Thursday, December 30, 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

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Christ is born! and homemade soup dumplings

Glorify Him!

I went home to visit my parents and stuff my face with goodies and have had a great time here. Here's my sister with her hair freshly dyed, I find it really pretty:




And here's the whole family:


The cold cuts that I bought from the Charcuterie de Tours in the Atwater market. From left to right: serrano ham, rosemary ham, coppa, torchon ham, and proscuitto:


And the dumplings I made with my new pasta maker (sorry for the yellowness, I have no photo editing program to fix it at the moment):


For the stuffing:


1lb pork hocks
1/2lb ground pork
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 small bunch of chives, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, minced
Salt and freshly ground white pepper


Put the pork hocks in a large pot and slit the skin in 2 or 3 places so when it shrinks it doesn't squeeze the meat. Cover with water, add a tsp or so of salt and simmer for 2 or 3 hours, skimming off the scum and topping up with water to keep them covered. Make the pasta while the hocks are simmering. After an hour or so they should be tender enough to pull apart, pull them apart and keep simmering them to get all the collagen out. When they're done, strain the meat and bones from the liquid, leave the liquid in the pot and continue boiling it to reduce it by about half.


Once the meat has cooled enough to handle, pick the meat away from the fat and bones, pull it apart and set aside. Give the fat and bones to a very grateful dog or cat, if you have one. Fry the ground pork with the onions, chives, garlic, and salt & pepper to taste, just till the meat is cooked through and the onions are beginning to be translucent.


In batches, put the ground pork and meat from the pork hocks into a food processor or blender and blend till the texture is finer, but not a paste. Add the blended meat to the reserved pork stock (you should have roughly equal amounts of stock and meat) and mix it well, seasoning more if needed. Chill it till firm (like creton, for us Quebecois, or rillettes, for those who have no honking idea what creton is).
For the pasta (you can do this while the pork hocks are simmering):

2 1/4 cup unbleached flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
4 tbsp water
2 eggs, beaten

Mix the flour and salt in one bowl, the wet ingredients in another. Add the wet to the dry and stir quickly with a spoon, when you can't use a spoon any more dump it out onto a clean dry surface and mix with your hands. If after a few minutes you can't incorporate all the flour add a bit of water and oil. It's supposed to be very hard, it takes about 15-20 minutes of kneading till it gets completely smooth. It shouldn't be sticky. For this part I had to get my mom to knead it cause I wasn't able to.

Then cut into chunks a bit smaller than fist-sized, and run it through the pasta machine on the largest setting (I'm guessing this varies from one machine to another, but on mine the largest is roughly 1/4") a few times, folding it in half after each time till it's nice and smooth and even. Then run it through again on the next lowest setting, without folding it, then the next lowest, and so on till you get to about 1/16" (which is #4 on mine), or thin enough for pasta but not so thin that it breaks. Then cut out into circles, or squares, or whatever shape you want and is easy to stuff. If you don't have a pasta machine it can be done with a rolling pin but it's a lot more work. Store the cut pasta on a plate covered with saran wrap in the fridge till needed.

To assemble:

Simply spoon the filling onto the circles of dough, it'll take a bit of trial and error to find out how much is just enough to fill them. Wet the edge on one half of the dough, and fold over, pressing the middle gently to get the air out, and then press the edges together firmly so they seal properly. If you want you can make scalloped edges like Asian potstickers if you want, I just left mine plain cause it's less work. Boil in salted water for 3 or 4 minutes, or until desired consistency. Then STUFF YOUR FACE! And try not to burn your tongue, or injure/maim others when fighting for the last one.

Oh, and I just thought of something after reading the creton link... I should have cooked the meat mixture with cloves, I think it would have been delicious. Oh well, next time.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Friday, December 17, 2010

The case for foie gras

I found this really interesting article about how not all foie gras producers are unethical. This is great to hear, I suspected as much myself already, but this gives more concrete proof.
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Saturday, December 11, 2010

First big snow pt. 2, and some food

Here's what it looked like outside as I waited for the bus outside my place on Tuesday:



Here's what it looked like as I arrived at work:


And the view from inside:



Here's some shrimp salad, beans and rice I made this week. The rice I cooked with a bit of miso and the salad is with a mix of wafu dressing and sun dried tomato and oregano:




This morning I'm going to the gym and then getting ready to make Carlo's birthday surprise. Here we are last Sat. night, I stayed up decorating the living room till he got back from work around midnight. I'll post about the surprise tomorrow :D

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

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Monday, December 6, 2010

November 2010 in pictures

Here's a cello player that was playing some great music at Radisson metro last weekend:


Here's a delicious dinner of chicken ballotine we had that I made after I watched this video:




Steph, Johan and Carlo around the table digesting:





Pastries from Chinatown:


My sister:


The view from work one evening:


Crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Lachine Canal:


A foggy day at work:


Licorice on my mom's ironing board:


A rainbow over Montreal:


Taken on the bus to or from Rawdon where I went to visit my parents:


Inside Place Alexis-Nihon:


We went for dim sum at the Red Ruby in Chinatown for my birthday, it was my first time eating dim sum and I loved it!:


Carlo and my reflection in the disk of a broken external hard drive (cell phone pic):


The view of my parents yard last weekend, first real snow I saw this winter! I was so happy :D:


The Sushi Crescent where we went to eat for Carlo's mom's birthday, it was so good!


The railing of the stairway changed color:


A sunbeam hit Steph's dragon figurine just right, and the ostrich egg with it:


Some kickass salad I made with tomatoes, lettuce, Wafu Asian dressing, calamari just barely fried with some oil, smoked salt and white pepper:


The rest of them are here.

Tonkotsu ramen

Is what I'll be making in January!!!!

Unless I can find a restaurant in Chinatown that makes some... *goes to search on Chowhound*

And a few hours later...


First big snow!

I took these with my cell phone of the view out the window directly behind me at work:


Missing

It makes your day when you're missing someone but are too shy to tell them and then get a text message from them saying they miss you :D Especially after reading something like this and a good cup of coffee :D

My weeks nowadays are spent going to the gym in the evening and generally being busy. This weekend I stayed up suuuuper late on Friday night decorating my entire apartment with every last Christmas decoration I could find lol. I surprised my friend Carlo when he got home at 12:45 am as he wasn't expecting me to be up lol. Then went to bed at around 4am, got up yesterday at around 11am, had breakfast, went back to bed at around 12:30 and napped till 3:30 or so, then got up and got ready to go with Carlo to his place to have dinner and get some clothes from his mom and we watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It made me feel a bit emo. And then she drove us back to my place and I stayed up late again and had to get up early for work and drink coffee for once. I'm preparing a BIG surprise for him for his birthday but I'm guessing he doesn't read this but just in case he does (hi Carlo!) I'm not saying what it is muahahahaha! XD

This weekend nothing planned either, except for the surprise, and finally getting to church!

I wanted to post up a slide show of November's pictures but couldn't cause I wanted to edit it and it didn't work so I'll have to post them up individually when I have time. Maybe tonight. I think I'll start posting more or less once a month, I've gotten too busy to do otherwise.

WANT! Rainbow House!

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Thursday, December 2, 2010


O Hai by *La-Vita-a-Bella on deviantART

Chicken Viking Hat

ROFL! If ever I have kids I have to get someone to knit me this hat: