Cream Cheese Biscuits

I made this on a weeknight when we had a 'White Food' night.  The oven was on because we were heating up a pork shank for dinner, so I figured I might as well try this recipe out.  This recipe was great not only because it tasted good....but it was super quick to do!  The only downside......it's probably not the healthiest.  But what biscuits are?  I substituted all purpose flour with whole wheat flour.  Thats me trying to be slightly healthier.

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/3 cup self rising flour
Butter, softened or melted for finishing

Pulse together the cream cheese, 2/3 cup butter and 1 cup of flour two or three times in a food processor fitted with the knife or dough blade until it comes together in a ball.  Turn the dough out onto waxed paper and divide into two rounds.  Flatten.  Wrap in waxed paper, plastic wrap, or resealable plastic bag, and refrigerate for at least 30 mins.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Lightly sprinkle a board or other clean surface suing some of the 1/3 cup reserved flour.  Sprinkle the top lightly with flour.  With floured hands and a floured rolling pin, roll out one portion fo the dough at a time to about 1/4 inch thick.  Fold the dough over to make it 1/2inch thick.  For each biscuit, dip a 1 to 1 1/4 inch biscuit cutter into reserved flour and cut out the biscuits, starting at the outside edge and cutting very close together, being careful not to twist the cutter.  The scraps may be combined to make additional biscuits, altho these scraps make tougher biscuits.  Roll out the second portion when ready to bake.

Using a metal spatula if necessary, move the biscuits to an ungreased baking sheet, placing the biscuits 1 inch apart.  Refrigerate the biscuits for 10 to 20 mins until cold.  Bake the biscuits on the top rack of the oven for a total of 10-12 minutes until light golden brown.  After 6 minutes, rotate the pan in the oven so that the front of the pan is now turned to the back.  Continue baking for another 4 to 6 minutes.

Recipe taken from the below link:
http://sandynawrot.blogspot.ca/2012/03/southern-biscuits-nathalie-dupree-and.html

Sushi Kaji

This post is late, way too late.  My hubby treated me to Kaji for my birthday, which was in July.  Even after all these months, I still remember how good the food was.  Yes it was expensive, but boy was it worth the money!  I will leave this post short text wise, and let the pictures do the talking.  Enjoy!

Menu

Menu

Sesame Tofu

Simmered Eggplant with Dashi

Lotus Root Gelee with Lobster

Assorted Appetizer Plate

Marinated White Fish with Plum Sauce
Chicken & Green Peas in Tomato Cup

Cold Butter Squash Soup

Lily Bulb Cake

Green Tea Noodle 

Grilled Scampi Shrimp

Sashimi Plate

Grilled Eel Sushi

Toro Sushi

Salmon Sushi

Scallop Sushi

Forgot what kind of fish :(

Shrimp Sushi

Lobster Sushi

Yuzu Panna Cotta

Fruit Jelly & Macaron

Macaron

Sushi Kaji

860 The Queensway,

Toronto, ON

M8Z 1N7

416-252-2166

Momofuku Noodle Bar TO

I was very excited when I heard that David Chang was opening a Momofuku in Toronto.  I have always wanted eat at Momofuku because of the reviews of his several locations in NYC.  Each time I have gone to NYC, I tried to include it in, but other restaurants always snuck in on my list instead.

When I walked through the doors of Toronto's Noodle Bar, I was expecting a wait, a long one, especially since the I've seen and been in the long line ups for other new ramen restaurants that have opened up here.  As soon as we walked in through the doors, we were seated immediately.  Strange I thought.

Our order consisted of the infamous pork buns, mushroom buns, the infamous ramen, and the smoked chicken wings.

The pork buns and the mushroom buns arrived first.  Pork buns looked great but tasted disappointing.  This is the first place where I have tried pork buns of any sort (have not been to Ippudo yet).  On the menu it was mentioned that it was high quality pork, Berkhsire?  I have found that Berkshire pork or other humainly raised pork products have evenly layered fat, or distributed evenly.  This is making me think of the maple smoked bacon I have purchased from the Brickworks Farmers Market, it was amazing!  Okay, back to Momofuku. The pork belly had HUGE chunks of fat.  It was quite disgusting.    Flavour wise, it tasted like Chinese BBQ sauce.  And as you can see, the buns were flat, and not light and fluffy as mantau should be like.  The mushroom bun flavour reminded me of Chinese Shanghai noodles.  In otherwords it tasted like soy sauce, some oyster sauce and mushrooms.

Pork Buns

Mushroom Buns

The ramen, looked good.  Tasted blah.  I personally think that what makes the ramen is the broth.  I love a good thick hearty broth.  Here, the broth was a clear broth, no pork flavour, and watery.  The only flavour the broth had was a slightly smoky flavour similar to bonito flakes.  The chasiu was dry, and had a 'pork' flavour that I don't like.   This flavour normally I usually taste when the pork is a cheap quality pork.  To me tastes like a dead rotting taste.  The egg was a poached egg, not a perfectly boiled egg that normal ramen dishes are served with.  I was also not a fan of the noodle.  It's not the ramen noodle that I'm accustomed to.  It was more like the thin wonton noodle rather than ramen noodle.

Ramen

Smoked Chicken Wings.  There was little to no smoke flavour.  Although the wings look browned, it was soggy.  What I hate most about eating chicken is squishy, rubbery, fatty chicken skin.  I hate eating the skin off of steamed/poached chicken.  This is what it resembled.  There was some sort of sauce on the wings.  Tasted like a soy sauce.  Essentially, this dish was no different than my mom's soy sauce chicken wings.

Smoked Chicken Wings

Overall, I was very disappointed in this meal.  I have heard that Momofuku's tasting menu up on the third floor has much better food.  But i'm not sure I'm willing to spend the money to try it after being so disappointed on their signature dishes.  During my trip to NYC, I wasn't willing to go to Momofuku to try their ramen again, even though I have heard that it's much better there.  I did however try their crack pie which I thought was pretty good.  A separate post on my NYC trip later.

Momofuku Noodle Bar TO
Ground Floor
190 University Ave.,
Toronto, ON
M5H 0A3

Lunch 11:30am - 3pm
Dinner 5pm - 11pm

http://momofuku.com/toronto/noodle-bar-to/

Dr. Oetker Mug Cake

I really am not a fan of 'instant' cakes.  Growing up, yes my mom did buy us cake mix for when we wanted to bake.  But now, I don't buy any of those.  If want to eat cake, I'll bake it from scratch.  I tried Dr. Oetker's Mug Cake because I had a coupon for it.  The coupon was for a free box of the mug cake mix.  So I thought, might as well give it a try.

Dr. Oetker Mug Cake

The cake mix was simple and quick to 'make' and 'bake'.  This is way faster than those regular cake mixes.  All you need to do for the mug cake is to grease a mug with butter, pour in the mix, add 1/4 cup of milk and mix.  'Bake' it in the microwave for 1 minute and 15 seconds.  It definitely gets points for the easy factor.  The only way easier to get cake would be to buy a ready make cake.

Look and taste wise, thats a different story.  After 'baking' in the microwave, the mug cake looks like the picture below.  It's pretty ugly.  So many holes all over the top makes it look like it was overcooked doesn't it?  But it's not.  It's pretty moist inside.  What I really didn't like is the fact that the cake sticks to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter.  There's also a fake sugary sweetness to it.

Dr. Oetker Mug Cake

I definitely will not buy this product in the future.

PC Mini Cheesey Bees' Nests

I got suckered into buying this after watching the episode of Recipes to Riches a while back.    The story about how the father was laid off, didn't have much money for food, had to be creative with what was in the fridge etc was very heartfelt.  But I actually bought it because I thought the combination was pretty gross which made me want to try it.  The recipe has raspberry jam, cream cheese, mozzarella in a phyllo shell.

Turns out these bees nests tastes pretty good.  The cheese isn't as overpowering as I would have thought.  Not sure if I would spend the money to pay for the PC product again, but from what I remember, the ingredients and steps of putting together the recipe was pretty easy.  I'm sure it's something that can be easily replicated at home.

PC Mini Cheesey Bees'  Nest