Showing posts with label eye eat. Show all posts

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Eye Eat 20 +Etc.



If there's something I learned from yesterday, salmon in burgers = pure genius. I finally got to see one of my closest high school friends K, and treated to her to a (really)late birthday lunch since I couldn't make to her actual birthday. We headed to a lovely restaurant near the water, and feasted on delicious burgers - an Angus beef burger for her, a salmon burger for me.

 Honesty time, I usually don't eat salmon burgers. Ever. Mainly because I'm a bit of a burger purist - beef only please (exception: veggie burgers). But man, that salmon burger was SO GOOD - it consisted of a  juicy grilled piece of salmon with pickled vegetables and pea tendrils, tartar sauce, nestled in a toasted kaiser bun. I was worried that the pickled vegetables would make the burger sour, but it added a nice tangy touch to the salmon. The only thing I wasn't too pleased about was the pea tendril aspect. Trying to eat them was like a tug-of-war because of the stalks. Other than that, it was delicious! Be warned, that thing oozes tartar sauce as you eat it.

 And because I'm trying to be (minimally) healthier, I went for the salad. Go yesterday me!

 Also, went to an amazing indie rock concert with A. Good food, good concert? I'm a happy girl.

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Eye Eat 19

I seriously can't remember the last time I went on a photo spree on food - mainly I'm terrified of being labelled as one of "those people" ,you know, the people who spend more time taking pictures of food than eating it- at restaurants. Anyways, I made a small batch of roasted pepper tomato sauce a few weeks ago to cure my post-finals boredom. I took this recipe and this recipe and mixed them together. Unfortunately, it didn't take me fifteen minutes to make the sauce, but it did turn out just delicious! Mmm, that red pepper really added a nice, mellow touch to the tomatoes, but I'll be sure to add some paprika or chili powder to add a kick next time.

 I've included what I did, but I am by no means, a chef- just someone who enjoys messing around with ingredients. :)

 Here's what I used:
-half of a large roasted pepper, chopped
-half of an onion, chopped
-two cloves of garlic, minced
-four small tomatoes, washed




Cut an "x" shape into the tomatoes. Heat a pot of water until it boils, and put tomatoes in. Once you see the skin peeling off, take them out and rinse under cold water.

Peel the skins off, and then squeeze the seeds out. I chose not to squeeze the seeds out (a waste of tomato, in my opinion), but crushed the tomatoes by hand into a large bowl with their juices.
Heat up a saucepan and fry the onions and garlic with oil until onion is translucent, and garlic is golden-brown (I actually burned the garlic as you can see, haha).
Put your crushed tomatoes and red pepper into the pan, and cook for about five minutes. Take out the tomatoes and pepper with a slotted spoon, and leave the juices in the pan. I added some sugar, salt, and oregano to add some flavour.
Let the sauce thicken, it should be ready when a mark appears you scrape the pan.
Re-add the pepper and tomatoes to the pan, and mix well. Turn off the heat, and let cool.

I wasn't too pleased that my sauce looked like salsa, so I took it for a spin with an immersion blender. The result? A nice, smooth-looking sauce.

 Mix in some pasta, and bam, happy time. Enjoy! :)

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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Life Offline




Woooo, bad quality phone pictures!

 A small peek at what I do outside of school no I don't pig out I promise. In order from top to bottom:
1) Smoked salmon eggs benedict (my friend's) when we celebrated my other friend's birthday.
2)Various tacos : fish, beef cheeks (sounds weird but it tastes really good), chorizo, pork(?)
3)Various macarons: lemon, cranberry, pumpkin, salted caramel, apple spice.

 Time to roll my sleeves up and dive into finals. Best of luck to anyone who's writing them! :)

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Thursday, July 12, 2012

Eye Eat 17/18

Remember my post about living life like a parisienne, simply spending time at cafés and enjoying time with your companions? What a beautiful - and expensive- past-time. Well, here's the visual accompaniment to that, with my lovely senior classmate, H!

For dinner, we had ramen at this small restaurant on Robson and Denman. We were lucky enough to avoid a big line-up - H claims that that particular restaurant has high quality ramen. While we waited, we ordered our ramen. You can pick the richness of the broth(this is based on how much fat they put in) , the cut (fat or lean) of the meat, and extra toppings. As we made our way into the shop, I was mystified. It had the exact layout of what I would imagine a traditional ramen shop would be like (I blame two RPGs for this haha). As mentioned before, dinner was good for the price we paid (well, I paid).

Afterwards, we left the restaurant with warm bellies... which were ready for dessert. The plan was to have cheesecake, but we ended up at this upscale patisserie (H's friends changed their minds) which I've longed to visit for a while now.When I heard the news, I might have started talking in an octave higher than I normally do . And started doing funny hand gestures. Classy. H paid for dessert, and I got 7 fabulous macarons while they got a spiked tea. Then we sat with their friends and had a lovely conversation while enjoying the sunset.

Eye Eat 17: - Spicy Garlic Ramen with medium broth and lean pork (H's)
                   - Miso Ramen with light broth and lean pork (mine)

[H's ramen, with egg and a garlic ball on top]

[mine]

The verdict: I thought my miso ramen was good, but there were some things I was iffy on. First, the broth. Maybe it's just me being a pansy about spicy things, but there was a spicy note to the broth. The last time I checked, miso was not spicy. In spite of this, the broth was flavourful and I enjoyed it.Another thing which I wasn't fond of was the cut of pork. Lean meat doesn't mean dry meat. Enough said.

Eye Eat 18: Macarons - lemon, raspberry, mint, passion fruit, salted caramel, gianduja (fancy word for chocolate hazelnut), and earl grey.

[beautiful presentation, I felt bad opening the box haha]

[passion fruit, salted caramel, and mint macarons]

*the sudden improvement in image quality is accredited to a different camera with manual focus

The verdict: Between this patisserie (that H and I visited) and the one where I got the caramel macaron, I personally favour this one. These macarons were more dense and cake-like, and generally more rich in filling. Take for instance, the lemon macaron (not pictured since my camera died and I ate it). The lemon ganache/ filling was thick and bursting with lemon flavour. The mint one turned out to be a pleasant surprise! I expected the ganache to be too minty for my taste (something similar to the paste in After Eight chocolates), but it was very light. However, the earl grey one was a miss. I've actually never had earl grey tea (I haven't developed a taste for citrus teas), but I felt this one wasn't up to par with the others. There was something off with the flavour - I can't describe it in words. If there's one that I'd recommend to my friends/classmates to buy, it'd be the raspberry one. There were raspberries in the shell, and this provided a nice, fruity note to the almond taste.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Eye Eat 15/16

 Once upon a time, a tiny girl had a job interview in the northern end of the city. On that faithful day, she came across a famous patisserie (okay she knew it was already there) located beneath. These are the delicacies she came across...(with the help of the shop assistant)



Eye Eat 15: Jamaican Style Panini with Almonds, Watercress, Fuji Apples,Chicken with Moroccan Spice, and Havarti Cheese. (forgot the actual name)

The Verdict? One of the stop assistants recommended this sandwich to me - it's apparently a customer favourite- and I have to say it was quite delicious! The tangy taste of the apples gave the sandwich a pleasant twist. To be honest, I couldn't really taste the watercress nor the almonds (I don't think I could even find almonds); the main flavours that I remember were: the cheese, butter (?), and chicken. Speaking of the chicken...I was kind of disappointed. There was an expectation that the Moroccan spice would give the chicken a bit of a kick*, but I couldn't really taste it in the sandwich (it was fine alone). But overall, this was a lovely sandwich - maybe the chicken was under seasoned that day - which I would love to have again.

*For those of you wondering, Moroccan cuisine makes use of spices such as paprika, cumin, ginger, and cinnamon. 




Eye Eat 16: Caramel Macaron

The Verdict?: Okay, so this is my first time analyzing a macaron before (I've had the patisserie's macarons before - cassis and chocolate- but never did anything but swoon in happiness after eating them), so I've examined it according basic guidelines*:
Visuals:
-shell should be smooth, and free from bumps
        -- the shell was smooth, with a minor bump
-"feet" (the rough edges of the macaron) should be present
        -- yup 

When You Eat:
-when you pick them up they shouldn't fall apart
        -- didn't break
-when biting into the shell, it should crack like an egg shell
        -- not sure if I like that, but it didn't happen
-should be soft, moist, tender  
        -- it was definitely soft to the tooth, and tender
-flavour should not overpower the basic ingredients (almonds)
       -- the caramel flavour was light, so you could still taste the almonds, yum
-even ratio between filling (jam/confiture, buttercream, etc.) and shell
       -- i felt there was a nice balance between the buttercream and shell

So according to these guidelines, I think it was a lovely treat! Only flaw is that it's sort of pricey for a poor university student like me. These bad boys fit into the palms of my tiny hands and they cost ~2 Tim Hortons donuts. Ouch to the wallet.

*Adapted from Follow Me Foodie, found here

3 comments
Thursday, June 7, 2012

Eye Eat 14




Or as I like to call this piece of work, Unintentionally Spicy Mushroom Noodle Soup. The gloomy weather hasn't been doing the city or I many favours - the wet sock feeling when running? No thank you. On the bright side (if there is any), it has ignited my desire for hot soup. I decided mushroom soup would be a nice cure for the blues, so I adapted this recipe to what I had on hand. Which was...interesting. I added some garlic, broccoli stem, straw mushrooms, bay leaf (I still don't know if it did anything, oh dear), macaroni and cayenne pepper powder - all to the therapeutic sounds of Mother Mother.

Verdict?
It was fuh-reaking delicious, oh mah gaw. Add some toasted pita bread with pesto spread on top (which I did) and you will be happy as a clam. Seriously. The only flaw was the spicyness. The recipe called for some good ol' s and p (salt and pepper) for flavouring... and for some unknown reason there was a shortage of salt. Sac à papier. So I threw in quite a bit of pepper and cayenne pepper powder to give some form of flavour.

N.B. Do not taste the soup immediately after you've frantically tried to bomb it with seasonings, you're probably NOT going to taste it. Until after ~20 min, where you regret everything.

2 comments
Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Eye Eat 13



Double post, say what?! Seriously, you can't post character sketches but pictures of food are alright. Going to school and work usually put my dinners in a bit of a rut (don't want no stares in class / workplace policies). Yummy foods such as chicken, pasta, etc. are no-no's simply it can easily make a mess on oneself or go flying out and make a mess on someone on the bus. Sad, sad times. So I've been sticking to the basics: salad, sandwiches (brace yourself, the kitchen jokes are coming), or rice. Speaking of which, I've had the luck of trying out a Japanese curry rice pilaf found here. The premise? Excellent. The result? Sad face. The rice lacked any form of flavour - just a faint taste of curry, which pretty much ruined the entire idea. Maybe it was because I used mild curry roux, or I didn't let the curry cook for a while before adding the rice. At least the sausage and vegetables tasted good. Next time, I'll either add some chili pepper for a kick, add a reasonably flavourful  stock, or cook the curry longer.

6 comments
Friday, May 18, 2012

Eye Eat 12

[Folding in that flour into those beaten egg whites like a boss]

[My baby cake just after it came out of the oven!]


[Clearly, I have a Master's in Icing Cakes]

[Anybody notice that it looks like an egg salad sandwich?]

It's kind of sad how much time I devote to cooking nowadays compared to actual art and job hunting, fufufufufu. A really really really late Mother's Day cake for my favourite woman in the world, angel food cake! Or a cheater's version of it. considering:
a) Most recipes call for 10-12 egg whites. Sorry, not going to make my family eat egg yolks. And I'm too cheap to go buy a carton of egg whites.
b) No cake flour!?!

So, I made this version, and omitted the coconut (apparently coconut in angel food cake is sacrilegious, according to Momma Bear). Rating? It was alright, considering I used all-purpose flour - making it more dense than it should be - and might have over beaten the egg whites (y u no appear stiff peaks?!). But the texture was very spongy... please don't tell me I accidentally made sponge cake instead.

IN OTHER NEWS,
I got an interview for one of the internships which I applied for a month ago. Excited and nervous at the same time!

4 comments
Sunday, May 6, 2012

Eye Eat 11

I vowed to put some pictures of outfits/ art... and look, more food! If it hasn't been made clear, I live in the kitchen. Here's some good ol' home-made macaroni and cheese. Which was not consumed by my sister, like it was supposed to be. Sad face. Hypothesis: No one in my house wants to eat my food, and because of it, I will become a big roly poly ball of chubbiness.

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Eye Eat 10

It's strange how the weather can shift from sunny and somewhat warm one day, to rainy and miserable the next. I hope Mother Nature has a good explanation. Anyways, to celebrate the warm weather yesterday, I ventured into the depths of my kitchen and made some delicious Passion Tea Lemonade granita! It was utterly delicious, and I can't wait for summer to come so I can make buckets of this treat for friends and family. Hopefully I can cram in some drawings and outfit posts soon, I feel as if this blog is evolving into a food and photography blog.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Eye Eat 9




It's the last week of school, hip hip hooray! Unfortunately, that means late night cramming sessions for finals over the next 3 weeks...then...I'M FREEEEEEE! :)
Maybe not, since I love school so much I'm back for a summer school course. Ah well, it's only 1 course. Curse you English requirements. In the meantime, here is my latest indulgence - chocolate mousse (thanks Momma Bear!). Add a cup of milk/ soy milk, and you are in a dessert utopia.

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Sunday, March 18, 2012

Calm Before the Storm / Eye Eat 8









Just a bit of fun before the final midterm rolls in.
Eye Eat ( and some of friend's,in order from top to bottom):
1)Foccacia with olive oil and some sort of olive paste
2)Open faced sandwich with chicken breast, brie, and fig/apricot preserve
3)Frisee salad (apples, lettuce, hazelnuts, beets, goat cheese, and vinaigrette)
4)Open faced sandwish with bonoccini, tomoatoes, and pesto
5)Yam fries.

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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Eye Eat 7


After a nice, relaxing, fun filled Reading Week...I kid about the fun filled part, since I'm kind of cramming for a midterm on Tuesday (good job Jennifer). Ignoring that, I've indulged in my mom's home cooking (sorry dorm food, Mom always wins. ALWAYS). This is her last gift to me before I see my family again in 2 more months...jokes, I only live an hour or so away from campus SO MORE FOOD FOR ME. Okay, back to Eye Eat. These are home made Vietnamese salad rolls, or "gỏi cuốn". These are so good, I could eat these every day and never get tired of them. I've even included a step-by-step procedure of how to obtain happiness with these rolls. Enjoy! :)

Step 1: Grab that salad roll(that's literally bursting with goodness)!


Step 2: Dip into peanut sauce, ensure coated.

Step 3: Take a bite. Feel the happiness spread, and repeat procedure.

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