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Posts Tagged: potatoes

Battle for The Golden Curd

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Tiger Poutine

What comes to mind when you think of Victoria, BC? If you said poutine, you may have been one of the lucky people who caught the poutine competition on May 13th. A serious, but friendly, battle took place between two hotel giants in Victoria: The Fairmont Empress Hotel and Inn at Laurel Point.
The location: the grand front lawn of The Empress Hotel. The prize: the Golden Curd and bragging rights!

The Empress Hotel

For those who aren’t familiar with poutine, it’s a heart-stopping dish that originated in Quebec which involves three ingredients… fries, chicken gravy, and cheese curds. The fries should be crunchy on the outside, but soft on the inside and the cheese curds should be fresh and squeak when you bite into them. Lastly, the gravy should be poured onto the dish right before serving to prevent the fries from being soggy. That would be the purist version, but the dish has been enjoying a sort of explosion of interest in the past couple of years and you can now find upscale restaurants putting their own take on it with non-traditional premium ingredients such as lobster, foie gras, and truffles.

The Empress Hotel’s entry for the competition was Tiger Poutine, which was topped with their signature butter chicken/curry.

Team Empress
Putting together Tiger Poutine

The Inn at Laurel Point came back at them with their Duck Poutine, topping their version with crispy duck confit.

Team Laurel Point
Putting together Duck Poutine

In all honesty, both poutines were incredibly good, I finished both servings clean to the last fry, sauce and all. Judging for best poutine was based on five criteria including the all-important cheese stretch and grease load! There was quite the debate on whether a high grease load should be rated good or bad. We’ll leave that up to personal preference to decide! I won’t get into too much detail of who had the better poutine, but the general consensus was that Team Laurel Point had superior fries while Team Empress won significantly more points in the cheese stretch category.

In the end, the Golden Curd trophy went to… Chef Ito and Team Empress!!

The Golden Curd

It was a super tight race, with Team Empress coming in just ahead of Team Laurel Point. They were gracious in their defeat and egged on by Downtown Victoria Business Association Manager, Ken Kelly, declared to all present that “Our poutine is definitely not as good as your poutine!”

Team Laurel Point Declaration

It was a beautiful afternoon in the Victoria causeway and it was great to meet all the other twitter judges who came out to revel in poutine goodness @lacouvee @toots11 @seedtocup @FlygirlWS @cqwww . We also got to meet Auntie Vie, great aunt to Pamela Anderson. She was so sweet to talk to and looked very refined with her lovely red hat.

Poutine Off Judges

Both teams made enough poutine that day to feed the crowds of people who stopped to join in on the fun. If you missed it, not to worry because both poutines are available at their respective hotels. The Empress Hotel’s Tiger Poutine can be found at The Bengal Lounge and Laurel Point’s Duck Poutine is on the menu at their restaurant, Aura. I definitely encourage you to taste both of them and let us know if you do!

Thanks to Fairmont Empress for letting YouCook use some pictures of the event that we didn’t manage to catch ourselves!

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Olympics / Timothy Tejuco — View Comments
12
Mar 10

Bosco Sport Russian Bar (at Joey Burrard)

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Fish Salad
During the Olympics, Bosco Sports, the official Russian Olympic apparel company, rebranded the Joey Restaurant on Burrard and Robson as the Russian Bar.
Joey Russian
I only found out because we were looking for drinks after watching Hey Rosetta and The Stars perform. I was rather impressed how beautiful the transformation into Russian branding was.

I was also impressed at the prices! All the double drinks were only $6. We were so used to $10 drinks at other restaurants and pavilions, $6 was such a steal! Joey didn’t want to abandon local patrons with auto gratuity or increased prices and I commend them for that.

Bosco Sports arranged for Russian chefs and bartenders to work along with Joey employees. We sat down with Sous Chef Timothy Teljuco to talk about his experience. When the Russian chef first came – he spoke no english and the Menu as well as the recipes were all in Russian. In the cooking world though, language barriers quickly go away and substituted with pointing at different ingredients and dishes, watching how things are done, tasting and smelling. As Chef Timothy Teljuco and Chef Chris Kaiser put it, Cooking is a universal language. After a few days, the kitchen was working in unison where Chef Teljuco’s team could coordinate the timing of their dishes and the Russian dishes. By the end both teams picked up a few words in each language and Joey could make all the Russian dishes for their wrapup party.

Russian cuisine is influenced by its harsh climates and rural populations of peasants. Basic Ingredients such as potatoes and beets are popular. In the 18-19th century, there was a large French influence on Russia and vice versa. Before the Russian influence, French food would be served family style – all dishes brought out to the center of the table and shared. The term Service à la Russe means that courses are brought out sequentially which is how most restaurants serve food today. The French influence can be seen in the Russian pancakes (similar to crepes) and many desserts. Since Russia borders China, there’s no surprise that there are Asian influences in the cooking as well.

The Piroshky seemed exactly like Chinese buns with meat.

The menu at Joey consisted of a reduced selection of favourites from Joey and Russian items
Menu

such as Perogies (dumplings), Borscht (Beets soup), Piroshky,

Herring Salad and Russian Salad.
Russian

The Herring Salad (main picture) is an interesting combination of Beets, Carrots, Herring, Potatoes, Green onion with a Mayonnaise sauce. I’ve never had anything like it before – the strong flavours and textures made it something different and memorable.

The desserts included Pancakes, Dumplings stuffed with cherries, Tiramisu and assorted tartlets.

Perogies

You can really see the French influences in these desserts.

All of the food represented hearty staples and favourites of Russia. As for the Joey menu, not surprisingly the Russian clientel favoured all Meat and Potato dishes. For the choice of drinks, Vodka was not the number one seller but Whiskey was.

We got some recipes and will attempt to make Borscht. We’ll write about our experience soon!

Thanks Chef Timothy Teljuco and Chef Chris Kaiser for showing us the Bosco Bar before it was converted back into Joey.

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Breakfast / Easton Hamilton / Jamaican — View Comments
5
Mar 10

Ackee and Salt Fish

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

After meeting Chef Easton Hamilton from La Maquette for Winterlicious, we learned that he loves to make Ackee and Salt fish, Jamaica’s National Dish. Because of the lack of Jamaican food in Vancouver, I immediately packed my bags and flew back to Toronto to show up at his kitchen to learn how to make authentic Saltfish and Ackee! I have not had this dish in at least 5 years and was very excited to see first hand how to make it.

When we sat down to eat, Chef Easton Hamilton talked about his view of Organic food. In Jamaica, fruits and veggies just grow in people’s backyard. There were no chemicals added; fruits aren’t picked before they’re ripe, to ripen while in transit to grocery stores. They’re picked when they’re ready to eat and enjoyed right away.

Ackee is a good example. Ackee is Jamaica’s national fruit. It is green until it ripens into a bright red or yellow colour revealing the seed and the white/yellow flesh. If you try to pry the fruit open before it’s ripe, you’ll get poisoned by the toxins. You have to wait for the fruit to open itself then it can be eaten.

So according to Chef Easton Hamilton, organic food means food grown locally, using the basic elements of sun, soil, and water, no chemicals, no preservatives, no genetic modifications. We thought that was a pretty cool definition as opposed to this:
Foods claiming to be organic must be free of artificial food additives, and are often processed with fewer artificial methods, materials and conditions, such as chemical ripening, food irradiation, and genetically modified ingredients. Pesticides are allowed so long as they are not synthetic.

We were delighted to listen to Chef Easton Hamilton’s experiences in Jamaica, Whistler and Toronto while we feasted on our meal. I finished everything on my plate rather too quickly.

Summary

Preparation Time: 15 min
Servings: 4
Meal type: Breakfast

Recipe Rating:

Ingredients

1/2 lb of boneless salt fish (salted cod)
I’ve never tried to get salty fish from the supermarkets yet but the chef assured me that you could
1 can of Ackee
1 green pepper, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 yellow pepper sliced
1 onion sliced
1 tomato
Sprinkle of minced green onion
Thyme, salt and pepper to taste

Procedure

1. Break up the salt fish.
break salt fish
2. Heat up a pot of water (don’t let it boil).
3. Drain the ackee can.

4. Put ackee into the pot of hot water.
5. Heat up pan with olive oil.
6. Add the vegetables: onion, green onion, thyme, tomato, and all the peppers.
fry
Chef’s tip: Traditional Ackee and Salt fish does not have all these vegetables but they make the dish much more colourful and delicious. The chef made a point that if you find it visually appealing, it enhances the taste of the dish!
7. Don’t cook all the way, so that everything is too soft, but long enough so that the veggies are no longer crunchy.
8. Add the salt fish and mix.
add salt fish
9. Drain Ackee.
Ackee Drain
9. Add the ackee and take care not to mix too much – the ackee will come apart quite easily.
Ackee
10. Season with salt and peper and add hot pepper and plate.
Mixed

Variations

Ackee’s texture is similar to a scrambled egg. Chef Easton’s addition of green/red/yellow peppers, tomatoes, green onions and onions really enhanced the taste of the ackee and salt fish. If you want to stray from the traditional meal even more, you can experiment with other combinations you would typically have in your breakfast omlette.

Chef Easton also decided to boil some side dishes before our visit to his kitchen. There was boiled dumplings (potato), green (completely unripe) banana, and pumpkin (yes not squash but what you carve for Halowe’en). I enjoyed the pumpkin the most! I think I needed some seasoning to enjoy the banana and dumpling. I’m likening this to eating breakfast with a side of hashbrowns or sweet potatoes.

Results

Ackee and Salt Fish
Delicious! I love the taste of Ackee and Saltfish and really enjoy the colourful peppers and onion flavours to go with the dish. Watching Chef Easton make this so quickly and simply makes me hope that it is actually that easy and simple! I have yet to try this at home but will update the post when I do.

I want to thank Chef Easton Hamilton and La Maquette’s staff for hosting us during a busy time of Winterlicious!! This dish might not appear on La Maquette’s menu anytime soon but I know it’s going to come out of my kitchen shortly! Chef Easton Hamilton also sent us home with his home made Jerk sauce. We made Jerk Chicken that weekend and it was sooo good. If we can get the recipe from the chef, we’ll let you know!!!

Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)

Brad Smoliak / Olympics — View Comments
25
Feb 10

Alberta House with Executive Chef Brad Smoliak

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Alberta
I’m rather impressed with how beautifully renovated Alberta turned Atlantic Trap and Gill at the corner of Robson and Beatty Street into their home for two weeks.

YouCook was invited to a media event at Alberta House to taste the creations of Brad Smoliak.

Brad does Food Product Development all over Canada and came up with a very well executed menu to serve 20,000 people at the Alberta house (plus more on the Alberta Train but more on that later). We had four special tastings which were dishes created by Brad incorporating ingredients from all regions of Alberta.

Ministry

Along with Brad we met Cindy Ady, the Alberta Minister of Tourism and Jack Hayden, Minister of Agriculture.

Wild Boar Bacon Vodka Caesar

We started the tasting at 10:30am, yes just in time for a Caesar. I didn’t realize this but the Caesar was invented in Calgary, Alberta in 1969 – 41 years ago at Calgary’s Westin Hotel.
Caesar
As a twist on this classic drink, Brad infused vodka with bacon. Instead of celery, he included a thin strip of Wild Boar Bacon. Wild Boar Bacon has an amazing sweet taste (and if you can believe it, it tasted lighter than regular bacon). The combination of the sweet fatty boar with the caesar was sooooo good. Words don’t do this justice, you’ve got to try this or make it at home.

Prairie Chowder

Happily intoxicated, we moved on to the Prairie Chowder.

All my life, I’ve associate chowder with seafood. To my surprise, this dish was completely vegetarian. Brad is truly an amazing chef and food product developer. He combined ingredients from all the growing regions in Alberta: honey from the North (Peace country), potatoes from the South, three types of mushrooms from the Northeast, prarie barley from the Northwest, cream from the Central, and beans and potatoes from Southern Alberta. It was a delicious blend of flavours making this one of the best vegetarian soups I’ve ever had. I’ve asked for this recipe so stay tuned after YouCook learns how to cook this. I will never make clam chowder again after I get this recipe!

By this point, I could’ve gone home happy to blog about the food experience at the Alberta House. However, two more courses to go!

Cowboy Trail Chili

Cowboy Chili
Brad created this dish to represent the hard working people that work on the ranches along the The Cowboy Trail is a 700km route along Highway 22 between the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian prairies. The first cattle was brought into the province in 1876 and now Alberta is the largest cattle producing province in Canada. Alberta Beef is quite famous and tasty because of it’s high quality feed grain. The chili had both ground beef plus chunks of Alberta beef along with beans, carrots and other vegetables. I’m not sure which herbs and spices were in this chili but the combination was flavourful and a little spicy. The beef chunks were tender and delicious. This definitely wasn’t just a regular chili and again showed me how creative and skilled Brad and his team is.

Homestead Gingerbread Cake

Finally to finish it off, we had a Gingerbread cake with hot caramel sauce and Saskatoon berries. The ingredients for this dish represents the historical Indian House Trade Store in Fort Edmonton where Aboriginals would barter for European goods, which included molasses and spices such as ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. Alberta has the last sugar beet refinery in Canada which is what molasses is made of. At first instinct, I thought this was a carrot cake. However, it was the cinnamon, nutmeg and molasses that threw me off into that thought. Nope, no carrot in this cake. Again, the combination of flavours, sauce and berries really bring out this dish.

Alberta House was one of the final hospitality houses on my Olympic food coverage and I think I did save the best for last. During the tasting, I was informed that there are a few media seats on the much sought after Alberta Train to Whistler the next morning departing at 6am-9pm. The Rocky Mountaineer train is a luxurious train with 6 full size kitchens. Best of all, Brad Smoliak created the menu for the train as well ! It was sincerely my dream come true and you’ll hear more about it in the next post.

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Olympics — View Comments
18
Feb 10

Atlantic Canada House Free Tastings

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Bread
I get so excited when I hear about free food. When I hear that there’s two tastings a day full of fresh seafood from the Atlantic Canada House it gets me even more excited. Then to top it all off, there are 4 culinary chef instructors from each province (Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland) with their team of student chefs preparing all this food everyday!

The tastings of the day included:
1. Smoked Salmon Spheres with Cream Cheese and Carmelized Apples. (NS)
Salmon
2. Mussel Toast Point with Smoked Tomato Cream (PEI)
Mussel
3. Yellow Split Pea Cake with Salted Beef and Pickled Root Vegetables (NF)

4. Halibut Ceviche (NB)
Ceviche

The venue is popular so come early to lineup for the tastings. The chefs also have these great mobile kitchens set up to prepare all the food:
mobile

Along with sampling some great food, I was able to talk to some chefs from Atlantic Canada.

I have family in PEI and have been there on a few occasions so I know how fresh and abundant and fresh (and delicious) the lobster, oysters, and fish are there. Chef Kevin Boyce mentioned that PEI residents love to eat seafood in a social setting. You can find lobster dinners in Churches with plenty of famous PEI potatoes. You can find plenty of oyster bars with large group tables to sit at and enjoy food together. The small size of PEI does offer a stronger sense of community where you might know the entire food chain from the fishers and farmers, to the markets, to the restaurants and homes.

The growing season is shorter, as PEI gets very cold very quick in the winter. However, in the short summer, there is an abundance of fresh vegetables and farmer markets in town. Most vegetables and fruits have to be brought in the other times of the year. Chef Kevin Boyce teaches at the Holland College in PEI and was offering a tasting of Mussel Toast Point with a Smoked Tomato Cream. He also sent a recipe for Lobster which we still want to cook before posting!

Chef Dave Irving from New Brunswick spent some time telling me about some special foods that is only found in Atlantic Canada. He told me about Fiddleheads.

I have NEVER heard or seen Fiddleheads in my life. Fiddleheads are the start of young Fern. They can only be harvested for a few weeks in the spring time and taste like asparagus. They look, indeed, like the head of a violin. I am so curious about these and would love to try them when they are in season!

He also talked about a popular New Brunswick tradition of cooking called hodgepodge. A hodgepodge is a stew of seasonal vegetables. Whatever you can pick off your garden, you can combine it in a slow cooker with butter, flour, milk and water and you’ll get delicious hodgepodge! It’ll vary for each house and each season. We’ll be posting a recipe about this shortly!

Dave Irving
As for his advice for people at home who are just starting out learning how to cook, Chef Dave says, Keep It Simple. I’m a big dork and have heard this advice as it relates to programming (KISS) but it’s great to hear it being applied to the cooking world as well. I fully agree, it’s more enjoyable when there are very few ingredients and the cooking techniques are simple and the whole process is quick. Less time in the kitchen means more time eating and enjoying it with your loved ones. You don’t need to reproduce some of the restaurant recipes right off the bat and get intimidated. Cooking should be fun and keeping it simple will make the introduction to cooking fun.

Anyway, head down to Atlantic Canada House before the Olympics end for their tastings and nightly concerts! I’m going to go back on February 27 for Sturgeon Caviar for sure!

Stay tuned for recipes from the Atlantic Canada House on our blog.

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Cookbook / Michael Smith / Recipe / Side Dish / Special Event — View Comments
25
Jan 10

Chef at Home with Michael Smith::Potato Bacon Cheddar Tart

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At one of our recent YouCook meetings, we were talking about giving back to the community. Thu had volunteered at a food bank in Vancouver and was inspired by the people there. Elaine told us about Cook for the Cure, where if you host a dinner through their site, KitchenAid will donate $50 in addition to any funds you raise for breast cancer research. Hosting a party through Cook for the Cure gives you some nifty tools, such as online donation and automatic generation of tax receipts. So I decided to host my very own Cook for the Cure party! It was a great opportunity for me to try some of the recipes from Michael Smith’s “Chef at Home” cookbook.

Upon flipping through the Chef at Home cookbook, I came across the recipe for Potato Bacon Cheddar Tart. It was essentially layers of potatoes, cheese, onions and garlic, all wrapped up in bacon. With ingredients like that, how could this taste anything but delicious? It sounded like a perfect side dish to go along with my Apple Roast Chicken and looked impressive too.