Monthly Archives: June 2012

Eat Out Restaurant Review

Acme Café

June 22, 2012 – 9:22 pm

My cousin intro­duced me to this restau­rant a while ago. She rec­om­mended that I “have to” try their pies. Of course, as an enthu­si­as­tic baker, it auto­mat­i­cally went on my list of restau­rants to go to. She also has her own list of Gas­town restau­rants to try as Gas­town is a pretty vibrant foodie place. We decided to come here for lunch on a week­day, she also advised me to go after the lunch rush hour to avoid a long wait, so we arrived at around 2:30 pm.

The inte­rior has a vin­tage feel to it, like a diner. The brand­ing is quite con­sis­tent through­out the restau­rant with a hip­ster touch.

Even the type­face of the menu was vin­tage! The menu offers a vari­ety of com­fort food such as grilled cheese, mac and cheese, break­fast, and good­ies like pies and cookies.

Turkey Sand­wich with Daily Soup — $12

A cup of soup, broc­coli almond slaw, or potato soup. I had their soup of the day, which was a spiced peanut and pinto bean soup. I liked the grainy mus­tard from the sand­which, it was a great com­pli­ment for the turkey. The meat wasn’t very dry and the cheese melted nicely. The arugula also added a nice pep­pery flavour. The sand­wich was grilled and served warm and I enjoyed its crispy outer tex­ture. I also liked the cran­berry sauce, a clas­sic com­bi­na­tion with turkey. The soup had a nice peanut flavour, I have never had soups with peanuts before, except in Chi­nese cui­sine. The beans had a good tex­ture, and the flavour was a lit­tle sweet.

Daily Quiche with Salad and Soup — $10.25

My cousin had the daily quiche (with salami), which includes a side of salad and a cup of soup. It was the same soup that I had with my sand­wich. The quiche was quite tasty, the crust was very flaky and the cus­tard was very rich and creamy. The salami had a nice salty flavour, which worked well with the cus­tard. The quiche was rich, so the salad did the job of cut­ting a bit of the greasiness.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Since my cousin des­per­ately wanted to try the lemon meringue pie, we ordered a piece to share. It seems be a pop­u­lar pie at the restau­rant. We asked the server if they had it, and the pie was cooled down just in time to serve. I think it was a good pie to end the meal, it was sweet and fluffy on the top, sour on the bot­tom, the flavours were well bal­anced and wasn’t too rich.

We enjoyed our visit, the food was good, the envi­ron­ment was laid back and relax­ing. I can’t wait to try their other baked goods.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3/5
Food: 3.5/5
Ser­vice: 3.5/5
Value: 3.5/5


Acme Cafe on Urbanspoon

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Chinese Freestyle Recipes

Pork and Vegetable Dumplings — My Way

June 17, 2012 – 6:38 pm

Chi­nese are obsessed with all sorts of dumplings, we have them pan-fried, steamed, or even in soups. I like to make my own when­ever pos­si­ble. That way, I am in con­trol of what goes it and its sea­son­ings so they can be quite healthy and deli­cious. Com­pared to store-bought ones, of course I pre­fer my home­made ver­sion. There are end­less ways to make them and they dif­fer in dif­fer­ent regions of China. In Man­darin Chi­nese, they are called “jiao-zi” or in Can­tonese, “gao-ji” and “gyoza” in Japan­ese. Some­times they are called “pot-stickers” if they are pan-fried.

The way I make them is def­i­nitely influ­enced by Can­tonese cui­sine. The napa cab­bage in the recipe is pick­led by using salt to extract the water, result­ing in a crunchy tex­ture. It is then mixed into ground pork shoul­der, I find this cut of pork works well in this recipe because it has a good tex­ture that isnt too soft nor too stiff. To make a tasty chive vari­a­tion, you can also add chopped Chinese/garlic chives directly into the pork in place of the picked napa cabbage.

I some­times make the dumplings from scratch, that includes mak­ing the wrap­per from flour and water just like how restau­rants do it — I could also con­trol the thick­ness of the wrap­per but it is time-consuming. So if I don’t have the time, I often buy ready-made wrap­pers from the super­mar­ket which saves me all the knead­ing and rolling.

Print
Pork and Veg­etable Dumplings

Yield: 80–90 pieces

Ingre­di­ents

  • 1 pack­age Ready-made Dumpling Wrap­pers — about 1 lb. (not Won­ton wrappers)
    • Picked Cab­bage:
  • 620 g Napa Cab­bage, chopped
  • 3 tsp Salt
    • Pork and Seasoning:
  • 730 g Pork Shoul­der, ground
  • 2 tsp Sugar
  • 3 tbsp Soy Sauce
  • 1 tbsp Minced Ginger
  • 2 tbsp Rice Wine (optional)
  • 3 tbsp Corn Starch
  • ¼ cup Water
  • 1 tbsp Veg­etable Oil
  • 2 tsp Toasted Sesame oil (optional)

Method

    Picked Cab­bage:
  1. Chop napa cab­bage into lit­tle pieces, place in a colan­der — it will look like a lot but will shrink when the water is squeezed out. Add 2 tsp of salt into it and let it sit for about 5–10 minutes.
  2. Squeeze out the excess water from the cab­bage, and drain. Set aside until ready to use.
    3. Sea­son­ing the Pork:
  3. Add the fol­low­ing sea­son­ings into the ground pork: soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, and minced gin­ger. Mix until incorporated.
  4. Mix in the corn starch.
  5. Add water in sev­eral addi­tions, mix­ing after each addition.
  6. Mix in pick­led cab­bage, veg­etable oil, and sesame oil.
    7. Mak­ing the Dumplings:
  7. Place about 2 tea­spoons of fill­ing onto a piece of dumpling wrapper.
  8. Dab your fin­ger with some water and spread the water around the edges of the wrapper.
  9. Fold the wrap­per in half and press the edges together firmly.
  10. You can also make some creases on one side of the wrap­per before fold­ing in half to make it look nicer.
    11. Pan-frying:
  11. Heat some veg­etable oil in a non-stick fry pan in with medium heat. Place dumplings into pan.
  12. Add water until it reaches about ¼ of the dumplings’ height.
  13. Place a lid on the pan and let it sim­mer with medium heat for about 5–7 minutes.
  14. Remove lid, the water should be almost all gone by now. As the water evap­o­rates, the crust will start to form on the bot­tom, fry until the bot­tom of the dumplings are golden brown.
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I always make extra and freeze them and they can be steamed, boiled, or pan-fried with­out defrost­ing. To freeze, place them on a tray sep­a­rated and place the whole tray in the freezer until the dumplings are frozen. Store them in a freezer bag until ready to cook. (Note that cook­ing time will be longer if cook­ing frozen dumplings.) It makes a con­ve­nient quick meal or an appe­tizer. You can also eas­ily make chicken dumplings by replac­ing the pork with chicken. I’ve made a tasty veg­e­tar­ian ver­sion by fill­ing them with sea­soned chopped cab­bage, car­rots, shi­itake mush­rooms, and Chi­nese ver­mi­celli. It is very easy to be cre­ative with the filling.

You can tell when home­made food really makes a dif­fer­ence espe­cially when you have fresh ingredients!

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Eat Out Restaurant Review

Catch 122 Café Bistro

June 9, 2012 – 1:42 am

I recently learned about the Food Blogger’s Meetup Group in Van­cou­ver, it seems like a good oppor­tu­nity to meet and eat with other food­ies in town. In my first meetup, we dined at Catch 122. One day as I was read­ing some tweets from my Twit­ter account, I saw this tweet about a free entrée. So it turns out the restau­rant is offer­ing a free entrée for the group and we would write an hon­est review of our din­ing expe­ri­ence. What’s bet­ter than eat­ing free good food and get­ting to review it? Catch 122 is a new restau­rant in Gas­town. I have read other blog­gers’ reviews on their lunch expe­ri­ence and they are all pos­i­tive so I was excited to visit the restau­rant for their new din­ner menu.

The Gas­town Riot Mock­tail — $4

The inte­rior of the restau­rant is quite com­fort­able, with a trendy and vin­tage feel. The owner, Brent came and intro­duced him­self. He explained a bit about the back­ground and the décor of the restau­rant — very nice per­son. As I sat down and chat­ted with the group, our server asked us if we would like any drinks. I didn’t feel like alco­hol so I opted for the Gas­town Riot, it was very fruity with rasp­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, and man­goes — didn’t taste the “riot” part of it but it was yummy.

Com­pli­men­tary Bread

The bread was fresh, crusty, and fluffy in the middle.

Catch of the Day (Hal­ibut) — $22

I didn’t get appe­tiz­ers as we were told the entrée por­tions are quite large. For the entrée, I had Catch of the Day which was a Seared Hal­ibut served on top of a bed of roasted pota­toes with a but­tery cayenne sauce. I enjoyed the pota­toes, there were gar­lic and earthy flavours which worked well with the fish. There was also a good crust on them and weren’t too oily. The fish, how­ever, was a lit­tle over-cooked to my lik­ing. I also liked the creamy and but­tery sauce, I would have loved more though.

Coq au Vin — $21

I actu­ally didn’t have the Coq au Vin, a per­son from our table ordered this. Accord­ing to him, the chicken was very tasty though there was a bit too much pota­toes. He fin­ished the whole dish and found it very fill­ing as the por­tion was quite gen­er­ous. We had room for some dessert so we shared two among four of us at the table.

Crois­sant ‘bread pud­ding’ — $7.5

I adored the pre­sen­ta­tion of this dessert. It was a crois­sant and apri­cot bread pud­ding with crème Anglaise, and blue­berry sauce. We all enjoyed this as it was very creamy, and rich. The blue­berry sauce had a very intense colour and flavour, which paired well with the but­tery bread pudding.

Choco­late Ganache Delice — $7.5

The choco­late ganache was quite rich — the tex­ture was almost like a truf­fle. It had a good dark choco­late flavour, def­i­nitely a win­ner for choco­late lovers.

Latte — $3.75

Some­one at our table ordered a decaf latte, it looked pretty and cute with the “Catch 122″ writ­ten on it.

I had an enjoy­able din­ing expe­ri­ence at Catch 122, the food was pre­pared with care and ser­vice was friendly. I espe­cially enjoyed the bread pud­ding — I don’t know if I can re-make that at home but would like to try. I would love to try their lunch menu some time.

Con­clu­sion:

Ambi­ence: 3.5/5
Food: 3.5/5
Ser­vice: 4/5
Value: 3.5/5


Catch 122 Cafe Bistro on Urbanspoon

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