A Taste of Kindness

Get your own copy of the book here: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3363841

There's probably not much more left to be said other than thanks for your support, hope you like the book, and please help spread the word!

The Book is Served

At long last, the cookbook is here!
Blogging about making such a book began on September 9, 2008.  This is my 150th post, nearly 2 years after the last one.  A lot of time and words fell away in that long hiatus.  For a while, it looked like the demands of day-to-day life would prevent anything from ever materializing.

As some of you may know, the need for the book arose from the tragic and untimely passing of a childhood friend.  I felt compelled to do something meaningful in memoriam.  Cooking was the only thing I could offer and raising funds for charity while doing it seemed like a reasonable idea. 

For better or worse, a fire was lit under my arse this year.  This July will mark the 7th anniversary memorial -- 6 full years after death -- which is a time of great significance among Buddhists.  It became absolutely essential and symbolic for me to have the book ready in time for the event, which has gone from being a modest service to an epic occasion involving over a hundred invited family and friends. 

My late friend's family still doesn't know what I've been up to and I'm starting to feel some anxiety and trepidation about how the book will be received.   The first printed copies (sent to two different cities just to make sure that at least one order would arrive on time) have one typo that I'm aware of and some photos look better on my laptop than in print.  My only hope is for the book to find one happy owner. 

The publisher, Blurb, did a great job printing and binding the amateur content I laid out with some help from friends.  As of July 2, you will be able to order a printed copy (hard cover or soft) or an e-book for your iPad or iPhone through Blurb; as I understand it, the e-book will also be available through the Apple iBookstore.  Check back here for links.  I'm also searching for other e-book publishers that will allow me to sell and distribute it electronically for a wider variety of mobile devices. 

You might find the printed copies to be a bit pricey, but I have tried my very best to give you the most bang for your buck at the lowest possible production cost while also raising a few dollars per book for two very important hunger relief organizations: Action Against Hunger and World Food Programme.  Not one penny will be going to me.  This was a labor of love.

Farewell But Not Goodbye

After 148 posts and a 3-month hiatus, it is time for me to bid farewell to this blog.  Life has a way of taking precedence, especially when free time is at such a premium.  That said, my goal of finishing this cookbook in my late friend's name and (hopefully) earning a profit for charity has not diminished in the slightest.  It just means that the time that would have been taken up by maintaining a blog would go now more directly into the production of the book.  (It's a bit of a juggling act, considering I have three other books in the works + the unavoidable day job.)

It's been a fun journey and I've learned a lot in the process.  There really is no end to what one can discover about food or cooking.  And then there's always the best part: the tasting.  I still feel like an ignoramus when it comes to cuisine -- I don't pretend to be an expert at anything -- but I hope someone out there in the wide web of the world has gotten something good out of this. 

Check back from time to time.  Because one day, the cookbook will be here.  Thanks for reading.  TTYL.

Southern Comforts

I usually have lame excuses for not posting in a long time, but this time I have a good one: I've been out of town for the past week and will continue to be on the move for another week! 

As friends and family know, I'm pursuing a personal project which has taken me to Texas and now New Mexico.  California is to follow.  Having made sure that the Internet would always be accessible, I was expecting to write almost daily about my dining adventures, especially since there's very little home cooking involved when on the road.

Well, while the eats in Texas were very good, they were almost all deep-fried, grilled or Tex-Mex.  It made for a repetitive and generally unhealthy menu.  Furthermore, the dining venues weren't exactly conducive towards photo-taking.  I felt alien enough being a very visible minority; it might have been too freaky for the locals if I started taking pictures of my food.

At last, today I was in Santa Fe and had my first taste of light food since leaving home.  At a modest little place called the Palacio Cafe, I had a refreshing half-sandwich and salad.  The sandwich was a BLT with whole wheat bread accompanied by a simple salad with balsamic vinaigrette.  My beverage was a delicious prickly pear iced tea.  In other words, cactus tea.  One thing I am loving about the southwest is that all iced tea here is unsweetened which is the only way any iced tea should be served, IMO.  And refills are always free.  The prickly pear tea was oddly familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place the taste until I remembered that my brother had given me a pouch of cactus tea upon returning from Tucson.  Unfortunately, I always made it hot and didn't like it much.  Served cold, I can't get enough of it.  A squirt of lemon perfects it.

For dinner, I found myself at the Atomic Grill -- aptly named considering Santa Fe's close link to the Manhattan Project.  I would have walked away from their menu which offered standard pub fare, but I was immediately attracted to their Fried Avocado Salad.  They took two fleshy halves of a whole avocado, rolled them in some breading then fried them to a light crisp.  The indentations where the pit used to be are filled with a creamy, tangy crab salad.  Leafy greens and yellow peppers are on the side, drizzled with a honey mustard dressing.  It was satisfying without bloating and seasoned just right.  I'd love to emulate this at home!

Shortbread Redux

I have no new recipes up my sleeve today. What can I say... excuses always sound lame, but it's been busy. More about that later.

Recently, I revisited one of my older recipes from March: Orange Coriander Shortbread. For Mother's Day, it seemed appropriate to send Mom something home-made from my own repertoire. To give it a personalized twist, I tried three flavor variations. Going clockwise from bottom left: (1) Lavender Orange, (2) Kaffir Lime Leaf and Lemongrass, and (3) Vanilla Poppy.

Not mentioned in the names is the grated lime rind that went into (2) -- Kaffir Lime Leaf Lime Rind Lemongrass sounded a little excessive. For (3), I scraped seeds from a vanilla pod rather than use vanilla extract. I like how the specks of vanilla blend right in with the poppy seeds.

The only thing I would do differently is to omit the lemongrass... as much as I adore its aromas, even finely ground lemongrass is too fibrous and clashes with the delicate texture of shortbread.

Happy belated Mother's Day to all you fabulous Moms out there!

Free as a Bird

I consider myself to be relatively food conscious, but it was still a very rude awakening to watch Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners -- a brutally honest examination of the poultry industry. I mean, I try to do my part by buying only free-range or free-run eggs if available, or at least organic eggs. Likewise with chicken meat. I know there are cynical counter-arguments that "free range" isn't what it's cracked up to be, but my choice is driven less by concerns about my own nutrition and more by the quality of life we owe to these creatures who nourish and sustain us.

But Jamie's show rattled me when I learned that egg farmers routinely euthanize large batches of male chicks after selecting female chicks most suitable for egg-laying. (Why the male chicks can't be sold or given to poultry farmers is beyond me.) A container full of fuzzy, adorable male chicks were gassed live on the show as audience members looked on in horror.

Less emotional but equally unsettling was the realization that we consume many third party commercial products that are made from eggs, almost none of which are organic, never mind free range. Cookies, cakes, ice cream and salad dressings are some of the less obvious examples. Sure, it's obvious when you think about how these things are made, but are you thinking about the quality or origin of the egg when you pick up a bag of chocolate chip cookies?

Hellmann's mayonnaise is my Achilles' heel. Their half-fat mayo is especially killer -- for someone like me who is perpetually watching her weight, it's a blessing to have something that tastes so creamy and rich at half the fat. Yet I had to give it up after seeing Fowl Dinners. {sniff}

For a while, I've been making do by making my own version of mayonnaise with half the effort: I posted a recipe last summer which I call Almost Mayo Sauce. By using soft/hard-boiled eggs instead of raw ones, it skips the hassle of ensuring that the emulsion stays stabilized. (You can all too easily screw up home-made mayo by over-whisking past the point of emulsion and causing it to separate itself again. It's salvageable by adding more egg yolk, but it's still annoying.)



Well, now some great news! Hellmann's has announced that they are using only locally sourced "100% Canadian free-run eggs". I'm usually very leery of big corporations that make these kinds of feel-good claims but this change makes me ecstatic. It shows me that there is enough push and demand out there among my peers for what Hellmann's calls "real food". By shaping the market, we make it possible for local farmers to succeed and create financial incentive for ethical farming practices. Maybe we're not doomed... it's nice to have hope.

Upscale Munchies

Poutine is a staple of this native Québécoise's diet. On a late night outing with friends or after a great concert, an attack of the munchies would have to be quelled by a cup of crispy fries and squeaky cheese curds bathed in thick gravy. The ubiquity of authentic poutine joints in Montreal -- like Lafleur's and La Belle Province -- made it easy to satisfy those cravings when I lived there. Toronto chefs can dish out some respectable interpretations of poutine, but I have to go a fair distance out of my way to get my hands on any of it.

Montreal chef Martin Picard has inspired me to give it a go right in my own kitchen. Picard is the chef/owner of Au Pied de Cochon -- a mecca for nose-to-tail meat lovers -- and host of The Food Network's The Wild Chef. I've had firsthand experience of the devastatingly good eats at Cochon, the most memorable of which featured foie gras. So it should come as no surprise that Picard has a recipe for Foie Gras Poutine.

Foie gras is not something one cooks with every day. It's a pricey indulgence that can't be found on the shelves of the neighborhood supermarket amongst packaged bologna and imitation crab meat. I bought my first fresh foie gras at A Taste of Quebec, allowing myself the splurge only because it was my bday. However, the price made me incredibly indecisive about what to do with it... that is until I found Picard's poutine recipe.

The seared foie gras tasted like bacon and had the texture of soft, buttery tuna belly inside. The foie gras sauce was tasty but not really necessary; I'm generally content with just a really savory, thick gravy. If only I could snack like this every time I get a case of the munchies...