My regular experience with Italian food are dining in the Old Spaghetti Factory or Anton’s. I remember I was really impressed by the big serving portion of Anton’s dish but never really by the food itself. To me, dining at a family style italian restaurant is more like “Yeah yeah, it’s just pasta or pizza, nothing SO special about Italian food…” and I was so wrong.

During my staying in Montreal, I found there’s tons of Italian restaurants around the city’s busiest restaurant districts, no matter it is on St. Denis, St. Laurence, or Outremont. Little Italian restros are everywhere with pleasant dining environment and moderate price. My old impression of Italian cuisine was holding me back from trying out an Italian restaurant. But that was before the wonderful meal at Le Petit Italien , thanks to my friend Jannie.

We were just wondering in one of those hot summer nights in Montreal. It was our second week of staying in that beautiful little Paris of Canada. I started to notice that the number of Italian restaurants were much greater than the French bistro. We stopped by the Outremont area; visiting little novelty shops, vintage books store just made the time passed by so fast that by the time our stomaches started to sing. Across from the vintage bookstore ran by the lovely french gentleman, was Le Petit Italien. Happy dinners sit under the big red sunbloc umbrellas, wine were pulling, glasses clinking, laughters and smiling faces in each and every table. It is definitely a good sign! Although it did look like a fancier restaurant, we still headed in with our modest traveling student budget.

Last summer the hit movie for foodies around the world is “Ratatouille”, thus we had to order it when we saw it on the menu. It came as a warm salad with sautéed diced fennel and pistachio in a balsamic vinegar reduction. It was sweet, crunchy and with a hint of licorice. Second came the pasta, linguine with grilled chicken and…..grapes! Yes, sweet little white grapes packed with summer flavor instantly lighten up the pasta dish. It was a nice surprise and a great discovery of a new use of grapes for me. I don’t usually like to mix sweet and salty flavor together, but this one was a hit. Under the dim candle light, dinning with a good friend, enjoying a delicious meal, it was such a wonderful meal that to this day, when I think about italian meal, I think about that linguine, that night. 

Rose et Pamplemousse

vanilla-grapefruit parfait, apricot financier, rose crème brûlée, strawberry-rhubarb gelée

Blanc Fraisier
vanilla cake, vanilla sablé Breton, white chocolate black pepper mousseline, strawberries, passionfruit meringue

 

I’ve been waiting to come to this trip for two months, and now I can’t believe I actually made it all the way to the supposly the most vibrant city of Canada.

The journey started smooth. Thanks to my dear friend Holly who came all the way back from the student residence to pick me up from the airport, I got to avoid the trouble of finding myself lost in the jungle of buses and subways. My first impression of the city is that the landscape is just so flat! There are barely any mountains, just small hills here and there, which is so different from Vancouver. I think the city will look more beautiful without being so foggy all the time. It’s been quite humid and warm since I arrived, but people keep telling me this kinda temperature is too low compare to the regular Montreal summer. This reminds me of the summer of Fuzhou, my hometown.

I am stay in the Studio Hotel of Universitè de Montreal. It’s located in the university campus near Mounte Royal. The building we are staying are two twin towers that’s connected by the lobby. The buildings are having summer renovation at this moment so it’s quite dirty in the lobby. My room is big enough to meet almost all my daily necessities except shower and toilet. I am happy that we have fridge in our room. For a foodie like me, the fridge is quickly filled with fresh seasonal berries, prune, lectures, corns, mushrooms, eggs, some meat and milk. My newly made friends are very impressed by my food need and the fact that I actually bring a wok with me to Montreal. (Big thanks to my mom! ) I cooked my first meal on a very small hot plate, it took me 2 minutes to hit up my small wok….. The rest is story.

According to the orientation, there’s some 400+ of students in this program. A lot of them are just high-school graduates, which make me feel really old. I am happy that I still get a chance to learn so much by paying so little money. It’s the first time I’ve ever lived by my-self entirely on my own for a relatively long period. And so far, I think I really enjoy it.

Let’s see what’s going to happen in this month long staying here, bon chance pour moi-même!

I totally forgot about this box of strawberry which I purchased a weeks ago. The fruits are still fine except they are little dehydrated. I’ve just got a nice bottle of Ruby Port which is super sweet. I think they will make a perfect couple in making a fruit sauce. I got this recipe for berry compote from a magzine. Tried it, just delicious. Serve this berry sauce over pure vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. I made this for my family gathering this weekend and it was a big hit. =)

5 cups berries, blueberries and halved strawberries

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 ruby port, or any kind of red wine

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground allspice

1. In a mdium saucepan, combine berries, sugar, wine, cinnamon and all spice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring often, until sugar dissolves. Boil gently for 2 minutes.

2. Remove from heat and let cool; the sauce will thicken while cooling. Refrigerate for up to 2 days, if desired. Serve at room temperature over ice cream.

Recipe adopted from the July/August issue of Glow magazine.

Flan:  

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup butter, softened

2 egg whites

1tsp pure vanilla extract

3 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen (not thawed)

Topping:

2 tbsp all purpose flour

2 cups plain yogurt

1 egg, lightly beaten

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp lemon or orange zest

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, egge whites and vanilla and mix well. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch spring form or flan pan and sprinkle with blueberries.

2. In a bowl, sprinkle flour over yogurt. Add egg, sugar, zest and vanilla and mix untial smooth. Pour mixture over berries.

3. Bake in 350F oven for 60 to 70 minutes or until the topping turn golden. Serve warm or cold.

Note:

I found making hte flan mix into a dough and roll the rough into a flat round pan-cake works better when making the flan base. The orginal recipe called for a 10-inch cake mode, but I found the flan turn out too thin, so maybe a 9-in flan will work better with this recipe.

The traditional flan recipe uses sour cream instead of yogurt. I do find using yogurt taste lighter and less sour. The yogurt will not completely solifiy but rather like a soft custard. The combination of berry and orange zest is just wonderful.

I also tried to pair this flan with the Rigamarole White Wine of VQA Okanagan Vally. It’s an interesting pair. The wine is quite smooth but do not have the tard taste.

My first time having orzo was in the Macaroni Grill italian restaurant on Davie street. I felt in love immediatley with this rice shaped pasta. It’s chewy yet smooth, every bite was so much fun just for the texture of the pasta. I’ve always wanted to try to make it at home. Now I have my little herb garden on my belcony, I finaly get to make my favorite pasta. I guess after all, I am still a rice eater by heart, even my favorite pasta is rice shaped!

This recipe is adopted from the Reluctant Gourmet.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter

250g uncooked orzo

1 clove of garlic, minced

 4 campari tomatoes, chop into bite size

1 cup of water, 1 1/2 cup of chicken stock

 6 shrimps and 6 small scallops

salt and pepper, to taste

1/4 cup freshly chopped parsley and basil

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

Heat a large sauce pot or fry pan over medium high heat. Add the butter and melt. Add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the orzo and cook with the garlic for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently so the orzo doesn’t burn. If the pan seems too hot, turn down the heat to medium. Add about 3/4 tomato to cook with the orzo. I like to have most of the tomatoes fully cooked so that the orzo can suck in the flavor of tomatoes.

Add the chicken stock to the pan and bring it to a boil. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes while the orzo absorbs the stock. Be sure to stir every so often. Add shrimps and scallops, the rest of tomatoes and the fresh herbs. Season with salt and pepper and then cover and cook for a few more minutes until all the stock has been absorbed into the orzo. Be sure to stir so the orzo doesn’t stick to the pan.

 Stir in the grated Parmesan cheese at the end just before serving. 

There are a few vegetables are the regulars on my family’s dining table when it’s summer, broad bean is one of them. Every summer, my grandparents will buy fresh plump broad beans from the market. I love the color of broad bean, it’s so green but with a little black line on the top that’s usually covered by a little piece of extra skin. We usually only peeled the top half of the skin so that the bean is still hold in its half shell. I loved to count how many pieces of bean shells I had after the meal to see what a big eater I was. (I still am.^_^)

I didn’t find fresh broad beans in the market here in Vancouver; only the frozen ones from T&T super market. The texture of the frozen beans are not as good as the fresh one, that’s for sure. It’s much softer and kinda too soft, but the good thing is that the flavor of the bean is still preserved.

Ingredients:

1 bag of frozen broad beans

200 grams of lean pork, shredded into long slices

1 can/bag of preserved vegetable, or in Chinese it’s called “Xue Li Hong”

Instruction:

Wash the beans in cold water, peel off the outside skin. Drain the preserved vegetable from it’s juice, chop the vegetable into smaller bite size. Marinate the pork with some salt for 5 minutes.

Heat the wok, add oil, add pork and preserved vegetable, saute until pork is cooked, add the broad bean, add some water (about 4 tbsb.) Cover the lit and let the food simmer until water is almost dry-up. Saute for several times until the water dry out and the beans are fully cooked to soft, add some salt at the end after testing, because the preserved vege is kinds salty already, so don’t add too much salt.

Donald Market is the new food market that I discovered on my random bus ride. It is located in the corner of Hestine and Nanaimo street. I was attracted by its colorful street stand showcasing some of the freshest seasonal fruits and vegetable. From the countless numbers of spring/summer seasonal delights, I picked strawberry and rhubarb for their color, red, being so bright that I simply cannot resist them.

Whenever I shop of sweets, I’ve never wanted to pick-up a strawberry and rhubarb pie despite it is the one of the most popular baked desert. I dislike the taste of store-brand after a bad experience with the Safeway pie. Plus, the celery-like rhubarb stalk looked so weird that I don’t know how to deal with it. So naturally, strawberry rhubarb became the combination I try to avoid, for so long, until one blog entry changed my mind about this duo. So this time I want to try to make this pie myself, to see the difference. I adopt the recipe from the “Simply Recipes“, it goes as following:

3 cups rhubarb stalks cut into 1/2 inch pieces (Trim outside stringy layer of large rhubarb stalks; make sure to trim away any and discard of the leaves which are poisonous; trim ends.)
1 cup strawberries, stemmed and sliced
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons of quick cooking tapioca
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of grated orange peel
Unbaked pastry for two-crust 9 inch pie

Note: In the recipe of pie-crust, it called for freezing for at least one hour. I found it too long that the dough was hardened so much that defrost take a while. So if you are going to make it in a hurry, make sure you defrost the dough first and then combine the filling with sugar, otherwise too much juice will come out.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

1 Mix the rhubarb and the strawberries with the sugar, tapioca, salt, and orange rind. Let sit for 10 minutes.

2 Turn into a pastry lined pan. Top with the pastry, trim the edge, and crimp the top and bottom edges together. Cut slits in the top for the steam to escape.

3 Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 350°F, and bake an additional 30-40 minutes longer. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or cold. If you do cool to room temperature, the juices will have more time to thicken.

The pie came out really nice! a great balance between the sweetness of sugar and strawberry and the sourness of rhubarb, with a hint of orange zest, just wonderful! Now I truly understand the difference between the home-baked-pie and the commercial made one. The pie crust is quite buttery, a nice contrast with the gluey filling. This is my very first pie as well, so I am quite happy with it. I think from now, I will make more pies, with different fillings, ah…..I’ve already got a list of different pies I want to try~ ^_^

Clock-wise: Drunken Chicken, Shanghainess-style Wonton soup, Pork ribs with rice cake and Xie-Ke-Huang, a sweet stuffed dessert.

    Last Saturday was one of the religious holiday for the many Buddhists, to celebrate the birth of the funder of the Buddhism. My family paid a visit to the Linyan Temple at Richmond for this festival. After the ceremony we were supposed to eat a Buddha feast featuring all vegetarian dishes, but the queue was so long that we decided our stomachs couldn’t wait any longer. So we went out to find our own feast for the day. The result being we were more happy to be meat-eating omnivores than vege chewing Buddhist monks.

    Richmond is the place when it comes to find the finest Chinese cooking, in Vancouver, or even in North America. I’ve been told many times that Richmond’s Chinese restaurants are at an much higher level compared to the their brothers from rest of the continents. My family is from Shanghai city where its own style of cuisine is famous for its dark color from soy source and the grease of oil. As Shanghai city is located in the joint between the northern and southern China, so does it’s cuisine combined the characters of north and south.

    We found this packed Shanghainess restaurant near Richmond Center. It was not the one we planned to go initially, but we were attracted by its crowdiness. According to my mom, one should never go visit a restaurant with lots of empty table in the lunch time. And she is absolutely correct with this one.(maybe not others, wink!) Bai Yu Lan is the name of the restaurant. we waited for half an hour to get a table for 4. We studied the menu carefully while waiting. The food came out fast. We ordered some of the signature dishes of Shanghai style cooking. The drunken chicken is very tender with meat socked up all the flavor of rice-wine, yet the wine taste did not overpower the nature flavor of chicken. The wonton soup has a light pork bone soup base with lots of seaweed and 10 small piece of wontons. The pork ribs with rice cakes is my favorite, slightly sweet sauce with tender pork and chewy-but-not-sticky rice cake, yum! The desserts were alright but not my favorite.

T

he juicy little steam pork bums are the best of all, love it love it love it!

The total came to be $42 dollars for 4 of us, which is quite good consider the quality of food. This restaurant is one of the best Chinese I’ve ever had in Vancouver, highly recommend to anyone who want to try something different than sweet-sour pork and sesame chicken.

Restaurant: Chen’s Shanghai Restaurant, they close on Wednesday.

Location: 8095 Park Road, Richmond, BC, V6Y 1S8  Phone:604-304-8288