Oyster shucking for the uninitiated

If you think about all the food you eat that is alive and raw when you actually eat it, maybe the live fish sushi in exotic China comes to mind. In fact, oysters are very much alive when you eat them raw (or cooked alive... one should never eat dead oysters).

I was once a beginner shucker. And after a bit of practice and a couple of minor injuries, I now consider myself an intermediate shucker, which means I can probably still injure myself if I get too cocky.

Oysters on the halfshell. Can you hear them squealing? I do, and I don't care. 

So here's my pictorial step-by-step on how to violate an oyster*!

A genuine Prince Edward Island oyster in shell 

You need towels, a shucking knife or other sturdy knife with a stiff blade.

Is it hard to shuck an oyster? Yes. Can one hurt one's self while shucking an oyster? Yes.

Ain't she sweet? Oyster in shell waiting to be violated. 

Here goes the surgical procedure:

1. Lay the oyster down on a towel with the bottom facing up and hinge pointing towards your dominant hand (i.e. the hand with which you would use to stab someone using a weapon). The bottom side is usually the side that curves upwards (concave side up).
   
   

   

   Ain't she sweet? Oyster in shell waiting to be violated. 

2. Wrap and hold the front end of the oyster in the towel. Wiggle and jam the shucker/knife into the back hinge of the oyster until you feel it sitting firmly in the hinge.
   

   

   Jamming the shucker/knife into the back hinge of the oyster.

3. Turn the knife/shucker 90 degrees (90°) until the hinge is busted.
   

   

   Turn the shucking knife 90° degrees to unhinge the shell and listen to the oyster scream in pain. 

4. Run the knife along the inside top lid of the oyster to loosen the meat and then remove the top shell/lid. 
5. Rinse the oyster meat under cold running water to wash away any sand that might be floating around. The oyster is still attached to the bottom shell.
6. Run the knife underneath the oyster meat along the bottom shell to loosen the rest of the meat. Gently rinse again. 
7. Scoop the screaming oyster into your mout. Savour it as it screams silently down towards your digestive tract!  

Screaming, disrobed oyster.

And that is the end of my lesson in shucking an oyster. The end. Of the oyster. 

*Thank you, anatomicunderground, for your hand modelling and shucking!

Water spinach: the illicitly delicious vegetable

In this neck of the woods, water spinach (ong choy, tong choy 蕹菜 in Canto) is pretty expensive, running usually about $5/lb, which is probably why local Thai digs sell tiny plates of stir-fried kangkung for $15 (not naming names because it will incite certain backlash).
IMHO, water spinach best served hot, salty and spicy.

Ipomea aquatica is officially a Federal Noxious Weed in the US, which makes it illegal to grow and import without a permit (however, nothing *really* stops Asians from doing otherwise).

Unless you pull a Gabe, you can't really mess this up unless you overcook it.

Forget salad: water spinach with anchovy sauce, chilis and garlic are an excellent way of winning friends. 

• Water spinach with garlic, soy and fish sauce (nam pla, which is technically not vegetarian)
• Belacan kangkung (water spinach with shrimp paste, which is not very vegetarian, unless you consider shrimp a vegetable but last time I checked, shrimp did now grow out of the ground)
• Chopped up in a sour Vietnamese soup called canh chua

And if you're unbelievable resourceful and short on ingredients like I am, here's what you come up with:

Junk in my fridge: dried shrimp, garlic, onions, soy sauce + chili sauce, and shrimp paste. Also a mordor and apostle which was not in the fridge. 

(Quantities of each ingredient was eyeballed...)

• Soak the dried shrimp in some water until soft. Drain and discard the water.
• Mash up the reconstituted dried shrimp with half the garlic and a spoon of the onions.
• I had no chilis handy but if you do, slice them crosswise thinly.
• Heat oil, add dried shrimp/garlic/onion and heat until fragrant. Add remaining garlic and then onions. Add shrimp paste and chilis.
• Clean the water spinach (remove tough parts of stems and gross leaves, then split larger stems to smaller ones; soak, rinse and drain well). 
• Add the water spinach and stir fry until just cooked. Remove from heat and serve like a king.

*Pats self the back*

Easy and quick way to get your pomegranate fix and take out your frustrations

'Tis the season for one of the most tasty fruits ever: pomegranates. Pomegranates are to the fruit world what we might call auto-cockblockers: they're so difficult to peel and extract the fruit that it's like they purposefully evolved that way... hard-to-get, yet strangely making them more enticing, attractive... clever, but not more clever than us!

Thankfully, there is the Internets, and though it's 99% littered with garbage, the rest is actually useful; many bloggers/vloggers have shared many different ways to get to the pomegranate fruit (WHICH, technically-speaking are NOT the seeds, rather are the arils (or outgrowth) that contain the seeds).

Pomegranate arils

The easiest way I have found so far is whacking the fruit with a spoon (or in my case, was a tiny frying pan stolen from a tiny dwarf).

There is no longer any need to pick out every individual aril and sully your hands to get to the fruit. Let you your frustrations out and not get arrested! (Great for if your boss has been on your case for the tiniest, most irrelevant issues that don't prevent the job from getting done but because he is extremely uptight and missing the big picture... but I digress.)

Here's how to beat your pomegranate:

1. Score the pomegranate fruit all the way around its "equator" (crosswise, I guess). Don't slice too deeply into the fruit.
2. Twist both halves apart.
   

   

   A pomegranate split in half. O, the horror! 

3. Take one half and loosen the arils from the membrane (mesocarp) all the way around by gently pressing on the sides from the outside. Repeat massage with other half.
4. Hold the pomegranate half from underneath over a bowl with the open side downwards and smack the outer skin all the way around until all the arils have dropped into the bowl. Repeat the abuse with other half.
   

   

   Tap that pom.

And you're done. No peeling, no post-pom-peeling countertop murder scene (well, only a minor one at least).

Aftermath of the Pomegranate War of 2013. You could avoid this if you want by putting a dishcloth under the bowl.

(Thanks to via Lifehacker Whitson via boobtube user NaturalMarketer for the timesaving tip! Now I can get back to Minecraft King's Landing because "Winter is coming...")

Easter bunny face egg surprise ending

I picked these egg molds up in Tokyo, at Tokyu Hands, also known as the best store in the world. They came in handy for making Easter-themed gobbledygook.

[Bunny and teddy bear face egg moulds (yudetama gokko)]

Basically, take some boiled chicken eggs, peel them while they're warm and then plop them in these kawaii-shaped molds called yudetama gokko, which is Japanese for "make your food cute so people don't think it tastes gross" (though the Interwebs tells me the alternate meaning is "boiled egg make-believe").

Drop them in ice water for 10 minutes or refrigerate them until they're cool. Then you can unmold them and destroy their cuteness, as you wish.

[Ugly egg Easter bearface and bunny. I don't know how to order these adjectives anymore.]

Here comes the kicker:

[Original Juan cayenne hot sauce photobomb (it's not that hot but it's pretty tasty)]

And the money shot.

[Caesar-flavoured hot sauce boiled eggs shaped like cute animals. There must be an adult film about this. ]

No chocolate eggs for me, thanks... only the real deal with hot sauce this holiday. Happy delicious Easter, folks!

'Dangerous' shortcut pressure-cooked pulled pork

A new year and a new resolution! This year, I resolve to experiment with more dangerous techniques that endanger my safety and those around me, but make my food even more delicious. The Mayans were wrong and now, to reap the benefits!

Wimps, such as Gabe who constantly asks me how to cook stuff, however, are scared of kitchen implements that actually facilitate food preparation for busy home cooks. In this case, pulled pork made not in an oven, nor in a slow cooker, but rather in a pressure cooker.

[Pulling the pork. You can do it!]

Pressure cookers, as we know, when use improperly, can explode and maim, which is why one should follow all precautions when using them.

(The subtitle for this entry should be Why Gabe does not own any sharp knives. The answer to that question, folks, is because he is a wimp. The smirk on his face just says "Can't I just use scissors?"...)

[Gabe the meat-lover and carnivore wimp]

For a 4.5lb (3kg) chunk of pork butt, I would say a good hour and half (vs. 4 to 8 hours on a grill or in an oven or slow cooker). The only downside is that any amount of sugar (be it from the brine, the spices, or the BBQ sauce) will likely burn at the bottom of the pot while the meat cooks.

[You reading this caption probably took longer than this pulled pork sandwich topped with some random coleslaw existed IRL.]

I probably should have read Miss Vickie's pressure cooker tips on how to avoid scorching my food before trying this the first three times; she recommends lowering the temperature to the lowest temperature required to maintain pressure as soon as your pressure is attained. Also her PIP (pan-in-pan) technique might come in useful; perhaps I shall try AlfoillingingIP (aluminium foil in pan) technique next attempt (soon to be patented if it works).

(Meanwhile, check out these fab recipes for pulled pork from Amazing Ribs, Chefs George Siu & Park Heffelfinger from Memphis Blues (VAN), or BBQ guru Steve Raichlen.)

Shiitake mushrooms are not all the same

If there was a contest, I vote Montreal's Chinatown(s) to be the worst Chinatown in North America. For a city this size, Montreal's Asian quarters are sad, especially for the sizeable East Asian population. The Asian supermarkets are overpriced, variety stinks and quality is meh, at best.

Take for example, the sorry state of shiitake mushroom selection in this city.

This is what you get at the local Loblaws chain (which also owns the T&T Supermarket chain):

[These shiitake mushrooms have an extra "i". Also, not much far off from the ones in our Azn groceries, but still...]

You can fool gweilo, but you can't fool a discerning Chinese glutton like me; calling that shiitake mushrooms is like calling Coors Lite "beer". Recommended use for these ones: chopped up in dumpling filling. I don't need to see that poppycock served to me.

And then there's what you can get, for example, in butt[expletive] suburbia from a random Asian grocery store in Markham, Ontario where Asian malls outnumber Tim Hortons franchises:

[Shiitake with distinctive crackles. Crackles on mushrooms are what sprinkles are to cupcakes.]

In Chinese cooking, the most revered grades of shiitake are winter mushrooms (dong gu) 冬菇, fragrant mushroom (heong gu) 香菇, and white flower mushroom (bak fah gu) 白花菇.

The quality of these mushrooms depend on the season, temperature in which they're grown, humidity, pH levels of the growing medium (often just tree trunks or logs), and all that junk. Winter versions are obviously cultivated in winter when the humidity is lower which helps create the crackled patterns on the cap, and produce meatier caps... mmm meaty.

As you can see from above, there's a discernible difference between good and not so good (usually prices will be a good indicator), which I have outlined below:

NOT SO GOOD

• Very dark cap and stems
• Little or no floral pattern
• Small, wrinkled caps
• Dense
• Thin caps
• Long stems
• Dark gills

GOOD

• Light in colour
• Pronounced floral pattern on cap
• Light in weight
• Large caps
• Thick caps
• Shorter stems
• Delicate-looking
• Pale-coloured gills

Connoisseurs recommend rehydrating dried shiitake in cold (not hot or boiling) water, as hot water will likely "destroy the flavour". I say, "Be a man; do the right thing," but that's just me.

If you're lucky enough to have access to fresh ones (home-grown or in store), you'll probably appreciate the delicate umami flavours more than the dried ones might lack; nonetheless, you should still look for fresh ones that exhibit similar qualities.

(Treehugger posted a step-by-step article on growing shiitake on oak logs. Or you can buy one of these shiitake growing kits from Amazon and have the most disgusting-looking centerpiece in your neighbourhood!) 

BBQ explorations: in a grilled octopus's garden

My next-door neighbours are hyper-friendly, cacophonous Greeks (five of the 60 000+ of them in our fine city). They literally have barbecued-something eight days a week and as result, they're also experts at adding that fresh charcoal-barbecue smell to my laundry-line wash. 

However, they always seem to cook the same meats and though their grillades taste pretty good,  I hoped to one-up them by grilling up this octopus platter:

[Grilled octopus. Omnomnomnom.]

... which started off as this critter:

[My eight-legged supper]

Taking off on Peter Minakis' mouth-watering guidelines on grilling octopus (from his ace blog Kalofagas.ca), I forgoed (forwent?) cooking the octopus with a cork because a) it sounds gross, especially if the cork tissue starts disintegrating in the water, b) the wine bottle cork I had lying around might have been hybrid plastic/cork, and c) I don't think a single cork is enough to tenderize an entire octopus*.

Awesome food science writer and author Harold McGee says leave the cork stoppers in the wine bottles when cooking octopus. Sorry Lidia, Mario and the gang... you're still loved regardless.

If you can find fresh octopus, I am jealous. This one came frozen from Mourelatos.

[Octopus underside. Notice the mouth in the centre; this is what you need to cut out, or it will bite you while you eat.]

Grilling octopus is pretty much child's play, though I doubt small childrens (or even squeamish adults) would want to touch this). Seriously... it's not like you have to harpoon it and wrestle it – it's already murdered for you!

Cooking a frozen one just involved thawing, cleaning (cutting out the mouth and eyes), and then dipping the tentacles in simmering water to curl them prior to steaming them. Once they're steamed, they get marinated and then grilled and then eaten.

[Dipping the tentacles in boiling water prior to steaming them makes them curly and cute, like perming them.]

Were my neighbours jealous? They probably would have been if they had seen it (had it not been inhaled by hungry, hungry hippos first). 

* According to this study from 2001, enzymes from natural cork stoppers were proven to be able to decompose cellulose and cell walls of other plantstuffs but doesn't mention anything about octopuses. I rest my case.

Try this: Chocolate from Newfoundland & Labrador (also called Chocolateland, Canada's 10th province)

Some of you might know me as being curmudgeonly, sourfaced, and the resident naysayer (I love these terms of endearment).

However, when you get chocolate gifts like these, directly from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador by the Newfoundland Chocolate Company, one can't help but melt over the adorable hand-drawn depictions of Canadian maritime streetscapes.

I mean, just look at them... wouldn't you want to live in a cute little house like this filled with chocolate? I don't even like chocolate and I would, just so I could pull a Homer.

[Newfoundland Chocolate Company chocolate bars: Extra Smooth, Island Almond and Wildberry. I would eat those houses. Oh yeah, I already did.]

And the chocolate was good too. 

(Thanks, Tara!)

Fun with bacon crafts

Ideal for a casserole/savoury pie topper or camping blanket, try weaving bacon.

[A bacon weave, soon to be the next girl scout achievement badge.]

(Inspired by craftster.)

Try this: Hagelslag – the serious chocolate sprinkles

Hagelslag, according to the Dutch, is the reason bread was invented*. Bread, you see, is the vehicle for conveying hagelslag, chocolate sprinkles for grown-ups (though they do make kid versions).

It's ideal for people who want to relive the youth they never got to experience because their moms were scatterbrained anti-sugar fascists!

[Box of assorted hagelslag. The best is the original one and the pure chocolate one and the golden one.]

Around 1936, some enterprising Dutch man by the name of Gerard de Vries at the Venz chocolate factory decided to revolutionize the consumption of chocolate in the form of sprinkles – which, by the way, can only be called hagelslag if it's 45% chocolate or more, otherwise it's labelled chocolate-flavoured hagelslag.

Butter up your bread (or toast, though it might be frowned upon) and sprinkle hagelslag generously on top and eat with a grin: the butter is the binding agent that unites the world.

[I might go to hell for putting hagelslag on toast but it's totally worth it.]

Take it from the Dutch: chocolate sprinkles are serious business – about 14 million kilos of business annually, on 850 million slices of bread.

* Totally could be made up.

Keeping vampires away -- with pizza!

So my other job as a vampire hunter, as you know, takes up a bit of my spare time.

And of the brazillion pizzerias in Montreal, ranging from upscale to substitute for cardboard weather-shields even hobos wouldn't even use, there are a number of places where a part-time vampire hunter like myself can kick back and refuel.

Take for instance one of the newer spots – Pizzeria Magpie – in our (now famously famous) Mile-End neighbourhood; their Bianca pizza is perfect for vampire hunters: roast garlic, bechamel, ham, fresh basil, parlsey, dill and coriander. A must for regular humans and vampire hunters alike! 

[Oh how this Bianca pizza warmed my cold, black heart.]

Here's a shortcut for roasting garlic in the privacy of your own vampire-hunter lair.

1. Take a head of garlic.
2. With a sharp knife, slice off the top without separating the cloves.

3. Place it on aluminium foil and drizzle a moderate amount of olive oil over the head of garlic.
4. Wrap up the aluminium foil and bake it in a toaster oven for 10-20 minutes (depending on size of oven).
5. Remove from the toaster oven, open packet and let cool.
   
6. Squish them out of the garlic sheaths. Eat them on toast, pizza, in sauces, pop them in your mouth, or store them in a tightly covered container, preferably covered in oil. 

[Roast garlic squeezed to perfection.]

As for Magpie, I'd head back when I'm feeling peckish for some tasty vampire-hunting fuel. as it is in the mid-range price-wise, and only AFTER I collect my fang-bounty.

BTW, here's my business card for anyone interested in vampire removal services:

Pizzeria Magpie

16 rue Maguire
www.pizzeriamagpie.com

try this: ox-tongue (minus the tongue)

sometimes i wonder whether or not it is out of sheer spite that the chinese create ridiculous and cryptic names for dishes and foods to turn them off from eating them.

one of my favourites in that category is the puffy, slightly chewy, slightly sweet and fun-to-eat ovular deep-fried treats called ox-tongue pastries, or 牛脷酥 (in cantonese, gnau-lei so).


[it's the one on the right! one in the back is a sesame ball and one in the foreground, i forget but it wasn't as tasty as the oxtongue.] 

there's no ox nor any ox-tongue in it, perfect for vegetarian/pretendatarian/omnivores alike! its namesake stems from its shape which resembles the tongues of our bovine friend (pretty ugly if you ask me).

often eaten to complement congee or with just fresh soy milk, these and other types of chinese pastries are often found in fast-foody type, street food carts, or dim sum houses (though finding them in the latter is kind of rare, at least in north america, but you might luck out).

i guarantee some smiles once you bite into one (hopefully not fake ones)!

can you say quinoa?

i sure can! and how!^*


[quinoa salad with pears, feta and peppers and other stuff (based on the foodland ontario recipe). sweet and tangy, like a disco party in your mouth]

this versatile grain/seed is nutritious, deliciously nutty and an all-round good guy, like the a gay best friend... great sweet or savoury, hot or cold! no wonder the incas were such an innovative and advanced society for their time! smart food for smart people! (though eating smart food won't necessarily make dumbasses any smarter).

here's a cooking tip: use a rice cooker to cook the quinoa, at a 2:1 water to quinoa ratio.

^*that's "keen'-wah" btw.

shortcut caramelised onions

unless you're deathly allergic or get sharp painful pangs in the liver when you consume them, there isn't a person i know who would refuse a dollop of caramelised onions on a burger, on a salad, in quiche or ice cream, even...

often though, one might forego the caramelized onions in favour of less tasty raw onions on a burger, for instance, because cooking onions to the state of caramelisation requires more time, patience and one big beer to drink while you wait for the caramelisation process to complete.

[caramelised onions on sage/onion pork burger with apples and mustard]

but here's a little tip to getting that golden onion tastiness quicker: salt... yes, good ol' NaCL.

toss your bowl of sliced onions with a little bit of salt to help draw the water out and let it sit for about 15 minutes or so (more if you have time). fry them up as per usual over med/med-high in the fat or oil of your choice (about 1 tsp (15 ml) per onion) (and bacon fat tastes best). you'll notice that it takes less time to caramelise than it takes to finish your beer!

you can also deglaze the pan with apple cider or balsamic vinegar or love.

n.b. it's caramelise in canada, not caramelize.

try this! e-fu noodles

if (and when) you find yourself in an asian grocery store, step up to the noodle aisle and take a cake or two of these e-fu mein (pronounced like "mean", meaning "noodles" for the non-slanty-eyed).

also called "yi-mein" (because chinese people pronounce approximant consonants like they were on fire), they run between $1 and $2 a cake (much cheaper than a brick of illicit narcotics, and much tastier). they come in big cakes because they are fried after being made, and then dried in giant puck form for easy transport.

these lightly chewy, egg-based wheat noodles need to be boiled first to soften them up, and then rinsed (they're kind of oily). you can then fry them up with mushrooms, chives, garlic, adding your own sauce; or you can use them broth soups with asian vegetables and meat.

sesame oil and seafood goes well with yi-mein, cold or hot. in some chinese restaurants, you can get yi-mein with seafood and some bizarre fluorescent orangey-yellow cheese sauce (it's not like an alfredo, trust me) (and if i could find a photo, i would post it here¹).

¹i'm not *all* up against these east asian cheese concoctions because there are some tasty-looking creations... sadly, just none in my experience.

try this! mango butter

straight from the bohol bee farm resort in bohol, philippines, this little jar of mango spread is sure to bring a taste of equatorial paradise to every breakfast table.

i don't really remember what the ingredients are but mango, honey and butter are definitely the main three.