Late Review: Amazing Italian Lemon Butter Chicken

The subject of this post is not, in fact, a review. It is the title of the recipe. It is a little presumptive of a recipe writer to attach the word "amazing" right in there, but also a nice little advertisement I suppose. So no hard feelings. On with the post...

Key Ingredients (see actual recipe for full list and directions):

Lemon Butter Sauce
- cream
- butter
- lemon

Pasta
-Farfale

Chicken
-chicken


To be fair, I may say that the promise of everything in the aforementioned title held up quite nicely. This meal did turn out to be pretty Amazing, the Farfale was indeed Italian, and the Lemon, Butter and Chicken all did their job as per the contract I executed with them prior to their ingestion.

Extra colour needed: Green
Extra flavour needed: None

The solid salad

Like many humans, I occasionally get that internal health guilt that tells me to eat salad. It's not as satisfying as some foods I'd rather be eating, but it does curb that nagging nutrition neurosis from time to time.

Salad ingredients:
Sweet baby lettuces, unbagged
Mushrooms, sliced
Mozzarella, cubed
Northern Spy apple, match-sticked

Dressing ingredients:
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Blueberry honey
Sun-dried tomatoes


I may lose a lot of loyal fans and alienate some well respected culinary readers of this blog when I say "there's nothing wrong with bagged lettuce". A chef once told me that if you buy bagged lettuce, make sure there are no soggy leaves. This is a result of the freezing and transportation process and if one is soggy, the whole bag will likely be ruined soon enough. It truly is a marvelous age we live in. Bagged lettuce tastes fine and saves two huge Western problems: 1) ripping/cutting lettuce and 2) washing lettuce. Those extra minutes add up and I prefer to use them to solve the world hunger problem.

Fruit, and apples specifically, seem to lighten up any salad and create the illusion that you are food savvy by adhering to seasonal trends. The Northern Spy apple adds crunch, sweetness and converts this boring salad into a Summer Salad.

As if sun-dried tomatoes didn't gourmet-ify the dressing, blueberry honey has made a guest appearance by popular demand, after a classic post on this blog. True to form, blueberry honey holds up its end of the bargain to make everything taste better as long as I keep putting it "on stuff". Magically, what would have been a run-in-the-mill vinaigrette has been enhanced with the infusion of this heavenly mutant bee excretion.

Throw it all together and it tastes just like a sugar-coated forest on your tongue, minus the bark.

Acids and bases: emulsified
Discussion of mushrooms or mozzarella: msyteriously not present

Quick Review: Blueberry Honey on stuff

According to people smarter than myself with more hands-on bee experience¹, bees are actually quite inefficient at pollinating blueberries. However, this does not stop us from migrating huge amounts of bees to Maine and creating blueberry honey for our enjoyment. Please note that this post is not politically slanted and that blueberry honey tastes like heaven.

On the recommendation of someone with excellent taste, I got a bottle of this stuff and am attempting to try it on things. Toasted english muffins with peanut butter and honey have been improved with blueberry honey. It doesn't really taste blueberry flavoured; rather just a different, more potent version of regular honey.


Bees harmed in the making of this post: none
Bee pollination scientist citation count: 1
-----------------------------------
¹Javorek SK, Mackenzie KE, Vander Kloet SP (2002) Comparative pollination effectiveness among bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) on Lowbush Blueberry (Ericaceae: Vaccinium angustifolium). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 95: 345–351

Quick Review: Janet's Balls

A tasty melange of coconut, amaretto, cranberry, apricot, raisins, sunflower seeds, walnuts and brown sugar.


Chalked full of flavour: Undoubtedly
Number of testicle-related puns: Too many to count

Quick Review: Noodle Bowl's Shrimp Fried Rice

Noodle Bowl is a pan-asian attempt at a traditional noodle house. Their shrimp fried rice comes in three forms:

1) Pseudo-classy sit down restaurant style (not seen)

2) Take out box.


3) Day after takeout.


Like so many asian eateries, this third state is somehow the most satisfying.

Peas: A little too hard but still green
Level of day-after rice chewiness: Ideal

Paldo Lobster Taste King Cup Noodle

After my recent failed attempt to purchase this $17 monstrosity, I set out to find a more reasonable lobster delicacy. The vast asian markets of downtown North York illuminated this happy little fella:


I had never had lobster flavoured dehydrated noodles and figured this was a good time to try. I should have added an item for scale in this picture. The bowl is huge. Twice the size of a regular Mr. Noodles. Those with faint heart may have been turned off by the term "Lobster Taste Langosta", but I forged on. Langosta is just Spanish for Lobster. This cup of soup has done some great travelling it seems. A glance at the ingrediants list reveals the Lobster taste is due to "Shrimp powder, Crab powder, Lobster powder". Indeed.


Upon the first sip, it was immediately evident that "Lobster Taste" was actually code for "Industrial Grade Hot Sauce Taste". I went through about 5 full glasses of cold water just to get through this sucker. The noodles tasted just like standard Sapporo Ichiban noodles and if you're wondering what the little pink discs are in the soup... well, so am I. There is no hint to these things in the ingredients. They're chewy; that much I know. If I could taste anything but fire, they might have been delicious. Can I recommend this soup? It's a tough call. This soup is a challenge. Nothing really tastes like its description. Sure is filling though.

Tongue: Sore
Brita dispenser: Depleted

Chicken of the Sea

How do you make a tuna melt? Play her some Barry Manilow.


Ingredients
Tuna
Hard boiled egg
Mayonnaise type dressing
Celery
Swiss Cheese
Bread
OJ (optional)

Instructions
1) Mix up the first 4
2) Place on toasted 6 with melted 5
3) Eat, and wash down with 7

Important
- Sandwich cutting 101: This sandwich must be cut down the centre and not diagonally. Diagonal sandwiches have deli meats on them. Tuna, along with cheese or plain butter sandwiches are always cut down the middle. Club sandwiches should be cut into four triangles. Party sandwiches may take any form (triangle, pinwheel, etc) as long as they are smaller than 1/4 of a full sandwich and are placed directly into my mouth.
- Tropicana is such a good orange juice that it doesn't taste like oranges. Oranges taste like Tropicana.


Verdict
Taste: Delicious
Breath: Needs mint

RIBS, RIBS, RIBS

So tonight was rib night. I have been waiting all week for this night. As soon as the clock hit 6 I was out of there and on my way home to BBQ heaven. I made Oren start the BBQ as I had a small accident last year and am still a bit nervous.


I had some potatoes left over from another meal so I cut them up with green onion, butter and salt & pepper and put it into a tinfoil pack. We wrapped the corn in foil and got the sweet, sweet ribs ready to be grilled. We soon realized there was no way to tell the different sauces apart but we got over it.

Unfortunately the corn got a little burnt but we cut off the good stuff and it was actually really sweet and tasty. The potatoes turned out really well although I think I am more of a fan than O.

Last but not least were the ribs. Their underside was left on a little long but that was my only complaint. The two sauces were pretty similar but they were still quite enjoyable. I think next time we will have to make our own sauce. Although I have been informed that we are only allowed to have them once a month if that. We ended up boiling some extra corn we had and used this lemon-pepper mayo we threw together on it. The lemon flavour was a nice touch.

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Questionably Healthy Lunch

From time to time, one must leave their home for work in such haste that all they can do for a packed lunch is scrounge up loose items from the fridge. Today was one such day and the lunchbag inventory is as follows:

2x Hard boiled eggs
1x Apple, Musili and Nuts Activia Fibres yogurt
1x Banana
1x Small container of olives (multiple varieties)


Hard Boiled Eggs

For the past few years, I've boiled eggs according to the Charles D.H. Williams uber scientific method. I don't actually get how it works, but the formula looks something like this:







It is a little known fact that the best way to boil an egg is not to boil it at all, but rather to steam it. Cover the egg with water in a pot, wait until the first bubbles break and then take it off the heat, place a lid on it and wait about 15mins. Perfect eggs every time. Thank you Charles D.H. Williams.

So how do they taste? Not half bad. I tend to toss out the yokes. They're full of cholesterol, fat and taste like ground up chalk. Quick fact: The yolk is yellow due to the colour of the chicken's feed. Some farmers try to artificially colour the yolk, but this practice is outlawed in many areas.

The white of the egg is nothing but water and protein. I should have brought some salt.


Olives

There are over 16 million varieties of olives and I brought about 7 of those with me today. Black, green, Kalamata, umm... big, little, chopped, oil... They're all delicious and good for your heart. Olives only seem to last a day or two in these containers before the olive oil starts to congeal.


Yogurt

The website for this particular brand of yogurt claims that it is unique for it contains "bifidobacteria". It is a "friendly" bacteria that promotes colonic digestion. As if that wasn't enough, they've now added fiber into the yogurt in the form of musili and nuts. It all tastes fine as can be, though I should probably wait another hour or so for the real effects.


Banana

Now, I'm as much against genetically engineered fruit as the next person, but how come they can't get rid of those stringy things that stay on the banana after you peel it? They are one of nature's atrocities. The rest of the banana, however, is fine by me. Funny shape, adds colour to your lunchbag, tastes like you'd expect every time. Bananas make an excellent hangover cure, by the way. Hangovers are caused mainly by dehydration and lack of potassium. True story. Bananas have lots of potassium but so do orange juice, potatoes, bananas, avocados, tomatoes, broccoli, soybeans and apricots.


Conclusion

This lunch makes for a lot of work and waste just to eat it. Everything needs to be peeled, shelled or pitted. This is, perhaps, why chili in a breadbowl is the greatest evolution in food.

Scorecard

Nutrients: Some
Gas: Immanent

Summerlicous

So tonight was Summerlicous night. Every winter and summer the more fancy restaurants in the city do a prix fixe menu and every winter and summer I make sure I attend. This time we tried to stay in our neighbourhood and ended up at Grappa.


I apologize, I forgot to take a photo of my appetizer but I started off with a mango and bell pepper salad. There were too many sliced almonds on it for my liking but it was quite tasty. The mango and pepper was very sweet which was a nice change to the bitter stuff I've been having lately.

The main course was stuffed pork tenderloin which I think could have been a little more tender but the apricot sauce was very tasty. I loved the fresh veggies you got with it. I've had a lot of frozen ones while out lately but these were great. The red pepper gave me some worry as I thought it may be a hot one but it turned out to be one of the sweetest ones I have ever had. Overall I was quite happy.


Dessert was a vanilla creme brulee with raspberries. It was probably the biggest one I have ever had. I haven't had much experience with this but I found it to be very creamy and satisfying.

I would definitely say it was a good choice. The service was good and it was nice to be in a place where you didn't have to scream at your friends.