Category Archives: eating and drinking

Come join us at Eat Alberta

Posted on by bruleeblog
Eat Alberta

Eat Alberta

For the last little while I have been busily helping to organize a brand new food conference called Eat Alberta. Eat Alberta is about celebrating our local food heroes through hands-on learning, tastings, and lots of fun.

Ever wanted to learn how to make sausages or cheese? Curious about different types of honey or the proper way to brew a cup of coffee? Then this conference is the perfect place for you. It is being held in downtown Edmonton on Saturday, April 30th, and includes meals, keynote speakers, and an end of the day “wine” down.

We are hoping that this will be the first of many yearly conferences, but to do that we need this one to be a success. And for this conference to succeed, we need you! Registrations are now open at www.eatalberta.ca. I hope to see you there!

Christmas tips

Posted on by bruleeblog

Here’s a little Christmas present, from me to you.

Tip #1: Always check the expiry date on your baking powder before trying to actually bake anything. You will save yourself frustration, wasted labour, and baking that doesn’t turn out correctly.

Tip #2: If you don’t want to cook or eat leftovers on Christmas Day, head to Chinatown. Asian restaurants are pretty much the only places that are open on the 25th. Dim sum, anyone?

There will be a new Morocco blog post before the new year. One with lots and lots and lots of photos. Have a Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) everyone!

Green onion cakes

Posted on by bruleeblog

Summer in Edmonton means festivals, and festivals mean food. There are certain food items that you usually expect to find at Edmonton’s festivals, one of which are green onion cakes. It always baffles me why people insist on standing in long lines for this. I can understand if they’re looking for the puffy kind that you can usually find in restaurants, but more often than not the kind that I see people eating are the flat ones. Don’t they know that they can easily make them at home themselves?

Just a warning – this is not a “how to make green onion cakes from scratch” kind of post. Screw that, I don’t have the time! This is my patent-pending “how to make green onion cakes the quick, cheap and lazy way” recipe.

Green onion cakes

Ingredients
1 package of frozen green onion cakes, can be purchased at any Chinese grocery store
a neutral cooking oil like canola or sunflower oil

my favourite brand of frozen green onion cakes

my favourite brand of frozen green onion cakes

Directions
Heat a non-stick frying pan somewhere between medium and medium-high. Add oil to the pan. You will need more oil than you think; I usually use a bare minimum of one tablespoon (and sometimes more) per side for each green onion cake. The dough will soak up the oil very quickly so if you don’t add enough oil the cake won’t cook properly and if you add too little the cake will be too oily.

Stick your still frozen green onion cake in the pan. (I don’t recommend defrosting them because the dough will stick together and then you will have one very tall green onion cake blob instead of multiple green onion cakes.)

partially cooked green onion cake

partially cooked green onion cake

The green onion cake will start to change colour from white (frozen), to partially translucent (defrosted), to golden brown (cooked). Flip it once one side has lightly browned. Make sure to check on them as they cook, as they can easily burn. Once both sides are nicely browned, slide them onto a plate and you’re all done!

fully cooked green onion cake

fully cooked green onion cake

Be careful of eating them right out of the pan because they will be piping hot and you will burn your fingers and/or mouth. Eat plain, or serve with your favourite condiment (Sriracha, etc.).

News and events

Posted on by bruleeblog
  • I recently stopped at Famoso for a meal (lots of photos over at my review from 2009). The pizza was great as usual, but they’ve recently changed their gelato supplier from Edmonton’s Bueno Gelato to Calgary’s Fiasco Gelato. I tried two flavours – the blood orange sorbet and the banana chocolate gelato, and was disappointed. The sorbet was a little too icy and grainy, and didn’t have much blood orange flavour. The gelato, while creamy and smooth, had no banana taste whatsoever and I wasn’t crazy about the chocolate flavouring. This really surprised me; while I haven’t tried them in any of their Calgary locations, Fiasco ordinarily gets pretty good reviews from what I can tell.
  • Superstore is now selling bread made with Red Fife. There’s a $1 coupon that you can get if you want to try it out (expires July 16). When you click on the link, just skip to page 4 of their baking booklet. There are also coupons for other breads and cinnamon buns on that same page.
  • Liane Faulder at the Edmonton Journal has a blog post about a food writer’s tour of Alberta.
  • Gary at travel blog Everything Everywhere has started up Project Pringles – his effort to document every flavour of Pringles from all over the world. If you have a picture of a Pringles flavour, you should send it his way. (And yes, he’s right. They are everywhere. I even found Pringles in Morocco, but unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of them.)
  • World Cup fever – did you know that the Dutch wear orange because of purple carrots?
  • And more on the World Cup – the “Oracle Octopus” could end up as dinner if German fans have any say.
  • Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko is in hot water after spending a lot of money on breakfasts during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Maybe he’s a hobbit who needs breakfast, second breakfast and elevenses?
  • Jeffrey Steingarten interviewed Gwyneth Paltrow for Vogue magazine – she’s coming out with a “cooking for families” cookbook later this year. The best line from the article has to be “Our conversation was not much different from what it would have been if Gwyneth were a longtime food friend, except that Gwyneth is nicer than most of my food friends.” You can see a bunch of photos of Gwyneth’s kitchen(s) and read an edited version of the article on the Vogue website.
  • Fast Company did a feature on innovative U.S. cities, and a couple of cities caught my eye – New York’s urban farms and Portland’s farm-fresh food.
  • And lastly, check out Beer and Butter Tarts, a Canadian food and drink blog aggregator. I recently added my blog to the list!

Gluten-free pizza party

Posted on by bruleeblog

I’ve been wanting to give GF Patissiere‘s baking a try for a while now. Luckily, I managed to have a small order tagged onto a regular delivery to Edmonton and, after meeting Peter (delivery man, husband to GF Patissiere’s owner and baker Victoria, and the guy behind The Celiac Husband blog) and his lovely daughter, I had the goodies in my hands.

And then I had to promptly stick them all in the freezer for two weeks because I was saving them all for a get-together with friends. It was pure torture, let me tell you. But I was a good girl, and didn’t even open the box to peek inside. Who knew I had so much willpower?

The box that called out "open me!"

The box that called out "open me!"

In addition to dessert, I also ordered some gluten-free pizza shells so that we could assemble our own Celiac friendly pizzas. I took everything out of the freezer the day before, and I am happy to say that freezing didn’t affect the quality of the food at all.

GF Patisserie pizza shells

GF Patisserie pizza shells

We added a little cheese, a little tomato sauce, some yellow, orange and green bell peppers, some Mastro extra lean hot capocollo, and some Harvest Meats bison sausage before popping the shells into the oven. A couple of different side salads rounded off the meal.

my beautiful pizza

my beautiful pizza

The crust browned perfectly in the oven and took no time at all to make. If you like thin crust pizza, I would highly recommend these. And all of us agreed that you couldn’t tell they were made from special gluten-free dough, which is high praise because most gluten-free products do taste at least slightly different from the originals due to the mix of alternative flours.

one of the other pizzas

one of the other pizzas

And some sangria to go with the meal didn’t hurt either.

Yes we were lazy and didn't make it from scratch.

Yes we were lazy and didn't make it from scratch.

To end the meal we cracked open the box and devoured brownies made from Barry Callebaut chocolate and cream cheese. (To be perfectly honest some of us couldn’t hold out anymore and we had some of these before eating our pizza!) They were like biting into a piece of rich, thick cheese cake and were heavenly to eat. One friend said — and keep in mind that I quote her exactly — that they were “fucking glorious.”

Callebaut and cream cheese brownies

Callebaut and cream cheese brownies

If you want to learn more about GF Patisserie, make sure you check out their website, Peter’s blog, and also this profile on Victoria that Chris did a little while ago.

GF Patisserie
122 – 3rd Ave West
Cochrane, Alberta
www.gfpatisserie.com