Best meals (out) of 2013

As we head into 2014 with great enthusiasm, let's look back at some of the best meals we had in 2013. It was a year filled with trials and tribulations, no doubt, but also some really great food.

 Locanda Verde, New York City

We went during Legal Tech in February with some work friends. Jennifer came down from T.O. to spend a couple of days.We tried practically everything on the menu.  Meatballs so good you couldn't even believe it. Pasta fantastic. Atmosphere was super hip (a bit overwhelming for me, but I managed). Not very poetic, this is why I'm not a restaurant reviewer.

Topolopambo, Chicago

Rick Bayliss has been the inspiration for my Mexican cooking fetish. From him I have learned so much about flavours and textures as well as styles of cooking. Have wanted to eat at one of his restaurants for years and this year on my birthday, we did it.  The service was absolutely spectacular and as I'd been sick all day, the gentle touch went a long way with me. We had the tasting menu (which changes every few months) but the flavours, combinations, and textures of the beautifully presented food absolutely lived up to expectation. We will be going back (and here's the post about that adventure).

East Indies, Eighth Bastion Hotel, Cochin, India

The food during our trip to India got better every day. Eating in the state of Kerala in the south provided new tastes and adventures. The seafood, especially the giant blue prawns, was prepared simply and deliciously. It proved to me, that yes, I could eat Indian food every day. On our last day in India we went to East Indies in Cochin. The food was Dutch-Indian fusion providing a modern and artistic twist on the local cuisine. Just absolutely fantastic and a great way to end our adventure.

 

Taqueria El Farolito, San Francisco

I am all about the high-end restaurants but give me a dive with cheap food and off-the-charts delicious food, and nothing makes me happier. I was in San Francisco for a conference and wanted to have a Mission Burrito. There is much debate over the best burrito in SF but I landed on El Farolito. Outstanding. I had a tongue/steak burrito (no beans, sadly) with a horchata. Sat with a really interesting young chef who was off to see a concert with some friends. Enjoyed the whole experience of being human that night.

Now don't think that we didn't also have some great food at home in Toronto. We sure did!

Hopgoods Foodliner 

This was Jennifer's choice for her birthday. A bit of Atlantic Canada in west end Toronto. Go there, it's fun. Try the crab dip with triscuits. Also the Halifax Donairs (with sweet sauce), Digby scallops, and the Cape Breton snow crab (served cold on a tower with ice). All dishes made for sharing, so go with lots of people as you'll want to try many things and having pals with you means you won't leave so full you don't know what to do with yourself!  Again, another place with great service, which made the evening despite the cranky pants fella at the table next to us. 

Union

I have a great fondness for the charcuterie and it's quite the rage all over the place these days. So I have had quite a few, some good some not so great. Union's was probably the best I had this year. All made in-house (including the smoked meats). Definitely enough for a meal - hearty and delicious. Lots of comfort food and great drinks in this very small restaurant.

The Chase

I have a lot of business lunches and the food is often expensive and generally pretty decent. I'm not one to hop on the bus of trendy and "it" places (which this apparently is) but I am going to say that I had one of the best lunches I've ever had here. As a starter I had the avocado stuffed with a shrimp salad - who knew you could slice avocado so beautifully thin?! My main was scallops with quinoa, a pea puree and a soft poached egg. I can't describe the sweet, velvety deliciousness of this emerald green dish. I can taste it now just writing about it. I am actually afraid to go back because I don't believe it'll ever be that good again and who needs the disappointment.

 

Richmond Station

This downtown spot hidden away beside the ramp to the Bay Adelaide parking garage. Perhaps J's favourite of the year. Top choices: the suprisingly delicious quinoa salad and the best halibut in town. We were repeat offenders here (although not as frequent as our pal Sarah!).  

Of course, lot of great food made at home but that's another story altogether. We didn't actually eat out as much, or at least eat out at "fancy" places, as in past years. But usually we ended up at totally worthwhile places. There are always lots of great places to discover in Toronto, and we will continue our urban adventuring in 2014. Happy New Year.

Butter chilies . . . I've never heard of them

G again at the keypad . . .

Tonight, and some other nights for inexplicable reasons, I felt the need to make a selection of veg curries for dinner. Unlike making a meat curry, I feel you can't just have one kind so if it's going to be veg, there's gotta be a selection. So it ends up being a bit of a madhouse in the kitchen and not always a roaring success.  The least successful part of this evening was the mushroom/pea/potato curry. I used pre-prepared curry powder and well it just ain't that good and there was not any thickness to the sauce. Sprinkled with some raita it was alright but I think I'm going to give the mushroom curries a pass from now on as I can't seem to get it right.

Second I made some butter paneer. I will admit it was pre-packaged sauce here too (I did make it all in a hour after getting home late!) and it was pretty good. The sauce was Mother's brand in a foil packet if you happen upon it. I bought it at Ambal Trading on Parliament St., where I get most of my south Asian goodies, including the roti/paratha and fresh paneer. There's also a fresh fish market in the back but I've not ever tried anything from there as I'm not so bold on the fish front.

But in my daily chili quest, I had to do something with the latest chili find I made last week at Ambal: butter chilies. Feast your eyes on these white babies.

And so tonight's effort was a red lentil dal that came out pretty terrific in the end. Here's my recipe - and it makes about 4 servings.

1 cup red lentils

3 cups water

3 dried butter chilies, chopped finely

1 small onion chopped finely

1 1/2 tbsp chopped ginger

3 tbsp oil

2 cloves chopped garlic

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp cumin whole

3 tsp garam masala

1 1/2 tsp salt

Put the lentils and water on to boil for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, prepare all the other ingredients.

Add oil to a small frying pan and once hot add the onions and sautee for about 5 or 6 minutes. Add cumin and chilies and fry for a minute or so. Then add the garlic, ginger, garam masala and tumeric and fry for a few more minutes. You should have a nice soft, oily spice mixture.

Once the lentils are soft and cooked, turn off the heat, stir in the onion and spice mixture and add salt to taste.  Let is sit for a few minutes for all the flavours to get jiggy with each other and then serve and enjoy.

Were we talking about chicken?

Honestly, I could eat chicken three meals a day every single day. I absolutely love it. It cannot be a coincidence that my two favorite Weight Watcher frozen dinners are the chicken quesadillas and the chicken fajita pizza (which I had for lunch three times last week!!!). I know G thinks I am crazy because of the sheer frequency of chicken breast recipes in this house, but she's slowly coming to embrace it...

For instance. While away visiting my family, G made some Jamaican goat curry, which she posted about right here on this very blog. She had LOTS of the curry mix leftover so one evening for dinner, she made a chicken curry with the Jamaican curry sauce...


She threw in some carrot and potato (because it just makes ya happy) and served it over rice. DELICIOUS! It was a really different tasting curry from the Indian and Sri Lankan curries we normally eat, milder in some respects, but with a back kick that was delicious. (And G rocks because while she made the curry sauce, she also figured out the weight watcher points in the recipe builder! It's low point!)

I highly recommend this and you should run out and make G's recipe and make some of your fave curry with it... veg, chicken, beef, you name it. It's yours. Go, I'll be here when you get back! :)

While J is away G will play

J is in OK so G is guest posting!

From my research, I see that Jamaican goat curry is a special dish that is made for the holidays. Well being neither Jamaican nor celebrating the Yuletide, I thought I'd give it a go.

The goat meat has been in the freezer since the end of our meat CSA a few months ago. J is not keen to eat it, so I thought I'd make some goat dishes while she was in OK visiting her family for the holidays. So goat curry it is.

Note: You need to start this process the night before!

First of all, I realized that Jamaican curry powder is not the same as regular Indian or the high-test Sri Lankan stuff we have in the cupboard, so I had to make my own. Happy to report that I had all the ingredients on hand so no troubles putting together this brew late at night. The main difference is that Jamaican curry powder has allspice (or pimento as it's called on the island). This is a mild one because you add scotch bonnets to the sauce later for heat. So I gathered all the indredients:

• 2 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp fenugreek
• 1 tbsp poppy seeds
• 1 tbsp anise/fennel seeds
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp allspice seeds
• 1/2 tbsp mustard seeds
  
• 1 tsp ground ginger
  
• 2 tbsp ground tumeric

Toast all the seeds in a dry frying pan.


Let them cool, then grind them in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. Add the ground tumeric and ginger and stir it up so you have a nice fine powder.

The next step is to create the marinade. Take the following ingredients, cut them up and throw them in a blender.

• 2 onions
• 2 green onions
• 2 scotch bonnet peppers (or more if you're feeling extra bold)
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp of chopped fresh ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 1/2 cup of water
  

Waz it all up. Add more water if you need it to make a nice paste. Then add 2 tbsp of the curry powder and stir it all up nicely together.

Now add 2 lbs of goat meat to the marinade. Ours had no bones, which was lovely for eating, but generally it actually tastes better if you cook it with meat on the bone. I put it all in a baggie and got the marinade all over the meat and then slapped it in the fridge overnight.


Next day when you're ready to cook it up. Take the meat out of the fridge and scrape off the marinade. Put it in a bowl and save for later.

Then put some oil in a large frying pan and brown the meat.

Once it's good and brown add the marinade, 1/2 lb of chopped up carrots and 1/2 lb of chopped up potatoes (use WHITE potatoes as they don't fall apart when you cook them for hours on end).


Cover the whole lovely concoction with water and simmer for 1.5 hours or until the meat is tender. Add more water if you need it as you go along. I added it a few times so the lovely sauce didn't stick to the bottom.

It's okay to make this well ahead of time. It gets more delicious as it sits. I made it in the morning (and the whole house smelled very fragrant all day!) and ate it with my dad that night. Went out and bought some roti from the local Jamaican restaurant because even though I'm energetic in the kitchen, making the breads does not appeal to me. The dude behind the counter also pointed out that making the roti would probably have taken longer than making the curry, so I was glad not to have gone down that road!

So I served it up with roti, some chopped up banana (weird you say, but the bit of sweet is delicious with curries), rice and peas, and some raita (yogurt, chopped up carrot, onion, tomato, salt, pinch of garam masala). It may not be pretty but it was DELICIOUS!!!

If It's Good Enough for Nelson Mandela...

When I was in Cape Town, I bought a cookbook called Zhoozsh! Cooking with Jeremy and Jacqui Mansfield. G's cousin Debra thought that I might like it as he is a radio personality there with good cooking technique. So I bought it and have greatly enjoyed reading it.

For dinner tonight, I really wanted to have curry. Since I am in the countdown of a friend's wedding and the need to fit into the lovely dress I just bought, we are trying to eat more healthfully at home. As such, we started looking for a chicken curry recipe that would allow us to use the food that is currently in the house.

Enter Zhoozsh. I looked in it and found a delicious recipe that I became hell-bent on making, Madiba's Chicken Curry. For those who don't know (and I didn't), in South Africa Nelson Mandela is known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders in Mandela's clan. This recipe is one that Jeremy Mansfield made for Madiba at his home in Houghton (according to the cookbook). I made it and we served it along with a beetroot curry that G made. YUM!


Yummmmmmy!!!!!!!!!!! This was amazing!!! My version turned out beautifully, though I had to make a full adaptations in order to use what was in the house. It went something like this:

Jennifer's Take on Madiba's Chicken Curry
serves 4
3/4 lb of boneless chicken pieces (white and dark meat -- we get 1/2 chickens that are enormous from a local farm that we deboned and used for this)
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp gluten-free all-purpose flour
1 tbsp tumeric
1 large chopped onion
3 small dried chili's crushed
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp crushed garlic
2 tsp crushed ginger
2 tsp garam masala (g makes her own)
1 regular tin of diced tomatoes (410 g)
100 ml of boiling water
1/2 g-free chicken bouillon cube
Salt and Pepper as you go

1. Mix the salt, flour, and turmeric in a baggie and add the chicken cut into pieces. Shake to coat.

2. Brown in a large pan with a lid and remove.

3. Take the garlic, ginger, cumin, chili, and garam masala and smash together in a mortar and pestle. Add to the pan that you cooked the chicken in, adding more oil if necessary.

4. Add the can of tomatoes, the hot water, and the chicken bouillon. Bring to a boil. Add the chicken.

5. Simmer for approximately 45 minutes, covered, with the lid off for the last 15 or so minutes. Serve with rice.

And G made up the beetroot curry recipe because she wanted to recreate the one that they make at Rashnaa. It was fantastic! She has graciously allowed me to print the recipe here for you...

G's Beetroot Curry
Serves 4

6 small or med beets
100 ml of coconut milk
1 onion chopped
2 tbsp oil
1 tsp curry powder (more or less depending on how hot you want it or how hot your curry powder is)
1 tomato chopped
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
juice of one lime
1 tbsp chopped ginger
salt to taste

1. Cut beets in half so all piees are roughly the same size.

2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

3. Put beets in the foil with enough oil to cover with a pinch of cumin seeds and a smattering of whole coriander seeds. Roast in foil for 40 minutes until soft but not totally cooked. Let cool. Peel them.

4. Slice the cooked beets so that each half gives you 5 or so pieces.

5. Heat oil in medium pot and add onion. Cook to translucent.

6. Add curry powder, garlic, ginger and fry together.

7. Add mustard seed and fry until popping then add the tomato and fry until mushy.

8. Add beets and the coconut milk, then stir in the lime juice and salt. Cook for 15 or so minutes.

9. ENJOY!

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. If you try either, let me know. And if you are able to get your hands on the Zhoozsh cookbook, I would highly recommend that you do! There are tons of great recipes, lots of cool stories, and a recipe for on of G's favorite foods Sadza and Nyama.