Father's Day Banquet Lunch

Father's Day was a day before Grandpa's 80th birthday this year. The extended family gathered at Sea King Restaurant for a huge banquet lunch that started off with Peking duck. I didn't photograph every dish, but here are some notables:


The Peking duck wasn't sliced properly. Usually the skin is sliced and served with the pancakes. Then the duck meat is stir-fried and served with lettuce to wrap. And the third rendition is supposed to use the bones for soup. We got two versions of duck that day; the skin, with a bit of meat attached, on top of disappointing limp shrimp chips, and then a plate of the duck meat.


A family favourite, shrimp paste balls, arrived. These are the same mixture that restaurants use to make those stuffed crab claws that you get during Chinese wedding banquets. Grandpa likes these too.




Grandpa wasn't happy to see the Chinese roast chicken. In his opinion, if we got the duck, then we didn't need this. We had to remind him that it was part of the set meal and to try and enjoy it. The chicken skin was so crispy and the meat was very tender and juicy. The chicken is usually left mainly untouched, since it tastes great reheated the next day. But the chicken was finished.


This was an unfamiliar dish of young snow pea shoots with crab meat and egg whites. The family really enjoyed the dish.


The lobsters with ginger and onion were spot on for me that day.


The last two main dishes were fried rice and braised e-fu noodles. The e-fu noodles were slightly smoky and tasted even better when mixed with some of the lobster and ginger onion sauce.


The set lunch was capped off with a plate of almond cookies.


But our lunch finished with a fragrant durian layer cake from Kowloon Market (about $23/lb of durian), which my uncle picked up beforehand. Although we were in a private room, I still felt bad for anyone who was eating in the restaurant. The room reeked of durian and we overheard people talking about the smell. Most of the family loves durian. I find that I have to be in the mood for it, otherwise, the smell ruins any curiosity. I had a small slice that day and that's all I needed. After scraping off most of the icing, I got into the fluffy cake and durian, which was very creamy and custardy.

The banquet lunch was paced at a reasonable pace, especially considering that it was during their busy Sunday dim sum service. The portions were good too. There was enough for everyone to have at least one serving of every dish, except the Peking duck -- but we made the miscalculation. We still had leftovers after eating, but none of the good stuff.

~

Sea King Restaurant
1558 Merivale Road
Ottawa, ON
613-228-8819

Canadian Thanksgiving 2013

Happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers! And happy early Thanksgiving to our American readers!

Unlike past years, we just had a small family dinner with our immediate family earlier this week on Monday, October 14th. On the menu: smoked salmon cream cheese appetizers, prime rib roast, pan-dripping gravy, sweet potato mash, buttered carrots and corn, and dinner rolls. We were going to have three kinds of homemade desserts: apple pie, apple crumble, and cookies.


The day started off slowly. I didn't end up going downstairs until 11:30am. It was nice to sleep in after a hectic week at work. My brief morning began with open-faced peanut butter banana sandwiches and a cup of coffee.


We began our prep work by making pies and cookies once everyone had a bite to eat in the morning. The apples actually came from our Golden Delicious apple tree, which Dad planted about 10 years ago. Mom made the pie pastry out of Tenderflake and some butter. The apples were peeled, cored, sliced, and seasoned with brown sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of salt. Then some oatmeal crumble was made for apple crumble. There was a little confusion in the kitchen and we ended up making apple pies, apple crumble, and even an apple crumble pie. I'll touch more on that in another post. (Update: Apple Crumble Pie post is up.)


I also worked on these DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookie dough too. Once the cookie dough was done, I put the bowl into the fridge to firm up.

I've been thinking about making these beauties for a while now, well, since I stayed at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. They gave us warm cookies when we checked in. So amazing!


Around that time, Lucy arrived and we began to snack some more. She put together a Ritz cracker with smoked salmon cream cheese, half an olive, and some dry dill. Looks good, doesn't it? Lucy even took this, and a few other, photos with my dSLR.

Costco had one of their smoked salmons on sale the during the week. Cream cheese was also on sale a week prior. So we stocked up on both of them. Dad chopped up some smoked salmon and mixed it with the cream cheese for a nice kitchen hack. The real smoked salmon pieces were so wonderful!

I was planning to make either a spinach dip or caramelized onion dip, but we loved the smoked salmon cream cheese so much that we didn't need anything else. True story.


For the sweet potato mash, the sweet potatoes were peeled and boiled. They were mashed with half and half cream, cinnamon, powdered ginger, salt, butter, and freshly cracked black pepper. There was a carrot left behind.




Once the mashed sweet potatoes were seasoned, they were spread into a baking pan and then topped off with marshmallows.

I'd use less ground ginger and add more black pepper next time. Maybe I'd bake the mashed sweet potatoes for a bit before topping with marshmallows next time. That way the mash would be hotter.


This is the prime rib roast out of the oven. The burned parts is just the cap of fat. The prime rib was baked to rare and then we had to pop it in the oven for more time. By the time it was taken out, the prime rib was medium-well.


I grabbed my camera and went back to the table but Lucy blocked me off from taking the photo. She wanted the first shot. Alrighty then. After she took the picture, I swooped in to take one on my camera.


That's most of our spread. The dinner rolls, ginger ale, and red wine are missing.


Having prime rib was a nice change to turkey. Maybe we'll try making lamb next year.

Jimmy really enjoyed the prime rib. "How do you make something like this?"

"First, you need to buy a high quality of prime ribs -- high quality. Then you just season it however way you like it; like with steak spice or salt and pepper." Lucy chimed in.

As for the desserts, I'll be writing about the apple crumble, apple pie, and apple crumble pie separately. Here are the DoubleTree chocolate walnut cookies. I based these cookies off Food Geek's recipe.

The cookies taste the best when enjoyed just like the hotel serves their cookies: warm. That way the chocolate chunks are still gooey. The proportions of walnuts and chocolate chunks to cookie dough was a bit off. I remember the cookie was chunkier. I'll have to try the recipe out again. Until then, I'll hold off on sharing it.

Cooking and baking with the family does get noisy, but that's because we all have our different ways of doing things. Things get done however elaborate the meal is. And that's because we all know how to cook and, to some extent, bake. The underlying lesson is to learn to cook and bake for yourself and others. It's a life lesson.

Zhong Yuan Jie 中元節 2013

I'll be the first to admit that the history behind our Chinese traditions have been lost on me. I really should have paid more attention to my parents and grandparents when they explained the reasons for certain Chinese holidays and festivals. For example, the family gathered in August for Zhong Yuan Jie (中元節) or the Ghost Festival, but I'm not sure why. Wikipedia tells me that it's the day when the deceased visit the living.

 

What I do know is that we pray for good health and fortune for the family, and this usually involves a lot of food. I won't go over everything we ate, since we make mostly the same dishes for each festival. As you can see, we had some roast and BBQ meats, fruits, stir fry dishes, drinks, rice, noodles, and desserts.

 

I'm not sure what this dish is called in English, but it is basically a soy skin spring roll. It's stuffed with ground meat, pepper, and other vegetables, then wrapped in soy skin and deep fried until golden and crispy. Typically, we dip the sliced rolls in black vinegar. It's got quite kick, and isn't in our usual repertoire for festival food.

 

Clear soup with fish maw, fish balls, napa cabbage, shrimp, wood ear, and ground pork. A staple dish when celebrating at Grandpa's.

 

This mango roll cake is a family favourite for some reason. I've always found that it was lacking in flavour, sweetness, and texture. If I could modify this dessert, I would swap out the whipped cream filling for mango puree with chunks of fresh mango, and add more mango flavour to the cake itself. I do enjoy its mild fluffiness, which can be very welcoming after a very greasy lunch. It tastes particularly nice with a small cup of strong oolong tea.

 

While I didn't get to try all of the fruits, the lychee were exceptionally ripe and sweet. They were the first fruits to be devoured, and it certainly made me wish that I had visited Taiwan in the summer, if only to experience tree-ripened lychee. The next Chinese festival will be Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) in September, which usually tends to warrant a much larger feast. We'll be sure to share those yummy eats in the coming weeks!

Snow Crab Dinner

My aunt and her family went to Montreal, two weekends ago, and brought back fresh Gaspé snow crabs! We invited over our family and had a feast.


The snow crabs were boiled and then served with rice and a dipping sauce of lime juice, garlic, chili peppers, sugar, and fish sauce.


All meat.


MT and I were the last ones still eating at the kids table. But she won for being the last one remaining.


Dessert consisted of tea, grapefruits and Beryl's tiramisu flavoured chocolate almonds.

Chinese New Year 2013

The event this year was made more special because we had family from Australia visiting. And since they were here, we ordered a whole roast pig from Double Happiness! Jealous?

Weekend at Mont Tremblant

This past weekend, we brought our Aussie relatives up to Mont Tremblant. We rented a chalet and did some sightseeing. As soon as we got back to the chalet, people were either grazing or making food - sometimes both. Let me just say that the photos cover most of what we ate.




On the first full day we were there, we went up to the Mont Tremblant Village and walked around a bit. The weather was -20 Celcius with blue skies. We didn't stay there long at all. After a brief BeaverTails break (the Kilaloe Sunrise is pictured on the bottom left; cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice), some of us went tubing while everyone else went back to the chalet.






That night, we had a spectacular prime rib dinner with a few sides: mashed potatoes with mint, side salad, heart of palm salad, and gravy. There was also Japanese-marinated chicken (soy sauce, palm sugar, ginger, and garlic) for those who didn't like beef.


There wasn't anything for dessert that night, unless you count the southeast asian fruit punch that JN made. We used some canned jackfruit, rambutan and some of the liquid, longan, pineapples, lychee jelly, and fresh strawberries with Sprite, tropical fruit juice, and Grey Goose.


On the following morning, we breakfasted on bacon, breakfast sausages, bagels, rice, toast, coffee, hot chocolate, and/or tea. Then we snacked on some boxed white cake with fresh blueberries.




Before we had lunch, there was a fruit platter of guava, papaya, strawberries, and asian pears. Containers of hummus and baba ganoush were opened along with a few bags of chips.




Lunch consisted of marinated ox tongue, which Uncle TS prepared and marinated the previous night. It was served with a nuoc cham-like sauce: fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic, cilantro, green onions, and chili peppers.



Both the ox tongue and dipping sauce were addictive. Delish!




Mom, Lucy, Jimmy, and Richard arrived with some homemade bo kho for lunch as well.

We (Lucy, Jimmy, Richard, and I) left the chalet before everyone else ate a lobster dinner. We arrived in Ottawa just after 9:30pm. I was so exhausted that I don't remember getting into bed. There was just so much food!

Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone!

I want to try something a bit different this year. I'll try to do some live blogging as we're (Lucy, Richard, and I) putting together our Christmas eve feast. The approximate time will be noted in brackets using 24-hour clock. I'll stop once I run out of counter space and/or when our family arrives. Follow me on twitter: @teafortwo_c

Thanksgiving Feast

I'll have to apologize right now. There aren't any recipes in this post. But if you like food porn, do carry on.

~    *    ~

Our main menu for our Thanksgiving feast:

Turkey, ham, turkey gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, buttered corn and carrots, garlic bread, and bo kho (Vietnamese beef stew).

Dessert:

Apple pie, pumpkin pie, krop knao, glutinous mochi balls, and two kinds of banh xoi nuoc.

~    *    ~

Learning from past holiday feasts, we began preparing more things ahead of time. Mom actually made krop knao (sweet coconut mung bean nuggets) the night before Thanksgiving dinner and then left the plateful in the fridge. I actually wrote about it years ago.

Bun Bo Hue, Sour Soup, and Durian Cake

A few weekends ago, Aunt IS invited us over to her house for lunch. She had made a large pot of bun bo hue and wanted to see how we liked it. Richard and I didn’t go for lunch, but rather, we went in the afternoon.

After we greeted everyone, I noticed that there were two sheets of pound-like cakes cooling on the table. Aunt L brought some durian custard, which she had mashed and put in a bag. Grandpa complained that there wasn’t enough durian in some past versions, where the durian was “watered down” by coconut milk. You’d rarely find cakes made with pure durian like this.


Even though it wasn't finished yet, the cake looked more appetizing once Aunt L began to spread the durian around. It looked less like a pile of... yeah...


The second layer of cake was pressed onto the durian custard.






Whipped cream was then used to top the durian cake.

Richard and I then had a bowl of bun bo hue. Slurping down the contents was so enjoyable! As we were eating our bun bo hue, Richard said that it felt like we were eating at a street stand in Asia somewhere with Anthony Bourdain. We were both sweating before we were even done eating half of our bowls. It was a combination of the spice blend and the heat. It was a good sweat. I'm struggling to not drool over my laptop as I write this.

Dinner prep began after we finished eating. On the menu, a Cambodian sour soup with fish (known as somlaw maju in Cambodian and canh chua ca in Vietnamese), chicken and pork bulgogi, salt and pepper shrimp, and stir-fried Chinese water spinach with preserved soybeans.




I don't know how to spell it. I've seen it also spelled as samlor machu, samlar machu, and somlah machou. In any case, the soup consisted of skate wings, pork broth, tomato, Chinese water spinach, and tamarind powder. The soup was garnished with fried garlic chips, fried garlic oil, green onions, and thin ribbons of thai basil. The bowl of soup above didn't have the fried garlic chips or oil.




Uncle L fired up the BBQ in the backyard and grilled the two kinds briefly marinated bulgogi. Two platefuls of shrimps, lightly dusted with cornstarch and salt, were deep fried outside on the BBQ element too. The deep fried shrimps were served with a side of salt and pepper.

Both the beef and chicken bulgogi needed a lot more time in the marinade. I wish there was leftover bulgogi sauce to pour over the meat, or at least dip it in, but Aunt IS used up everything in the marinade. *Sad face*




Finally, the Chinese water spinach was stir-fried with minced garlic, preserved soy beans, and some oyster sauce. It was meant to be on the bland side to balance out all the dishes. (I loooove the preserved soy beans in congee and in homemade wonton soup! Ah... how nostalgic...)


Along with a seemingly bottomless teapot of jasmine tea, we ended dinner with durian cake and che dau. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that Mom brought over the batch she had made the previous evening.