Pleasant Lifestyle » All About Food

Flying cookies

samson — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:55:29 +0000

Today I have the pleasure of indulging on some Almond cookies from Macau. Almond cookies are a traditional Cantonese style cookie made with roasted almonds. Surprisingly enough, the main ingredient is not almond but green bean, almonds primarily are for flavoring and aroma. Other ingredients include pork fat, water, powdered sugar and oil.
To make the traditional style of almond cookies, the baker must start at least one night before. The pork fat with meat removed needs to be cut up into little pieces of approximately the size of a quarter of a Canadian penny and each piece must be covered with sugar and rice wine. Once the mixing for the fat portion is complete, let it stay over night so the fat would pick up the sugary taste. After about a day, the actual baking may begin.
Just before one start the batter portion, the pork fat needs to be boiled and dried of water. Having excess water would alter the texture of the final product. To create the “batter”, grind the green beans to a powder and mix in the sugar powder, chopped up roasted almonds and oil. Add little amounts of water to the mixture, ensuring the mixture stays powdery and does not become a real batter! If the mixture becomes too moist and lose its powdery feel, it is no longer almond cookies batter.
With the batter powder ready, take a Chinese cookie mold, stuff a piece of the now cooked and dried fat into the mold and cramp the mold with the powder mixture. Remove the cookie from the mold and roast it. Once it is roasted, it is an almond cookie.

A good and fresh almond cookie should crumble to powder as you chew. It should not taste too sweet, nor should it be too heavy on the almond side.

The almond cookies originated from Chung Shan city of the province of Canton. During the wars of the last one hundred years, the ability of almond cookie making have migrated toward the British colony of Hong Kong and the Portuguese colony of Macau. With the advances of Hong Kong within the last forty years, most Chinese bakery chefs have redirected their money earning efforts elsewhere and the Hong Kong branch of Almond Cookies seems to have slowly died out. Macau on the other hand maintained the branches since it have never prosper like its brother city, therefore maintained the Macau branch of the more traditional style the pre-war Chinese heritage.

These cookies came into my procession because a friend of my family just flew back from Hong Kong, where one of the stops they had was a visit to Macau. These cookies really do feel different as you chew on them, the ones available in most stores of Toronto cannot compare. Just the freshness alone would etch a gigantic difference.

Life is like a cotton of Chocolate

samson — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:35:48 +0000

Milk is a great source of calcium! Unless you are lactose intolerant, drinking milk would definitely benefit your body. I highly recommend my friends and family members to drink more milk. Studies have shown that milk help increase the density of bones, a common problem for older women. Yet, drinking milk on a daily basis would jade it really fast.

Chocolate is a very addictive substance. it is used in many dessert, ranging from hot chocolate fondu to cold chocolate ice-cream. It is also a rumored aphrodisiac.

Mixing the two together was the best idea since sliced bread! We now have multiple choices to absorb the amount of calcium we need! (strawberry milk is an idea that frightens me, actually mixing sour fruits with milk in general is a very bold attempt in my opinion.)

As I trot through a grocery store I frequent, I notice a new type of chocolate on the shelf. Read very carefully as it is 100% English!

Yuk!!

The good, the bad and the wings eater

samson — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:25:51 +0000

For Christmas team lunch, the Learning Management System team (LMS) went to Wild Wing. It is not my first time there as I am a big chicken wing lover.

Just as I got out of my car, I notice Clint Eastwood looking at an angle, as if the bad is riding towards him. That’s pretty interesting to me as I never thought that where the “wild” in Wild Wing came from.

Once I got inside, the idea of being wild went even more wild. They decorated a orange plastic coconut tree for Christmas!

The wings are not bad, they were not over cooked or over sauced. My complains lies primarily with the appetizer we ordered, the nachos. The primary problem with the nachos is that melted cheese was pour over the chips but was not able to maintain the level of heat to keep the cheese molten. By the time we started eating, it was a bulk of harden cheese with semi-crispy nachos bonded together. I would prefer the cheese to stay molten so that when we started, cheese strings would result from each nacho chip being removed.

A tale of two Pizzas

samson — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:48:40 +0000

PizzaHut seems to be turning into a delivery, I thought as I drive down on Simcoe st. North from the Durham College campus.

It is the last day of work for the year and eating a lunch from was not on my mind. I have accidentally missed the group lunch with everyone due to a panic call from a faculty member hence I am starving and clueless as to where I should go for lunch.

As I drive down the road, several food places popped into view. The lunch box, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco bell, Subway, Mr. Sub, Mary Browns and many many more. Suddenly a graving surfaced and I have this sudden urge for PizzaHut! Luckily the nearest location is just around the corner, this means I don’t have to drive down to King Street.
I pulled into the parking lot of the little plaza where the PizzaHut is located and place an order for a medium Supreme. I am extremely fond of the Supreme and Super pan pizzas from PizzaHut. It is still the best tasting pizza I have tried, followed by Domino’s Philadelphia steak pizza.

A noticeable change to Pizzahut is that they have close down many restaurant locations and replaced them with PizzaHut delivery.

Even the box have been redesigned! It is now red instead of the old school brown card board design!

After fifteen minutes of waiting, I was presented with a meat lover’s pizza. The service manger noticed this and asked me to wait for an extra five minutes. Once the waiting is over, he presented me with two medium pizzas, the Supreme that I ordered and the Meat Lover’s that was made erroneously. With apologizes and wishing me a merry Christmas, the service manager charged me only for the Supreme and apologized some more. I have not witness this level of customer services for a very long time! Obviously I will frequent this PizzaHut store more now, this older fashion of customer focus should be highly encouraged.

I still have half of the Supreme in front of me as I type this, giving off an attractive aroma as it cool down. The Meat lover have sacrificed itself and have been devoured by my co-workers.

A tale of two Pizzas

samson — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:46:13 +0000

Pizza Hut seems to be turning into a delivery, I thought as I drive down on Simcoe st. North from the Durham College campus.

It is the last day of work for the year and eating a home brought lunch was not on my mind. I have accidentally missed the group lunch with everyone due to a panic call from a faculty member hence I am starving and clueless as to where I should go for lunch.

As I drive down the road, several food places popped into view. The lunch box, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco bell, Subway, Mr. Sub, Mary Browns and many many more. Suddenly a graving surfaced and I have this sudden urge for PizzaHut! Luckily the nearest location is just around the corner which means I don’t have to drive down to King Street.
I pulled into the parking lot of the little plaza where the PizzaHut is located and place an order for a medium Supreme. I am extremely fond of the Supreme and Super pan pizzas from PizzaHut. It is still the best tasting pizza I have tried, followed by Domino’s Philadelphia steak pizza.

A noticeable change to Pizzahutis that they have close down many restaurant locations and replaced them with PizzaHut delivery.

Even the box is different! It is now red instead of the old school design!

I still have half of the Supreme in front of me as I type this, giving off an attractive aroma as it cool down. The Meat lover have been devoured by my co-workers.