.....the culinary musings of a lover of (most) things edible!
Sushi lovers take note! All may not be what it seems when you order sushi in a restaurant in Montreal. (Who knows? The problem may be more widespread.) You may think you are getting sushi made with one type of fish, but instead are being served a different type altogether.
Read about and watch this interesting investigative piece by CTV in Montreal.
Fashions for chocolate lovers? Oh yeah!
Okay, I’m not sure I’d wear an outfit made out of chocolate, but the chocolate fashions created for the Salon du Chocolat (Chocolate Show) and modelled in Paris on Oct. 13 are pretty amazing.
On second thought, if you were wearing one of these, you’d always be able to satisfy your chocolate cravings!
Grocery shopping is not the highlight of the week for most people. Usually it’s just thought of as a chore, something you have to do if you want to put food on the table – without ordering in!
But what if, while you were picking peppers and bagging broccoli at your local grocery store, Michael Bublé tunes were being piped over the sound system? If you’re a Bublé fan like me, that would definitely help make the shopping excursion more pleasant.
Then, what if you saw the velvet-voiced Canadian crooner actually singing in the grocery store, say in Aisle 8, sitting above the shelves of pickles? Well, that would be quite lovely, but possibly a bit weird, although I have to admit I’d much prefer hearing him belting out tunes while I’m filling my cart with milk and eggs rather than the ‘good things grow in Ontario‘ guy (even though I’m a huge fan of Foodland Ontario and always try to buy locally-produced, seasonal foods!).
Since it’s highly unlikely Bublé is coming to a store near me or you anytime soon, his new video – Haven’t Met You Yet from his latest album Crazy Love – will have to suffice. It will also help explain what you just read!
Enjoy!
The Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out today. These awards are for “achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think”.
There were a few food and drink-related achievements among the winners:
* The winners in the Veterinary Medicine category were Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson of Newcastle University (UK). Their research showed that cows who have names give more milk than cows that don’t have names!
* The Peace Prize went to Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern (Switzerland) for determining whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle. (The answer? Empties are sturdier than full bottles, you really don’t want to be hit on the head with either because both can fracture your skull!)
* Javier Morales, Miguel Apátiga and Victor M. Castaño of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México won the Chemistry Prize for creating diamonds from liquid. Tequila, to be specific!
* The Biology Prize was awarded to Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences (Japan) for demonstrating that bacteria extracted from panda feces can reduce the amount of kitchen garbage by more than 90%.
As for non-food related research, these were my favourites:
Got a guilty food pleasure? Something you like to eat, but are hesitant to admit it for whatever reason.
I have a few GFPs, but the one I’m willing to confess today is my secret love of Cherry Blossoms (a Hershey product).
I say ’secret’ because anyone who knows me knows I appreciate good quality chocolate.
A Cherry Blossom is chocolate candy. It’s really not supposed to be something a true chocoholic indulges in (or in this case, admits to indulging in!).
But there’s something about the texture and taste of this chocolate, coconut and chopped peanut shell with its maraschino cherry and oozing cherry syrup centre that just works for me. The little yellow box with its foil-wrapped contents rather resembles a little gift. Maybe that’s part of its allure!
Here – see what I mean……
It’s not that I eat a ton of these chunky, flat-bottomed chocolate mounds.
Once in a while I pick one up when I see them at the grocery store checkout. I tend to eat this treat quickly, partly because otherwise its oozing centre makes for sticky fingers, and tell-tale stains on one’s clothing. And, probably also to hide the evidence that my love of chocolate isn’t exclusively for higher-end brands.
By the way, Cherry Blossoms are a Canadian candy. If you don’t live in Canada, you can order this treat and other foods from Canadian Favourites, an online company that sells specialty Canuck foods.
So there. I’ve confessed a guilty food pleasure. What’s yours?
Got fruit flies buzzing about your kitchen? Although they seem to come out of nowhere, in fact they breed in moist environments such as ripe or rotting fruits or vegetables, damp dish cloths, and juice spills. The kitchen is usually the hot spot for fruit fly activity.
Here are some ways to prevent an infestation.
What should you do if you already have them?
My friend Carol recently shared a method she’d learned for getting rid of the pesky critters. You get them drunk……and then they drown! What a way to go!
Here’s what you do……
Pour a small amount of red wine in a little bowl. Into that put a bit of dish soap. Set out the bowl. Now wait. The fruit flies will be attracted by the scent of the wine, but when they alight on it to partake, they’ll stick to the detergent in the wine. And drown. (I’m not usually one to wish ill on anyone, but in this case……YES!!)
Check out this link for additional ways to get rid of fruit flies, more tips on preventing them in the first place, and an lovely enlarged image of the insect. (The latter may drive you to drink!)
I think Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream may be the best ice cream I’ve made so far.
If you like Nutella and ice cream, I’m quite sure you’ll like this ice cream too! Seriously. Who wouldn’t??
It’s so easy to make, and it just sings with chocolate hazelnut flavour. It’s texture is more creamy than other ice creams I’ve made. I often find that “ripening” homemade ice cream in the freezer tends to make it harden to an extreme and form large crystals that make for a really granular texture in your mouth. I’ve had this Chocolate Hazelnut ice cream in the freezer for almost 3 days now, and although there’s not much left, what there is is firm, but scoop-able.
So here’s the recipe:
Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream
(Makes 8 cups/2 L)
2 cups (500 mL) whipping cream (35%)
2 cups (500 mL) homogenized milk (3.5%)
1 cup (500 mL) chocolate hazelnut spread
1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) chopped dark chocolate* (optional)
1/4 cup (50 mL) chopped hazelnuts (optional)
In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, bring cream and milk to a simmer.
In a large bowl, combine hazelnut spread and sugar; stir until smooth. Whisk 1/4 cup (50 mL) of the cream mixture into the sugar mixture; whisk until blended. Whisk in remaining cream mixture until well blended. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled or overnight.
Stir cream mixture. Transfer to an ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer’s instructions, adding chopped chocolate and hazelnuts a few minutes before the ice cream has finished churning.
Recipe Source: 125 Best Ice Cream Recipes by Marilyn Linton and Tanya Linton, Robert Rose Inc., 2003
Tips:
* If you’re adding chopped chocolate, use a good-quality brand. I used Lindt Madagascar (65%) dark chocolate.
* I have a Cuisinart Flavor Duo (two 1 L/1 quart buckets) ice cream maker. This recipe filled both buckets. The mixture had chilled overnight so only took 15 to 18 minutes to process to a soft creamy consistency.
* The recipe can be halved if you can only make 1 L (1 quart) of ice cream at a time.
* If desired, splash a serving of the finished ice cream with hazelnut liqueur and a sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts (instead of adding the hazelnuts to the ice cream).
You’d think I was a grocery shopping newbie!
This is the second time in the past few months I’ve bought ice cream without double-checking I was really getting ice cream. Seems weird that you’d actually have to check this, but you can buy something called frozen dessert which, believe me, is not ice cream!
We are never without ice cream in our home. Ice cream is a staple – one of those foods we don’t run out of, or if we do (heaven forbid!), it’s at the top of the list for the next trip to the grocery store.
I was on a mission to buy ice cream recently when I spotted Breyers ice cream on sale and grabbed a carton of vanilla.
A few days later we sat down to enjoy a piece of pie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. With the first mouthful, I know something was very wrong. I’m not sure how to describe the flavour and the feel of the “ice cream” in my mouth. Artificial? Sticky? Just plain yucky? Certainly it wasn’t the sweet creamy vanilla taste I was expecting. An inspection of the carton provided an explanation. Instead of vanilla ice cream, we were eating vanilla “frozen dessert”. Say what??
Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert - not ice cream!
These ingredient lists show the difference between frozen dessert and ice cream:
Breyers Vanilla Frozen Dessert: Modified milk ingredients, water, sugar, modified palm oil, glucose, mono and diglycerides, natural and artificial flavour, cellulose gum, guar gum, polysorbate 80, carrageenan.
Breyers Naturals Vanilla Ice Cream: Evaporated whole milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, natural vanilla flavour, pure ground vanilla beans.
I’m trying to choose paint colours for a home reno project, but I seem to have worked up an appetite and it’s proving rather difficult to focus on the subtle differences between french vanilla and vichyssoise……mayonnaise and pale celery……mixed fruit and perky peach……hot spice and tangy orange tangerine…….and summer harvest and butter rum. (And if you liked those Benjamin Moore paint colour names, believe me, I could go on citing lots more colours named after food! Whoever is in charge of naming paints over there must like to eat!)
Now really. Who wouldn’t be hungry looking at colour chips like these?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go make dinner……
I suspect Julia Child has a few new fans since Meryl Streep brought her to life in the big screen production Julie & Julia.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading since the movie’s debut on Aug. 7, copies of Child’s My Life in France are being snapped up along with Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the cookbook she wrote with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.
Julie Powell’s book, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and her blog (The Julie/Julia Project), on which the movie was based, are also proving to be popular reads.
Whether this translates into more meals being served in kitchens around the country that don’t come straight from a package, a can or the drive thru remains to be seen, but if the movie serves to generate interest in all things culinary, I say thanks, Julie and Julia!
Some Julia Child and Julie Powell links -
