Elana's Adventures

With just over a week to go before leaving, I decided that I must try Yunnanese food before going to Yunnan (Yunnan is a province in southwest China).  One of my colleagues recommended S&W Pepper House to me, apparently its the only, or one of the only restaurants in Vancouver that serve up Yunnanese food.  S&W Pepper House specializes in Yunnanese and Sichuan food. 

 

We arrived on a Saturday night at around 730pm.  The tiny place in the Crystal Mall was packed, a mix of families and young people on their way out on the town.  The wait staff didn't speak much english, but we managed to find out that lamb with cumin and chili and kung pao chicken were great apparently great choices, although it wasn't clear if these were Yunnanese or Sichuan dishes. 

 

The lamb was a large plate of lamb with a few green onions scattered throughout.  The cumin added good flavour.  The chicken, unsurprisingly, was a large plact of chicken with a few green onions scattered throughout as well as tasty cashews. 

 

This was definitely a meal that would appeal to carnivores and made me wish to become a herbivore for the next month!  I checked with my colleague on Monday morning who confirmed that our dishes were indeed Yunnanese.  Perhaps we'll return to S&W Pepper House after Yunnan and be able to order in a more "informed" fashion. 

 

S&W Pepper House - 1812-4500 Kingsway, Burnaby (in the Crystal Mall, next to Metrotown)

 

 

 

 

So most of my loyal readers (that's a total of 3 people - 2 cousins + 1 boyfriend) have noticed that the blog's been on hiatus.  It's interesting, the blog's existing entries tend to correspond exactly to my 9 month sabbatical, that's the time I spent not working full time, between leaving London and starting my life as a recruiter in Vancouver. Ive had a few failed attempts to bringing the blog back to life but this time, I assure you its for real. 

 

Last weekend my cousin Tamar was visiting from Toronto.  Food is big in our family and brunch is particularly special.  I was determined to take Tamar somewhere that she`d like, the rule is when she's in town I pick.  Last time we had a bit of issue with my choice, I'll leave that for another entry.   I decided on Seb's, I'd been a few weeks earlier and thought it was the best brunch in Vancouver but I felt some pressure.

 

Seb's didn't disappoint as you can see from the photos.  The best item on their brunch menu are the benny's.  A good benny is amazing and a mediocre benny is very disappointing.  Seb's benny's are made with a choice of three sauces, the havarti sauce it like hollandaise but better. 

 

Seb's is located at 592 E Broadway, see

http://www.hotstuffcatering.com/Seb's%20Market%20Cafe/index.html for more details. 

 

 

Today I went snowshoeing at Cypress with Oren and his parents.  The weather was good (ie not raining, gotta love Vancouver ) so we rented some snowshoes and meandered through the trees on a fun 2 hour circuit.  Snowshoeing is like walking in snow, but the snowshoes give you extra powers (ie grip) so you don't slip while walking up or down.  From Cypress, the views to the city and surrounding mountains are amazing. 

 

For lunch we stopped at the Hollyburn Hut - about 1 hour 45 mins from our set-off point.  Oren ordered poutine.  I knew it was a bad sign when the person that took the order wrote "poo" on the kitchen slip.  The main complaint - the cheese curds where ON TOP of the gravy and therefore didn't melt.  Even a rookie Montreal cook would have noticed this fatal mistake. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend my parents, sister, brother in-law, and I piled into my mom's car for a road trip to Portland to visit our friends The Singers.   The Singers are our best friends, we've grown up as close as family. 

 

While in Portland I had a great time visiting, eating, and shopping .  The Singers were fabulous hosts - they took us to to the hottest restaurant in town called Andina (http://www.andinarestaurant.com), a Peruvian place downtown.  The best dish was the tuna cebiche followed by the duck wonton.  We went on to Voodoo Doughnuts, a favourite shared with the Singers by food icon Anthony Bourdain.  Jonathan Singer chose our watering hole, Pi-rem (http://cityguides.msn.com/specials/default.aspx?cp-documentid=1372691 and look at the Slideshow), which was voted by MSN as one of the best new bars of 2006 in the whole USA.  

 

Of course, when hanging out with best friends, my favourite things to do is share secrets.  Here's Anna teaching her daughter Dora and I to make cookies.

 

 

Ingredients:   
2 1/2 c  All-purpose flour
1/2 ts Baking soda
1/4 ts Salt
1 c  Dark brown sugar
1/2 c  Sugar
1 c  Butter; salted; softened
2 Eggs
2 ts Vanilla extract
2 c  Semisweet chocolate chips
 
Method:

Preheat oven to 300~.

 

Mix flour, baking soda and salt.

 

In separate bowl, cream together the brown sugar, sugar, and butter. Add eggs and vanilla and blend until smooth. Combine the flour mixture and the sugar/butter mixture and mix. Add chocolate chips.

 

Using a silver cookie sheet, scoop out the dough onto the cookie sheet using two spoons. Separate the mounds well. 

 

Bake for 22-25 minutes. Do not overbake or raise temperature of oven as this will make soft, chewy cookies.

 

I found these were very buttery and extremely sweet to eat. 

It was my sister's birthday two days ago.  I made her a cake in the shape of a crown with help from my mom and cousin.  

 

Need I say more?

Latkes are only half the oily fun of Chanukkah.  This year I tried making another oily treat- soufganiot (jelly donuts).  Too be honest, I tried two different recipes for donuts, but only one was yummy and (un)fortunately it wasn't the one that I brought to my sister and brother in-law's party last Saturday night much to the loss of the poor guests but more left-overs for me and my dad!

 

The successful soufganiot are surprisingly easy to make.  They're nice and oily, taste like real deep-fried donuts, although you don't need a deep-fryer to make them.  They're best served warm from the pan, if you can. 

 

Here's the recipe for the succesful donuts which my cousin Benji and I made.