Panama Las Flores de Volcan

Panama Las Flores de Volcan

When it comes to Central American coffees, for its balance, subtle complexity and elegance, I like Panamanian the best. This is a bright example . The nose is interestingly of toasted almond and light caramel. The flavour is subtly complex, nothing dominate but there are quite a lot to explore. It is a little more acidic than your typical Panamanian, but the acid is very mild and dances light on the edge of the tongue, not sharp like an Ethiopian. Body is medium-light and clean. My roast this time is half way between 1st and 2nd cracks.

Ethiopia FTO Yirgacheffe Oromia Union

 http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.africa.ethiopia.php?coffee=EthiopiaFTOYirgaCheffeOromia2009

This is the fullest Yirgacheffe I have roasted so far. At just pass first crack, I find it very round in the mouth with cherry, licorice and berry notes balanced with caramel, plenty of characteristic acidity but complimented with atypical sweetness. It is like a sharp Yirgacheffe blended with a sweet Honduran. Liking it a lot.

Vina 105 from Telmo Rodriguez

I like Telmo Rodriguez' wines, not all of them, but I like the way he makes different wines with character from under-represented regions and brings them to us.  Of all the wines on his portfolio, I like this one the best.  It is not very cheap but certainly well priced at C$17.  It is ripe and full (but not heavy like his wines from Toro), a very generous and confident wine indeed.  If I were a restaurant and have house wines, this would definitely be one of them.

Slow Roast Leg of Pork

People usually use the shoulder of to slow roast to take advantage of the fat and connecting tissues.  Here I have a leg roast, a much leaner cut, healthier to eat.  I rubbed it with salt, black pepper, fennel, cumin, coriander seeds, garlic, rosemary and oregano all mashed up in a pestle after I scored the skin. It roasted for 30 minutes at 450℉ then 2 hours at 250℉ covered.  Garlic, onion, carrot and celery were then added to roast for an hour more uncovered.  The meat was finally roasted by itself at 400℉ for 20 minutes to crisp the skin.  Water was added to the pan with the vegetable to simmer for 20 minutes, skimmed off the fat and then pureed and strained to make the sauce.  Despite the leanness, the low temperature under which it cooked most of the time kept the meat moist and tender, not the fatty melt-in-you-mouthness of a shoulder cut, but the satisfying soft meatiness of a good roast.  And the crackling, OMG, is to die for, quite literally.

Roast Duck

Different people are good at different things; in the culinary word, Chinese are better than everybody else in roasting duck.  To everyone else roasting duck is the one of the highest test of a cook's skill.  To Chinese, particularly Cantonese, it is just like fast food.  The way Chinese roast duck is done requires special equipment, not easily replicated at home.  The trick of crisping the skin is still the same--first boiling the outside of the duck in water for a few minutes and then dry it thoroughly by hanging it for a few hours. I like then to roast it in a 350℉ for a couple of hours, bast with the fat in the pan a few times.  The result is crispy skin with all the fat melted away, the meat is full cook, moist and tender.  A sort of half Chinese, half European method that works very well at home.  Now I have a lot of duck fat and I really want to eat it but someone in my head keep saying don't... what to do? what to do?

Poulet au Vin

Thanks to Julia Child, Coq au Vin has become the standard with which the culinary worth of a host(ess) is measured in North America.  If it were called just chicken stew, then many a host(ess) would not have been so proud when presenting it to the table.  And if you don't call it coq au vin, you don't have to cook it in a such tedious way Ms. Child delineated in her books and shows.  I have a little red wine left so I just sautéed a couple skinless chicken legs add some onion, carrot and celery. A little tomato paste flour and herbs are next.  Wine and stock are next, season with salt and pepper, then cook slowly with the potato pieces for half and hour.  Et voilà, a all-in-one dinner is done.

All in One Oven

You can cook all in one pot, all in one stack of steamer, and all in one pan in the oven.  This is about as quick and simple a meal I can come up with.  Potato and cauliflower are in the pan and the one-legged game hen is on the rack.  It takes about the same time to cook everything, 30 min or so in a 400℉ convected oven.

El Salvador Cup of Excellence La Montañita Pacamara

El Salvador Cup of Excellence La Montañita Pacamara

These beans are big, as least three time the size of the Sidamo. I roast it to just before 2nd crack, darkishly City+. Its fragrant is like that of a fine cigar. Its taste is well balanced sweetness, bitterness and acidy. A deeply flavoured coffee that is worthy of quietly contemplation.

Ethiopia DP Haile Selassie Sidamo

Ethiopia DP Haile Selassie Sidamo
This coffee reminds me why I love Ethiopian coffee above all others. It is lively, bright, floral, fruity; the flavours just dance in my mouth and nose. Who say acidity is bad in coffee? I love it so I roast it light, just pass first crack, i.e. City.

Roast Pork Sirloin

Sirloin is a very very lean cut of pork so it is easy to come out of the oven like a door stop.  The only way is to slow roast it.  Here I browned the salted meat on top the stove before smearing the top with a paste of garlic, rosemary, oregano, black pepper and olive oil and roasting in a 170℉ oven until it reaches 140℉ internally.  I then turn the oven up to 400℉ convected until the top browns and the internally temperature reaches 160℉.  The meat is still slightly pink and very tender and juice.  Not only is it good eating soon out of the oven, it is even better as sandwich meat. 

Tandoori Chicken

Making Tandoori chicken isn't difficult, finding a tandoor is.  As much as I like tandoori, I am not about to keep a tandoor around.  Here I turn the oven onto 500℉ and bake it convected--as hot as I can get me old electric oven to do.  The chicken legs are marinated over night with coriander seeds, black mustard seeds, cardamom seeds, cumin, cloves, garlic, ginger, onion, lime juice, cinnamon, red chili powder, green chili, salt, black pepper, turmeric and yogurt.  It does not have the special flavour imparted by the tandoor oven but still tastes very good.

Re-Cooked Chicken and Potato Curry

This looks fresh but actually is chicken and potato cooked in leftover curry sauce.  The style of curry popular in Hong Kong is quick saucy, I would say soupy.  I like my curry thick, so my friends from there always complain about not having enough sauce.  I tried to make a saucy curry beef the other day, got rather unhappy with the watered down flavour and added coconut milk and lime juice and chili pepper and whatnots to make it eatable to my taste.  I have a couple of cups of sauce left after all the beef is eaten.  To use it I put in some skinned chicken leg and potato, reseasoned it a bit and I have another meal.  It is better this time, the sauce is reduced more in the cooking and more is added to it.

Uninspired

Picked this up at the Hong Kong Airport Duty Free store about a year ago, just finished drink it. It has taken me a long time because, well, I didn't like it at all.  Sounds interesting, doesn't it, 1851 inspiration?  It isn't much of that.  The bottle is bubbly and that's interesting, but the liquid inside is mundane at best.  It is neither rich nor full nor even flavourful.  If this is what people were drinking back then, Macallan certainly has improved quite a lot in the century and a half since.

20-Year Old Shaoxing Wine 二十年花雕酒

I have had this for a few years now but the cork and everything holds up well.  The wine though is a little disappointing.  Usually it get richer as it ages but this one tastes a little thiner than some 10 or 15-year I have had.  Maybe it is the style but I prefer the 15 from the same maker.  I still have a bottle of 30-year, will fine out how it is.  I like the bottle though.

Local Sake

Masa Shiroki make sake on Granville Island in Vancouver.  He is unique in that he handmakes a small number of sake in unusual style.  He like his sake full and flavourful, quite a different style than the typical clean and crisp style of premium Japan sakes.  This nama sake is quite that way, the mouth feel is full and the fruitiness is also full and upfront.  It is complex but not a lot of subtleties.  Come to think of it, it goes better with our international cuisines here than most from Japan.

Leaky Port

Cristiano Van Zeller, the maker of this wine, promised me that if the leaking cork effected the wine, he would replace it with a different vintage (because he is completely out of this one).  I decided that it is not worth the trouble.  It is not so ruined just slightly oxidized, more like a Late Bottled Vintage, nowhere like a Madeira.  The fruit is a little muted but the wine is still lively.  The fine structure of the vintage holds up very well.  It is not like the unleaked ones but still quite a good drink, like a super fine LBV.

Battered and Fried Oyster

I haven't battered and fried oyster for many many years, it is about time to fry a few now.  My batter is simple, just flour, cornstarch (equal amount), salt, baking powder, egg and water.  I remembered some really great ones I had when I was little at Lei Yue  Mun 鯉魚門, Hong Kong that was fried with scallion in the batter, so I added that too.  The oysters are first parboiled for a minute then dried.  Dusted with flour, they are then dipped into the thick pancake batter-like batter and then fried in very hot oil till golden brown.  Not bad at all.

Best Potato

I like potato but I don't like most preparations of potato.  Baked is often dry and require lots of fat to slide down the throat.  Boil is boring unless massive amount of butter is tossed in.  Fried is, well, lingering, let's say.  Mashed is lots of work and more a carrier of butter and cream than potato.  Au gratin is, well, more a carrier of butter and cream and cheese.  My favourite is this--roasted in wedges.  Just a little olive oil, salt, pepper and whatever herbs or spices at hand, or not and in the very hot over it goes.  Crispy like fried, sweet like boil, creamy inside almost like mash and overall tasted like a good potato.

Purple Yam--Nature's Pre-wrapped Dessert

These little things got to be one of the most wondrous things grown.  The colour is unnatural and the taste, well, it is just like lotus paste or marzipan--sweet, fragrant and smooth.  All that  come without any work on my part, just buy and bake.  It is healthy too, but I don't care.  

Simple dinner

This is a pretty typical meal at home in a Cantonese household.  The beans are simply sautéed with garlic.  The tofu is first browned  and then cooked with left over roast pig pieces seasoned with a little ginger, garlic, scallion, shaoxing wine, sugar, salt, soy sauce and sesame oil.  The oysters are parboiled for a minute first then lots of ginger and garlic are first sautéed before the dried oysters are added to the very hot pot, add a little shaoxing wine and then a sauce of oyster sauce, sugar, soy sauce and cornstarch is added.  The oysters are usually quick fried in oil when you have this dish in a restaurant and that brings out the nice fragrant of the dish; this way though has the advantage of health as well as the creamy tenderness of the oyster fully intact (provided you don't overcook it).