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.

Hanging out with my pal Char Siu

Everyone who knows Char Siu knows that there's no fooling around when it comes to barbecue. Steve Raichlen doesn't hold a candle to char siu (sorry, Mr. Raichlen).

Char siu, or Chinese barbecue pork 叉燒 (literally "fork roast" but can also mean "stabbing burn"*) is scientifically proven to be everyone's second favourite meat, and is eaten year-round, in steamed buns (bao 包), in sandwiches, topped on ramen, or stand-alone (not only at Chinese New Year).

Contrary to tradition, the beautiful roast red colour on char siu is often a result of red food colouring, the CHEATERS way of getting that awesome colour. Cheaters, as we know, get turned into pillars of shame, and end up on Jerry Springer with illegitimate twins.

The REAL way of getting the red is using red fermented bean curd which lends to the flavour and the red colour without artificial colours. You can also be a lazy doof and buy the jar of char siu marinade which doesn't taste as good. Up to you if you want to be a doof.


[This is how I roll. The medium-fatty pork loin version of char siu.]

As is customary for enterprising Asian food mart merchants, CNY foodstuffs prices are jacked up prior to the holiday. I wasn't about to pay $10/lb for a sliver of delicious barbecued pork, so I made my own from pork loins. The loins were, IMO, not fatty enough for my taste but plenty good on flavour. Opting for more of an authentic roast, I hung the char siu to roast in the oven, just like the big boys do!


[Suspended animation: char siu roasting on makeshift hooks in my convection oven. Looks weird, but so do bodybuilders.]

Chow's Char siu 
Marinade (for ~3 lbs pork)
1 Tb (15ml) light soy sauce
3 tsp salt
4 cloves garlic
1 Tb (15ml) chopped ginger
2 stalks green onions
1.5 Tbs (22ml) five-spice powder
3 Tb (45ml) honey, corn syrup, or maltose
2 cubes red bean curd
1 Tb (15ml) rice wine


Glaze
1 Tb (15ml) honey

1. Salt your meats and let it sit at least 30 min. This is always important
2. Meanwhile, combine all ingredients for the marinade.
3. Score your meats (optional) by making very shallow slits perpendicular to the grain of the meat, as so.
   [I was told that scoring cross-grain on one side of the loin would keep it from curling. Who cares about it curling when it all goes into your stomach!]
4. Marinade your meats in the marinade (minimum 4 hours, recommended overnight in fridge, while letting warm up to almost room temperature prior to cooking).
5. If roasting in a tray and rack, first cover the rack in aluminium foil, pierce a few holes in the foil, and then lay down a few chopsticks at intervals on the foiled rack. Lay the meat over the chopsticks so that it is basically propped over the foiled rack.
   If you roast them hanging, make sure you place a tray at the bottom of your oven to catch the delicious char siu drippings which will be lost to you forever because it's no longer edible.   
6. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes in total for a 3lb roast, testing at 20 minutes for doneness. When near done, paint the honey glaze all over the meat (flip if required). 
7. When done, remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes. Slice thinly and eat while your gluttonous family members are still watching television. 

* When I was subjected to Rorschach tests, I always saw demon dophins. 

Deep-fried Lunar New Year treats: Crispy Sesame Flower aka Dragon Cloaca

It's that time of year again, where old and young Asian kinfolk bring together their bickering over a family supper table. Yes, it is Chinese New Year today.

Aside from the traditional gut-busting home-cooked Chinese gastronomy the eve, there is also no shortage of Chinese tradi-superstitions, to which I don't really adhere; here's a shortlist of some CNY buffoonery:

• Cleaning your house on the new year (that's what domestic helpers are for).
• Avoiding the use of scissors or knives (so all haircuts happen before CNY mean barbers and salons gouge clients for 10x the normal fee).
• Eating as many sweets as you can stomach before your teeth fall out.
• Giving money in the form of red pockets is auspicious, especially if they're for me. 

However, stupidstitions aside, here's one deep-fried tradition I did honour for year 4710, or the Year of the Dragon: crispy sesame flowers (脆麻花, cheoi mah fah). They resemble nothing less than the anus of a dragon (mostly because my handywork is sub-par... sue me). 

[Crispy sesame flowers; definitely not flower-shaped, rather, they're like three-dimensional Möbius strips.]

The recipe is the same as the one used for Smiley Face Nuggets with a slight variation: a smidgen less sugar and the addition of one cube of red fermented bean curd (南乳, "southern fermented bean curd") for each cup of flour used.

[Red fermented bean curd. Again, the Western translations here are stupid; ridicule liberally.]


[Before the magic red fermented bean curd is mixed in the dough.]

Once mixed in (you might need a bit more flour), roll it out, cut into 2-inch strips and like a plastic surgeon, make an incision in the middle parallel to the long edge, and then thread one end through the incision. Deep fry the flipped dragon anuses doughthings until golden, and drain on paper towels.

[Rolled out and ready to go.]

A recipe using (1) one cup of flour will yield about 2.5 cups of deep-fried biscuits and raise your LDL cholesterol by 20 points.

Gung hei fat choi 恭喜發財! 
(P.S. My resolution this year is to clean my potty mouth. So far, it is not happening.)

salt and pepper something (or everything)

one of the staples in cantonese restaurants is salt and pepper [something] -- think of every good cantonese restaurant you've been to, and someone in your eating party inevitably orders salt-and-pepper [something].

it's the spiciest type of dish in cantonese cuisine. and someone will always order it. it's just that loveable.


the [something] is often shrimp, crab, tofu, squid, porkchoppy things, chicken, babies, etc. and it is really simple to make, but just slightly labour intensive (i wrote "intestines" by accident).

a) you need to deep fry or pre-cook the [something] ( see below for some suggestions).
b) you need to make the salt and pepper mix.
c) you need to put it all together by cooking it with garlic and green onions or regular onions (or whatever your heart desires, but the sparser, the better).
d) you need be eat it.


make the salt and pepper mix! approximate the measurements to your liking...

• 1 Tbs (15 mL) table salt
• 1 tsp (5 mL) ground white pepper (or mix of white/black pepper to equal 1 tsp)
• 1/2 to 1 tsp (2 to 5 mL) sugar

at this point, you can add stuff like

• ground ginger (1 tsp or less), five-spice powder (1/2 tsp), szechuan peppers (but not too much or you'll feel like you just had novicaine injected in your mouth; they're not even real peppers anyways).
  

store in an airtight container.

the story of lob-setah

lob-setah (or lobster as it is commonly known outside of fob communities) is commonly misconceived as a hoity-toity food. fact is, lobster in north america, was food for the poor (likely because it is a bottom-feeder), and people buried lobster shells to avoid the stigma of being a lobster-eater! shame!

anyways, this is the story of how this guy (actually, i think he was a she), an american lobster (Homarus americanus):


turned into this delectable feast for the eyes:

by this person (whom we will refer to as fat auntie from this moment forth):


by doing this:

the story goes like this (as told by my mom): "lob-setah (lobster) grow up and leave the fish tank. then you take lob-setah and then you chop him up and say you're sorry while you chop him. then you put him into hot wok with hot cooking oil, garlic and ginger, salt and white pepper. they you fry in wok until it is cook and put green onion on top. you take it, and then you eat it. the green part of lob-setah is the best part."