Monthly Archives: January 2012

Eat Out Restaurant Review

The Urban Tea Merchant

January 28, 2012 – 7:53 pm

I went here with two friends before Christ­mas last year — I can’t believe I didn’t get to this blog post until now! Any­ways I had a good expe­ri­ence and a nice chat with my two friends. I believe there is another loca­tion in West Van­cou­ver but we vis­ited the one on West Geor­gia in Down­town Van­cou­ver. The Urban Tea Mer­chant is a high end tea store that also offers after­noon tea ser­vice, check out their web­site here. We reserved seats and when we arrived we were seated promptly. The “Salon de Thé” is not a very big space, there are about ten tables but the envi­ron­ment was com­fort­able and quiet.

They have an exten­sive tea menu and their food menu includes after­noon tea sets, light lunches, and desserts. I chose the “Petite After­noon Tea Ser­vice” which includes tea sand­wiches, sweets, and a tea of your choice.

Since I didn’t want to be adven­tur­ous with my tea choice, I chose the “French Earl Grey” and it had a smooth feel in the mouth with very aro­matic flo­ral notes — can’t go wrong with an Earl Grey tea.

Petite Sig­na­ture After­noon Tea Ser­vice — $25

The “Petite Sig­na­ture After­noon Tea Ser­vice” came in a tiered pre­sen­ta­tion with fruits and sweets on the top, a scone with but­ter and jam in the mid­dle and tea sand­wiches and a chicken salad cone on the bot­tom. I started from the bot­tom and worked my way to the top. The tea sand­wiches tasted pretty good but I think I enjoyed the chicken salad cone more. It is a waf­fle cone stuffed with chicken salad and let­tuce — the cone was crispy and sweet while the chicken was savoury. The scone was still warm when I got to it, it was very good, flaky and but­tery — so yummy with the whipped but­ter and straw­berry jam. The fruits were fresh and the sweets were okay — not very remark­able. I couldn’t tell what flavour the French mar­croon was and the lit­tle white choco­late cov­ered cake was pretty sweet.

Sig­na­ture Tea Sand­wiches — $15

One of my friends had the “Sig­na­ture Tea Sand­wiches”. It is a full selec­tion of tea sand­wiches served with sea­sonal greens. The sand­wiches were like the ones I had for my tea set but with more variety.

Earl Grey White Choco­late Cheese­cake — $9

She also had the cheese­cake, infused with Earl Grey tea and Bel­gium white choco­late. I had a bite and I think it the flavours went together very well. It also had a nice pre­sen­ta­tion with a caramelized sugar layer on top, which had a crispy tex­ture that con­trasted with the smooth­ness of the cheesecake.

Smoked Salmon — $16

My other friend had the Smoked Salmon, which includes cream cheese, green salad, a choice of bread. I think this one had a pretty good por­tion for the price. The flavours were not sur­pris­ing but the ingre­di­ents were very fresh and delicious.

Over­all, we had a good expe­ri­ence, the envi­ron­ment was com­fort­able, ser­vices and food were also good.

Con clu sion:

Ambi ence: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Ser­vice: 4/5
Value: 3.5/5

The Urban Tea Merchant on Urbanspoon

Tags , , , | Permalink | Comment (0)
Chilled Dessert Recipes

White Chocolate Mousse

January 28, 2012 – 1:13 am

A while ago, I made this white choco­late mousse from a recipe found in a weekly Chi­nese food mag­a­zine from Ming Pao Daily News­pa­per. That par­tic­u­lar issue fea­tured chef Corbin Tomaszeski’s demon­stra­tion of his Irish Cream dessert recipes. One recipe that caught my eye was the white choco­late mousse. If you watch Food Net­work Canada, you would prob­a­bly know who chef Corbin Tomaszeski is, as he is the host of some of their shows. How­ever, when I was brows­ing around at a local liquor store (not that I was look­ing for any­thing par­tic­u­larly), the store atten­dant rec­om­mended me to try their newly stocked “À La Crème” (with a strange bot­tle label design) made by St. Remy. He told me that it tastes bet­ter than Bai­leys’ Irish cream liqueur when he had it at a tast­ing event. So I decided to give it try and it is very nutty and has a very rich caramel taste. In this recipe, instead of using Irish cream, I used St. Remy’s À La Crème and it turned out YUM.

Print
White Choco­late Mousse

Yield: 4 serv­ings

Ingre­di­ents

    Mousse
  • ¾ cup Whip­ping Cream (35% Milk Fat)
  • 1¼ cup 2% Milk
  • 4 tbsp. St. Remy’s À La Crème Liqueur
  • 3 Egg Yolks
  • 225 grams White Chocolate
  • 2 tsp. Unflavoured Gelatin Powder
  • 1 tbsp. Water
    • Dec­o­ra­tion
  • Whipped Cream
  • White Choco­late Shavings

Method

  1. Soak gelatin with cold water.
  2. Place egg yolks in a medium bowl and mix them just a little.
  3. Heat a pot of water (for hot water bath).
  4. Heat milk in a small pot until it is simmering.
  5. Slowly add hot milk into egg yolks while whisk­ing mixture.
  6. Place the bowl with egg yolk mix­ture on top of the pot of sim­mer­ing water, add in chopped white choco­late and mix until is melted into the mixture.
  7. Add gelatin, the choco­late mix­ture should be thick­en­ing as it heats up.
  8. Mix in the liqueur and remove from heat.
  9. Strain mix­ture through a fine sieve (wasn’t in the orig­i­nal recipe but it will result in a smoother texture).
  10. Cool mix­ture by plac­ing the bowl on top of a bowl of ice water.
  11. Beat whip­ping cream until soft peaks form.
  12. Fold in white choco­late mixture.
  13. Pour into wine glasses or dessert cups.
  14. Refrig­er­ate until it solidifies.
  15. Gar­nish with whipped cream and top with white choco­late shavings.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​1​/​2​8​/​w​h​i​t​e​-​c​h​o​c​o​l​a​t​e​-​m​o​u​s​se/

The mousse has so much white choco­late flavour and is very creamy, rich, with just the right touch of the liqueur flavour. It doesn’t actu­ally taste like booze so don’t worry about the alco­hol in there (the alco­hol taste will be gone by the time you eat it). :) It is there to enhance the flavours. I would rec­om­mend pair­ing it with a unsweet­ened cof­fee or drink since the white choco­late can be quite sweet. Serv­ing in a wine glass is a great pre­sen­ta­tion to impress although it is quite easy to make.

Isn’t it a strange label design for a liquor bot­tle? It has a car­toon cow on it, which looks like it is actu­ally chil­dren friendly! :D

Tags , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (5)
Chinese Pastry Recipes

Chinese Sesame Cookie Balls

January 22, 2012 – 7:27 pm

It’s Chi­nese New Year soon! Noth­ing is bet­ter than home­made deep fried good­ies and one of my favourites is the deep fried sesame cookie balls. Its name is “kai kou xiao” in Man­darin pinyin, mean­ing “laugh­ing mouth”. Being brought up in a Can­tonese fam­ily I’ve learnt that they are called “siu hau jo” in Can­tonese which trans­lates to “laugh­ing dates”. The crack­ing part of these cook­ies makes them look like lit­tle laugh­ing heads and hav­ing them dur­ing the Chi­nese New Year would bring lots of laugh­ter to you and your fam­ily. Not only are they easy to make, they are also very crunchy and tasty. The size makes them so easy to pop into your mouth — overeat­ing alert! ;)

Print
Chi­nese Sesame Cookie Balls

Ingre­di­ents

  • 300 grams Cake/Pastry Flour
  • 1 tsp. Bak­ing Powder
  • ½ tsp. Bak­ing Soda
  • 120 grams Gran­u­lated Sugar
  • 3 tbsp. Hot Water
  • 2 tbsp. Veg­etable Oil
  • 1 Egg
  • Raw White Sesame Seeds to coat cookie balls
  • Veg­etable Oil for deep frying

Method

  1. Mix sugar and hot water together and let cool. Add egg to sugar mixture.
  2. In a medium bowl, com­bine flour, bak­ing pow­der and bak­ing soda together.
  3. Add wet ingre­di­ents (sugar+ egg mix­ture and oil) to flour mix­ture. Mix to form dough. Wrap dough in plas­tic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.
  4. Roll dough into long tubes and cut into small pieces to form 1.5 cm wide balls.
  5. Spay a lit­tle water onto the dough balls and roll them in the sesame seeds.
  6. Deep fry in low tem­per­a­ture oil, rolling the balls in the oil as they cook, until they turn slightly golden brown — I had my stove on low heat. Drain oil and cool before stor­ing them in dry air tight containers.
http://​yum​my​work​shop​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​0​1​/​2​2​/​c​h​i​n​e​s​e​-​s​e​s​a​m​e​-​c​o​o​k​i​e​-​b​a​l​ls/

Tips:

  • Do not use all-purpose flour in this recipe. Cake/pastry flour will give it a nice tex­ture and the crack­ing appearance.
  • To ensure the sesame seeds stick­ing to the dough balls, roll them lightly in your hands before deep fry­ing them.
  • When deep fry­ing, the oil will start to foam but it is nor­mal because there is egg in the recipe.
  • Deep fry­ing them in lower tem­per­a­ture will take longer to cook and will result in a crunchy tex­ture and even cook­ing. If the oil tem­per­a­ture is too high, the exte­rior will be crunchy while the inte­rior will still be soft and under-cooked. This step takes patience so don’t rush it.

Happy Chi­nese New Year! May the Year of the Dragon bring every­one health and prosperity!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Tags , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comment (1)

Next Page »

Next Page »

%d bloggers like this: