Gastronomical Exploration: Aristo's

Next up on our list of restaurants to visit--Aristo's.

It's a Greek restaurant--and I have to admit, I've never been a fan of Greek food, but I've heard great reviews about this place.  Mom wanted to try the moussaka.

I didn't have much of an appetite, so I ordered their soup, the Avgolemono.

 It's a Mediterranean egg-drop soup basically.  Very flavorful, chicken-stock based clear-yet-thick soup was nice and hot...and quite tangy from the lemon.  It was full of tender rice and bits of carrots.  Very strange, but pretty good.
Then came the mousaka....

Ground lamb, eggplant, and potato slices sauteed in spices and topped with bechamel sauce.  The filling was bland, and the bechamel "sauce" was so thick it was like pudding.  Again, it was pretty bland, and mom couldn't finish it.
Meh...doubt we'll come back here again...

Gastronomical Exploration: Copper Onion

While my dad's recuperating at the hospital from his surgery, my mom and I continue on with our gastronomical exploration.

Today, we tried the Copper Onion, a New American cuisine restaurant that's fairly new.  I've heard good reviews about this place, so I had high expectations.

There were a few things on the dinner special, so my mom got the rock shrimp pasta and I got the smoked salmon salad.



The rock shrimp pasta.  The pasta is house-made, and tasted fine--but very al dente, if not borderline chewy.  The shrimp was slightly overcooked, and the sauce was too spicy.  It was spicy to the point it overpowered the tomato in the sauce.  

My smoked salmon salad.  With fresh greens, smoked salmon, raspberry, and house dressing.  I normally like salads, but this one wasn't very good.  The smoked salmon was delicious by itself, but the raspberries didn't go very well with the smokey flavor of the salmon at all.  The salad would've been way better with orange segments instead. 
We left disappointed.  And at $14 per plate, we felt ripped off.  I doubt we'll go again...

Gastronomical Exploration: Good ol' Kyoto Restaurant



It's good to go explore and try out new things, but there's something comforting about going back to a restaurant that you know is good.

Kyoto is our favorite Japanese restaurant in Salt Lake City.  The quality is good, the pricing is reasonable...and the staff is very friendly.

My mom and I (but not dad) love the sushi bar.  We are friends with the sushi chef there.  He always welcomes us, is quite generous with the portions, and gives us some freebies, like new menu items for us to sample.

Last time we were there, he gave each of us a gigantic yellowtail tataki handroll.  He gave that to us after we were finished with our meal, and well, who can turn that down??  Of course, after finishing that, we thought we were gonna explode.

This time, the freebie was a seaweed & crab salad.

 It had seaweed (i.e. wakame), bean sprouts, chunks of crab, with sweet & spicy sesame dressing.  It was delicious, and a great appetizer.
Now for the sushi...

 Good ol' Rainbow Roll for mom.  As I've mentioned, the chef is very generous with the portions, and topped the roll with thicker-than-your-average-sashimi slices of fish.  He didn't skimp on the roll filling either.
As for me, I got my favorites...

Ikura (i.e. salmon roe) and Amaebi (sweet shrimp) nigiri.  I think the best part of the amaebi nigiri is the head.  The chef deep-fries the heads to a crispy delight, crunchy on the outside, filled with the succulent, buttery shrimp innards.

We left quite full and happy.  The food is excellent at Kyoto, but it's the personal, close relationship we have with the people there that elevates the overall experience to ultimate satisfaction, and keeps us coming back.

Gastronomical Exploration: Faustina

With dad safe and sound at the hospital, it was just me and my mom.  We decided to spend the next week or two eating out and trying out new restaurants that we weren't able to go to because of dad.  Sad to say--but it's true, dad is a finicky eater, almost never wanting to try new places and refusing to eat any cuisines that originated south of the Tropic of Cancer.

But no more that for a while!  Mom and I are taking this opportunity to go on our gastronomical exploration!

First up on the list:  Faustina.

Mom has never been here, and though I've been here before, it's been a long time.  They serve the so-called "New American" cuisine, with a strong Italian influence.

Mom ordered their lasagna.

 We were very impressed with their presentation!  It was chockful of Italian sausage, salami, grilled zucchini, spinach, and caramelized onions and three kinds of cheeses.  I love the artwork the chefs painted with the orange and yellow bell pepper sauce and balsamic reduction.  It was delicious too--very flavorful but not too greasy, with just the right amount of cheese.

As for me, I got the soup & salad combo--I just love salads :)

I had the choice of butternut squash soup or the salmon chowder.  Of course, I chose the chowder.

 The soup was delicious!  Loaded with tender diced potatoes, onion, and salmon chunks, it was rich but not greasy, and very smooth.  And oh-so-flavorful!  The salad was very good too, with red beet chips sprinkled on top for a nice crunch.

Our lunch came with a complimentary dessert--Strawberry Roulade



A jelly-roll sponge soaked with maple syrup, filled with (I think) caramel buttercream.  Topped with macerated strawberry brunoise and cinnamon whipped cream, this was actually quite light, and not too sweet.  I would've finished it if I wasn't so full.

Dad's been recovering slowly but surely.  He was pretty lucid and was apparently hallucinating too the first few days after the surgery, but he's mentally more alert now.

Dad's surgery day!

Thursday was the day!  The check-in appointment was at 6AM, so we all woke up around 4:30AM to get ready, which didn't take too long;  dad wasn't allowed to eat, and both mom and I decided to have breakfast at the hospital restaurant.
We checked in, went into the prep room where dad got dressed into a hospital gown.  A nurse, an assistant surgeon, and an anesthegiologist came into ask questions and to get an IV set up.  Dad got teary-eyed as they whisked him away to the operating room.  As for mom and I, the waiting game has just begun.

I brought a book (Better Homes & Gardens Annual Recipes 2000 ed.), so I read through that while mom dozed off.  Across the waiting room, a service dog, was also waiting for its owner to return from the surgery.

The poor dog was having a bad separation anxiety--he had the saddest look on his face, and whined nonstop during the entire three-hour procedure :(
Mom and I went up to the Point restaurant at the hospital to grab a smoothie (for mom) and an energy drink (Monster Rehab for me).  Every few hours we got a call from the nurse in the operating room, who gave us updates on the surgery.  It sounded like everything was going well.
For lunch, we again, went up to the Point restaurant.  Neither of us had much of an appetite, but we had to eat something (preferably solid).  Mom got the clam chowder and I loaded up at the salad bar.

 The clam chowder was flavorful, but had more potatoes than clams.
We went back to the waiting room and waited a few more hours--finally, the surgeon emerges, announcing that it's done, that dad's doing well, and is in the ICU!
We got to see him once he woke up.  He was still woozy and sleepy but seemed OK otherwise.  We finally left the hospital at 4:30PM.  Goodness, we were at the hospital for 10 hours!  Seriously, this waiting thing is extremely draining, mentally and physically.
Since neither of us had the energy to cook, we went out to eat at Kathmandu, an Indian & Nepalese restaurant.
Since we've never been here--and we still didn't have much of an appetite--we ordered an appetizer and a salad.
This is the Combo platter, with lamb kebab, chicken tikka, chicken tandoori, paneer pakora, aloo tiki, sami kebab, and assorted grilled veggies.

We asked it to be "mild" spiced, but it was still very hot.  The meat was dry, and not a whole lot of flavor other than the capsaicin.  The veggies were good though.

For the salad, we got the Desi salad.  Now, we were expecting a little more than a plate of quartered lemon, raw onion, and raw serrano (or jalapeno) peppers, with a small cup of mysterious pickles.  Silly me, I ate the peppers first, just to see how hot it was.  YIKES.  It was so hot it managed to numb my tongue, making it impossible for me to taste any of the appetizers.  Not to mention they were pretty hot anyway.
Would I come back here?  Uh, no.  This is their second restaurant located in downtown.  I've heard good reviews about their other place on Highland, but we both left, very disappointed.
All in all, a very eventful day... 

Inside Les Madeleine's kitchen: the final week

With dad's surgery coming up and the orientation/training for my job at Scheels, I made this my last week at Les Madeleine's.  During this short period, I learned a lot about production, utilization of leftover products, how bakeries work in general, storage of food items, etc.  Definitely something I can put to use at Scheels.

These are some of the stuff I helped put together...

Peach Charlotte.  Peach Bavarian cream, topped with candied ginger.
Yet another plus side of working at a bakery is the access to leftover pastries :)  They still taste excellent, just not 'fresh' enough to sell.
There were some strawberry charlottes that have been sitting on the shelf a little too long.  They are given to the workers as a snack, but there were a few extras that they let me take home.

On my last day, I got to assemble the Linzer cookies.

The cookies are baked, and the bottom half is smeared with raspberry jam.  The top half is dusted with powdered sugar before being placed on top.  This forms a little 'window' of the red jam.

There was also a special order of the boxed desserts.  It contained an assortment of about 7 varieties of pastries, all mini-sized.  Since most of the pastries were too big to be placed in the box, they had to be specially made.

Here are the mini-poptarts, being assembled.  They look like raviolis.  

 So that was my last day at Les Madeleine's. It was fun and I learned a lot!

Next topic: dad's surgery.  It's going to be a six-hour surgery, accompanied with a 10~14 days of hospital stay.  Mom and I are still deciding what to do in the meantime...

Not-so-little dessert catering job

A dear church friend had asked me about few weeks ago if I can do catering for her daughter's graduation party.  They wanted to do a dessert buffet and it sounded pretty exciting, so I said "yes!"  ...Except it turned out that they were planning on about 50 people showing up!  Right away, I knew that this was not going to be your ordinary "dessert for 50" kinda thing.  If it was going to be a dessert buffet, it's going to require about 5 (at least 3) kinds of desserts. 

Wow.  Five varieties of desserts for fifty.

She ended up ordering 30 fruit tartlets, 50 eclairs, 50 cream puffs (half vanilla, half strawberry cream), 30 raspberry cheesecake squares, and 60 cookies (three kinds: chocolate chip, snickerdoodles, and sugar).  At first, I wasn't too worried--it was a lot of food, but I can pull it off, I thought.  She wanted it delivered by 4:30PM on Thursday.

I made the cookie dough on Tuesday, portioned them out, and froze them (the trick learned at Les Mads).  I also made and baked the cheesecake crust, and prepared the tart dough and put it in the fridge to chill overnight.

Wednesday was one busy day.  I baked the choux for the eclairs and the cream puffs, and ended up using the entire two batches.  While they were baking, I made double batches of the pastry cream for the tarts and the eclairs.  I was having trouble with the tart shells--they turned out very fragile, and kept breaking one after another.  By the time I finished them, it was 7PM and I still had a cheesecake to bake.  But cheesecake was easy--it was done and in the fridge by midnight.

Thurday morning,  I baked off all the cookies, cut the cheesecake, and made the chocolate glaze for the eclairs.

Around noon, the "fun" began...

I started filling the eclairs.  The choux turned out pretty crisp, but the moisture from the filling will soften them up a bit.  But here, I noticed that I was running low on the pastry cream--and I've yet to fill the tarts!

I started filling the tarts--which didn't require as much filling as eclairs--and to my delight, discovered that I had just enough for everything.  And by 'just enough' I only had about half a cup of the pastry cream leftover.  I glazed all the eclairs and arranged them on a sheet pan, to let the glaze set.  In the meantime...

While Mom was cutting the round choux in half, I whipped the heavy cream, and flavored half of it with strawberry jam.  I piped the filling into the shells--which turned out pretty small, even for a "mini-size".  Next time I'll make them a little bigger...

The whole assembly line.  While I was arranging the fruits on the tarts and snapping photos, Mom was carefully putting each eclairs into baking cups. 

By the time we were done assembling and packaging everything, it was a little past 4:30PM.  Good thing our friends live only two miles away!  We managed to deliver everything safely!

Cream puffs, half with vanilla, half with strawberry whipped cream.

Raspberry swirl cheesecake, cut into 30 squares.

And last, but definitely not the least, 60 assorted cookies (the soft & chewy kind): Chocolate Chip, Snickerdoodle, and Sugar.

*phew*  That was crazy but fun!  ....I doubt I'll do it again though :P