Egg tart review: Les Châteaux bakery

(I thought I had done this before, but it turns out I'm going senile.)

This will be the first in my series of egg tart reviews. As a self-professed egg-tart-aholic, I attribute some of my girth to my love of egg-tarts, and the rest of it, I blame my mother.

I start off with a review of a Portuguese egg tart (i.e. not a Canto-style plain egg tart, daan-taat 蛋撻). Portuguese egg tarts (called nata or pastel de nata in their native tongue, and bastardized by us Cantos as po-taat 葡挞) are the cream of the crop.

My auntie Kay from Tdot (also my personal Santa Claus*) always brings me egg tarts when she visits. This time, they were from some place called Les Châteaux (oooh c'est du faux français! [translation: the name is French so it must be fancy]).

[Deformed po-tat from Les Châteaux]

I've never been to this bakery, and frankly, I would probably not go out of my way to go there, especially because it's 5.5 hours away from my place. And also because my review leaves more to be desired...

Shell
Texture: Puff-pastry flaky
Flavour: Bland, and crisco-like

Filling
Texture: Good and perfectly eggy
Flavour: Unspectacular but not too sweet. Maybe good for diabetics, but I don't have any to test this theory on.

Temperature
N/A. They arrived in a crushed carton, 6 hours after they were baked. The baker did make an effort to eliminate steam by cutting off two corners of the carton. Yay on him.

Price
No clue. My auntie didn't accept any monetary compensation for them. I will presume she paid upwards of $1 brazillion dollars because she loves me that much.

Final grade
2.75/4. At least they were edible.

Les Chateaux Bakery
3229 Hwy 7
Markham, ON

* Only parents can love these kids singing so off-key. They would all have been fired otherwise.

Tourtière abberation by Chow

Whatever I'm going to write now about tourtière will probably receive some eyebrow-raising and some harsh poo-pooing from any bonne dame de région* but maybe not...!

This is a tale of the birth of a French-Canadian meat pie that was born out of wedlock and raised with love; this is the Chow tourtière made from pork, potatoes and chicken hearts.


[Diminutive version of the meat pie designed for loggers.]

Chicken hearts, though they might be the ugly duckling of the meat world, are (as Subordinate Chow put it) "the most tasty meat in the world until someone told you it was chicken hearts."

Traditionally served as a sleep-inducing meal (réveillon) on Xmas and New Year's eves, it is a perfect sedative for holiday church masses (if the actual mass doesn't put you to sleep first). Les québécois were pretty resourceful folk back in the day, and used whatever meats were local and available to them to make tourtière. (Perhaps I might not be off the beaten track after all.)

This aberration tourtière involves stuffing a double pie crust with a mix of ground chicken hearts and ground pork, with diced potatoes, onions, salt and pepper, herbs (thyme, bay leaf, oregano) baked in a deep dish pie plate (or double the recipe and bake in a cast iron Dutch oven for that extra authenticity no one really cares about unless it means more food).

[Keep the meat and meat grinder cold and your work will be cut out for you.]

The fact that there are not only one but two types of tasty animals in this dish means it's twice as tasty; my math is good.

(Take heed, vegetarians and vegematarians: skip the dead animals and use ground hazelnuts, seitan, ground chickpeas, lentils, TVP (textured vegetable protein), chopped mushrooms, and/or caramelized onions, or combination of all of them.)

May 2012 bring you new tidings of glee in the form of good food and drink! Now for the REAL new year celebrations...

* old bat from Quebec boonies.

Holiday cheer: butter up your days with shortbread biscuits

Cookies (or biscuits as they're called on the other side of the pond) are one of the reasons why Xmas was invented. Forget the religious business – Xmas is a vehicle for consumption of alcohol butter.

[Single batch of petticoat-shaped cookies.]

Full of buttery goodness, shortbread is originally a Scottish blessing made of pretty much just butter, oatmeal flour and sugar. Nowadays, one uses plain flour or mixed with oatmeal flour.

[Buttery proof is in the paper bag]

Taking off from the America's Test Kitchen recipe for perfect shortbread, you can clog a few arteries with a single recipe, or double it to induce a few heart attacks.

[ATK suggests how to properly bake them properly – notice the top one is still slightly wet in the middle... big no-no... I ate it anyways.]

[The middle piece! Or what's left of it.]

Happy butter season to all!

Baked bread so good, you can hide stuff in

Sometimes when you least expect it, you can learn something. In this case, I learned something revolutionary from the talented local photographer, Mr. Simoneau when I went to help him dispose of bodies learn desktop publishing crap – I learned that you can make [expletive]ly fantastic bread with very little kneading and patience.

Let's call it Fancy Bread for Lazy People.

I was in complete denial that this would work and boy was I ever schooled!


[Still hot in the Dutch oven]

The NY Times piece that first revealed this technique says that all you need is:

• 3 cups +/- (~750ml) of flour (mix and match)
• 1/4 tsp (1.5ml) instant yeast
• 1-1/4 tsp salt (6.5ml) (I found 1 tsp was sufficient)
• 1-5/8 cup (385ml) water
• Cornmeal, more flour, or wheat bran for dusting
• Big bowl
• A Dutch oven or something similar with an oven-proof cover. They're on sale this week at Canadian Tire, so you have no excuse unless you live in an armpit.
• Patience (also available at Canadian Tire for $12.99) 

The secret, Mr. Simoneau says, is magical unicorn saliva. But I think it's the humidity that gets trapped in the preheated pot for the first part of the cooking process.


[Mr. Simoneau making his olive version, where he reduced the salt by about a quarter. Please ignore the yelling face he is making at me.]


[A 50% whole wheat bread with black sesame]

Oh, btw, I said you can hide stuff in the bread; I tried hiding Pee-Wee in it while baking and it worked out quite well (wouldn't you say?).


Thanks, Mr. Simoneau for the great tip! And thanks to Pee-Wee for being such a good sport.

Red curry pizzazz

This is red curry.



This business is [expletive]ly spicy, even of the store-bought variety.

As you can see from the container, red curry is made of garlic, lemongrass, shallots, coriander roots and seeds, galangal, some wrinkled green things, and 2 brazillion chili peppers.

I made the minor mistake of slathering too much on this Thai-inspired seafood pizza, complete with shrimp, crabmeat, bamboo shoots, and hot, hot peppers.



Let's just say there was spicy regret the next day... delicious, delicious regret.

Look what I made!

[Cocoa meringue doodie cookie!]

I've never had a sweet tooth, especially for strange extra sweet confections like meringue cookies [jump to thekitchn.com] that look like CJ7 left behind. Unfortunately for me (and those subject to my confections), the egg whites didn't hold their form so the cookies kind of collapsed into its turd form.




[A pilfered image of CJ7 from eastday.com who probably pilfered it from the film distributors. Gotta love China!]

Though meringue doesn't require cream of tartar, the acidity helps neutralize the alkalinity in egg whites to give them stability and volume, making the doodie cookies less doodie-like!

My mistake was substituting lime juice for cream of tartar (3 times the required amount of cream of tartar) which added liquid to the egg whites, thus adding water in addition to acidity... big meringue-o no-no!

(Evidently, if you rub cut lemons around the inside of a bowl and let it dry, the white powdery citric acid that is left behind is a good substitute for cream of tartar).

m-m-m-my my my macarons

i've been spoiled! my cousin* rayray brought a boxful of ladurée's famous macarons back from paris, just in time for my birthday!

(the most intriguing flavour in the batch was cardamom but it was fantastic.)

and it also came in a new purse:

[fact(ually unproven): 96% of women in hong kong use paper shopping bags for purses. they are frequently filled with wallets, lunches, dried orange peels, fake eyebrows and ugly stuffed animals.]

* again, he's not exactly blood-related but closely related-enough that i can scold him for his foibles.

the last slice (of sectionable foodstuffs)

over the holidays (btw, happy 2011 to you all), i received criticisms from the complaint department that my blog is boring. i have since terminated that department and critic.

to celebrate his dismissal, i made a celebratory cake (modeled after belle of the bakery's version of the brooklyn brownout)! unfortunately, there wasn't much left by the time we finished celebrating.


[the last remaining piece of brooklyn brownout cake, maybe in the city, but it's long gone now.]

most everyone knows that the last slice of cake, pie or other divisible foodstuffs with nerdy arc lengths is always the most coveted... that the most delicious bite is the one that you can't ever have again... and that a chocolate layer cake will never go to waste¹. 


[brooklyn brownout cake = x^(brownies*ganache) ∫[2* (layers of mocha chocolate cake) / √(brownies*ganache)]

(i think the derivative to that differential is x=cake makes people crazy).

¹ watch until the end.

handsdown banana bread

if you're lazy like my cousin rayray, you will eat bananas, pears and apples for your recommended daily servings of fruit, and avoid oranges, melons and kiwis unless someone peels and/or prepares them for you.

that said, if you forget that you bought bananas and they turned to brown, flaccid unattractiveness, don't throw them out!

instead, transform them from the ugly ducklings they are to the sensuously scented banana bread they deserve to be in!



this is the banana bread recipe i've been using since i was 15 (which was less than 5 years ago)! it's moist, low in fat (though i really don't care about fat content), easier to make than a plutonium bomb -- guaranteed, handsdown, will be one of the best banana breads you'll make in your lifetime.

tips: try varying it by sprinkling brown sugar on top before baking, or adding butterscotch or chocolate chips to the batter. or you can substitute the sugar with applesauce (but reducing the oil when you do).

(low-fat and moist) banana bread
3 ripe mushed bananas (overripe is best)
1/3 cup (~80 ml) buttermilk or soured milk*
1/3 cup ( ~80 ml) vegetable oil
2/3 cup (~160-175ml) packed brown sugar
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
2 eggs

1 and 2/3 (~400 ml) cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp (1.25 ml) salt
1 tsp (5 ml) baking soda

*if you don't have buttermilk cause you don't live in the deep south where people actually drink the stuff, make soured milk: measure 1 tsp (5 ml) vinegar or lemon juice into a measuring cup and then pour enough milk to top it to the amount of milk required. let it sit for 5 minutes before using.

1. preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). 
2. grease and/or line a loaf pan.
3. combine the first six ingredients in a medium bowl.
4. in a separate bowl, stir together the three remaining dry ingredients.
5. add the dry to the wet ingredients and stir until well-combined.
6. pour into loaf pan and bake for 50-55 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.
7. eat. 

once a tart, always a tart

who doesn't love the sweet tartness and mouth-watering flavour of strawberries (other than those deathly allergic to the fruit and maybe koalas...)?

strawberry season is well under way in this neck of the woods. what better way to celebrate them than to eat them?

bounty and seascape are apparently the most popular variety of strawberry plants grown in quebec (about 90% of the fall crop are of the seascape variety, and the majority of the summer )^a, and are a type of day neutral plant. the ones usually sold in nurseries for home gardens are usually everbearings, sold as "double-bloomers! twice in one season!" but the fruits are often smaller and the plants don't produce as many runners.

i have double-bloomers but i don't remember what variety they are. either way, i had do something with the berries i got. 

on 5 ingredient fix, that nice lady who has a julia roberts-like talking hole made three things using pizza dough (i didn't know this show existed until a month ago). these mini strawberry mascarpone tarts was one.


super simple technique: roll some sugar into prepared pizza dough, cut it out into rounds, then bake. top the cooled rounds with mascarpone, and then some strawberries that have been tossed with a bit of sugar. drizzle with good quality balsamic vinegar. and then eat.

any leftover strawberries should be eaten or cooked down. but anyone with extra strawberries should probably be punched in the nose.

^aaccording to the strawberry and raspberry growers association of quebec.

better butter is better

remember that butter-themed tongue-twister rhyme from your childhood that began with "betty botter bought some butter..."?

remember how she said the butter was bitter and that if she incoprorated it in her mysterious batter that it would result in a bitter batter? and that quality butter would be the only resolution for improving the result of the batter?

anyways... here's an example of some sweet sweet butter-based batter (or dough, rather) is the fancy-arse kouign amann (breton for butter cake).and oh what a cake it is! so decadently delicious dat you dare double the dosage and die.


the breton bakery where this one is from (pâtisserie kouign amann) sells them in slices like pizza. i don't think i would have the patience to make one of these things (dough, butter, sugar, roll, wait... dough, butter, sugar, roll, wait... rinse and repeat...), but i can definitely walk or run to the bakery that makes these sweet, flaky cakes of artery-cloggers.

oh my darling, clementine cake

anyone who would ever pass up buying one of those little wooden crates of tangerines has to be some sort of citrus masochist (or allergic to citrus, which is not unheard of...). why anyone would pass up the taste of a tangerine-burp is mind-boggling... so refreshing!

i, for one, won't pass up a crate (especially when it's on sale), but there's only so many one can eat. so with the extra ones i didn't consume, i tried cooking them in these sticky tangerine cakes following nigella's recipe for clementine cake.


i wasn't about to spend 2 hours cooking tangerines so i smoldered them in the pressure cooker for less than half the time. they came out just as mushed up as being simmered on the stove for 2 hours. then i just pulsed them using a hand blender. the finished cake(s) came out as delicately sweet and almondy scrumptious as you can imagine they would taste in the photos with just 5 ingredients (almonds, eggs, clementines/tangerines, sugar, and baking powder).

(btw, if you don't have a scale (which you should even if you weren't a drug dealer), try following smittenkitchen's version, which approximates the weighted quantity in volume).

tangerines and clementines are variants of mandarin oranges so you can use them interchangeably (the major difference between them is that tangerines often have many more seeds than tangerines).

according to chinese lore, chinese ladies who were "hip to their time" used to carry mandarins in their hands so that they would smell like the citrus fruit. (i should check the oxford companion to food for the exact reference...)

anyways, good on you, nigella, for finally producing an easy-to-follow recipe that doesn't sound wacky!

DO, however FOLLOW to the recipe when it says to use parchment paper cause these suckers stick to the pan like doody to a chihuahua's butt.

two bites don't make a wrong

(that's a terrible pun. i should slap myself because i hate puns.)

my attempt at duplicating two-bite brownies was a win -- popped in the mouth, like the decadent chewy ones you buy in the store supposedly made by some grandmother, except not as sweet and definitely way cheaper than dropping $4 for a bag of 12.


[this picture doesn't do them justice]

i don't actually remember making them. i might have had one too many beers. but i think this is what i did:

melt 1/2 cup (125 ml) of unsalted butter with 7 oz (200g) of dark chocolate in a heat-safe bowl over simmering water. remove from heat and add 2 Tbsp (30 ml) of cocoa powder, and let it cool slightly.

in a separate bowl, i think i beat 3 eggs with 1 cup (250 ml) of sugar, 2 tsp (10 ml) vanilla, and 1/2 tsp salt. stir in the chocolate mixture until well blended. add 1 cup (250 ml) of flour and mix well.

bake them in your greased mini cupcake/two-bit brownie pan for about 10-12 minutes at 350F (180C). they won't be baked all the way through but you don't want them to.

i don't remember how many the batch made but it should make at least 6 or 8 two-bite brownies, the last i counted. my math might have been bad because of the beer.

i smell cookies... cookie towels

this morning when i went to dry off with my towel, i noticed that it smelled like cookies.

more specifically, these cookies:

spiced snowballs. just take a snowball recipe and put a bunch of spices in it (here, i've experimented with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, ginger), then bake it an roll it in icing sugar. you can probably use whatever nuts you like (i used almonds; hazelnuts would probably be equally tasty and fattening) and adjust the flavours to your liking for these shortbread-like balls.

(unfortunately, the only thing remaining about them is this photo as the lot of them were gobbled up at the incubator's birthday get-together the night before.)

i guess i underestimated the power of cardamom and how it can permeate everything in your house.

i think i just came up with a product -- food-scented towels! i'm gonna be rich!!!111one

so long 2009... hello 2010!

as the days of 2009 finally disappear, i look back at the past year with cheerful reflection and a rotund belly... props go out to the wonderful things i've eaten this year (to name a few):

- apples from quebec.
- the best egg tarts/po-tats ever (from royal garden*).

- hot pot with lamb intestines.

- mango butter from the bohol bee farm.
- fresh oysters on the half shell from the union oyster house.

- fresh chocolate banana doughnuts from the sparrow.

- dandan noodles from wing lai yuen (詠藜園).
- the best porkchops in the world (tonkatsu from tonkichi).

- soup dumplings with amazing beijing chili oil (北京水餃店 beijing shui gau shop).

and to everyone who has given their time of day to this blog, have a happy and healthy 2010!

*note to royal garden management: continue to make these things and your patrons will die in bliss of heavy coronary blockage. be forwarned.

o, xmas cookie, o xmas cookie...

if there ever was a healthy holiday cookie, this applesauce oatmeal one would be it: chewy, fibrous, made of real fruits, and topped with maple-flavoured love... or what love would taste like if it were made of maple icing and a pound and a half of butter.


(there's actually very little butter in these cookies, which makes it all the better).

triple the batch and give them away to people who need that extra poundage for the holidays. consider it a gift, you cheap bastards.

(recipe courtesy of martha).

happy holidays!

pumpkin pie

just to set the record straight, i do not have a sweet tooth.

however, here's another piece of pie that's worth a blog entry about: this was likely the second best pumpkin pie i've had since being born... swear by the stray hairs on my chin.



decent crust, a filling not too sweet and just the right consistency (i.e. moist but not soupy, nor too eggy, nor too tough), simple on the spice, and a belle couleur. thanks to tammy's country kitchen in napanee (ontario), i am now a pumpkin pie aficionada.

(oh, and those who eat pie "à la mode" are heathens).

fresh harvest: apples

apple season means picking loads of delicious apples fresh from the local orchards (which are a-plenty here, like hobos in the streets).


this year, i decided to pick my apples from the bin at the market because it was faster, closer, as cheap, and just as good quality (if not better) than the u-picks. cons: you don't get as much variety and you don't get to stuff your face with apples while buying them from the stand.

using alton brown's recipe for a pâte brisée crust, i set out to make two pies at a time (one for someone's birthday party and the other for my un-birthday).

things i discovered on this pie-making feat:

1. having hard alcohol handy makes the medicine go down (and the keeps the flour in the crust from glutenizing quickly as opposed to water).
2. a sharp peeler makes a huge difference.
3. apple corers make things go way faster.
4. a helper makes things go twice as fast!

also using alton's super apple pie recipe as a guide, i used the standard fare of cinnamon and nutmeg for spices and also added freshly ground cardamom. AB's recipe called for some stupidly named spice called grains of paradise which i have no idea what that is, but after a little research i found could be substituted with cardamom.

that said, the only remaining thing about the pie pictured above now is that photo...

lobsters from prince edward island

on holiday in the province of prince edward island in the east coast of canada, a lone provincial island in the gulf of st. lawrence... home of l. m. montgomery's anne of green gables, red dirt, white-sand beaches, etc, etc.

i had the pleasure of experiencing a typical neverending lobster supper in new glasgow, PEI which comprised of all you can eat:

- dinner rolls and bread (surprisingly good rolls)


- mussels


- seafood chowder


- coleslaw and potato salad (and something that claimed to be garden salad)

- dessert (here is blueberry pie with blueberry frozen yogurt)

and your choice of main course between 1 lb, 1.5 lb, or 2 lb delicious atlantic lobster, or some other nonsense like roast beef, roast chicken... standard island fare, but very little compares to fresh boiled lobster dipped in melted butter.


oh and you get a bib if you ask.

and a heart attack if you don't.

fun with tayaki

these little portable japanese snacks come hot off the tayaki (たやき) presses like no one's business.

tayaki is basically a waffley sandwich that can be stuffed with savoury or sweet surpises. they're usually (and i believe traditionally) shaped like carp.

savoury fillings:
- tuna (from a can... gross)

and sweet fillings:
- custard
- red bean paste
- glutinous rice balls

this one is from a small stand in the koenji district of tokyo and stuffed with red bean paste (azuki paste).



i don't know much more about these things because i can't read very much japanese.