The recent macaron craze in Toronto was only further bolstered by Macaron Day on March 20, 2012, brought to us by those sweet people at La Bamboche, in support of Red Door Family Shelter.  The whole premise behind Macaron Day was that participating patisseries would give out a free macaron to each customer, and 25% of additional macaron purchases would be donated to Red Door.  

It was success.  Over $6 500 was raised for Red Door by customers and the participating 18 patisseries.

I found myself on that day getting a bit of late start, some time after lunch, and stuck in the downtown core.  Closest to me was Petit Thuet on King Street and they were bringing out their final batch of macarons.  I had planned on eating just one.  Instead, I had two: one hazelnut, one chocolate.

I was happy to participate in Macaron Day, enjoying a couple of lovely sweet treats while lending a hand to a worthy charity in my community-at-large, but it also led me down a new path.  I had not, before that point, realized just how crazy this city was about macarons.  To have 18 patisseries involved in this day, and to have most of the macarons sell out soon after lunch — well, certainly, this city loves a good Parisian treat.

A few hours of digging on the internet had me overwhelmed with the number of patisseries offering these little almond-egg white-sugar goodies in Toronto, and in going through blogs and Flickr posts and Facebook status updates, everyone seems to have their own favourite place for procuring the perfect macaron.

You could literally eat macarons for days, just by visiting a number of different patisseries.

Challenge accepted.

I start my mission at the somewhat still new Loblaws at Maple Leaf Gardens, whose bakery is always awash in colour from the cakelets, truffles and doughnuts.  While this is not a traditional patisserie, I concede, its accessibility and the fact that I had grocery shopping to do anyways made it an acceptable starting point.

Heading straight to the macarons, I looked through the offerings to find flavours that were mostly of the fruit variety, and very few flavour-neutral ones.  On tap were vanilla, strawberry, raspberry, lemon, lime, passion fruit, chocolate, blueberry and even anise.

Steering clear of anise, I opt for a lightly yellow lemon macaron and a confusingly blue vanilla one.

Now these macarons were not bad.  They were just okay.  The lemon had a really nice tartness, but there just wasn’t enough curd filling.  The meringue-to-filling ratio was far too high and while I got a nice crunch on first bite, it seemed to go forever until I felt a resistive chewiness.  The vanilla was not much different, although it could have stood to be a little stronger in the vanilla department.

At $2.60 a pop, these were pretty standard macarons for price; however, I thought that the quality was lacking a little.  These are not the macarons you buy for your mother for Mother’s Day.  Perhaps a sugary pick-me-up to get you through your weekend grocery rituals, but these versions are not the kind of little heavenly bites that I’m pretty sure are offered elsewhere in the city.

It’s okay though, because I’ve got a long list of patisseries I’ve yet to visit.

I’ve been in a bit of a cupcake craze recently, after venturing out of my comfort zone and hurtling straight into the cupcake zone with my friend Lianne.  Back in April we made Brain Cupcakes, which were actually red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing, in order to celebrate my friend and her boyfriend matching to a Neurosurgery residency.  Then, last week, we made Placenta Cupcakes, which were actually lemon cupcakes with a lemon butter cream frosting, to commemorate having a weekend free from clinical duties.

And so, with me on vacation for a week, my friends all far away, my husband at work, what else was there for me to do except make cupcakes?  But what flavour…?

I had this weird thought on my recent trip to New York City.  We visited the Museum of Natural History, where I, a self-proclaimed nerd, got to really nerd it up in the Space and Animals and Dinosaur areas of the museum.  But as I stared up a a scale demonstration of our solar system, I started to let my mind wander.  What if planets were made of cake?  Wouldn’t that be cool?  We could eat our own planet…and we could visit other planets that might be different flavours.  And this just set me off.  Stars might be different types fudge.  And asteroids might be cookies!  And so, what if, by some act of pure randomness, an Oreo asteroid rammed into a vanilla cake planet?

Yes, “what if,” indeed.  And thus the idea for Oreo cupcakes was born.  I even took a special trip out of my condo just to buy Oreos (I’d spent a lot of time at home this week, having been totally and completely sucked into The Wire, which, by the way, is an awesome awesome show).

The Oreos were crumbled, and prepared for the collision!

I decided to base the cupcake on a classic vanilla batter…and then just added large chunks of Oreos, since I wanted to be able to see the Oreo chunks when you bite into the cake.

The cupcake liners were each bottomed with a half Oreo…

And the cakes came out beautifully.  The frosting itself was based on a regular vanilla buttercream, just with lots of Oreo crumbs added for colour and flavour.

And dirty-iced, because I have no piping accessories.

Topped with a piece of Oreo for effect, I was so completely happy with the result!  The cross section had just the look I wanted, and the cupcakes tasted just like Oreo cookies.

Mission successful!

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Oreo cupcakes

Adapted from Vanilla Cupcakes (Foodnetwork.ca) 

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

12-15 Oreos (or more…)

Directions:

Cream the butter and sugar together with a mixer until fluffy.  Add the flour, baking powder, salt, milk, eggs and vanilla to the butter mixture and mix well.  

Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.  Split 7 Oreos in half and place half an Oreo, cream side up, at the bottom of each liner.  Break the remaining Oreos into pieces into the cupcake batter, and mix into the batter by hand.  Spoon out the batter into the cupcake liners.

Bake at 375 on the middle rack for 20 minutes or until golden brown and a metal tester stuck into a cupcake can be removed cleanly.

Let sit for 10 minutes, then remove the cupcakes from the pan and let cool on a cookie rack.

———

Oreo Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

2-1/2 cups icing sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbsp plus 1 tsp milk

1-1/2 vanilla extract

4 Oreos, crushed into crumbs

Directions:

Cream butter with an electric mixture.  Add icing sugar and salt and mix again.  Add milk, vanilla and Oreo cookie crumbs and mix well.

When the cupcakes are completely cooled, ice each cupcake with the Oreo buttercream.  Place a quarter of a Oreo on each, for garnish, if desired.

Makes 14 cupcakes.  

Long hiatus, many apologies.  A lot has happened since my last gourmet adventure: I somehow graduated from medical school, got married, bought a condo, moved into that condo, went on a fabulous honeymoon through Italy and Greece (which, notably, I did a very poor job of chronicling online), started my Otolaryngology residency and somehow, somehow, managed to survive my first two months of said residency.  

With all of that, there hasn’t been much time to bake or cook or do anything other than scarf down whatever my wonderful new husband has made for dinner.  A brief note about residency: THIS IS AWFUL.  Awful, awful, awful.  I have no life.  I thought I had no life as a med student…I didn’t realize there was more life left to lose.  But…the one upside is that I periodically get to take vacation and TADA! — that’s what brings me to this week: a week of fantasmic vacationator kitchenation!

I have been wanting to make challah for ages.  My good friend Emily has in the past assured me that it was an easy thing to do, but I’d never ventured into the world of — gasp! — bread from scratch.  Sounded really really hard.

Luckily, I’ve recently discovered this great book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart, and not only is a wonderfully photographed book, with recipes for lots of basics and more exciting breads, it reads like a novel with a whole section at the beginning that’s all about the why’s and how’s of breadmaking.  Reading the beginning of the book got me excited to learn more about bread — and while I have always been the kind of lover that loves to eat breads, it was only when sitting on the spine and between the covers of this book that I thought that I might try being the kind of bread lover that just might like to bake them too.

So today, on vacation, I ventured.  And the venture went well.

(I should note, however guiltily, that perhaps I may never have embarked on this venture without my trusty sidekick, Lola.  [Lola happens to be my KitchenAid mixer. {Lola happens to have a trusty sidekick of her own, Doughy.  <Doughy is a dough hook.>}})

I must admit, being away from the hospital for several days with very little to do, there was an emptiness I felt I had to fill, and so, again rather guiltily, I did a little research to try and learn bit more about challah.  All I knew going into this adventure was that challah is an egg bread, traditionally eaten at Jewish meals, on the Sabbath and on holidays as well.  I was really interested in finding out the origin of challah — I learned that it is symbolic of the manna that fell to the earth to feed the Israelites when they were wandering in the desert…but where I found very little information was on the subject of where it was actually “invented.”  Scouring a few forums, it has been suggested that in fact challah finds its origins in Eastern Europe, sometime around the 15th century.  I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m open to anyone educating.  

Anyway, I suppose all that I really needed to know was that challah is amazing.

And off we went.  So Lola did her thing and the boule of eggy dough was made and left to rise (and RISE it did!) until it got huge and I had the wonderful privilege of punching it back down to size and letting it sit again to grow to insane sizes.

Punched it back down to size again…

…and fashioned the mother of a boule into three cute little baby boules, each of which were rolled out into a cylinder.

And this is where being a girl really helped — the braiding.  Just like braiding the hair of some girl in your class in Grade 3 who happens to have the fortune of sitting directly in front of you while some poor suck of a teacher is trying to give you all the gift of literacy, I began to braid the dough.

But here, ladies and gents, is where the magic really happened.  Again, I was forced to rest my dough (though at this stage, I’ve learned, it’s called “proofing”) and it grew to twice its size.  That’s four times the volume!  And once it was baked…it grew even more.

And this beautiful, steaming, GIANT loaf of bread was born.

Magical, just magical.

And so, I sat and ate bread for dinner.  Just bread.  Just plain, wonderful, amazing, carb-laden bread.

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Challah

Adapted from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart

(I like a sweeter bread, and so adapted this recipe slightly; this recipe is also written for use with a stand mixer; for “by-hand” instructions, please see here)

Ingredients:

4 cups flour, sifted, plus more as needed

3 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1-1/3 tsp instant yeast

4 eggs

1-3/4 cups water

2 tsp vegetable oil

Directions:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine flour, sugar, salt and yeast and whisk together.  

In a separate bowl, combine and beat two eggs plus two egg yolks, reserving the two remaining eggs whites separately, to be used as an egg wash later.  Add vegetable oil and water and whisk the mixture.  Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients in the stand mixer bowl and mix with the paddle attachment until the ingredients form a ball.  Change to the dough hook attachment and knead the bread for 10-15 minutes, adding flour as necessary to end up with a ball of dough that is not sticky, but smooth, and when pulled apart, does not rip, but rather forms a translucent membrane. 

Lightly oil a large mixing bowl and place the ball of dough in the bowl, covering the ball with a thin film of oil.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour.

Punch the dough ball and knead for two minutes, to get rid of the gas bubbles that have formed.  Re-form the dough ball and put back in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Again, let rise for 1 hour.

Separate the dough ball into three parts and degas each; form each into a boule.  Let sit under a damp towel for 10 minutes, then roll each boule into a strand, approximately 3 cm in diameter.  Starting from the middle and working outward on one end then the other, braid the strands.  Be sure to crimp the ends together and fold under the loaf.  Using a pasty brush, wash the braid with the egg wash.  Place the braid on a cookie sheet and cover loosely with plastic wrap.  Let proof (or rest) for 1 hour.

Wash the braid again with the egg wash and bake at 350 deg F for 20 minutes, on the middle rack.  Turn the bread and bake another 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Rest the loaf on a rack for 1 hour before slicing (or ripping apart in anticipation!) and serving.

Makes one (extremely large) loaf.

The Amalfi Coast boasts some of the world’s best fruits and vegetables, and the Caprese Salads here, with fresh buffalo mozzarella (that I swear taste a little like chestnuts) and to-die-for tomatoes, all swimming in fragrant olive oil and garnished with basil, are meals on their own.

Neapolitan-style margarita pizza from famed Da Michele in Naples. This was the most amazing pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life. It was, however, topped by a better pizza five days later — when I returned to Da Michele and Naples and had the marinara pizza. Incredible! I’ll never eat pizza in North America again!

My first taste of a real Italian cappuccino in Rome. It was smooth, strong but without any bite or acidity. It was perfect.

Oh wow, I’m finally back to blogging (well, sort of).  It’s been a really long while since the last cooking post, but you know, things have been busy, and there’s a been a lot going on in life, like, oh, I don’t know, finishing med school and stuff, but now that that’s over, I feel like maybe life can finally go on.  I’m happy to be done, and I won’t be looking back.

Updates, updates.  Well, I matched to where I wanted, ENT in Toronto, so looks like this city is stuck with me for at least five more years, and for that I’m very grateful.  We bought a new condo, and getting ready for that is a little crazy, especially since the closing date is a week and a half before our wedding.  And that’s why I’m only “sort of” back, because I think the blogging is going to be slim from here until after all the wedding stuff is over.

But this week, I needed a break.  Planning a wedding is serious news, and it can definitely get a little crazy and stressful, which makes me a little disappointed at times, because I feel like the whole thing, including the planning, should be enjoyed and relished, although I am certainly more practical than that and realize that that probably isn’t going to be the case.

My lovely friend Em, along with my Mom, threw me a wonderful Tea Party wedding shower last week; one of the generous gifts that I received was a VitaMix blender — the “Rolls Royce of blenders,” as one of the guests described it — and I was super excited about trying it out.  I picked up some butternut squash to make one of my favourite soups in the blender (which turned out wonderfully, by the way, although my brother didn’t like it), but was left with quite a lot of leftover squash, it being a huge mofo of a vegetable.

That’s when I stumbled upon Chadian peanut and squash stew, which sounded super interesting.  I have to admit, I barely know where Chad is, but I thought that this would lend a perfect segue to learning more about this Central African country, whilst using up the leftover butternut.  Turns out that this is a fairly traditional dish, but usually the squash that is used is “summer squash.”  Which led me to the next research question.

A quick Googling of “summer squash” did not prove too useful; I learned that zucchini (both the green and yellow varieties) are summer squash, but beyond that, I was hard-pressed to find concrete names of these types of squash.  In the end, it seems as though butternut squash is probably not a summer squash, but a winter squash, given its thick, inedible skin, which is in contrast to the soft edible skin characteristic of summer squash.  Ah well, can’t win ‘em all.  Especially since I couldn’t even figure out if zucchini was native to Chad.  So I just ploughed ahead and use the squash I had on hand.

In my learning about Chad and the Central African diet, I quickly found out that okra was a staple — a factoid which excited to me to insuppressible levels.  I had recently done an elective in Nutrition with one of the world’s foremost nutrition experts, and he had spent an hour expounding the incredible qualities of okra (it’s a soluble fibre, akin to that expensive psyllium stuff we all like to buy), and so, when I realized that I had the opportunity to incorporate it, though informally, into this meal, I jumped on the chance.  I love okra.  And it’s such a photogenic food, those lean-looking pods…

Anyways, all in all, this was a pretty simple dish, apart from the fact that since peanuts are used in it, one has to spend the prep time shelling the peanuts, which isn’t that fun — although, if you’re like me, you’ll pick a television show to watch while husking (I picked Cycle 16 of America’s Next Top Model).

The stew turned out pretty good, although if I were to make it again, I would probably spend more time crushing the peanuts into finer pieces; I had left them large enough to get stuck in your teeth by chewing.

The okra side-dish was great too, and I modeled it after another Chad favourite, dharaba, which is sort of like a vegetable stir-fry with okra and tomatoes.

So that was that.  A nice little return to the international cooking world after a long hiatus.  Unfortunately, it will probably be a while until my next chef-ination, but between now and then, rest assured that there will be posting…especially since we have a trip to both Italy and Greece coming up.

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Peanut and Squash Stew

Adapted from The Congo Cookbook

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

2 lbs summer squash or zucchini, cut into cubes or slices

3 cups of shelled roasted peanuts, crushed coarsely

Salt

1 tsp brown sugar

1/2 cup water

Directions:

Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan over medium-high heat and add squash when hot.  Cook squash until tender (this length of time is variable depending on the type of squash — zucchini cooks very quickly, whereas other types of squash may need as long as 10 or 15 minutes).  Mash 1/3 of the cooked squash directly in the pan.

Add the peanuts and sugar, as well as salt (to taste) to the pan, and mix well.  Add the water to the pan, and mix in the mashed squash to thicken the liquid.  Simmer for 5 minutes

Serve with a side of daraba and boiled sweet potatoes.

Makes 4 servings.

Many apologies for the lack of posting, but things have been crazy, and unfortunately, the food in my life has been less than varied recently.  However, hopefully things will return to great-tasting-goodness.  Updates on life to come with this week’s cooking dish (and I promise it’s gonna happen).

To celebrate the end of medical school, Lianne, Pam and I headed out to Greek Town to indulge in some lunch, prior to having some grooming done at the spa. A little restaurant called Astoria @ Pape + Danforth, had been recommended to me by a very helpful and friendly Greek lady at a nearby lingerie store from which I had recently bought my wedding undergarments.

Great little place, and the cheese saganaki was to die for.  The man who runs the restaurant though, is definitely the star — he yells a hearty “Opa!” as he pours brandy on the cheese and lights it on fire, and then checks back with you every 5 minutes to make sure that the food is too your liking, but not in an annoying I-want-a-tip way, more like a loving grandfatherly way.

Portions are HUGE.  I had the gyro “small dinner,” which was enough food to feed a coyote.  Definitely will go back.  Loved it.

Sunday Dinner became Sunday Lunch today when we visited the popular Korean restaurant Song Cook @ Yonge + Steeles.  Recommended to me by a good friend of mine (who actually hails from Korea, speaks Korean fluently, and yes, is that same friend whose mother is an amazing Korean cook), I was certainly excited about trying the gastronomic fare at this place just north of New Korea Town — which also boasts a heated-floor area where meals can be served in a traditional style, with you and your companions sitting on the floor.  We sat at a table, though, due to the wait.

(As an aside, did you know that the word “companion” comes from com- which means “with” and pan- which means “bread?”  Companions are, therefore, the people with whom you share bread.  I think that’s really nice.)

Anyways, we decided to go with Chef’s Meal D, since the first thing listed on this set meal was the Kalbi, which had come highly recommended by my friend, and at any rate, I do love me some beef.

The food was impressive.  Portions were generous, flavours were full, and my goodness, the Kalbi was nothing short of perfection: fall-off-the-bone tender, meaty, swimming in a salty-sweet sauce that complimented but never overpowered the innate taste of the meat.

I have to admit, the Nu Roung Ji Tang was a bit of a mystery to me.  A soup arrived in a big serving bowl, accompanied by a plate of what looked like rice krispies, but with no serving ladle or individual bowls.  Once we had flagged down the wonderful waitstaff, who righted the lack of dishware and explained the the krispy things were to be dumped into the soup and served, it turned out great.  A mildly flavoured thick soup, the krispies were a really nice crunchy complimentary texture.

The Jaeng Ban Ja Jang (noodles) were also great — a very slight mushroom flavour (which was fine for me, a fungus-hater) over perfect house-made noodles that were neither too hard nor too soft, and just the perfect amount of chewy.

Pal Bo Chae, the stir-fried vegetables and seafood in spicy sauce was slightly disappointing: I love my Korean food fiery, but it seemed to be fairly toned down in this dish.  Although the colours were beautiful, and the sauce looked spicy, there could have been far more in the way of the flavours that I expect of Korean food.

Tang Su Yuk was good — a nice spin on sweet and sour chicken.  VEEEERY sour though, and it made me salivate quite a lot on the chew.

Sorry for the long restaurant post — but I promised a full review for my recommending friend, who, today, definitely deserves a shout-out (Hi Ed!) after letting me know about this place, which I will certainly be visiting again in the future, but next time, I’ll eat sitting on the floor.

My first foray into omakase sushi.  I went with my regular Sunday Dinner group to Ippai @ Woodbine + Hwy 7 because I had heard good things about the omakase there.  

As an aside, omakase describes a meal that is up to the chef.  In other words, you basically leave your meal to the hands of the sushi chef.  Fair enough, this wasn’t exactly real omakase, in that it wasn’t entirely up to the chef (we chose which type of fish we wanted to eat), but we did only order what was available fresh (making it sort of omakase).

It was great — there have only been a few times when I’ve had the privilege of eating fresh sushi (in other words, sushi from something that was alive a few minutes ago, rather than something dead and frozen).  Actually, maybe it’s only been once before…in Chicago…but anyways, doesn’t matter — I got to do it on Family Day with 11 of my good friends. 

Good food, good company.  Good weekend.