some words of wisdom for home cooks like us:
When starting out, don’t copy Gordon Ramsey or famous chef recipes with 20 ingredients. Keep it simple. Those recipes are complicated on purpose – If everyone could make his food, he wouldn’t be so famous.

I like that because keeping it simple means less dishes in the kitchen for me to wash up and unknown ingredients to buy! He also gave us this other little tip:
Don’t try to make the food look like the pictures in cookbooks or magazines. Restaurants and chefs pay a lot of money to make food look good. Focus on the taste.

I can safely say that I’ve tried to copy recipes and came out at the end wondering why mine didn’t look as good as theirs! I’ll keep this excellent piece of advice in mind for next time.

Below is the recipe for Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie that Chef Woolfall happily shared with us.

Summary

Preparation Time: 30 min
Cook Time: 1 hour
Servings: 5 to 6
Meal Type: Lunch/Dinner
Total Cost: $44.30

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

5 free-range chicken breasts, diced ($17.00; mine were not free-range)
750mL Scrumpy cider from Merridale Ciderworks ($12.10)
500mL concentrated chicken stock ($1.50; I used chicken broth)
3 large carrots, diced ($0.70)
1/2 head celery, diced ($0.75)
1 medium onion, diced ($1.30)
1lb. crimini mushrooms, sliced ($4.50)
1/4 cup smooth Dijon mustard ($0.85)
1/8 cup tarragon ($0.75)
500mL heavy cream ($2.25)
flour/water mix to thicken the soup ($0.10; I used approximately 1/4 cup flour)
puff pastry or pie crust ($2.50)

Procedure

1. Bring the stock and Merridale cider to a boil.
2. Add the diced chicken and cook until the meat is just firm. Remove and set meat aside. I let the chicken cook in the stock for about five minutes.
Chicken cooking in stock
3. Add the vegetables and mushrooms to the stock and cook until they just retain a bite. Remove and set aside. The vegetables took a little longer than the meat and I let it cook in the stock for about 15 minutes.
Vegetables cooking in stock
4. Add the tarragon, mustard and cream to the stock and bring to a full boil. I couldn’t find fresh tarragon anywhere… Not even sure if it’s available fresh anywhere, so I used dried tarragon.
Spiced stock
5. Mix some flour with water and whisk this into the stock to thicken it. Make sure the liquid is thick enough to support the ingredients inside the pie. It shouldn’t have a thin, soupy consistency. I happened to only have whole wheat flour at home, but I think it would have worked much better with white flour. I just made sure that the flour/water mix was quite thin, which allowed the bigger particles of whole wheat to fall to the bottom of my cup, which I then disposed of after carefully pouring in the liquid portion. Point? Use white flour!
6. Add the chicken and vegetables back to the pot. Simmer for 10 minutes to allow the flavours to mix.
Simmering chicken and vegetables in the pot
7. Divide between pie dishes. Make sure you are using oven-safe dishes!
8. Top with your favourite pastry. La Pommeraie uses puff pastry for their version, but you can use short crust, if you’d like!
9. Put the dish in the oven to bake the pastry and brown the crust. It took about 20 minutes at 400C for mine to turn out.
pie in oven

Results

Scrumpy Chicken Pot Pie

I was actually surprised that I didn’t have to add any salt to it at all, but it had so much flavour already. I found it to be a little too rich so I would add less whipping cream next time. Mine doesn’t look like La Pommeraie’s, but hey, it tastes good and that’s what matters for now! I put an estimated time of 1.5 hours to make this, but I’m fairly slow at chopping vegetables and cooking in general. Thank you so much to the staff at Merridale Estate Cidery and a big thank you to Chef Dave Woolfall for taking time during a busy afternoon lunchtime to chat with us and take us out to the brick oven patio. La Pommeraie is easily one of our top favourite restaurants on the Island and we’ll be back!

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Easton Hamilton / Seafood / Winterlicious — View Comments
22
Jan 10

YouCook makes Cajun Paella

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Alright, I was eager to try La Maquette’s recipe for Cajun Paella Risotto after the Toronto team visited Chef Easton Hamilton! I have always loved Paella in Barcelona and order it any chance I get at Spanish restaurants but have never made it at home. I wanted to see how the risotto goes with the Paella. Of course I’ll describe to you the pitfalls and learnings of a home chef

Vegetable Stock

I really hate forking out more than $1 to buy vegetable broth from a can or box. It doesn’t even take much time to make so I always try to make it myself.

All you need is 2 stalks of celery, 1 onion and 1 or 2 carrots (yup that’s less than $1!). Heat up a large pot of water – I put 2L of water in. Add in a bit of olive oil, chop up the vegetables into thick slices. Bring it to a boil, add salt and pepper and put in all the vegetables.

I also added parsley to this stock because I had some on hand and a bay leaf. That’s about it, leave the heat on low and let it brew for about an hour. I didn’t use much of it because I didn’t end up making risotto but you can easily freeze it to use at a later time. We came up with the idea of putting them in ice cube trays, so you’d have individual portions of veggie broth when you need it. Another way is to fill up Glad sandwich bags since you can stack them and they don’t take up much space in the fridge.

Arborio Rice

To my disappointment – I went on an Arborio rice search across downtown Vancouver today with no luck! 2 Safeways, an IGA and Save-on-Foods. They had every kind of pasta and rice except for Arborio rice! What gives? Has there been a sudden increase of interest in making risotto?? Does anybody know why?!?! Tell us!

Well as a backup I got Uncle Ben’s long grain wild rice so I didn’t make risotto. However in the rice cooker, I did add the celery and onions I was going to put in the risotto – the rice turned out delicious!

Spanish rice is supposed to be medium grain rice thats browned with onion and garlic first. I shall try that next time if I can’t hunt down my risotto rice.

Good old Uncle Ben’s to the rescue

Proportions

Since I was cooking for 3, I doubled Chef Easton’s recipes to make enough for 4 (left overs are awesome). I find cooking for 4 a little easier because doubling his recipe means using a whole onion and all the peppers which is convenient. I also put in way more mussels and 3 Italian sausages and shrimp. I compensated by using only 1 small chicken breast.

Here’s everything prepped in my kitchen:

Chicken:

Shrimps:

Sausages:

Mussels:

Instructions

I definitely enjoyed following this simple recipe after getting everything chopped up and prepared. I found that instead of waiting 2 min in between adding the different meats, I’d wait 4-5min instead – just in case. The steps are really easy to follow – I doubled the spices, vegetable stock called for as well.

Adding chicken:

Adding sausages:

Results

I really love the colour and texture that the dish turned out to be. My pan was so overloaded with stuff that I opted out of adding rice to it. I didn’t end up using any salt or pepper as seasoning because I think the sausage was salty and the cajun spice gave the dish a great flavour.

I also added chopped parsley into the dish which turned out really good. The chef recommended trying different meats and experimenting with different spices however I stuck to the instructions and really like this combination!!!! I was so happy when my friends opted to go for seconds I think the verdict is….MAKE THIS DISH! I really recommend it. It’s not hard and so delicious. The hardest/time consuming part is going grocery shopping.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Main / Seafood / Winterlicious — View Comments
21
Jan 10

Winterlicious Recipe Feature: La Maquette Cajun Risotto Paella

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Last week YouCook visited La Maquette, voted one of the most romantic restaurants in Toronto, to make their featured Cajun Risotto Paella on the Winterlicious menu. “Risotto Paella?!” you ask? Yep that’s right and the Arborio rice adds just enough twist to the classic paella to make it special while fully satisfying your craving for seafood and rice. Chef Easton Hamilton took the time to show us how to make this dish …and we even got to eat it !!!

Use our What.2.Eat application to see what else La Maquette has on their Winterlicious menus and vote on your favourite dish during Winterlicious!

Summary

Preparation Time: 20 mins.
Cook Time: 15 mins.
Servings: 2 large portions.
Meal type: Main
Grocery Cost: $23.63 (good enough to feed 4)

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients for Risotto

1 cup of Arborio rice ($2.00)
1/2 medium white onion, diced ($0.20)
1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock (1 onion + 2 celery stalks + 2 carrots = $1.00)
2 oz. white wine ($2.00)

Ingredients for Paella

2 Tbsp olive oil

6 large P.E.I. mussels ($5.00 for 20 mussels)

4 black tiger shrimp ($4.00 for 12 shrimps)

4 oz. chicken breast, diced ($3.00 for 1 chicken breast)

4 oz. chorizo sausage, sliced ($4.00 for 3 sausages)

2 Tbsp Cajun seasoning

3 oz. julienne red and yellow bell pepper (1.20)

3 oz. julienne red onion ($0.50)

1 Tbsp chopped shallots ($0.23)

1 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp marjarom

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 cup white wine

1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock

1 Tbsp Tomato Paste ($0.50)

Sausages, mussels, and chicken breast along with the other prepped ingredients in the La Maquette kitchen.

The cut up chorizo sausage pieces, ready to go in the pan

Julienned peppers for colour

Instructions for Risotto

To prepare the risotto (can be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated):
1. Sautee white onion with oil over medium heat until translucent, about 2 mins.
2. Add Arborio rice and sautee for another 3 mins. stirring occasionally (do not let rice go brown, cook just long enough to remove starch, should be gluey).
See our previous Risotto post for details on how to cook risotto.
3. Add white wine and vegetable stock and cook for about 8-10 mins until rice is half cooked.
4. Spread risotto on a non-stick baking sheet to cool.

Instructions for Paella

1. Sautee red onions and shallots with butter and olive oil over medium heat, about 2 mins.

2.Add cajun seasoning and white wine

Chef’s tip: Make sure you follow the correct order to add in the chicken, mussels, shrimp, and sausage because shrimp can’t be overcooked and the sausage is precooked so it will fall apart if you cook it for too long.
3. Add diced chicken and cook for another 2 mins.

4. Add mussels and enough vegetable stock to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook for another 2 mins.

Chef’s tip: To add some flavour and colour, you can spoon in a scoop of tomato paste.

5.Take mussels out and set aside

6. Add shrimps and cook for another 2 mins.

7.Add sausage

8.Add marjarom, oregano, and the rest of the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil. Add red/yellow peppers.
9. Add rice and simmer on medium-low heat for about 10 mins, stirring occasionally. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Variations

Chef Easton suggests that you substitute different meats into the dish according to your taste. Try out different meats or seafood and see what you like!

Results

Add some grated beets for garnish and VOILA! A beautiful, flavourful dish that’s very quick to make.

Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)

Posts Tagged: Chicken