Happy National French Fries Day with Pad Thai Fries...

Happy National French Fries Day! I celebrated this fun occasion by trying my hands on popular Toronto Lisa Marie and Fidel Gastros' Matthew Basile's recipe for his infamous Pad Thai Fries. Happily brunched there over a Toronto Food Revolution meeting, tried it, thought I died and went to heaven and excited to find the recipe on Steven and Chris to adapt my own version at home-- instead of deep-frying the fries, oven-baking and toning the key spicy Sriracha sauce down a notch to appease to my young kids' palates! Spicy buttery with crunchy toppings, the tart and hot flavours work in harmony replicating succinctly what you would expect in a fries dish called Pad Thai! All I can say is... Exotically Addictive!

Photo Credit: Steven and Chris

With Matt and the fabulous Toronto Food Revolution crew.

Matt Basile's Pad Thai Fries (adapted from Steven and Chris)
(Double the sauce ingredients if you want it extra saucy)

1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup Sriracha sauce
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 pound oven fries
1 cup bean sprouts
1 cup cilantro, chopped
1 green onion, chopped

1 lime, quartered
1/4 cup crushed peanuts, optional

Bake fries in oven according to package directions.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan over high heat. Stir in the Sriracha sauce and lemon juice. Turn down the heat to low and cook for five minutes, or until the sauce is a nice velvety orange colour. Let the sauce cool and congeal (if the oil separates onto surface-- remove the layer with a spoon) so when you apply it to your fries it's more of a paste than a sauce.

In a large bowl, toss the cooked fries in the sauce. Transfer the coated fries to a serving dish and top with bean sprouts, cilantro, green onions, lime wedges and crushed peanuts.

WOWZERS! As I remembered them... crunchy bean sprouts and peanuts give way to crispy tender fries 
bathed in lemony fiery buttery sauce. As Steven and Chris said, it really is the Ultimate Fries!

This spicy son loves hot foods, even with his front tooth missing :)!

Perfect as a side to hearty meaty burgers! Thank you Matt! My family loved it!

For another fun do-it-at-home restaurant favourite, try my Oven-Baked Onion Blossom to celebrate National Onion Rings Day! :)

Pigging Out in Myrtle Beach....

I'm Baaaack... with the fam bam from a week at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina travelling along and to friends Marilyn and Charlie's vacation home! Driving 16 hours (even split over two days and thanks to my husband) is no easy feat especially with three young boys sitting elbow to elbow... but we happily arrived fairly sane in the membrane :). Tailing our awesome friends on the way, we made pit stops in 1-1/2 to 2 hour intervals for washroom, food and stretch breaks, and as the destination got closer I started thinking about what I love best-- Foooood.... With days filled to the max with nare to spare-- beaches, outlet shopping and amusement parks for the kids.... talk about eating out galore which means pigging out to our hearts' content (and I am not counting all the multi-fast food joints we ventured into) and no cooking (well 'cept for breakfast on some days) for me! Yay! 

There's my three crazy munchkins!

Beautiful scenic mountains and hillsides on the way...

Breakfast at the home on most days consisted of eggs, ham and toast, but I changed it up also on a few with DIY scrambled eggs and sausage burrito served with shredded cheese and salsa.

Hitting the beach for some friends and families photos all coordinated in blue and whites :) YAY!

Friends are the family we choose ourselves... Namaste!

Of course, we must have our rainbow assortment of coloured snow cone slushies at the water park and everywhere else that sells it to keep cool.... well by the order of our kids!

Buffet feasting at the many All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffet- Giant Crab, specializing in Alaskan Crab legs!

Look at the size of those yummy meaty leggy legs!! 

Only in America... LOL

A dinner show at Medieval Times with roasted chicken, corn on cob and roasted potato half. Fun and yum!

A trip to the Hollywood Wax Museum. Was not overly impressed with the likeness of the models but hoping they at least got their heights correct! Surprised at how tall and short some of these celebrities were-- Madonna- shorter than I thought and Taylor Swift and Martha Stewart were giants!

Alas Mexican dinner.... twice!! Mixed grilled meats-- sizzling shrimps, beef and chicken with peppers and onions, steak and shrimps and more shrimps with garlic alongside Mexican rice, refried beans and corn tortillas for wrapping. Oh and salsa and chips but of course!

A specialty of the Veracruz coast, this Mexican seafood soup-- Caldo de Mariscos is similar to bouillabaisse. Seafood soup--in one variation or another, depending on the catch of the day--is found across Mexico, where it is commonly sold in markets as a hangover remedy. This one contained crab legs, fish, clams, mussels and crawfish. So hearty delicious!

How can you not venture into an IHOP, Pancake or Waffle House when the roads well traveled are lined with them? Here was making my request come true with a giant, did I say giant breakfast for all.

More fun in the sun!!

On our last night, dipping our way through Outback's infamous deep-fried blooming onion and cutting into a full rack of barbecued baby back ribs! For a healthier version of the onion appetizer, try my Oven-Baked Blooming Onion.

But amongst the abundant greasy, sugary as well as ginormous food portions, trying to stay lean, mean and strong in the process.... so I could have room to down some mo'.... LOL

Rarrrrrrgh!!! 

Happy Canada's Day!...

I am as proud to be Canadian as I am Chinese, and feel so lucky to live in a beautiful country where peace, diversity and opportunities abound. Thank you Canada for the blessed life! Wishing you a Happy 149th Birthday!

Stepping away from my blog for a bit to spend quality time with my family! 

Enjoy your summer and see you back in a week with more deliciousness! Cheers!

Peruvian Juanes in Celebration of St.John's Day...

How much do I love learning about other cultural food specialties around the world with a similar offering like my Chinese background. Over the years, I've appreciated hearing about and trying dumplings from different heritages. For starters, there's Chinese dumplings, then there's Japanese gyozas, Polish and Russian perogies, Italian gnocchi, which in itself offer a multitude of varieties, fillings, wrapping and cooking technique depending on region and specialty, and so the different countries' dumpling list goes on... 

When I posted my recipe on making Zong Zi (bamboo leaves wrapped rice dumplings) for Chinese Dragon Boat Festival, I happily learned there are many other leaves-wrapped hearty meal-in-itself dumplings made in other parts of the world.  Last year, my friend Sandra Mukidza shared her Luwombos recipe (mashed bananas and meat wrapped in banana leaves)- a Kenyan specialty, and this time while posting my second attempt at Zong Zi on Facebook, lovely Chef Jesica Winitzky and Food Revolution Ambassador Peru introduced to me her country's rice dumpling wrapped in bijao leaves-- Juanes. Really cool because it sounds like the Mandarin word zong in zong zi and in fact, the Cantonese pronunciation which is how I say it is more similar Joung :).  She tells me these are eaten as part of an important celebration for St.John's Day in the Peruvian Jungle on June 24th. Juan = John thus Juane:)

Jesica's family does not celebrate this tradition, however juane is delicious anytime of year, and she recently made them at home for a Slow Food lunch. She is also a regional leader championing Slow Food International in Lima, Peru.

Photo Credit: Chef Jesica Winitzky

The festivities start the night of the 23rd and St. John's Day is the 24th and in the Jungle / Amazon it is a very important feast with the main day or the Juane day-- the 24th! But the party starts before and carries on for days usually trying to get the weekend! Here is a link that shows how it is celebrated throughout the Peruvian jungle. 

Intrigued, I tried to call around my multi-cultural home in Toronto with a few Peruvian shops and well-noted restaurants around this time, but was told that this is very specialty food mostly eaten in the jungle back home and not usually made and sold here. Shucks! I suppose I will have to try make them one day (Jesica's recipes to come) with a few substitutes.

Jesica Winitzky, Lima Peru

Photo Credit: Flickr

Jesica's recipe for Juanes is filled with rice, coloured and flavoured with fresh turmeric, a special kind of capsicum pepper, garlic, herbs from the Amazon and filled with chicken (Jesica uses duck), a piece of hard boiled egg, also beaten egg as a binder, and whole black olives. They are wrapped in bijao leaves and then boiled. The way it is wrapped resembles the head of St. John the Baptist given to Salome... (Ha-- Jesica says she knows that sounds awful!).  

A special hot sauce (more like a hot salsa) to accompany this dish is a must, called Ají de Cocona which is made with a special tiny and extremely hot pepper but super aromatic, only found in the Amazon called Charapita pepper. It is also concocted with a jungle fruit called Cocona peeled and diced in concassé, lime juice, diced onion, sachaculantro and salt.

Here is a youtube recipe of how to make Juanes. It is actually quite easy to make and the ingredients not too complicated except by a couple of things: The Bijao leaves which you can replace with banana leaves and the Sachaculantro (jungle cilantro) which can be omitted or add a bit more bay leaves or up the other ingredients. 

Jesica's recipes for Juanes and special hot sauce to come.

It's a BBQ Funday Sunday...

We just love getting together with my bestie and her family! Our kids play so well together, the adults get to catch up usually over some light cooking and wine-drinking (the hubs), and the food spread is never short of fantastic! Can't think of a better way to enjoy a beautiful Sunday than a BBQ cook-out with some delectable sides and desserts to tie it all in and of course, over great conversations with great friends! 

I love ma' steak medium-rare but even better with a beer or one of these Somersby Ciders!

I baked up my bestie's favourite-- Quick and easy Cassava Cake (a popular Southeast Asian dessert) with just three ingredients!! There is nothing to master except thawing frozen grated cassava, dumping, stirring with coconut and condensed milks then baking. Voila!! it perfectly balanced sweetness, just the way us Asians like it-- not too sweet.

Three-Ingredient Cassava Cake

Recently for National Onion Rings Day- June 22nd, I was inspired to bake a whole onion blossom covered in panko and seasoning as a really fun appetizer to share along a creamy spicy sauce. Certainly different from the deep-fried kind but tastes light crispy, sweet and much more healthier! I made one for the get-together, but this time the large onion expanded more like a lotus flower than a blossom. So pretty and tasty!

Oven-Baked Onion Blossom

This is such a Vietnamese thing to do... guess what kind of seeds these are? Boiled/steamed for an hour or so, tastes so yummy just like roasted chestnuts... They are "hột mít" Jackfruit Seeds!! Eat everything from the fruit down to its core-- no waste-- YAY!

Cookin' up steaks, lamb chops and Korean kalbi beef short ribs!

Home-grilled meat dishes and some prepared side salad dishes!

Gotta' get some refreshing limeade!

WHOA-- a Beast of a Feast!

Dessert Tiiiiime!!.....

I don't eat gluten-free however, when my cousin Helen brought back a bunch of baked goodies (cupcakes, cookies, squares) from her pal Pete's Gluten Free in Ottawa, I was delighted to try and taste how yummy gluten-free can be. My image of cardboard-tasting crumbly gluten free products are gone. His date squares and 4-variety pack cupcakes were our family's fave (chocolate, carrot, red velvet and pumpkin spice), and I look forward to baking with their SMART flour (sorghum, millet, arrowroot, brown rice and tapioca)! So nutritious can be delicious! He also makes savoury items like gourmet pizza and homemade lasagna. YUM!

Pete's Gluten Free