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.

Feel good food

I realized tonight that making a good meal, or at least one that I enjoy eating, makes me feel good about myself. So tonight's dinner was feel good food. I wll say that there's nothing bad about a meal that starts with this:

That is a bowl of delicious spices and chopped parsley that got turned into some beautiful beef kebabs that we had with a bit of rice, some Bick's pickles and some pickled beets that I whipped together just before Christmas. Here's the recipe. The flavours really hit the spot with me.

Ground beef kebabs

• 1 pound of ground beef (or lamb if you're feeling so inclined)
• 2/3 cup of chopped parsley
• 1 small onion finely chopped
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp chili powder

Get 6 to 8 skewers. If you're using bamboo ones, soak them in water. Basically put all the ingredients together in bowl and mix them up making sure the parsley and onion is all evenly distributed.  Then make 6 to 8 evenly sized balls. Go fire up the bbq. Take each ball roll it into a bit of a cylinder then put a skewer through it. Mold the meat onto the skewer by squeezing it a bit. Pop them on a med-heat bbq and cook for about 12 minutes turning them occasionally.

Take 'em off and serve right away with rice, pickles, and even some yogurt dip if you like.

La Casa de las Sirenas

There are still a few leftovers from the trip to Mexico . . . one of which was our dinner at La Casa de las Sirenas, which was the swankiest place we ate while in the capital. There had been plans to go to Puyol, considered one of the top spots in Mexico City but the size and madness of the city bested us and we could not get ourselves back to that part of town without a bit more of a Herculean effort than I wanted to put into having a meal. La Casa de las Sirenas is in the central historical district just off the main square behind the cathedral, which was all very close to where we were staying and so quite convenient. The food was also great.

You have to hike up quite a few rounds of stairs because while there is a bar on the ground floor, the restaurant seating is three stories up with most of the tables on a gorgeous patio overlooking the whole scene of central Mexico City below you.

It serves traditional Mexican food but also new twists on the old classics. My first dish was the very rich La Cazuelita de Tuétanos - basically marrow in a sauce with green chiles and served with fresh onions, fresh chiles, limes, and homemade tortillas. I ordered it in large part because I wanted some food served in the little clay cazuelita. Enjoyed it a great deal but this is a bit of a once in a lifetime dish it is so rich.

J ordered the Chilitos de la Casa, essentially stuffed chipotle peppers served with a creamy walnut sauce.

My main course of three different crepes stuffed with squash blossoms, meat, and chicken and smothered in some lovely creamy cheesy sauce does not make for a good photo but it did make for some good eats. Again, not the lightest of meals and it's a good thing we walked around for many hours this day.


The steak J ordered was absolutely fantastic - tender, flavourful - and served with fresh tortillas, grilled cheese wedges, the fantastic grilled whole small onions that were everywhere, cactus, and of course a homemade fiery chile salsa. Seemingly a safe choice but incredibly tasty.

It was all finished off with a shared piece of cheesecake that was made from a local cheese that I cannot recall offhand. Lovely blackberries and another fantastic Mexican meal in the belly!!

More on the schnitzel front

So there's this place Schintzel Queen on the somewhat sketchy corner of Sherbourne and Queen streets in downtown Toronto. I'm always intrigued by places that seem to have been around forever and are kind of a bit rundown and homely looking from the outside. So I've always wanted to stop in and give the schnitzel there a try. Problem is it's not really open for anything but lunch during the week, which when it's at the edge of sketch downtown and you work 50kms away, it's not so easy. Well today I was working from home and my planned lunch got cancelled. I decided to grab the scooter and head down the few blocks and give it a try.

The menu consists of series of different schnitzel sandwiches (traditional and chicken) with various kinds of toppings including the basic mayo, tomato, and lettuce to cheese, roasted onions, and more. You can also just grab a piece of schnitzel or have a dinner that includes sauerkraut and potato salad. Well I just went for the basic sandwich but substituted mustard for mayo, as I'm not too keen on the may-o-naise. It's a big sarnie, let me just say.

It comes on a triangular multi-grain bun. I decided that there really was no need for the bun. It was just too much. So I had a stripped-down version of the schnitzel, tomato, and dijon mustard. It was actually very delicious. The schnitzel was light and crispy and not deep fried like at the last place where we had it. Usually I like to have lots of lemon juice squeezed on the meat but it was different and quite tasty with the mustard. Next time I'll try the potato salad because I've heard good things about it.

I had mine to go but there is a counter in the tiny little mom-and-pop shop where a few people can sit. I understand it gets quite crazy in there at lunchtime. I think when I arrived today, they'd just had a run of customers as the owners seems quite out of breath! But they were very pleasant and it homey inside and I liked it! You just have to get over the location and head in.

The stuffing was excellent

I had bought the ingredients to try another Rick Bayless recipe: Ancho chiles stuffed with potato and chorizo with escabeche, which in this case is sort of like a quick sweet and sour pickle sauce. Well it sounded interesting and gave the opportunity to try some different techniques and flavours. I wouldn't say it was the most successful ever but I did learn something, so all good.

The escabeche was basically frying up some carrots, adding ground allspice, garlic, cider vinegar, piloncillo (unrefined Mexican sugar), water and onions. You get a sweet-tart sauce and into it let the ancho chiles sit and rehydrate for a while. Then cook up some potatoes and chorizo, split and clean the rehydrated chiles, then stuff them with the potato-chorizo mixture.

It is actually an appetizer but I made it as the main so we had a few each instead of just one and served it with salad and corn. Pretty good but not the best ever. I think there were a couple of reasons: 1. the ancho chiles I had were of varying quality. Some were really wrinkled and didn't soften up evenly, some had really thin skin and tore too easily, etc. etc. So every one was totally different. 2. The escabeche was okay - very tart and sweet - but I was not sure whether to serve it cold or warm. I didn't really want cold liquid on my dinner so heated it before serving.

But I try some new techniques: softening the dried chiles on a hot griddle, splitting and stuffing them, etc. And the potato and chorizo stuffing was really easy and can be translated into other things in the future for sure.

Pot roast under pressure

I may have mentioned how much I adore the pressure cooking. Using it more, I'm getting used to how it works, how much liquid etc is needed. Pressure cookers are not really the cool kids of the kitchen, so there's not a tremendous number of recipes available for them out there. The recipe book that came with it is mostly Indian curries, which I like but . . . Ours is also pretty small. The combo makes it a bit complicated to figure out how to make things. But it's kind of fun to try.

Anyway with all that preamble, I'd been wanting to have some pot roast so pot roast it was. I cobbled together something quite delicious from a bunch of different sources that accomplished what some might consider the perfect Sunday dinner . . . pot roast in a mushroom wine sauce with potatoes and carrots. All cooked in about an hour!


A thing of beauty really, for the tummy anyway.

A good 'ole Jewish breakfast

Today we went to Caplansky's deli for breakfast. We'd been for lunch with friends a few weeks ago and had some great smoked meat and tongue sandwiches. The breakfasts looked good too, so since we were up and at 'em early today, off we went. J also needed to get her strength up for her 10K tomorrow (so you know, any excuse!)
I had the smoked meat hash. I love corned beef hash and I will say it sure comes in many varieties of not good. This one was great! They use all the leftover bits from making sandwiches and then fry it up with some potato sticks and herbs. Add fried eggs, challah toast and presto. I ate it with some of the delicious brown mustard - one of may varieties of mustard on the table - and it was heavenly.

This pic was taken with my new Sony Ericsson Xperia Android phone, which has an 8MP camera. Not bad for a phone. It's my first personal smartphone and it rocks (a recently acquired BlackBerry is for work and I don't really want to carry work e-mail around with me all the time so bit the bullet and got this groovy tunes phone!)

J. had the fried salami and scrambled egg breakfast. It was also very delicious - with a lot of crispy fries! Definitely will go back again when looking for a particularly hearty breakfast. It's not an every week kind of deal. The heart would not go on, if you know what I'm saying.

Now on to something completely different.

Today is a new experiment with the old HOT blog. I am going to leave the sunny shores of South Africa and start blogging about some things that have happened since I've been home (which we've been home now for TWO months!). Also, this is my first post from new netbook. I am giving the netbook a go, I bought a pretty solid one (I think) from tigerdirect.ca in order to have a computer that is even more portable than my mac (which is about to go into the shop) and that is lighter and easier to carry around with me. So far, so good, but I haven't made a blogpost yet using it and the photo editor program I downloaded, so bear with me while I get used to a) blogging from windows and b) blogging from my teensy 8.9 inch netbook. DISCLAIMER OVER AND OUT!

When we returned from vacation, we both had a craving for Greek food. The weather was crap and we didn't want to go out so we found a place that delivers and made a big order. Kalyvia is a Greek restaurant on the Danforth that also has pizza. We've been there a few times now because they are one of the restaurants in our coupon book (we're such grannies) and the food is really solid. We'd never done delivery before so we gave it a go.

First up... massive Greek salads...


This came with the dinner and we each got one this size. It looks from the photo like the small styro container, but it's not at all. The Greek salad is good, really astringenty with lots of lemon and oregano. The feta they use is really nice and creamy and not too salty.

I ordered the beef kebab which comes with rice and potatoes.

Lots of meat, really nice rice with mushrooms, and the most amazing potatoes. I don't know how they cook theirs, but they have so much amazing flavour and they are unbelievably soft and fluffy. Really tops.

I also ordered a side of the gigantes, which is probably my favorite Greek menu item...


Oh yeah. These were amazing. It's crazy how much I crave these beans!!! They are tender to eat, with a rich tomato and onion sauce. I could eat rice and these beans for dinner every night of the week and not be at all sad.

All in all it was a very good dinner. We couldn't eat all the food that was delivered, so we made little lunch packages for the next day and felt pretty smug about the whole affair! If you are in Toronto, give it a try. We've eaten in the restaurant a few times and it's always got people in it and the food is solid. And if you've had the pizza, send me an email and let me know how it is.

Nothing Beats a Braai at Home.

Going out to dinner is a great way to spend an evening. Having a braai at home? Even better!

S and L treated us to a big braai at their house. (A braai (or braii) is a barbeque.) Off we went to the Fruit and Veg City (where I ate the previously mentioned boerie roll). We bought amazing ostrich sausage and boerwoers. S and L already had a beef filet in the freezer. G wanted to make some salads, so she made a delicious tomato and onion salad, a zuke salad, and a lovely potato salad!

For some reason, I only took a photo of the tomato salad... too many delicious smells were distracting me...


L and S's nanny made G a special treat... sudza! Sudza is like polenta, only a bit stodgier.


It was lovely!

S made a delicious treat... jalapeno's stuffed with feta cheese and grilled on the braai. Oh my. They were soooo tasty. It's something we can definitely make when we have a bbq this year. And the smell of the meat cooking on the braai was absolutely fantastic.


Oh yeah! Smokey meaty goodness.

And it all came together nicely...


Yeah. That was an absolutely delicious meal. I really enjoyed having all the different meats and tastes, and the excellent company! G's family was so generous to us, I don't know how we'll ever make it up to them when they visit here!