A Gathering of Links and recipes #5

Here are some new recipes that I have tried the last two weeks:

White Chocolate Panna Cottoa with Raspberry coulis. This was a sweet but yummy dessert. I would recommend small servings sizes as it is pretty sweet. This recipe is also very easy to make.

Cream Cheese Stuffed, Bacon Wrapped Jalapenos. These are also very easy to make and super addictive. A tip that my wife learned the hard way is to make sure you use rubber gloves when cleaning and touching the Jalapeños :)

Risotto with Asparagus from the Food Network website

Banana Oat muffins from Gordon Ramsay

Enjoy!

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.

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.

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…