Coffee on your steak

Here's the video of Trish Magwood demonstrating how to make an easy chili coffee steak rub.

And here is my Ingredient column on the subject.

You are what you drink

I wrote about the trials of ordering wine while on a dinner date for today's National Post. Check it out here. And thanks to Steve Murray for the illusration.

A few things I learned while researching the story:
- Ordering wine while on a date still remains a male responsibility.
- Avoid the big tannic reds on first dates. Too heavy and it'll stain your teeth.
- Champagne! Couldn't fit this detail in the story but Mark Taylor, sommelier and owner of Cru restaurant in Vancouver tells me it's always a crowd-pleaser. A bit celebratory, but it always sets the mood right.

A logical follow-up story on this topic would be how we all judge dinner-guests based on what wine they bring. I'm hardly a wine snob (I love <$10 Italians) and I won't turn away a guest at the door if they bring an offensive wine, but if someone shows up with Yellow Tail or Jackson Triggs, they will be barred from future dinners. Harsh? Perhaps, but someone's gotta set the standards.

Ingredient - the video

I've always wanted to have a video demo accompany my Ingredient column in the National Post. Finally, my team and I have finally completed our first one. I invite you all to check it out and tell me what you think. The video is about my guided tour of the fish counter at T&T Supermarket and a quick demo about how to make Cantonese-style steamed green bass. You can also read the column here.

Thank you to producer Maryam Siddiqi for making this project happen.

Allez cuisine! The Gold Medal Plates black box competition

Last night, I attended the first night to the The Gold Medal Plates competition. Part culinary triathlon, part Olympic fundraiser, the GMP is a meeting of seven top chefs from across the country and they duke it out over three days in a series of challenges. The first event was yesterday's Iron Chef-like black box competition: The chefs are handed a mystery box of six ingredients and then given ten minutes to devise a menu of two dishes that use all the ingredients. They then announce their menu, submit it to the judges (comprised of food writers and chef-instructors), and create two dishes within the one-hour time limit.

James Chatto, food critic for Toronto Life, is the head judge of the competition and was responsible for choosing the six mystery ingredients. Five of them were local – organic flank steak, Georgian Bay whitefish, celery root, honeycomb and Ontario-grown peanuts – and one was the exotic import – plantains. Why this combination? "I wanted to make it difficult but keep it local," he said. "I added plantains because it can be both used as something sweet and as a starch." One of the competing chefs – Paul Rogalski from Rouge in Calgary – announced he had a peanut allergy upon declaring his two-dish menu. I asked Chatto later if he ever thought of the nutaphobes in his ingredient-selection and he blushed a bit. "It never crossed my mind."

The event took place at the culinary school at George Brown College. There were about 50 guests and judges, crammed into the school's kitchens, watching the chefs sweat out the challenge. It was like watching Iron Chef live, sans commentary and multiple camera angles, so it was a bit difficult to see what was going oe. Also, there were a throng of chefs, restaurateurs and foodie hanger-ons who were more amped about the free wine than about watching the competitors sweat it out, which made it even more difficult to decipher what was going on.

The chefs who took part:

· Anthony Walsh of Canoe (Toronto)
· Martin Ruiz Salvador of Fleur de Sel (Halifax)
· Roland Ménard of Manoir Hovey (Montréal)
· Melissa Craig of Barefoot Bistro (Vancouver)
· Paul Rogalski of Rouge (Calgary)
· Judy Wu of Wild Tangerine (Edmonton)
· Michael Moffatt of Beckta Dining and Wine (Ottawa-Gatineau)

Check out my preview of the GMP competition.

Also, here's a video of Anthony Walsh declaring his menu after his ten minute brainstorming period.

Gong hay fat choy

Is the myth of the second Chinese-only menu at Chinese restaurants truth or fiction?

Truth indeed. Check out my story about it here. Truth be told, I've been meaning to write explain the secrets of the second menu for a while and it just so happened that my editors have been just as eager to read about now.

A few footnotes:
- the Chinese-only menu is called "to chan" and prounanced "TOE chan." If you want to see the menu, ask for the "TOE chan DAN."
- Unfortunately, I didn't get to lament the sad state of North American Chinese cuisine. Chinese cuisine on this continent needs a massive marketing overhaul but it's so hard to find at times. Nina and Tim Zagat – the founders of the Zagat guides – complained about the how far North American Chinese food lags the real thing.
- My dad has yet to give me his opinion of what I wrote.