Little Italy, A Little Risotto, and My Little Sister

Wednesday afternoon was a really enjoyable, really foodie time. Once classes were over, my little sister and I met up to shop for and cook dinner. I've been meaning to check out the Italian Centre Shop in Little Italy for quite some time. I'd heard it was awesome with so much Italian food and excellent prices. It was a bit of a journey from the University on the LRT and a really old-school electric bus. We thought it was like a journey back in time what with the old bus and the state of the Little Italy neighbourhood, which is maybe a touch run down. The store was absolutely awesome, though.

There was a lot of food you don't see elsewhere like goat stewing meat. There was a ton of dried pasta in every imaginable shape, a pretty much exhaustive selection of Italian cheeses and cured meats, and an olive counter. I found treasures like cheap figs and fennel bulbs in the produce department. There were also piles of Italian cookies and chocolates including single Bacci chocolates available at the checkout counters.

My sister and I bought ingredients for a recipe by Giada Di Laurentiis for Dirty Risotto, that features pancetta, hot Italian sausage, mushrooms, red bell pepper, onion, and Italian flat leaf parsley. For the two of us, we prepared essentially half the recipe with a few alterations. We used less than a tablespoon of butter and one approximately 4 ounce link of the Italian Centre's fresh hot sausage. We skipped the white wine due to the expense and the fact we wouldn't drink the rest but added a chopped clove of garlic with the vegetables. We also didn't add any salt. . . but that's a matter of taste. Leslie was a fantastic sous-chef and the dish came together beautifully. She even cut all the mushrooms really, really carefully into slices.

Here's our masterpiece:
The pork products added a ton of flavour to the risotto, which was also wonderfully creamy and starchy. Both my sister and I like starch so we really enjoyed this. The bits of sausage were very tasty, clearly the Italian Centre knows what they're doing making it. I think it was comparable to what I tasted in Southern Ontario. Freshly grated Parmesan also added delicious flavour.

I think this was my sister's first risotto and she liked it. As a side dish we had a plate of heirloom tomatoes with pepper and basil. It was an excellent choice to cut some of the starchy richness of the risotto. All in all, it was a really successful shopping trip and supper with my sister.

Some Interesting Homecooking

Today I'm going to introduce you to two of my more intriguingly delicious creations and one recipe that I tried, but maybe didn't get quite right. It's interesting nevertheless.

First off, another "fried rice" creation. It's not rice but millet and I've used some cut up deli ham, red bell pepper, summer squash, onion, green onion, and an egg. The sauce is the usual with soy, a little rice wine vinegar, and very little or no sambal oelek. I really liked how the saltiness of the ham worked in this. It was a really tasty lunch and of course the egg really enriched the sauce. Next up is my first attempt at a recipe I was curious to try from Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson. She has a recipe for Baked Purple Hedgehog Potatoes with Yogurt-Mint Dipping Sauce. I prepared a slightly modified 1/4 recipe utilizing 2 small red potatoes (about 8 ounces total) in place of purple potatoes. She states that any type of new potato may be substituted and these were the best I could see, although they didn't look that good. I'd expected to find better potatoes at the store. Basically, I made thin slices part way through the potatoes that you can see here in my photo of the potatoes pre-baking.
Into the slits in the potato I put thin slices of garlic from the garden coated with a mixture of olive oil and sambal oelek. I used the sambal in place of harissa, the Tunisian hot sauce that Swanson recommends. I think the substitution worked. I then sprinkled the potatoes with salt and pepper and baked them covered for 25 minutes and uncovered for about 25 minutes at 375 F.

I prepared my own version of the dipping sauce by combining a half cup of yogurt with a chopped garlic clove, salt, pepper, and a bunch of chopped basil. I used basil because that's what I had although I'm sure mint and cilantro would be good, probably better. The whole recipe seemed good in that garlic-is-good way. I like dipping things in cool, creamy, tangy yogurt and also used the dip for a pork chop and some grilled patty pan squash.

There was a problem, though. The potatoes were crispy and undercooked. Clearly much more than the 45 minutes of total baking time in the recipe is required, at least for 4 ounce potatoes. I might try this recipe again, but I will be way more careful to cook the potatoes enough.

Finally, the Thursday-night thrown together dinner that was unexpectedly really, really delicious. This is my millet and clam superbowl. Umm, yeah. That's the name. I started by sauteing a quarter of an onion, 3 sliced mushrooms, and a couple of pinches of red chili pepper flakes in a little olive oil. I added a minced clove of garlic and some chopped red bell pepper and sauteed a little more. Then I added 2 chopped smallish tomatoes, 2 chopped green onions, and a small can of chopped ocean clams (about 80 grams). Finally I added 1 cup of cooked and cooled millet and a splash of chicken broth. I broke up the chunks of millet and warmed everything through before adding a bunch of torn basil and mixing it with grated Parmesan cheese in the bowl. It was of course seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. And here it is:

It was sooooo tasty. The bell pepper and tomato added irresistible sweetness. That was balanced by a slight spicy kick from the pepper flakes. The clams had an intriguing salty taste of the ocean and pleasingly chewy texture. The basil added fragrance while the Parmesan added complex cheesy flavours and richness. The mushrooms were tasty and meaty as well. Altogether, this was one unexpectedly delicious bowl of light, summery dinner.

Now you have it, three things that I've tried cooking lately.

Rice and Not So Rice

I've been meaning to write for a while about one of my favourite quick dinner fixes. It has seriously become a fixture on my menu, so much so that I've stopped photographing its every incarnation. I've been making "fried rice" as I think of it. By no means do I claim that it's "authentic." It's not even always rice. That's a sacrilege if ever there was one. Basically, I've taken to tossing cold, cooked grains in with my stir fries at the end and mixing it with soy sauce, seasoned rice wine vinegar, sambal oelek, and/or oyster sauce. The other ingredients are pretty much what's on hand although onion, garlic, and ginger make and appearance pretty much every time.

I often cook grains the night before. It's important that they be cooked and cooled or it can get. . . soggy, I'd say.

I'm going to describe, to the best of my recollection what's in each photo:
This may be my original not-rice "fried rice." It's pot barley with tofu, green onions, celery, carrot, onion, and Anaheim chili pepper.

This one is millet, which Heidi Swanson recommends for making "fried rice" in her cookbook Super Natural Cooking. I don't pay attention to that recipe though, aside from using millet in this way. It also has chard, onion, parsnip, and some white meat that's either chicken or pork. I really like parsnip for it's unique flavour. I think stir frying it made it taste sweet too. It was good.
This is the first rice "fried rice." It also contains some beautiful summer squash from the garden, onion, and pork I believe. This one was really good because of the rice, which makes for a stickier and more richly carbalicious creation. It reminded me that I really like rice, it might be love.
This is some fried millet that I used as a bed for some salmon marinated in soy sauce. There's chard, summer squash, and onion in the millet. I remember I used to much sambal oelek chili sauce in this one. I could eat it, but it was a bit much with the salmon.
This was an excellent fried rice creation. I used lost of stuff from the garden like green and yellow beans, snow peas, and half of a green chili pepper. There's also onion, garlic, and ginger of course. The pepper was very hot, luckily I tasted it and discovered that after Travis told me it was sweet. Actually, it was super fiery. So, I used half of it and didn't add any chili sauce. Thus, it provided the perfect level of spice. This fried rice was mixed with a raw egg near the end of cooking, which is what we did when Albert and me made fried rice at his parents' house. There's nothing quite like egg as sauce, and don't worry the egg got cooked. If you've never tried mixing an egg with something to enrich the "sauce" try it with noodles or rice or anything. I also quite like eggs in case you can't tell.

And now. . .

One final dish incidentally with rice and eggs. But, I didn't make it. I had my first (hot stone) bowl of bibimbap at Ga Ya Korean Restaurant, which is a tiny restaurant near the university on 87th Avenue. It was a black stone bowl of rice topped with sections of fine strips of carrot, cucumber, ground meat, and a fried egg in the centre. There might have been other veggies I didn't identify. The egg was topped with the loveliest strips of dried seaweed waving in the convection currents off the hot food. It was beautiful and I wished I had a camera. Mixed with copious amounts of gochujang Korean hot sauce, it was a meal quite to my taste as I love a good hot sauce and I may be falling for rice especially sticky Korean rice. I also enjoyed the salty, mild bean sprouts and spicy, pungent kimchi that came with my meal.

The ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal had some good descriptions of bibimbap, if you're curious what it's all about. I guess I had the dolsot bibimbap, although the egg didn't begin raw. That would be cool to me, better than a fried egg with an essentially solid yolk, which is what I got. But, maybe a raw egg on hot food would violate some kind of health rules. I'm intrigued by Korean food. I may go back and try some other dishes. The ones I saw were all appealingly red with hot sauce.

Rice: Risotto and Sushi

That's right, the last two things I want to talk about from Albert's visit have something in common: rice. Therefore, it is not a stretch to put them in one post. I've already talked about both so let's call these updates.

Update #1: Risotto with Prosciutto and Peas

I said that I wanted to make risotto with/for another person. I fulfilled that desire when Albert and I recreated risotto with prosciutto and peas. He was very useful for stirring it. . . I really didn't do any of that. A risotto stirring slave. . . or assistant is a good thing. He's the risotto stirring pro modelling the finished product:
This risotto improved on my original by actually using the lemon zest and dry white wine. The "stock" I used was not so nice though since it was from bullion (naughty me). The prosciutto Albert obtained was sliced thicker than the stuff I got before. This might have actually been better in the risotto for the chunkiness, which might be better with slightly cooked prosciutto. In addition, the cheese I added for this risotto was indeed Parmesan.

We ate it with a simple salad of fresh organic greens straight out of the garden. It was ready for its close up:

Update #2: Sushi

Albert hadn't had sushi in quite some time. So, on his last night in Edmonton we went for sushi at Kyoto Japanese Cuisine on 109th. I've talked about it before and once again it was good, although we were not served water to drink although it was a hot day. The server was way too busy, so I guess it's excusable.

I had a spicy seaweed salad that was really spicy. I didn't quite expect that from Japanese food. It was a refreshing contrast to the sushi though in its texture and flavour. The texture is hard to describe. It was somewhat firm and not exactly crisp. I also had a raw oyster on the half shell, which I think was my first raw oyster. It tasted all right. I drizzled it with lemon juice but passed on the Tabasco sauce provided. I figured it would mask subtle flavours. Albert started with tofu, which he ate so I guess it was good.

For the main meal we had sushi. The salmon was fresh, rich, and good. Albert ordered a beef sushi that was just slightly seared and definitely blue-rare. It was kind of chewy and could not be bitten in half (the meat anyways). I thought it was a decent Alberta sushi. I also had surf clam sushi, which was really tougher than I would have thought. It was more like octopus than scallop. Mmmm, I love scallops but I didn't have any that night. I also had salmon roe, which I'd had before at other places. This salmon roe however was a bit of a revelation. I loved how each orange ball burst to reveal an intense taste of the sea, quite salty. Albert also had unagi, which I didn't try any of. The final sushi Albert ordered was a salmon skin roll. It seemed to contain fried tofu and salmon skin with a bit of a sweet and salty seasoning. It seemed richest of all the sushi and was quite tasty. We also received some small spicy rolls complementary that we didn't order. I honestly don't know what was in them, but they may have triggered a touch (and just a touch) of Albert's shellfish allergy.

Conclusion: Kyoto is still my preferred Edmonton sushi restaurant, not that I've tried many. But, one thing I do wonder about is why so many sushi pieces are so large but nearly impossible to eat in multiple bites.

Finale of the Calgary Eats

As I alluded in my breakfast post, we didn't really have lunch on Saturday in Calgary. Instead we had:
Gelato! I read a little on the Internet about Fiasco Gelato and how it was supposedly the best gelato in Calgary and made fresh every day. I didn't do a thorough survey myself, but my small cup of Strawberry Cheesecake gelato at the 17th Ave location pictured above was quite good. It was a generous portion. . . the mediums looked absolutely enormous. Plus, it was really smooth and creamy with the fruity flavour I was craving. Albert went with a medium passion fruit in a waffle cone, which he found refreshingly fruity and really big. It comes in peace.

By supper time we were quite hungry and ventured into Chinatown. We decided to go to a place specializing in Chinese barbecue meats called Happy Valley (I think) that was pretty busy. It was a very casual place that strangely served hot tea in plastic cups. We ordered 10 pork dumplings, a platter of barbecue duck and pork, Chinese broccoli in garlic sauce, and steamed rice. The whole meal really hit the spot with me as I was craving a good mix of meat, vegetables, and carbs. The dumplings were tasty if a little oily and I ate three. Albert played the hero and ate seven.

The meats were pure deliciousness, fatty in a good way atop a tasty sauce and peanuts. The outsides of the meat were seasoned in ways both new and delicious to me. It was my first Chinese barbecue. The dipping sauce with the meat was too sweet and added nothing, so I didn't really eat it. I think I preferred the pork to the duck partly because it was boneless and therefore easier to eat. Sometimes I'm lazy. Chinese broccoli was crisp and garlicky, perhaps a bit oily but overall very good. It's great when you're all enjoying the deliciousness of garlic, then nobody needs to feel stinky. Steamed rice was needed to fill out the meal and was also tasty to me as I have a bit of thing for rice now. Service was not great, but I didn't expect much and overall it was acceptable.

For our final meal in Calgary before the horrors of the bus to Edmonton, Albert and I had an early dinner at Murrieta's in the lounge area. The restaurant was pretty much dead as far as the number of customers, even when we left around six. Our server was attentive though and I found the meal well paced. To start with we shared the Courtyard salad of greens, small tomatoes, and fennel. The greens, tomatoes and fennel were top notch. However, the dressing a "Citrus Fennel Vinaigrette" was rather oily however with very little acidity. This was my only problem with the meal.

After the salad we were brought a small plate of fresh, warm!!! multi-grain bread and butter. I limited myself to one piece, not wanting to gorge myself on the bread, and it was delicious. For the main course we both opted for pasta dishes. Albert had the lamb meatball spaghetti. He really enjoyed it oddly preferring the spaghetti to the meatballs although he said both were good. I decided to try something new, the "Roasted Squash & Chevre Ravioli Brown Butter Verjus Sage Sauce." It was a really enjoyable dish, perhaps my favourite of the trip. The ravioli were topped with fried sage leaves, shavings of a hard and salty cheese, and sauteed bits of squash and zucchini. The sauce was buttery with that distinctive brown butter flavour. The ravioli themselves were large; filled with creamy, smooth squash filling, and perfectly al dente. I relished every rich, buttery bite. We emerged from our excellent meal ready to face the trials of travel by bus to Edmonton and more food.

The Risotto Revelation

For a while I have been thinking that I'd like to try my hand at making a risotto. It seemed like it would be something of an accomplishment to do, that it would prove my cooking skills. One thing that was stopping me was that I could not remember ever having eaten a risotto, I believe because my I remembered my father saying it was gross. . . maybe. Anyways, I tried my first risotto in memory at Quarry in Canmore. It was a creamy delicious almond risotto described here. The other thing I wanted before I made risotto was a good chicken stock. The chicken broth (made from bullion, naughty me) that I used to braise chicken thighs for sandwich meat seemed to fit the bill. I chilled it, skimmed off the fat, and froze it for my future risotto.

For the risotto, I also bought short grain rice. It's not aborio but calrose. I'm pretty sure that's okay, right? Anyways, it worked. I looked for a simple risotto recipe on Epicurious in which I could use my "chicken stock". The recipe I chose was this one for Risotto with Peas and Prosciutto. I of course made a few alterations, basically make a third of the recipe. I used
less butter than called for and didn't add any to finish as it already had a creamy texture and the comments with the recipe suggested it was unnecessary. I believe I also used less cheese than would be 1/3 of the recipe and used Roman in place of Parmigiano. People on Epicurious commented that there was too much cheese in the original recipe and it made for a sticky risotto. I omitted completely the white wine, as there wasn't enough reason to buy a bottle for my risotto experiment and I omitted the lemon zest. . . because I'm lazy? Hell, this was my special Sunday lunch, I'd do whatever I wanted.

I prepared the risotto as directed otherwise, but found that instead of 20 minutes it took a good 45 minutes for the rice to be of an edible tenderness, which I think was still al dente. That's a lot of stirring, risotto will beef up your stirring arm boys. My finished product looked pretty good:
It was a creamy, starchy bowl of bliss. However, I found myself adding quite a bit of black pepper, because it needed the slight kick. I also think that more peas would be good what with the colour, sweetness, and healthfulness they add. The prosciutto was really tasty too, nice and salty. The elements of this risotto really go well together, not surprising since peas and prosciutto is pretty classic. I would love to make it again in a larger portion to share with a friend. I think it would be really impressive. . . and we could use the wine and lemon zest for a more complex flavour, especially the wine. Anyways, I'm sure this won't be my last risotto.

Edmonton Stuff

I'll start with Wednesday and the remains of Ryan's ANTM Finale Party. He got an "ANTM" Dairy Queen log cake and served Diet Coke. I don't drink Diet Coke. . . or regular Coke for that matter. I don't really like sweet drinks and I can't stand the aspartame after taste . . . or Splenda aftertaste for that matter. But Dairy Queen cakes, those are good. I enjoy my Dairy Queen, although Blizzards make me sick from too much ice cream. I hadn't had an ice cream cake in ages, although I used to have them for every birthday. So, I guess there's a lot of pleasant memories attached. The cake was much appreciated!

On Friday before I caught my bus to Calgary, I ate at Kabsa downtown, based on reviews like this in the local media. I went alone and ordered the lamb, which cost about $13. It came with what I think was the vegetable Kabsa. There were potatoes, carrots, and some other veggies in a really tasty sauce. The lamb had a lot of bone and fat. . . real lamb and it was tender. . . but disappointingly weak lamb flavour. Although, I might have overpowered any of that by dipping it in the homemade hot sauce. That sauce was good, cool tomato and cilantro, but spicy. Actually, quite spicy. I really liked it. There was also a salad of finely chopped marinated vegetables that I also enjoyed for its tartness and vegetableness. Finally, there was (a mountain of) rice, probably some of the oiliest rice I've ever eaten but so tasty with onions and peas, and delicious fat. The portion was huge and I didn't eat it all. I'm thinking the fish or chicken might be better. Anyways, it was an interesting experience. I don't know if I'll go back, but I might if I were hungry and downtown. I don't think I'd get lamb though. It wasn't that great and other meats are cheaper.

After that meal, I got on a bus to Calgary then drove with my family to Canmore. I'll talk about some food there next.

What's for Dinner?

I thought I'd talk about one surprisingly good think i whipped up for dinner this week and what I mad tonight, which was also pretty good (and got photographed). The point of this is that cooking for one is an everyday activity, for me at least.

On Monday, I decided that I would whip up some fried rice with sticky rice left over from the Bul Go Gi House. No, the rice wasn't fresh. I fried up some onion, tofu, mushrooms, garlic, and a small zucchini in olive oil (very Asian I know). Then I added a bunch of rice and some hoisin sauce and garlic chili sauce. No, there wasn't egg. Does that make it not fried rice? I don't know. Anyways, it was good mainly because of the taste of the rice. I didn't know rice could taste that good. Is that taste telling me that sticky rice is bad for me?

Tonight, as I was walking home from work I composed a pasta in my head using broccoli and pork. At home, I sauteed a quarter onion in olive oil and added broccoli and a clove of garlic (minced of course). I sauteed that a bit and added some finely sliced pork chop, seasoned with black pepper and cooked the pork, added a splash of pasta water, and stirred in some al dente tortiglioni. Then I put it all in a big ass bowl and sprinkled it with grated Romano cheese. Later, I decided it needed a touch of salt as well. This is what it looked like:

I noticed several good things about this dish. The onions got nicely caramelized and were quite sweet and delicious. The cheese got fairly well distributed and contributed saltiness and creaminess, a bite with cheese was a good bite. The pork was also moist and tasty. It's actually been a while since I cooked meat, so there was a bit of novelty there. The broccoli remained crisp and it did not have a nasty broccoli pasta flavour, perhaps because it wasn't cooked to death. Finally, that pasta. Pasta tastes good to a carb lover like me. Plus, isn't that shape fun. Trust me, it's fun to eat. Don't you like stuff that's fun to eat? Overall, this was a pretty decent quick dinner for after work.

And now, couple of other food notes from this week:

You know when you think somebody will bring donuts to a meeting? And then they bring strudels and turnovers instead. And then you choose some giant strudel sprinkled with peanuts and covered in vanilla and butterscotch icing, probably the richest, sugariest one. And you eat it all even though you're not that hungry. And then you feel a little sick from sugar overload. But you had to eat it all because it was there, a gift to you. That's about what happened to me on Wednesday.

Then tonight, I went to the Sugarbowl and ate most of a bowl of Elk and Mushroom soup. I'm not sure how smart it is to order soup at 10:30 at night, it's been sitting it that pot a long time. Anyways, the mushrooms were plentiful and not your ordinary mushrooms so that was good. There was a lot of rice in the mild but tasty broth. Then there was the elk. It was ground and I can't say I tasted anything distinctive about it. Oh well, at least I can add it to the list of animals I know I've eaten. . . cow, pig, chicken, duck, alligator, lamb, baby cow (I know I'm evil), ostrich, bison, deer (I think), boar (I think), . . . maybe more I can't think of. This list excludes any animal of the sea, because that's a whole other issue. Plus, I was only vaguely aware of what I was eating in Japan, especially seafood, which may have included baby eels and a sushi of my creation featuring two generations of salmon. What animals won't I eat? Endangered species, bear, and shark. Didn't anyone ever tell you bears and sharks are our friends?