Bloor Street Market is the new Loblaws store that arised from the ashes of the Valu-Mart that was below the Manulife building at Bay and Bloor. The new store design does not really change the layout, but the store has gotten a fresh fascade with some stone facing, and new cabinets and counters. The butcher and fishmonger areas are much more approachable and there’s a large focus on convience foods (pre-cooked foods at the deli, salad bar, prepackaged ready-to-heat meals.
There’s quite a concentration of grocery stores on Bloor. With the new Market by Longo’s , a larger Rabba’s, the exclusive Pusateri’s and Whole Foods all a block away from this location. At least I have a lot of choices. What I like is that these are grocery stores, not supermarkets. There is no pharmacist, there is no 1 hour photo lab, no consumer hard goods – pure grocery. If they can concentrate on good, fresh product, they may get a lot of loyal customers who prefer to walk than drive to get groceries.
I picked up this cookbook, Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking, last week. I’m not normally one to own cookbooks, I find the web so much easier to find what I’m looking for. However when you’re trying to discover a new food culture, the web comes up short. I discovered lots of different dishes and variations on dishes in this book. It’s probably the best cookbook I’ve seen in ages. Luckily T&T has most of the ingredients I need for the recipes.
Harumi is well known in Japan and her first cookbook won “Best Cookbook in the World” after it’s publishing. Quite a feat for a home cook. “Home Cooking” is her second book, with three published so far.
Koko Share Bar opened in Yorkville a few weeks ago. The reviews have been positive and I put it on my list of places to try. On a random afternoon I poked my head in and tried lunch at the new restaurant. The lunch menu differs from their dinner menu but I was offered both to take a look at. I tried a beef tenderloin sushi roll and the Maguro role of tuna and ‘kimchee’. The dishes shortly arrived and both were quite tasty. Both sets of rolls surprised me by being quite bite-sized – I’ve found many new sushi places make very complex rolls with so many ingredients it makes the rolls almost too big to eat.
The beef tenderloin roll surprised me by it’s freshness. By using an outer layer of beef and a very thin layer of rice, they allow the veggies like the garlic stem to come through when eating. It tasted crisp like a salad. The Maguro roll had a tiny star shap of okra on top, I don’t recall okra being part of Korean or Japanese cuisine, but it looked great. This reminded me of a “spicy tuna” roll but it got it’s spiciness from the kimchi and not from a mayo-hotsauce concoction.
The quiet lunchtime hour allowed me to talk with the owner about many of the dishes. Each one is carefully crafted and you can tell he put a lot of thought into creating some unique dishes – taking a bit of Japan and Korea in each dish. I was very happy with my meal at Koko and will be back.
(this post is also titled, why I must justify purchasing this knife)
Butchering your own meat from a primal cut is not new. In fact it’s done in small towns with local butchers for quite some time. Toronto chef Ryan Donovan has started having demostrations of how to do it and this hopefully starts a trend. Already you can buy whole loins of beef from Costco to make your own steaks, this just allows even more freedom.
Kitchen Confidential is the book that made Anthony Bourdain famous. The TV host of food and travel show, “No Reservations” got his start in the self-described “dark underbelly” of New York’s restaurant kitchens. It’s a very raw look at the life of a chef and insightful look at the man on TV.
The book, now almost 10 years old, gives a look into a much younger and much bolder Tony Bourdain. It’s entertaining and filled with colorful stories. If it was a movie it would probably be rated ‘R’.
On a different note, I learned of an episode of No Reservations that I have yet to see on TV. It was an episode filmed about their trip to Beirut. On the second day of the trip, the 2006 Lebanon War broke out and what started as a food documentary turned into human drama. The episode focuses much on what it was like being in the middle a war in the relatively safety of their hotel/safehouse while waiting to be evacuated by the US Government. It was probably the best episode of the series – and won an Emmy.
I find myself contemplating starting a food blog more and more. It would let me combine my food photography with blogging, and provide some fuel to a cookbook I’ve thought of creating. While browsing various food blogs, i stumbled upon Epicute, a great food website with some fantastic photography. Check it out.
Rasa Malaysia is a food blog that my Dad mentioned to me. It features great recipes from lots of different Asian cultures and LOTS of great food photography.
It features sections for Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Filipino and Nyona cuisine. One absent member are Korean recipes but given the breadth that they cover it’s a forgiveable oversight. Especially since I’ve already discovered Maangchi.
Both the recipes and photography on the site are top notch. I definitely need to start working on my own cookbook!
The list of 150 restaurants participating in this year’s Summerlicious has been posted on the City of Toronto website. Reservations open on June 18th but Amex cardholders can start booking on the 16th and 17th.
I made this stir fry today quickly and with a bunch of stuff that was in the fridge, however it came out quite nice. The secret was lots of “rooster” sauce to make it extra spicy.
Since it was thrown together I’ll just put down the quick recipe instead of writing the full setup. Beef was sliced thinly on the biased and marinated with soy sauce and sesame oil. After stir frying I added all the vegetables that were cut bite size: bok choy, carrots, celery plus garlic and green onion for taste. Added udon noodles instead of normal thick-cut shanghai noodles because they were in the fridge. Finished with soy sauce and “rooster” sauce.
Kitchen Confidential
Rasa Malaysia
Entries (RSS)