Monthly Archives: October 2009

News and links

Posted on by bruleeblog

I know there’s lots of other things happening around town, but Sharon at Only Here for the Food already does such a great job of recording all that already. So instead today you get links that I stumble upon and find at least mildly interesting.

The Dish Bistro, Edmonton

Posted on by bruleeblog

The Dish Bistro is the restaurant side of two businesses that run side by side, the other side being a catering company called The Runaway Spoon. Cute names, huh?

I’ve eaten their catering before but their restaurant is one of those places that I keep meaning to go to but never got around to a visit. So one weekend, while trying to think of a simple but tasty place for lunch near downtown, I decided to try and snag a table at The Dish. The place is on the small side but is bright and sunny thanks to large windows. The place was pretty busy even though it was already past 1 p.m., and my dining companion and I were lucky to find a table. Service was attentive.

My order was the Dijon Chicken on Greens – a Dijon marinated breast of chicken served on a salad made up of mixed greens, tomatoes, carrots, Spanish onions and artichoke hearts, and topped with a roasted red pepper dressing. Visually the salad looks kind of messy but the meal was quite tasty. I also wished there had been more artichoke hearts, as I think I found only one that was chopped up into a couple of pieces.

Dijon Chicken on Greens

Dijon Chicken on Greens

The person with me ordered the Mango Curry Chicken Wrap, which was filled with grilled chicken and a curried mango chutney and vegetables, and served with a side salad of Honey Greens (same salad as above, but without the chicken and with a red wine honey vinaigrette instead of the other dressing). I think the salad serving could have been a little more generous, but the mango and curry chicken mixture was delicious.

Mango Curry Chicken Wrap

Mango Curry Chicken Wrap

This was the perfect light lunch that we had been looking for. They’ve got some great hearty looking dishes too, and I look forward to going back and sampling them.

The Dish Bistro
12417 Stony Plain Road, Edmonton
www.thedishandspoon.com

The Dish & The Runaway Spoon on Urbanspoon

T & T Supermarket Mini Low Sugar Moon Cakes

Posted on by bruleeblog

Better late than never, right? Sorry about the delay; I meant to post this on October 3, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also sometimes known as the Moon Festival, is celebrated on the autumnal equinox of the solar calendar, and is the Asian version of a harvest celebration. Traditionally, families celebrate the moon by eating moon cakes – dense, high calorie pastries traditionally filled with a lotus seed paste and a bright yellow yolk from a salted duck egg that symbolizes the moon.

Lotus paste is the most common filling, but nowadays you can usually find red bean paste and taro fillings. I’ve even seen coconut paste and green tea fillings, among others, in recent years. You can also buy moon cakes without yolks, or with one to four yolks inside each piece. This year, I was excited to find two different brands selling low sugar and lower calorie moon cakes being sold at T & T Supermarket. One brand was from Hong Kong, and the other was from T & T’s own bakery.

T & T Supermarket Mini Low Sugar Moon Cakes

T & T Supermarket Mini Low Sugar Moon Cakes

The package I picked up contained 6 mini moon cakes without yolks, and made up of three different flavours – two lotus seed moon cakes, two filled with red bean paste, and two taro moon cakes.

cross-section of taro and red bean moon cakes

cross-section of taro and red bean moon cakes

How did they taste? Well I found them to be dry. Not sure if that was due to them sitting in the box for too long, or if it was because to reduce the amount of sugar and calories they had to cut back on some of the ingredients that usually make moon cakes somewhat moist and even a bit oily. And normally I don’t care about the yolk but for some reason this time I was craving a bit of the salty bite that usually comes with moon cakes.

I think next time I will either try the more expensive brand, or stick with the regular kind of moon cake and just eat less of them.