Kickass Korean Tofu

After printing a series of blog posts about chocolate, shortbread, truffles and cheesy bread pudding, I had some requests to stop trying to kill you all, and instead, go back to my usual amenable ways of offering up healthy and tasty dishes for eating well.

So I guess you can add “good listener” to my list of “winning personality traits”. (And add “humility” to the list of “needs improvement.”)

Kickass Korean-style Tofu (Adapted from Gourmet)

(serves four)

Ingredients:

1 package soft or medium (but not silken and not firm) tofu

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup green onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp roasted sesame seeds (tip: You can buy Japanese-style sesame seeds as they often come roasted)

2-3 tbsp Tamari or soy sauce

1/2 tbsp toasted sesame oil

1 tsp sriracha sauce

½ tsp sugar

Method:

1. Rinse block of tofu, then cover with cold water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer, shut off heat, then cover and keep warm until eating.

2. While the tofu warms up, prepare sauce by combining ingredients above.

3. Just before serving, gently lift tofu from saucepan and drain on paper towels. Pat dry, then transfer to a plate and spoon some sauce overtop, serving remaining sauce on the side. Garnish with a bit more fresh green onion if you’re feeling fancy.

Be warned: This is addictive stuff. I almost ate the whole tofu block by myself in one sitting.

Cookie Dough Truffles

The interesting thing about fantastic recipes found on the Internet is that most are viral so you really don't know where they originated, even though better blogs usually give credit where credit’s due.

Take this amazing (and amazingly egg-free) recipe for Cookie Dough Truffles as an example. Someone brought them into work as a treat, and said she got the recipe from one of her favourite blogs, The Girl Who Ate Everything, who in turn got if from Annie’s Eats, who adapted it from Mel’s Kitchen, who snatched it from Taste of Home, where this contest-winning recipe first appeared circa-2005 -- and with the inclusion of walnuts, no less.

Now it’s here, on the National Nosh.

Where will it show up next? Only Kevin Bacon knows for sure, but for the time being, here’s the scrumptious recipe.

Cookie Dough Truffles


Ingredients:


8 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature


¾ cup light brown sugar, packed


2¼ cup all-purpose flour


1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk


1 tsp vanilla extract


½ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips


1½ lb. semisweet (or bittersweet) chocolate, coarsely chopped
Mini chocolate chips (for garnish)

Method: 


1. Combine the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the flour, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla until incorporated and smooth. Stir in the chocolate chips. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the mixture has firmed up enough to form balls.

2. Shape the chilled cookie dough mixture into 1-1½ inch balls. Place on a baking sheet lined with wax paper. Cover loosely, transfer the pan to the freezer and chill for 1-2 hours.

3. When ready to dip the truffles, melt the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Dip each chilled truffle, one at a time, coating in chocolate and shaking gently to remove the excess. (If at any point during dipping, the cookie dough balls become too soft, return to the freezer to chill for 30 minutes.) Transfer to a wax-paper lined surface. If using mini chocolate chips for garnish, sprinkle on top quickly after dipping each truffle before the chocolate sets. Once all the truffles have been dipped, store them in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Source: Originally from Taste of Home

Amy’s Awesome 2011 Food Trends Forecast

The end of the year can only mean one thing: Summary year-end lists and trends forecasting. Here’s mine, from the January issue of House & Home magazine. The list is the same, but the writing isn’t (trying not to plagiarize myself here), so enjoy, and try them out, and why not pass them along? Here they are, in no particular order. I, for one, think we have a lot of delicious things to look forward to in 2011. Let me know if you agree. (And go suck an egg if you don't.)

1. Pop-Tarts Redux: Nostalgia never goes out of style. Case in point, the reemergence of that childhood favourite, the Pop-Tart. The world’s first pop-up Pop-Tart restaurant recently launched in Times Square, where the iconic toasted confection is being spun into menu items like the Fluffer Butter, marshmallow spread sandwiched between two Pop-Tarts frosted fudge pastries; and Sticky Cinna Munchies -- cinnamon rolls topped with cream-cheese icing and chunks of Pop-Tarts cinnamon-roll variety. But we prefer the slightly healthier home-baked varieties using simple wholesome ingredients via internet-spawned viral recipes.

2. Greek-style Yogurt: Yogurt is one of the fastest growing segments in the supermarket, and Greek-style yogurt, specifically is in high demand. Why? It’s thick, rich-tasting and delicious. When topped with good quality honey, it also makes for a dessert-worthy dish of Greek decadence. What’s more, doctors and magazines such as Cooking Light agree that eating a snack with protein rather than just carbs can help curb hunger, which in turn keeps daily calories in check, and this is where this new generation of thick low-fat yogurt comes in extra handy. With our favourite brand, Fage, finally hitting Canadian stores, we’re eating more of it than ever. Added bonuses: It’s rich in B12 (perfect for fighting off those winter blues) and is full of good-for-your-belly live bacteria.

3. Friendly Butchers: Last year the culinary rock stars were organic farmers, but this year it’s the friendly butcher’s turn to shine. People are taking butchery courses, are raising their own animals (or buying a share in one), and befriending the hip baseball-capped meat purveyors behind the shiny counters at new organic spots such as Kensington Market’s Sanagan’s Meat Locker or the consistently smiley service at stalwarts like Cumbrae's and Armando’s on Granville Island. Our newly forged relationships mean our butchers know what we like and will go to the back to get us the grass-fed hormone free beef that we desire.

4. Coconut Water: We’re touting it as this year’s “it” food. From its pure, potassium-rich water to its virgin oil being spun into products ranging from skin care to nutritional supplements (helping in the realms of digestion and high blood pressure), the coconut’s benefits are attributed to lauric adicd, capric acid and capyrlic acid. But let’s not forget its toasted flakes topping our buttercream-iced cupcakes or its rich milk stirred into our favourite curries. We also wouldn’t say no to a pina colada right about now. Still, the slightly sweet water straight from the young green coconut is perhaps the purest form of our favourite new ingredient (though we also enjoy the Vita Coco and Zico brands when we can’t get it fresh from the nut.)

5. Smoked everything: We loved it in BarChef’s Smoked Manhattan, in our favourite new smoked finishing salt and in our smoked meats, be it a Montreal smoked meat sandwich at Caplansky’s or the perfect BBQ at Brooklyn’s Fatty ‘Cue. Smoke is everywhere this year, and we’re totally addicted to its earthy, warming appeal. How to get the taste at home? While chefs prize their Big Green Eggs, we’re secretly coveting the Kalamaoo Outdoor Gourmet K900HS hybrid freestanding grill (starting at a mere $15,895). Bottom line: From mesquite wood chips to BBQ sauce, smoke is hot.

6. Fried Chicken: Dished out from Harlem soul food kitchens to upmarket Jean-George’s restaurants, fried chicken is eaten down south, up north and throughout the belly of Canada. We’ve discovered that Korean chicken joints make some of the best stuff around – and Momofuku’s David Chang recently invented the superlative take on Korean fried chicken. Be it the Popeye’s chain or Thomas Keller’s crunchy dish at Ad Hoc, this is simple home cooking that’s also a finger licking guilty pleasure.

7. Young Chef Brigade: A new breed of chefs in their twenties and thirties aren’t waiting around to be given the chance to helm a kitchen – instead they’re making their own kitchens, and everything goes in them, in their largely bare-bones, nose-to-tail, field-to-table restaurants opened on a shoestring budget (in restaurant terms.) For instance, Toronto chef Nathan Iseberg opened The Atlantic with an initial budget of just $600!

8. Urban Bee Keeping: We’ve gone from growing herbs and heirloom vegetable gardens, to raising backyard chickens (for eggs) and now urban bee keeping. Some cities allow beekeeping, some ignore it and others have bylaws that restrict or ban the activity. Calgary has nothing on the books that doesn’t allow for keeping honeybees, providing they’re not a nuisance, while Ontario has a provincial regulation that does not allow bee hives within 100 ft of a property line. That said, from Manhattan rooftops to neighbourhood hives, we’re all abuzz about joining the ranks of these pollinating superstars, and we can’t wait to get our hands on the UK- designed urban bee hive called the Beehaus. Plus, it goes without saying that their sweet honey is the bee’s knees.

9. Kale Chips: A powerhouse of a vegetable married with a tasty crunchy snack? Who knew that eating our rich leafy greens could taste so sinful? Places like Live Food Bar and better health food stores have started packaging and selling them and Mark Bittman even showed us how to make them at the NYTimes web site: That’s what called hitting critical kale chip mass.

10. Fregola Sarda: This tiny toasted handmade Sardinian pasta has a unique nutty flavour and addictively tender bite. It’s also good for you; it has less carbs more dietary fibre and fewer calories than a typical pasta. Cooked in broth like rice, it’s a saucy side dish complimenting a simple fish dishes or rustic roasted meats, but cooked then cooled like Israeli couscous, it also makes for a great salad. It's popping up on rustic Italian restaurant menus from Noce in Toronto to Manhattan's hot new the Lambs Club.

That's all for now. Best wishes from the National Nosh, for a healthy, happy and delicious new year. And please, don’t forget to cook!

Snack of the day

They're not quite a chocolate bar and not really like M&M's -- though these new Hershey's Drops won't melt in your hands.

At first I was skeptical: They're a little too big for popping by the mittful, sort of waxy looking, and they don't even come wrapped in a candy shell. How was this chocolate experience going to go down?

I guess the idea here is portion control. You know; having a bite instead of a bar. (Does that ever really work?)

The press release that came with these soon-to-be-released treats (look for them in stores in January) explains how the drops feature "a milk chocolate recipe that was developed specifically for the Canadian palate and launched in 2009. Understanding that people in different countries have different taste and experience preferences, Hershey Canada has brought together the 'right amount of chocolate' with the 'right amount of creaminess' for Canadians in a new format!"

Apparently, we Canucks have grown accustomed to the sweeter and creamier British-style chocolate, so this chocolate is just for us.

And while I may not be in love with the new Hershey's Drops as a snack food, talk to me after I've finished my mug of "Hershey's Drops" hot chocolate this afternoon.

The most wonderful time of the year

Just because I don’t celebrate it, doesn’t mean I can’t love Christmas. Sure, there’s no tinselly tree in my home, no red stockings hung by the chimney with care, but oh holly, jolly, ‘tis the season for catching up with family and friends, drinking in both sparkling and creamy good cheer, but best of all, eating shortbread. Lots and lots of shortbread.

Some of it comes by way of the office, other times via cookie exchanges. Some shortbread is nibbled at parties, while more still is baked in my very own oven – but once a year, using one of my best-loved recipes.

But every so often, if you’re lucky enough, some of it, like this famous handmade, all butter Mary Macleod’s Shortbread, gets dropped off at your front door (Santa?)

Sold out of her Queen Street East shop in Toronto, but also at spots like Holt Renfrew (where only the best will do) there’s a real Mary behind the shortbread, a 70-something Scottish granny who has been baking up her biscuits out of her shop for clients near and far, for over 30 years.

Best bets: The traditional shortbread wedges, and signature chocolate crunch rounds. Even better bet? Seeing as they look homemade (because they are homemade), pile them into your own tins and Tupperware and claim them as your own.

I won't tell if you don't. Though, Santa may be watching...

Gratuitous banana shot

I've been travelling a little too much lately, so right off the bat I'm going to admit that this is going to be a pretty lame blog posting -- yet not as lame as you would think.

Why am I changing my mind mid-sentence?

First of all, this post is going to inform you that I've been in both Grenada and Montreal over the past week, and have eaten sublimely on each island. Some of my culinary findings will be showing up in future stories in House & Home magazine, on the Food & Wine blog, in the National Post, and yes, right here on the National Nosh.

There's the housekeeping bit out of the way.

So why else isn't this blog posting super lame? Because it includes a photo of a monkey eating a banana!!

Eat here: The Tasting Room

The Tasting Room, on Seattle’s Post Alley, is a spot to sip the state’s finest wines and nibble plates of local Beecher’s cheese while improving your high score at Boggle. It’s practically the definition of a hidden gem. I had almost forgotten about my visit there last December, until I saw the list of Oprah’s Ultimate Favourite Things from her annual show this week, and Beecher’s Mac and Cheese made the grade (good cheese makes good mac and cheese, natch.)

In other breaking news, I’m off to Grenada for a week, where I’ll be cooking and hiking and snorkeling and visiting rum distilleries and waterfalls, a chocolate factory and a nutmeg processing station, I’ll be river tubing and … it would appear, not doing a lot of relaxing.

No biggy: That’s what places like the Tasting Room are for.

A bit of a pickle

I really wanted to blow your socks off today. I wanted to write the best blog post ever -- teach you something that you never knew was possible, that you never imagined could happen in our lifetime.

But then I sat here for a solid two minutes and couldn't think of a damn thing.

The tank was empty. The well was dry. (But the cliches were 'a flowing.)

I blamed it on the low pressure system, the fact that I woke up with the sniffles, that I didn't have my sweet tea this morning, that I was over-worked, that my jeans were too tight, that TV sucks now that True Blood and Mad Men are gone for the year (though I am buoyed by the return of Dexter). Yet I only had myself to blame. (As always.)

So I went to the kitchen to grab a snack. I was feeling peckish for a pickle. And that's when I noticed the empty jar.

In other words, the last straw.

And yet, friends, what happened next is the kind of thing that kitchen lore is made of.

I took that jar, void of pickles yet full of brine, and held it firmly in my hand as I raised it skyward to curse the gods.

And that's when inspiration struck.

No, I didn't pour myself a pickle back (which, by the by is mentioned as one of my Food News items in the latest issue of House & Home magazine.) Instead, I decided that I was going to make some more pickles. Right there, right then.

I don’t think that this is considered “food safe”, but this empty jar of amazing pickles had been gifted to me by the great chefs at Charcut Roast House in Calgary, and as previously mentioned, I was really, really sad that they were gone. But looking at the jar, still teaming with that delicious brine, I decided to slice up half a cucumber and make a batch of refrigerator pickles.

They won’t last long (especially since I’m going to finish them off today), but I thought it was a tasty way of extending some special pickle brine while also being terrific fodder for today's blog post.

I guess you could call me a “the pickle jar is half full” kind of gal.

Soup!

Here’s a vegetarian fall soup that’s both sweet and savoury, just like me.

What’s that? Scratching your head at the thought of putting matzo balls into anything other than chicken soup? Get over yourself! My best friend has been a vegetarian since she was five-years old, and I got this idea from attending the odd Friday night dinner with her family. After all, matzo balls are vegetarian (unless you stir some schmaltz into them).

All they really are, are big fat dumplings made from matzo meal and egg.

In other words, a perfect lunch for days like these.

Butternut Squash & Golden Delicious Apple Soup with Sage Matzo Balls

(serves 4-6)

For Soup:

1 tbsp butter

3 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

1 rib celery, thinly sliced

1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced

2 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and diced

1-2 tbsp dry vermouth

1 tbsp real maple syrup

salt and chili flakes to taste

4 cups vegetable or chicken stock

2 Bay leaves

For Matzo Balls:

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 large eggs, beaten

½ cup matzo meal

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

pinch of granulated garlic

½ tsp dried sage

2 tbsp vegetable soup, or water

For soup:

Sautee shallots in butter over medium heat until soft. Add celery, squash and apples and sautee for five minutes more. Add vermouth and syrup, chili flakes and salt, give a stir then add vegetable stock and Bay leaves. Bring to a boil then lower to a simmer for 30 minutes, or until squash is tender. Discard the Bay leaves then puree soup, taste for seasoning and serve hot. It’s a smooth, thinner soup, that goes great with some matzo balls or noodles.

For matzo balls:

In a small bowl, mix together eggs, oil, matzo meal, baking powder, seasonings and soup or water. Stir to combine, then put in the fridge for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, put a large pot half-filled with water (about 1.5 quarts) on to boil. Make sure the pot has a cover. After it comes to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and using wet hands, form the matzo ball dough into 1-inch balls, then drop them in the simmering water. Cover pot and cook for about 30 minutes. Serve one or two balls in each bowl of squash soup.

A devilish fruit

What’s your end game pomegranate? I buy you because you’re cheap and in season and because you look like a little piece of art in the palm of my hand. But then I get you home, put you in the fridge and curse you.

Why won’t you let me in, pomegranate?

No offence, but that gorgeous face of yours belies a pretty tough exterior. Let’s just say you’re more than a little work.

You cut with a knife – and then what? You play your cards a little too close to your chest, my friend. I dig through a catacomb of pulp and membrane only to find your juicy essence further encapsulated in wee ripe droplets.

Tough childhood, pomegranate?

But you know something? I learned how to get through to you on a trip to Israel a couple of years ago when a local showed me this no-mess method of deseeding you. And you know something else? You’re totally worth it.

So cheer up, pomegranate. The holidays aren’t far off, and you get super popular around then; sprucing up salads, cakes and celebratory cocktails, sprinkled over fruit and eaten dead plain as a sweet and healthy treat. Did you know that some people even use you in their centerpieces, Christmas wreaths and garlands? (It’s all true.)

I guess what I’m saying pomegranate, is that as standoffish as you may seem at first, you’re really worth getting to know.