E&O Trading Company Corn Fritters

Here is a recipe that I got from the E&O Trading Company restaurant while I was in San Francisco in March. Jenn and I went to the restaurant to try a specific appetizer, the corn fritters. We first saw the corn fritters on an episode of the best thing that I ever ate crunchy edition. We ordered this from the bar and we were chatting with the bartender and he offered to give us the recipe, I was quite surprised. That was the first time that I have ever been given a recipe from a restaurant. It is very good and was not greasy at all. I have yet to make this recipe, but I am planning to give it a go on Sunday June 5^th.

Ingredients

·         4 cups fresh cut corn kernels

·         1/2 cup celery, small diced 1/4"

·         1/2 cup Green Onions, sliced 1/8" thick (including white part)

·         1 teaspoon of minced fresh garlic

·         1/2 cup all purpose flour

·         1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

·         2 eggs

Instructions

In a bowl, combine the corn, celery, green onion, flour and black pepper and mix well. Lightly beat the eggs. Combine with the vegetable mixture. Heat 2"-3" of oil in a wide deep pot to 350 degrees. Spoon the corn fritter mix into the hot oil. Using the back of the spoon coated with oil, press down onto the fritter to flatten. Cook until golden brown on one side and carefully flip over to cook the other side. Remove to drain excess oil onto paper napkins. Season with sea salt.

UPDATE: JUNE 12

I finally had time to try this recipe. The hardest part was trying to control the temperature of the oil. Another key part of this recipe is dont forget to salt the fritters when they are hot. That little bit of salt went a long way in the flavour of the fritters. I also decided to make a homemade spicy BBQ sauce. Below is the recipe.

Spicy BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

·         2 teaspoons dry mustard

·         2/3 cups apple cider vinegar

·         2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

·         1/2 cup chili powder

·         2/3 cup brown sugar

·         2 teaspoons salt

·         1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

·         2 medium onions diced

Instructions

In a saucepan combine all the ingredients and bring to a boil. Then add all the ingredients into a blender and blend for 5 minutes. Let cool before serving.

Anthony Bourdain

I am currently getting ready to watch the TV Show Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. In doing so I was reading Anthony's bio on wiki and discovered a couple of good quotes I thought I would share.


"Known for consuming exotic ethnic dishes, Bourdain is famous for eating sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and a whole cobra — beating heart, blood, bile, and meat — in Vietnam. According to Bourdain, the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten is a Chicken McNugget"


"He has been known for being an unrepentant drinker and smoker. In a nod to Bourdain's (at the time) two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, renowned chef Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu which included a mid-meal "coffee and cigarette": a coffee custard infused with tobacco, together with a foie gras mousse."

"Bourdain says he considers vegetarianism, except in the case of religious strictures as in India, a "First World luxury""

Cowtown Beef Shack

Name: Cowtown Beef Shack

Address: 5250 MacLeod Trail SW

Website: http://cowtownbeefshack.com/

Hours of Operation: Mon-Sun 11:00am to 8:00pm

Intro: Two of my friends have talked about this place on the past but I had given it a try yet. I was reminded about it again on Saturday, so I thought I would give it a try since I was going to be in the area. My friends were not wrong when they said blink and you will miss it. The shack is 8 by 12 feet. There is something kind of appealing about the concept of this restaurant. Do one thing and do it very well. This is not the place for a vegetarian, while there are some vegetables on the premise this is place all about meat, and that is not a bad thing. “Vegetables are what real food eats” is one of the quotes on the Cowtown Beef Shack website.

The Food:  The menu is based around the six sandwiches they offer; traditional southern smoked brisket, old fashioned smoked pulled pork, beef dip, Cowtown cheese steak, BBQ beef and beef and cheddar. They also offer a small variety of side which includes coleslaw and chips. On this particular day I was feeling like the brisket. When you order the brisket you have the option of BBQ sauce or no sauce as well as onions or no onions, I choose sauce and onions. The sandwiches only come in one size which a 8’ fresh French baguette. I was very excited after receiving my sandwich as it had a good weight to it. The sandwich is very good, good flavour, seasoned perfectly and the bread was real soft and French which I think is a key in this type of sandwich. The beef was so flavourful and was very tender. Having said that there were a couple of changes I would make to the sandwich. The first one is adding more sauce; the sandwich was a bit on the dry side. Next time I am going to try the beef dip so I will have my own dipping sauce. The next thing is not something I am sure that will work but I would want to experiment with; instead of raw onions that are diced, I would try sliced caramelized onions. The reason for this change is I found that the raw onions were too over powering; however I did like the nice texture contrast that they offered. I think the caramelized onions would fit the flavour profile better IMO. I did not try any sides; I will save that for next time.

The Price: All sandwiches are $8, the coleslaw is $1.50 as are chips and pop. There is also the option for additional meat $2 and additional cheese $1

The Service: The service was very good. The employee took the time to explain the sandwiches and the sauces as well. You could tell he was passionate about the product. The sandwiches were made pretty quickly. The employee did follow up once we had a couple of bites to ask what we thought. I always appreciate when restaurants do that.

Other Items of Note: They do accept debit and credit cards. There are two windows, one for walk up customers as well as one for drive thru customers. There is lots of parking if you are walking up, as well as 7 picnic tables for you to eat at outside. There is no dine in option.

Pimento's

Name: Pimento’s

Address: 911 General Avenue NE

Website: http://pimentos.ca/

Hours of Operation: Wednesday – Sunday 4PM- 10PM

Intro: Pimento’s is in its second location, owner and chef Mario used to have a location on 9th St and 5 Ave. He decided that he wanted to try his hand at a food truck. So he closed up his restaurant and was traveling around Calgary in a food truck. That was very successful but the customers kept telling him that they missed having a place where they knew they could go to get his food. So he is back with a restaurant in Bridgeland but he still has the food truck, in fact he has two!

One of my coworkers is of Italian decent. She and I often spend time talking about Italian food and restaurants. She knows that I really like authentic Italian Pizza. The best Pizza I have ever had in my life was in Naples. She emailed me on Tuesday to tell me that she had just visited a Pizza place that I needed to try. I am not a very patient man and when I want something I always want it right away. I decided that I would try Pimento’s for lunch on Wednesday, well as you can see by the hours of operation no pizza for Chris on Wednesday! So Jenn and I decided to try it for dinner on Friday. It is a very small building and is easy to drive by. I could smell the pizza as we approached the building, it smelt awesome. Once you get into the restaurant there are basically two counters the one to the right is the prep table where Mario makes the dough and pizza. The one in front of you is where there are beverages and other items. Notice in the back left corner is where the gelato is, and in the back right corner is the oven.

The Food: The menu is broken down into three sections. You have pizza/flowers, meat cones and desserts. There are 17 different pizzas to choose from. There are the classics like the Marinara, Margherita, Cheese and Meat Lovers. There are only two sizes 12” or Personal (flower). The reason the personal pizza is called a flower is because it is shaped like a flower. Take a regular pizza dough and add a hollow cone at the bottom and that is how Mario serves his personal size pizza. Toppings on the top, sauce in the cone. I did not try one as I was looking for a bigger meal. I happen to know that he imported a tool from Italy to press the flower dough. The meat cones are exactly what they sound like, a cone full of delicious deli meats. The gelato menu is pretty straight forward; there are 12 flavouers to choose from. All the dough is made fresh, so the pizza dough, flower dough and cones are all made by Mario.

I had the full size Pimento which has Pomodoro, provolone, bocconcini, roasted red peppers, red onions, Pimento’s made in house Italian sausage. I thought that it was missing a pinch of salt and that it could have been cooked for about 3 minutes longer. The dough was not strong enough to support the toppings in the centre of the pizza. Fresh dough and ingredients make such a huge difference. The basil gave it real nice flavour and I would eat the sausage all day long.

The Price:  The price seems about average. The flowers range from $5-$8 and the full size pizzas are anywhere from $13-$17. I can’t remember the prices of the meat cones, and the gelato was $5. There seemed to only be the option to have the gelato in a cone. My pizza was $16.

The Service: The service was really good. Mario obviously knows a lot about pizza and the importance of fresh ingredients. We did not have cash on us but they still took or order and started making the pizza before we had paid, which I really appreciated.

Other Items of Note: There are a couple of items to note. They only accept cash (there is a 7-11 right beside which has an ATM). Chef Mario’s Enviro Discount – $1 off when you bring your own plate. There is no dine in option. Everything is intended for takeout. There are a couple of chairs to sit down in while he makes your pizza, but not to eat in. There are also no picnic tables outside to sit down in. We ended up eating ours in the car. On a nicer day we would have went down the block to sit on a bench by the park. Parking might be tough as well, my advice is to park in the two hour parking in the streets beside the restaurant.

Chris's Apple Pie

I thought I would share a recipe for this rainy weekend. This or my banana bread is probably my go to dessert recipe.

Apple Pie

Pie Pastry Ingredients

·         2 cups of all purpose flour

·         1 tsp. Salt

·         2/3 cups of shortening

·         5 to 7 tbsp. cold water

Apple Filling Ingredients

·         6 Cups of peeled apples, thinly sliced

·         1 cup of sugar

·         1 tsp. cinnamon

·         1/4 tsp. nutmeg

·         1 cup of dark rum

Pastry Instructions

Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup (don't pack it in) level off. In a bowl, combine flour and salt. Using a pastry blender (or a fork), cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle flour mixture with water, 1 tablespoon at a time while mixing lightly with a fork. Keep adding water until dough is just moist enough to hold together. Shape dough into 2 balls for the two-crust pie. Flatten the ball and roll it on a lightly floured surface. Roll from the center to the edge into a circle that is at least two inches larger than the 9 inch pan. Place dough in pan, trim bottom and fill with filling and cover top and poke holes in the top to vent.

Filling Instructions

Add the apples to a large hot skillet and  add the rum. Light the alcohol on fire with a match, let all the alcohol burn off, it will take approximately 5 minutes. Let the apples sauté for another 5-7 minutes. In large bowl, combine all filling ingredients; toss lightly. Spoon apple mixture into a pie-crust lined pan. Top with the second crust and poke holes in several places. Bake at 425 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes or until apples are tender. (Place foil under the pan to guard against over spill)

The Tiramisu Incident

Recently I hosted a dinner for 11 guests. For dessert I made Tiramisu. It turned out very poorly, it was rich and way too cheesy. At the time I thought I had followed the recipe correctly. Today while I was adding the recipe to my cookbook I noticed that the recipe called for 1 lb of marscapone cheese not 1 KG!!! oops. To make things worse, I had doubled the recipe to make sure there was enough for all the guests.

Needless to sat I need to try the correct recipe again. Sorry to all my guests for the high calorie gross Tiramisu

James Beard's Theory & Practice of Good Cooking

This is the book that I am going to cook from cover to cover. My inspiration for this was not original. After seeing the movie Julie & Julia it looked fun, challenging and a good way to increase my culinary pallet. I have been mulling over this ever since the movie first came out. There were some key reasons as to why I never got around to it:

·         I am not a good writer: my English and grammar is not always the greatest

·         I have never been the kind of person to write journals or diaries

·         I am self conscious about what other people might think

Some would argue it took too long, but I feel like I am a more mature person now. The hurdles that I faced before don’t seem as big as they did before. Also I am a changed man. I have always loved cooking and food, but after going to Italy for my honeymoon in March of 2010 it literally changed my world. My wife (Jennifer or Jenn for short) sometimes jokes that she wishes we wouldn’t have gone there. That trip has really sparked my passion for cooking. The food and tastes that I experienced there have changed me forever.

Another reason for this blog is that I have a place to express all my foodie thoughts and Ideas. My wife puts up with a lot from me (not just about food either !) so I now have another way to express myself and share all my foodie ideas.

Back to the book, there were a couple of options that I considered. At first I was going to do Ted Allen’s book The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes. I like Ted Allen 100 recipes didn’t seem  as daunting and it sounded pretty easy. The other option was to do a book from one of my other favorite celebrity chefs books (more on who they are later on). In the end it sounds like I will learn more from the TPGC.

Amazon.com and Amazon.ca as well as Chapters Indigo did not have the book in stock. As a result I had to order it used from Amazon.com. This is the first time I have ever purchased a used book from Amazon.com so I am a little worried about what is coming in the mail. It was from a trusted seller who had a 98% satisfaction rate and over 3000 sales, so it should be ok. It was around $25 so not a bad deal if the book is in good condition. Now the hard part, it is not being delivered until the week of June 7^th!!.

Oh well I guess I will have some time to blog about my past…

Hello

So…blogging. Not something that is terribly new, but for whatever reason it has not been something that has been too intriguing to me. So you may ask why the blog now? I guess the real reason for this blog is I am going to cook my way through every recipe in the book James Beard's Theory & Practice of Good Cooking (I will be using the accronym TPGC). My goal is to learn some new things as well as to force myself to try some ingredients.

This blog will mostly be about cooking. I will be blogging about my progress as well as reviewing recipes. I will also be blogging about restaurants that I try and or food ideas that I have. I will also use this space to talk about sports and movies and other life related things.

It will take some time before you will get to know me as there is 28 years of stories to catch you up on. I will try to stay focused on the present with a little bit of the past sprinkled in.

I am open to feedback so please if you have suggestions or comments please share them.