"Sudden Consciousness" Hamburger

With the right state of mind, even this hamburger made of cloth and stuffing can be the most delicious meal you've ever had in your life

Man Yung didn't used to be a fan of hamburgers.

"But they are so delicious!" I protested.  "One of the most memorable meals in my life happens to be hamburger.  I had stopped in Aberdeen (on Hong Kong island) on the way home from school - probably to go to the library.  I hadn't had lunch but I didn't have a lot of money, so I went to McDonalds and ordered the cheapest sandwich they had - a plain hamburger with nothing but ketchup, onions and pickles in it.  Eating the hamburger super slowly while watching construction work next to the bus stop and waiting for the bus was a slice of heaven!  It was a taste explosion.  I relished every single bite."

Man Yung scoffed.  "Ah.  But you must have been very hungry."

"A growling, empty stomach added to my pleasure in eating the hamburger but do you understand?  It was one of my life's top culinary moments.  Perhaps even one of my life's top moments, period!"

"You obviously didn't go out much," said Man Yung, still scoffing.  "McDonald's hamburger! Objectively speaking, how could a hamburger taste better than a perfectly grilled t-bone steak?  Or 8 course omakase dinner at Kaji?  Or even stir fried double lobster with ginger and onion sauce?"

Although all experience is in truth subjective, I nevertheless set out to find the most objectively delicious hamburger for Man Yung, just to prove a point.  It wasn't easy.  The ones at the fast-food franchises are yucky and filled with preservatives.  He grumbled at the $15.00 loaded Angus beef hamburger at upscale burger joint M Burger, and found it dry and tasteless.  He refused to have the expensive ones with foie gras, truffle sauce and beef raised on Mozart and shiatsu massages.

I agreed, any burger costing more than $100 (or even $20) was kind of taking it overboard.

Ultimately, I made him a hamburger at home using one of Cook's Illustrated's recipes.

Bingo!  Man Yung had a taste and then looked at me in astonishment.   "Irene, you are right!  Hamburger is one of the most tasty foods around!"

So I kind of won that one...for the moment.  But it was easy for Man Yung to forget how great that burger was.  He starts scoffing after a while, like he couldn't believe that a humble burger could ever beat a plate of deep fried free range chicken marinated in fermented red tofu sauce (for example).  Or he would want to do something fancy with that burger, like put aged grated chenpi (mandarin orange peel) it, or eat it while standing on his head.  Or use a cut of beef of lesser quality.  Or a bread that is different.  Or skip the cheese.  Or pair it with an expensive red wine instead of the cheapo $8 Fuzion Shiraz Malbec we always get at the LCBO.

"Man Yung!  Stop experimenting," I said.  "The hamburger is good in and of itself, and it goes fine with the wine we were having.  It doesn't need to be fancied up."

"But you know I like to push the boundaries.  I cannot be satisfied until all possibilities have been tried and exhausted!" he said.

I don't argue.  I just serve hamburger again.  Man Yung will start eating, refusing to taste it at first due to mental clutter.  And then, in a moment of quiet, when his mind has emptied out....

"Wow Irene!"  He will look at me in surprise.  "How come?  This is one of the best foods I've ever tasted.  Hamburgers are amazing!"*

 * If only his mind would empty out like that when he is dancing!  Then he will realize that any tango he is dancing with me is amazing.  Instead, he gets all grumpy, spazzing out on the new steps he is attempting to replicate from Youtube because I don't get them right away.  And he wonders why dancing with me yesterday was not as great as dancing with me last week, when he hadn't been watching 150 hours of tango on Youtube!  Hurrrrrumph.   

For the curious, here's the recipe we have adapted from the Cook's Illustrated cookbooks for pan-fried hamburger - it's our own lazy version, but the results are good enough for us!

"Sudden Consciousness" Hamburger

Makes 4 Hamburgers

Ingredients:

1 to 1 1/2 lbs of beef (Skirt steak or flap meat is the best, with a good balance between taste, gristle and fat, but is hard to find.  Deboned short rib is also good, rib eye and flank steak also acceptable)

4 Large, soft hamburger buns (we use D'Italiano Brizzolio buns)

Sliced cheese (Real cheese, not processed cheese or spread.  But you don't have to be really fancy - Cracker Barrel or anything like that is good enough.  We use Cracker Barrel sliced mozzarella)

Butter

Method:

1.  Pat the beef dry with clean paper towel.  Mince the beef either using a food processor or preferably manually using a chopping board and meat cleaver.  People familiar with cooking chinese cuisine and a dish called "Yuk beng" or steamed minced pork will know what we mean - you just chop the meat manually until it has the consistency of a a very course grind.

2.  Shape the ground beef into four equal patties.  Don't smoosh them smooth though, the patties should be loose and rough on the edges.

3.  Season the patties on both sides liberally with salt and ground black pepper.

4.  Heat your frying pan to medium low heat.  Put a pat of butter on the pan and once it melts (which it will pretty quickly) spread the butter evenly on bottom of the pan. Put two split hamburger buns  (four pieces total) interior side down onto the pan.  Squash the buns lightly down onto the pan into the hot butter with a fish slice/turner/spatula, checking the side of the bread on the surface of the frying pan after a few seconds to see whether it has become toasted.  Once the bread is toasted a golden brown (around 30 seconds to a minute), remove them to a plate toasted side up.   Add butter to the pan, repeat with with the remaining buns.

5.  Turn the heat up to medium high.  Add a pat of butter, spread on bottom of pan and add the beef patties into the melted butter to start frying the patties.  Do not move the patties once placed in the pan.

6.  After about one minute, when the edge of the patties start to look cooked and gray, turn the patties over with the fish slice to fry them on the other side.  The side that was fried first should be specked with a cooked crust of a light to medium brown colour.

7.  Cover the frying pan for a minute.  Uncover the frying pan, add one slice of cheese on top of each of the patties.  Turn off the heat and cover for 30 seconds more, or until the cheese has melted.

8.  Remove the patties and place them on top of the buns.

The hamburgers using the above method should come out rare or medium-rare, depending on the heat of your stove and the amount of beef in your patty.  Add whatever condiments you like on your burger.  I like to top with sunny side up eggs and bacon with mustard, mayo and ketchup.  Man Yung just eats it plain.   Serve with cheap and cheerful red wine.  Try to eat them with full and sudden consciousness!  They will be the best that you have ever tasted (subjectively speaking).

Abalone

We went to a friends' house for dinner recently.  We don't really like to go to this house to eat because the house REEKS of cooking smells, and after we go there the smell is in our clothes, our hair, everything!  But we can't refuse, it would hurt our friends' feelings if we turned them down. 

This time when the invitation to dinner came, we tried to be smart.  "Look, let us cook dinner and bring it over!" we said.  So we made a couple of dishes (and we had to be super rush, since it was on a weeknight after work) and went over.

"It really seems like there is less stench today!" I whispered to Man Yung as we served our hot food to our friends.  We spent a pleasant evening eating and chatting and having dessert and coffee afterwards - without that dreadful sensation of "Ick, I can't wait to get home to take a shower right now!"

However, as we were driving back home, Man Yung sniffed his clothes, rolled down the windows, and said, "Irene, there wasn't any cooking in their house this evening, so why do I smell like a stale fried pork chop!"

Yep, me too.

We didn't notice it when we were sitting in their house, but the cooking smell was permeating our skin minute by minute!

"Oh boy, even when they aren't cooking, the smell is still there, seeping out of the walls, floor, ceiling and even the furniture.  That's what decades of roasting chicken, pan-frying fish and stir-frying pork with peanut oil without proper ventilation will do!"

And our friends are completely oblivious to the problem because they have been living with that smell for so long, they can't even smell it anymore. 

"This reminds me of an ancient Chinese saying," said Man Yung, who always has edifying Chinese sayings on the tip of his tongue (lucky me!).  "When you are dwelling among fine cultured gentlefolk, it is like living among fragrant orchids - and after a while you aren't aware of the perfume.  However, when you are dwelling among ignorant lowlife louts, it is like working in an abalone shop.  After a while you don't know it's stinky."*

"Wow, delicious and expensive!  

Who knew that abalone used to be one of the top disgusting smells in China?"

*And when you dance grotesquely in a community of other tangueros who also dance grotesquely, you would feel completely at home and you wouldn't know that you suck!   But here in Toronto, we also get this strange phenomena: People who dance like they are the love-child of Quasimodo and Elaine Benis at venues where all the other people are dancing quite nicely - and they don't feel out of place at all!  Are they immune from the influence of good dancers because they are encased in a magical invisible bubble of self-sucking obliviousness?  Sometimes they are so confident they even put on PERFORMANCES for all the other dancers who are scowling and not pleased - remember dear Toronto Organizers, please do not spring this SURPRISE on us and warn us well in advance so we can decide NOT to come to the milonga and stay home!

"I thought abalones were supposed to be prized delicacies! You can't get any decent ones unless you paid like, hundreds of dollars for an ounce these days. I didn't know they had a reputation for smelling horrible," I said.

"This saying comes from hundreds of years ago, when people probably didn't know how to preserve abalone.  Abalone smelled so bad, when the Emperor Qin died on his travels in China and his ministers wanted to hide the fact of his death in order to prevent unrest among the people, they pulled down the curtains in his carriage and put a load of abalones in the carts next to his carriage.  They continued to travel for weeks, stopping and cooking three meals a day for the Emperor so that no one would realize he had died.  Even though the Emperor's corpse was decomposing badly in the hot weather no one suspected he was dead.  If anyone commented on the smell, the ministers would  point to the smelly abalones and say there was no way around it, the Emperor took them with him everywhere as they were one of his favourite foods."

"Hee hee, that's a fun fact about abalones.  I'll keep that in mind the next time they serve abalones at a banquet - I'll tell that story and when everyone would rather barf than eat any I can eat as many servings as I want!"

They don't make shrimp dumplings (Har Gow) like they used to

One of the main Cantonese culinary rituals we enjoy is the weekend brunch indulgence of dim sum.  It's something we could look forward to after a late night at a weekend milonga - waking up late, going to our favourite dim sum restaurant, and eating several piping hot bamboo steamers of fluffy white bbq pork buns, har gow, shumai while sipping rich dark pu erh tea to aid in digestion.  Heaven!

This is the best photo of har gow we have found so far on the internet - the wrapper is translucent, the dumpling is plump and the shrimp is a faint visible pink...Just one thing no good - the dumpling are outside the paper insert and touching the bamboo steamer.  This would be a FAIL back in a Hong Kong dim sum restaurant in the sixties and you will have to throw the dumplings in the trash!*

* Man Yung would like to comment: "Actually, we didn't use a paper insert in the sixties - this would be an automatic FAIL because the dumplings would be stuck to the paper.  We used a stainless steel perforated plate, coated slightly with oil to hold the dumplings in the steamer.  They don't do it any more because 1) the stainless steel plate costs money, 2) oiling the plate and putting the har gow onto it takes time and effort.  This photo shows that the chef didn't care about presentation or the food he was serving - he just threw the dumplings in and expected people to take it or leave it!"

Unfortunately, the standards of our neighbourhood dim sum restaurants have plummeted in recent years.  The dim sum chefs who had been rigorously trained in Hong Kong are getting older, so many have retired without passing on their dim sum secrets to the next generation.  There's always a shortage of young people who want to enter into the dim sum profession, so anyone who wants to be a dim sum chef can go and apprentice themselves at a restaurant, learn a couple of things - and then they would easily be able to find employment anywhere without really being proficient at making dim sum.  On top of this, so many restaurants have opened that there is too much competition.  Restaurants everywhere have lowered their prices to compete, and in order to still make their bottom line, they cut corners on ingredient quality and also the quality of their chefs.  Many have even reduced the quality of their tea - as one of our friends complained, "Is this really tea, or brown coloured water that tastes like cockroach insecticide?"

At many dim sum restaurants, instead of great food and good service, we find terrible food and rude service.  Yet people still line up at peak times because the prices are cheap, and restaurants try their best to attract their customers with thing like "free soy milk while you wait", "shoe shine while you wait", or "free gifts and coupons if you eat here often"!

Man Yung knows a lot about dim sum.  He used to be a dim sum apprentice in his teens.  When he tells me about the authentic, delicious dim sum they used to make, it makes me want to cry.

"Just take this har gow, for instance."  He picked one of the shrimp dumplings up with his chopsticks from the bamboo steamer.  The wheat flour wrapper was stuck to the steamer and it promptly tore apart with the shrimp filling falling out.  "They have steamed it for too long, and this makes the wrapper soggy and easy to tear.  The wrapper should be elastic, thin and transparent and shouldn't fall apart or stick."

"What was har gow like in the sixties when you worked in dim sum?" I asked.

"All us dim sum apprentices used to go to different dim sum restaurants on our day off just to see the quality of dim sum at other restaurants.  One thing we must try was the har gow.  You can tell the quality of the whole restaurant's dim sum just by trying this one dish, so dim sum chefs took a lot of care into making sure that their har gow was perfect.

In order to prepare the filling, you need fresh peeled and deveined shrimp.   These days I often find shrimp in my har gow with their INTESTINES INTACT.  This is a very nasty surprise, it shows that the kitchen is understaffed or not paid enough to care about deveining their shrimp. 

The chopped shrimp has to be lightly "thrown" against the side of the mixing bowl in order to make the texture of the shrimp more springy.  These days many chefs add harsh chemicals to the shrimp to improve the texture - some of the chefs refuse to eat at their own restaurants because obviously, the chemicals are not good for your health.

Now, many chefs just stuff a whole lot of shrimp into the wrapper, steam it, and that is that - and people say, "Oh, what great har gow, there's so much shrimp!"  They don't know what a har gow is supposed to taste like.  A lot of shrimp, or entirely shrimp is not the hallmark of a good har gow.  A good har gow is a balance of several ingredients.

The har gow we used to make had fresh bamboo shoots - and not just bamboo shoot, but the tenderest TIP of the bamboo shoot.  That is boiled, chopped and then put into a wooden press with a twisting mechanism so to squeeze out all the water.  If the bamboo shoot water was not completely pressed out, there would be a pungent vegetation taste in the bamboo shoot and the bamboo shoots would go rancid easily.

In addition, we would add fatty pork belly to the har gow.  We would take a slab of pork belly, boil it until the fat was translucent, and then cool the fat down and chop it into fine cubes to be mixed with the shrimp and the bamboo shoot.  Yes, there is pork fat in great har gow.  The fragrant fat from the pork belly melts when steamed with the har gow filling.  The bamboo shoot absorbs some of this flavour, and the melted fat makes the har gow filling juicy.  When you bite into the har gow, this juice runs out and fills your mouth, and you experience the textures of the smooth and elastic wrapper, springy shrimp, crunchy bamboo all at once.  Har gow supposed to have a multi-dimensional taste."

"I don't think they make har gow - or any other dim sum - the way they used to." I said.

"Even the way they cook it is different.  In order to save time and effort, they just steam a whole lot until it is cooked and let it stand by.  When an order came in - they would REHEAT a steamer of already cooked har gow and serve it.  Oh, this would totally ruin the har gow, the wrapper would certainly break apart like the one I showed to you.  In the past, they never steamed more than 20 steamers at once - and those would sell out almost instantly.  Only if they ran out would they steam another batch.  This ensured that the har gow would always be hot and optimal in taste and temperature."

A couple of simple short cuts here and there - and they have ruined the mighty shrimp dumpling.  They might use more shrimp, or decorate with bright orange flying fish roe, or dye the wrapping bright green with spinach juice, or they might top with gold leaf and truffle shavings and charge a premium for the "fusion-inspired" offering.  Some people might think that all this new fanciness is great.  Who cares about the traditional way, this is even better! 

Only people who knew (or cared to inform themselves) how it used to be will know the difference.  Will you be the ones who would be easily fooled and dazzled by the new-fangled tricks and gimmicks, or will you be able to tell that what you are being served is a bunch of substandard crap?

On the success (or failure) of a Chinese Restaurant in Scarborough

You can get sweet and sour pork anywhere.  But really tasty crispy sweet and sour pork?  

That's not easy to find.

Remember this?  It was pretty traumatic, having our favourite chef and all the waiters walk out all of a sudden.  It was not a pleasant surprise - I believe we dropped our chopsticks in shock at the news.  Where were we going to eat?

We are happy to report that we are still eating at the same restaurant.  Even though the business has changed hands like, three times in two years, things have stabilized with the current owners, kitchen and waitstaff and we didn’t have to hunt for another place for yummy chinese food.

“So what makes a Chinese Restaurant succeed?  And what makes it fail?” asked Man Yung between bites of piping hot crispy roasted chicken (one of the current chef’s signature dishes).

1.    Great food helps...but doesn’t guarantee that you will have lots of customers

The first restaurant had a head chef/owner who used to work at a very prestigious seafood restaurant before he opened his own place.  His cuisine was absolutely delightful - from the basic Stir Fried Beef Rice Noodles and Seafood Fried Rice, to the very special (actually, quite unusual) Bitter Melon and Black Bean Sauce with Lobster, or Goji Berries and Chinese Herb Freerun Chicken Shabu Shabu.  He had a magic touch.

The great food made us repeat customers - but the chef kept on complaining to his staff that he wasn’t getting enough business.  In fact, there were always only a few tables of customers having dinner at his restaurant in the evenings.  What was the problem?

“Do you remember how the head chef always complained that he didn’t have enough ‘Family style customers?’” said Man Yung, “and that families simply stayed away from the restaurant during the evenings?”

“Yes, I remember.  Why, didn’t they like the food? We thought the food was tasty.”

“Well, the problem was the food was too special and too unusual - and it attracted the wrong type of customer.”

Yep, the waiters would come around recommending nightmarish dishes like “Sea Turtle Hot Pot” and “Screaming Wawa Babyfish stew” (it’s a fish that makes a high-pitched noise like a shrieking fetus - you don’t want to know) - we said no, but they were heartily gobbled up by rough-looking individuals who shouted when they talked, laughed outrageously with open mouths filled with food, expelled profanities every second word and thumped the table for emphasis.  What a strange lot they were - they had loads of money and were looking for culinary thrills.

We didn’t mind their shenanigans so much but we started to frequent the restaurant more for lunch than for dinner.

Man Yung analyzed the scenario for me.  “The regular chinese “Family” dining crowd stays away from restaurants with weird (even illegal) delicacies like turtle, wawa babyfish, bear paw or roadkill venison

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/closed-roadkill-deer-found-chinese-restaurant-article-1.1172323

- as well as restaurants with shady-looking patrons who are openly cussing, gambling or playing drinking games (and getting stinking drunk).  Is it all that surprising that despite the tasty food, the first restaurant was not an overwhelming success?”

2.  Great food is sometimes less important than consistent food

The first chef got fed up and left and the restaurant was taken over by a former restaurant manager.  He didn’t know how to cook but he thought that he could keep the food standards up by terrorizing the kitchen staff.  Half the time we were there the owner was yelling at somebody.

Chefs didn’t stay long under this kind of abuse, and the food suffered.  One day my Pork tripe with Mustard Green soup noodle would have intense ground pepper flavour , the next day the same dish would have too many chives and garlic sprinkles, and the day after that there would be no chives, no garlic sprinkles, and more noodle than tripe, and the day after that there would be more tripe than noodle but with plenty of green peppers etc.  Every chef had his own interpretation of the menu and although they tried their best, we got tired of the roller coaster standards and started to eat at the restaurant next door.

The food at the restaurant next door was kind of bland and at least 15% more expensive.  But the restaurant would always be packed!

“Why is this restaurant always so busy?” I asked Man Yung.  “If I had a choice I wouldn’t come and eat here.  The food tastes like someone forgot to add salt.”

“Well, the patrons here might like the food - maybe they are health conscious and think flavour would kill them.  Or perhaps they have gotten used to the style of cooking - and every time they want, for example, blah blanched whole chicken or insipid soy sauce tofu (they NEVER had enough soy sauce in that dish - we always had to ask for more on the side) they can always come and eat and get exactly the same dish they ordered the last time.”

There’s a restaurant just half a block away that is the exactly opposite - the seasoning was always heavy-handed and the sauces were always way too thick, like congealed phlegm.  And there’s another restaurant two blocks away where the dim sum contains meat that has been ground so thoroughly that it feels like toothpaste on your tongue. But those places were always packed too!  

Now, I’m not saying that if you served food that tasted like you just boiled everything in water or food that is oily, salty and drowning in thick lumpy sauces you would be a roaring success.  However, if you keep the food consistent(ly bad), you might attract people who like their food watery/chunky/pasty.  Because there’s no accounting for taste and there’s lots of people in the world who can’t tell well-prepared, delicious food from badly-prepared, gross-out food.

3.  If there’s someone working in the restaurant who rubs you the wrong way, you will just stop going there.

We patronized the restaurant next door because we got pretty chummy with the waiters and we were too lazy to go out and try any other restaurants.

We only stopped going because a new waiter started working and we hated him.

“Why does he always have an expression like someone has killed his entire family?” we asked each other.  “When he comes over, he throws the menu onto the table.  When he takes our order, he doesn’t nod or say anything or even react - he just wanders off when he thinks we are done speaking.  When he brings the food, he just shoves it into any available space on the tabletop.  When we want to pay and leave, he snatches up our cash without a thank you.”

After a few weeks of this, Man Yung was prepared to go back to the first restaurant - inconsistent food or no.  “I can live with the tasteless food - but I can’t stand another minute of that kind of service.”

4.  You don’t have to be the best restaurant in the world but with all the right ingredients you can still be a success!

We returned to the first restaurant - by now, the belligerent owner/manager was gone (he gambled away his shares - one sure way to ensure restaurant failure is to gamble your restaurant away) and the restaurant was being run by the sous-chef and his brother.

Now, the sous-chef had been there since the beginning.  He wasn’t a brilliant chef - like, he couldn’t pull any rabbits (or turtles, or shrieking wawa babyfish) out of a hat (or a wok) and he probably wouldn’t be able to get a job as a head chef anywhere else.  We thought - uh-oh, this restaurant might be changing hands very soon again....

Pleasant surprise (for once!)  The restaurant business started off slow, but gradually it got busier and busier.  Now, whenever we go for dinner, there are lines forming outside the door and there are plenty of “Family” style customers filling the tables.

The sous-chef wasn’t a culinary genius - he and his brother didn’t put their effort into making very inventive or unusual dishes.  Their signature dishes were crispy roast chicken, and sweet and sour pork - every restaurant has these items.  However, they made them fresh with care and almost every table ordered a plate of one or both.  They stuck to the basics - beef, chicken, pork, fish, the most widely available vegetables, common shellfish, rice and noodle dishes - and put their heart in it.  

And the customers kept on coming back.

“So, do you think we can draw a parallel between the success and failure of a Chinese Restaurant and the success and failure of a Milonga?” I asked Man Yung.

The Crispy B.B.Q. Pork Equation 2: We explain using Tango examples why your Chinese B.B.Q. doesn't taste that good

 "I made this crispy B.B.Q. pork all by myself!"

We aren't having much luck with our Chinese B.B.Q. lately.

Man Yung is rolling his eyes in exasperation.  "Not again!  This crispy B.B.Q. pork is not only not crispy, it is oily and tasteless as well!"

And I thought that after the life lessons learnt in "The Crispy B.B.Q. Pork Equation", we would forever more only make totally failproof B.B.Q. purchases.  After all, don't we order crispy B.B.Q. pork by the "bone" and not by the pound? Are we not "chums" with the B.B.Q. chef and know all about "secret handshake"?  And aren't we always choosing the best B.B.Q. meats solely based on the flavour and texture due to the fat to meat ratio, irregardless of health and diet concerns?

No, we are not doing anything wrong - in fact we are doing everything right.  But as we all know by now, the Crispy B.B.Q. Pork Equation is not about getting $10 of value for $10.  It is not even about getting $8 of value for $10, or $6.99 of value for $3.99, etc.

Just look at these very annoying recent examples:

1.    I made it myself!

We got invited to a pot luck party recently.  In order for there to be variety in the food at the party, the hostess arranged for everyone to be responsible for a different dish.  Mr. White will bring the sushi, Mr. Orange will bring the roasted chicken, Mr. Blonde will be responsible for the salads, and Mr. Pink will bring the crispy B.B.Q. roasted pork.*

* And afterwards we all went on a diamond heist.  We have a very busy schedule on the weekends.

So everyone showed up at the party and brought their designated dish.  All the food was delightfully enjoyed by all - except for Mr. Pink's crispy B.B.Q. roasted pork.

"Come on guys!  There's still plenty left over!  Don't you want some?  It's good - I made it myself!" proclaimed Mr. Pink.

No, we didn't want any of the B.B.Q. pork.  Instead of being crispy, the skin was as tough as leather.  And instead of being tender and juicy, the meat was as dry as the Sahara desert.

Somebody quick, tell Mr. Pink that you can't make your own B.B.Q. pork in your oven to the same standard that you could get in any ol' B.B.Q. take-out in town!  The B.B.Q. chef roasts the whole pig at once - a small piece of pork would dry out in the heat of your oven just like that.  In addition, the B.B.Q. chef has perforated the skin with a professional grade needle brush like, hundreds of times in order to prepare the skin for roasting into a golden crispiness.  A couple of stabs with a dining fork will not give you the same effect.

And really, Mr. Pink - how much would it cost to buy your crispy B.B.Q. pork from the take-out?  $5.00 per pound?  $6.00 per pound?  Yes, you saved some pennies "making your own" but you really have wasted all your money and your effort when not even the dog would eat what you made.

TANGO EQUIVALENT:  Those clever dancers who "poo-poo" taking lessons since they could save their hard-earned cash and learn everything by watching Youtube!   And are they still wondering why no-one wants to invite them to dance at the milonga?

2.  Refried, refried, and refried again

There's a fascinating B.B.Q. take-out at Peachtree Centre in Markham.   Whenever we are in the plaza, we always make sure we pass by so we could gawk....in absolute horror.

"OMG Man Yung, just look at the colour on that piece of crispy B.B.Q. pork!"  I whispered really loudly to Man Yung.

Yes indeed, it was something quite special to see.  The pork was evenly BLACK - on the outside...and the inside!

The B.B.Q. duck, the honey B.B.Q. pork, and the B.B.Q. chicken didn't fare much better.

We've tried to surreptitiously take a photo of the B.B.Q. counter but the B.B.Q. chef was always hovering nearby glaring angrily at gawkers like ourselves. We didn't want to risk getting a meat cleaver thrown at us so we just pretended to pass by on our way to another store.

In order to save money and reduce waste, the B.B.Q. chef took the stale B.B.Q. leftovers from the previous day - and he just deep fried them again and hung them out for sale the next day.  Moreover, he never roasted a whole pig - he'd buy just a section, for example, half a rib cage, and roast that.  And as you can see in our cautionary tale in #1 above, the best results are reached in roasting the whole pig at once.  If you roast only a part of a pig (especially in an industrial-sized oven) or refry your meat again and again throughout the week, you will get a product that is closer to being charcoal than meat. 

And the most horrible thing was - some intrepid customers still went to eat at that shop!  Either they couldn't tell the difference, or they liked their meat to taste like coals and ashes - or, they were just cheap, because you can get a bowl of noodles with a side of really burnt B.B.Q. with a pop for like, three bucks.*

* But you can pretty much get decent lunch with a drink from any Chinese take-out for $3.00, so WTF, why are you guys still going to eat there?

TANGO EQUIVALENT:  When not so good Tango Dancers decide to become not so good Tango Instructors.

They may be of the "undercooked" sort - they've only been dancing for X number of months, they have learned either very little or learned something wrong - but now they have decided that they are ready to out there and teach.  Or, they might had been dancing for ages, but they learned how to Tango in the nineties from the luminaries of various "Traveling Tango Extravaganzas" - and therefore still have no clue about dancing in a social setting.  Or, they have never been particularly talented dancers or have particularly relevant insights into dancing, but they have been dancing so long, it's time to "Graduate" and become Tango instructors.

What these chaps have to offer is not good to begin with or quite possibly refried, but some oddballs will still take their classes.  As we had said, "Nobody could tell the difference/Some like the taste of ashes/Some are cheap!"  You go girl! (guy!)

3.  Looks good, but is not so good

We have been looking and looking for a good B.B.Q. take-out for ages.  We thought we found a good one at Midland and Sheppard - but then the quality of their crispy B.B.Q. pork has suddenly gone down lately.  We thought we found a promising one at Midland and McNicoll after we tasted some of the B.B.Q. duck there - but then we were disappointed AGAIN when we bought some crispy B.B.Q. pork today.

"I thought the B.B.Q. pork skin looked quite good on the outside, and it's kind of crispy - it has all the visual factors to indicate a well-roasted pig.  But why is the meat so fat, and so tasteless?" asked Man Yung.

"You know what, I knew something was wrong when you told me that your order of two bones cost $13.00.  As far as I know, the average cost of two bones is about $8.00 to $10.00 at the most." I replied.

As we might have mentioned before, the key to making delicious crispy B.B.Q. pork is to puncture the skin of your roast a sufficient number of times prior to roasting.  This serves two functions. Firstly, it changes the texture of the skin so that when it roasts, it becomes crispy.  Secondly, the holes allow the sub-cutaneous fat under the skin to liquify in the heat into oil and seep out of the skin during roasting.

It seems that B.B.Q. chefs have become quite innovative.  Perhaps it's because their costs are up - wholesale food prices have increased, as have utilities and rent - or perhaps they just want more profit.

Instead of puncturing the skin all the way to the fat underneath, the chefs have just punctured the skin, short of the layer of fat.  This way, the skin still ends up kind of crispy - but the fat has no way to escape.  The resulting roast is heavier - and the B.B.Q. chef will make more money from it.  So, our $13.00 has bought us the same amount of meat that we would have purchased in an $8.00 pre-B.B.Q. "innovation" order - but with $5.00 of extra fat.  Our order is less tasty too because the B.B.Q. chef has applied the same amount of marinade, which has to season the 30% of extra fat remaining in the roast.

TANGO EQUIVALENT: Championship Style Salon Tango Clones.  They look more elegant, they "walk" more fine.  They win more prizes, they have better resumes and marketing and they make more money!

But they don't taste good at all - where's the music, where's the soul?  Apparently , these "Barbie and Ken Championship Salon Tango dolls" are manufactured somewhere in China so that the people who are attracted by exterior appearance alone and can't tell the difference between "Zombie-like, by the rulebook going-through-the-motions movements robotically "timed" to the music (and yes, they can program that, down to the pauses and the footwork and stuff!)" and real, flesh and blood dancing will open their wallets for classes and more classes. 

And what should we do with the remaining crispy B.B.Q. pork?  "Don't worry, we'll add a little savoury shrimp sauce, some chives, and some Tofu, and turn this tasteless meat into a delicious "Big Horse Stand!"* said Man Yung.

* Big Horse Stand:  A Chinese Tofu dish using leftover crispy B.B.Q. pork with strong stinky salty shrimp sauce as seasoning.  This makes even the worst leftovers taste better.  They used to serve this at horse stations to open-air restaurant stalls - therefore the weird name!

Customer Service

We went out for chinese food with our “Scarborough” (meaning “non-Tango”) friends tonight.  We go out with these friends at least once a week - just to hang out, to catch up, to eat (of course), and catch the current Hong Kong mini-series on the flat panel tv hanging on the wall of the restaurant.  It’s a very casual and relaxed get-together.

As usual, we ordered lots of food - roasted squab with pepper salt, double lobster in garlic and Maggi sauce, dried mandarin peel flavoured steamed eel slices, soy sauce fried beef noodles, jellyfish strips with wine-marinated duck tongue, crispy fried chicken, and, as an afterthought, stir-fried clams in black bean sauce.

Everything was delicious...except the clams were off.

The head chef came over to chat and find out what we thought of the food.  “It was very tasty,” said Man Yung.  “I especially loved the crispy fried chicken.  It’s such a simple dish - but it’s hard to find a place which serves it the way it’s supposed to be, with the skin crispy and juicy, and the meat tender and flavourful.  I don’t know how many times I’ve had chicken that was dry on the outside, and even more dry on the inside!” 

 “The only secret is to make it fresh everyday,” said the chef.  “Many restaurants don’t - they make all the chickens for the week in one go.  It can’t taste too good by day three!”

“Just one thing was not good,” said Man Yung - “Your clams were off.”

“Oh, is that right?” said the chef. 

He immediately rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a meat cleaver, and chased us out of the restaurant.

Savoury ingredients...expert cooking...immaculate presentation - but alas, the clams were "off"

Nah, I’m kidding.  The chef thanked us for letting him know.  “Please inform me if there is anything wrong with the food.  You’ve got to let me know, because otherwise, if something is wrong, we will continue serving the problem dish and we wouldn’t have a clue that our customers are upset at the food.  We’d rather fix the problem than lose our customers!”

We weren't charged for the clams and we got a 10% discount. That is one good, responsible chef - we’ll be going back to eat at his restaurant for sure!

*************************************************************************************

While the above is a very nice story, it is about customer service in restaurants.  It does not apply to Tango.

It is inappropriate to tell your dance partner before, during, or after dancing with them at a milonga that their dancing is “off” - in any way, shape or form.  Such words should not come out of your mouth; nor should you hint same with subtle (or non-subtle) body language.

No rolling of the eyes.  No sighs or snorts of contempt.  No pushing or shoving into place.  No slapping of limbs.  No body shimmies or arm jitters to loosen less than ideal grips.  No hanging onto your partner’s neck - and no pretending to be a metal anvil or a war elephant to slow your partner down.  No advice (except when expressly solicited by your partner - and only when you are off the pista and out of everyone’s way).  And, NO TEACHING ON THE DANCE FLOOR.

When you dance with someone, they are not a restaurant where the customer is always right.  In fact, you can throw the whole concept of customer service out of the window. 

I’m sorry, you should have known better than dance with the whirling dervish nutcase in the first place - weren’t you paying attention to all the dancers while you were waiting for the cabeceo?  Don’t forget, it is your right - in fact, your DUTY for the good of all tango-kind - to say no. It not your place, whether you are an amateur, an advanced, or a pro, to “correct” anyone’s problems - unless that person has paid to take your class and both of you are in the classroom. 

Your only recourse is the following:  Never eat at the same restaurant again.  Or, if encountering particularly repugnant, urgent horribleness (e.g. you found cockroaches practicing synchronized swimming in your soup, or strange hairs sprouting from your entree) - you can say “Thank you very much” and stop it right there before the dinner (I mean, the tanda) is over.  It is, in fact, totally appropriate to leave before the next gag-inducing course is served.

Asado

A whole week without Tango! Unthinkable, but true.

I was too sick with the flu to dance - too sick to even turn on the computer to check emails and blogs or surf Youtube for the latest in "el mundo de tango". In fact, I was too busy waging war against the demons of fever, cough, mucus and phlegm to even think about dancing.

Man Yung didn't get sick - but he claims that he was so stressed watching me be sick he developed an itchy rash! Poor Man Yung. No tango for a week and a rash. I'm sure it would clear up in no time - after a couple of tandas of dancing, that is.

I must be feeling better, because today, after a whole week of not wanting to eat anything but soup, I suddenly crave asado! I wish someone would invite us to a barbecue - after all, it's Canada's Victoria Day long weekend, and there's nothing like a good, fiery bbq to celebrate the holidays.

A very big asado

But who am I kidding? No Canadian homestyle barbecue can compare to the mighty Argentine asado.

Another very big asado

In Toronto, no backyard is complete without a gleaming, stainless steel, top-of-the-line Canadian Tire (or The Bay) propane barbecue grill. My parents had one - even though they didn't use it more than two times in ten years. My brother just bought his own house - and even though he is now saddled with huge back-breaking monthly mortgage/property tax/utilities payments, he went right out and got one too ("But it was on SALE!" he said). Perhaps there's this secret rule that you aren't an adult until you grill? No wonder my mother still treats me like an infant.

Oh, the big fuss my brother makes for his barbecue! He makes several runs to the grocery store for groceries and party supplies. He stays up into the wee hours the night before tidying the house, making salads, mixing drinks and marinating meat. And on the momentous occasion itself, decked out in full barbecue-wear and wielding his "tongs" and "prongs" (this is how ignorant I am of barbecue utensils), he is nothing less than the Lord of the Grill - like the volcano god Hephaestus ruling over his domain of flames and fire.

I don't have the heart to tell him - propane makes the meat less tasty! Your barbecue machine may have the most amazing features known to man - but when it comes to taste, you might as well use a WOK.

Let me tell you about the best asado we ever had. Rewind back to May 2006. Martha and Manolo had just wrapped up their classes in Toronto - they already had their general despedida with the other Toronto students, but they and their amazing, kind Toronto hosts Lisandro and Tatiana decided to throw one more small, private goodbye party the day before they had to fly back to Buenos Aires.

It was at this party that we tasted the best asado ever. Nothing would ever compare since.

Martha and Manolo were in charge of making the asado. Martha marinated the meat, and Manolo grilled it. It must have been the smallest barbecue in the world - no bigger than a laptop computer, it was just a metal box with a metal grill on top.

Into the metal box went the charcoal. On the grill went the meat - every square inch of grill space was filled. They balanced the grill on the concrete wall in the alleyway next to the studio - occasionally cars would pass by on the way to the small parking lot at the back of the building. Manolo set everything up, covered it, and barely checked again.

When the sun finally set and the alleyway was lighted by the fading indigo light from the sky and the palid white lights from the streetlights, the meat was done.

It was well-done, of course - that's the Argentine way of asado. But it was tender, and it tasted amazing. It needed no sauce to be absolutely, mouth-wateringly appetizing. Every Argentinian says their personal way of cooking asado is the best way of cooking asado. But tasting Manolo's asado, we had no doubt at all - his asado was the BEST.

All that was necessary for the best asado we ever tasted was a little Argentinian beef, seasoned with salt; a tiny charcoal burning grill; and the loving (but never fussy) attention - of a Tango Master. It was an asado... with compas.

Happy Victoria Day weekend to all!

Nothing says "Love" like a great cup of Coffee!

... especially after a great big argument over Tango!

As much as Man Yung would want to accomplish all the moves in Cosmotango AND all the poses in our Tango Posing extravaganza - with Irene's stubby limbs and poor head/neck/torso/hip/leg/arm/foot/hand/hairdo/footwear coordination, it is unfortunately just not possible.

What Man Yung needs is a really, really good, superrrriffficously delicious perfect heavenly tango partner - but since she's already taken, or perhaps busy getting more plastic surgery, he'll just have to settle with arguing with Irene every time he wants to practice.

Arguments in Tango are really horrible, horrible things. He says she's going too fast - she says he's not really leading. She says that he's pulling her off balance - he says she is interpreting the music by herself! It's the classic "He said/She said" dilemma - and both of them are out to prove the other wrong. And since dancing Tango amplifies all existing communication and interaction problems of the partners - the arguments usually escalate into humongous blowouts about every single thing that's wrong with the relationship itself.

That is, until Irene is willing to offer the first conciliatory gesture - a freshly made, perfectly brewed cup of coffee. A cup of coffee so strong, so rich, so fragrant, so delightful, so labour-intensive, so self-sacrificing and time consuming - that all grudges are immediately forgotten and all hatchets buried.

Irene's Recipe for ONE CUP OF PERFECT,
HAND-MADE, POST-TANGO ARGUMENT COFFEE:

Time Required:

Approximately 12 - 15 minutes (Just think about it - you could be flossing, rearranging your closet, watching youtube tango videos, or taking a nap! What incredible sacrifice of your time! He'd better be grateful.)

Equipment:

Stove, preferably the electric coil type - so the heating elements stays hot even after you turn off the heat.
Electric Coffee Grinder (we use a blade grinder instead of a mill grinder because speed is very important in this recipe. And our grinder is ONLY for coffee and nothing else - we don't want our coffee to taste like paprika or meat or whatever else we used the grinder for last week!)
Fine Mesh Skimmer
Fine Filter (we use an old permanent filter from a coffee machine we threw away)

Ingredients:

4 1/2 Heaping Tablespoons of freshly roasted whole coffee beans (if you don't roast them yourself, get them at specialty stores that roast small and therefore fresh batches every few days - we get ours at Moonbeam Coffee Company at Kensington Market here in Toronto. We've also tried Supermarket and Starbucks coffee beans - but these beans have been lying around for too long and just can't compare.)
1 1/2 cup of cold, filtered water
Half and half cream and sugar to taste

Instructions:

1. Heat water in a small covered saucepan until it just reaches a "rolling boil". Turn the heat right off, but leave the saucepan (still covered) on the heating element. You don't want any more of the water to evaporate because that will leave you with noticeably less coffee!

2. Immediately spoon 4 1/2 heaping tablespoons of the roasted coffee beans from their airtight container into the coffee grinder. Grind the beans coarsely - but make sure that there are no more "whole" beans. Don't grind the beans too finely, because the particles will go through the filter and end up in your cup.

3. Pour some of the ground coffee into the hot water - just a little first, because if your coffee is fresh enough, it will react with the water and the water and coffee mixture can bubble up so furiously it can spill over! When the reaction (if any) dies down, pour the rest of the ground coffee in, and stir once. Cover the saucepan and wait for 4 minutes.

4. Remove cover of the saucepan. Using the skimmer, quickly skim all the coffee grounds that you can out of the mixture and discard the grounds.

5. Pour the mixture through the filter into a standard size coffee mug so that the filter can remove the remaining fine grains of coffee.

6. Add cream and sugar to taste.

Serve with a smile and a piece of Godiva chocolate. Heaven!

Ancient Chinese Wisdom

I just got an email from a buddy of mine today, warning against the potentially fatal effects of "Starfruit" juice on people with kidney problems. Wikipedia also has a short paragraph regarding studies done confirming the health risks of consuming juice from the "Starfruit" a.k.a. the Carambola.

I rushed to warn Man Yung during lunch. But I should not have been so worried. Of course Man Yung knows all about the fatal effects of Starfruit juice and naturally he can expound on the rationale behind this based on his extensive knowledge of chinese traditional herbal medicine. That's because Man Yung knows practically everything that Irene doesn't know, and perhaps even everything that Irene thinks she knows that she doesn't really know (quel surprise!)

We've been so busy lately we haven't had time to post about Man Yung's method for stopping a nosebleed (insert green onions into nostrils) - but nevertheless, in the spirit of promoting food safety, Man Yung has generously offered to share his limitless store of information on the following topic:

ANCIENT CHINESE WISDOM:
FOOD ITEMS THAT YOU SHOULD AVOID CONSUMING AT THE SAME MEAL

Lamb with Watermelon

Banana with Sweet Potato/Yam

Tofu with Honey

Peanuts with Cucumber

Mung Bean with Dog Meat (A VERY DANGEROUS COMBINATION, apparently, and not only because of North American animal protection laws)

Fuyu Persimmon with Crab

Peach with Duck

Octopus/Squid with Eggplant

Ling kuo (some sort of black nut like fruit with a hard shell, shaped like bull's horns) and Pork

Mustard greens with Rabbit

Tomato with dried seafood like abalone, conpoy, dried oysters, sea cucumber etc.

Pumpkin with Conch meat/snails

Not that there's anyone we know who would knowingly make dishes out of any of the above delectable-sounding (not) combinations, but people can innocently and easily make a mistake. For example, you may enjoy a lovely main course of lamb stew, and then be presented a refreshing watermelon sorbetto at the end of the meal - with dire consequences.

So what will happen if you happen to eat the aforementioned combinations of ingredients during the course of one meal?

Man Yung didn't have time to elaborate, but I have reason to believe that the effects range from "You won't feel too good", to "Explosion!"*

I recommend that you print this list out, keep it in your wallet at all times, and if someone tries to poison you using any of these food combinations, you will be in on their game in an instant!**

Thank you for reading.



*In the case of dog meat and mung beans. There is anecdotal evidence that a friend of the wife of somebody's cousin once consumed a dog meat stew and then carelessly downed a bowl of steaming sweet mung bean porridge. The mung bean caused a chemical reaction with the dog meat that caused meat to expand uncontrollably while inside the unfortunate individual.... Well, all I can say is "serves you right for eating Fido".

** Less life-threatening but no less stomach-churning and gag-inducing would be some of the music being played at some of the milongas we have been to recently. For example:

A tanda of Lomuto followed by Orquesta Tipica Victor followed by Canaro!

Biagi followed by a tanda of vals followed by Biagi again, and then D'Arienzo!

D'Arienzo from the 30's, 40's and 50's, all in one tanda!

I'd take my chances with Duck a la Peach any day.

Mango Ice Cream Recipe

If you have noticed the less than frequent posts on this blog lately, you are right - Irene and Man Yung have been LESS annoyed than usual. Summer is in the air, people are (generally) following the line of dance, we have not seen hide nor hair of "Fabio" in months (apparently he has realized that he has to actually pay to get into the local milongas) and we have been enjoying some incredibly delicious homemade Mango Ice Cream at home!

When we lived in Hong Kong back in the 70's and 80's (or in the 1850's, if you happen to be as old as Man Yung), there used to be basically only one dairy company for the whole colony called "Dairy Farm". I used to live in a low-rise apartment about 500 metres away from one of their cattle sheds in Pok Fu Lam. Apart from the scintillating preview of the smell of "Fabio" that oftentimes wafted our way on the breeze, it was nevertheless always fun trying to sneak a peek at what they were doing over there with all those cows.

Wikipedia says these are the Pok Fu Lam Dairy Farm cow sheds. I remember living near more dingy and less museum-worthy cow sheds. Maybe there were inferior sheds in Pok Fu Lam for the 2nd-rate cows, kind of like how some less than superior tango towns end up hosting lots of 2nd-rate Fabios?

Well I'll be damned, there's a Tango connection in all these pre-senile reminiscences! Apparently, the old Dairy Farm Depot at 2 Lower Albert Road, Central has now become an arts facility called "The Fringe Club". Which hosts a milonga every 1st Thursday of the month called "Milonguita".

The Fringe Club, formerly the old Dairy Farm Depot

Well, back to the main topic, the only ice cream available in those days in Hong Kong was the "Dairy Farm" brand. Most ex-pat Hong Kong-ers would agree with me that no matter how far we travel, and however distant Hong Kong is to where we are today, we all still retain vestiges of nostalgic longing for pre-packaged, cardboard-y "Dairy Farm Lotus Cups" of coconut, pineapple, honeydew melon, and of course, mango flavoured ice cream.

Until, that is, you are presented with a one litre container of Irene and Man Yung's homemade Mango Ice Cream!

Irene and Man Yung's homemade Mango Ice Cream

Ataulfo Mangoes

1 kg of ripe mangoes (I think I actually used 1.25 kg or something like that, but the more the merrier. I used Ataulfo Mangoes because they are sweetest and most fragrant)
One 300 ml can of condensed milk (my secret ingredient for all "asian" inspired ice cream flavours)
One cup of half and half
One cup of whipping cream
One pinch of salt

Peel mangoes and remove all the flesh, squeezing the juice and pulp from the pits if necessary. Dice mango flesh and puree with the condensed milk, half and half, cream and salt. Freeze in ice cream maker (like the Cuisinart ICE-30BCC) - and voila!!

Makes two scrumptious litres.

Things you give up for Tango....

Man Yung and I started learning tango because we had some free time and we wanted to learn something new and fun that we could do together. Little did we know that our little diversion would turn into this great big part of our lives that would occupy all our time and our thoughts and take us all the way to Argentina, a country that we never, ever envisioned of visiting.

If you are spending your precious time now reading this (and other) tango blogs, you probably understand what I'm saying when I say that TANGO is LIFE ALTERING. The list of things that people would (and have) given up for tango is astounding. All that furniture in your house impeding your tango practice space? Sell it all in a garage sale, and use the proceeds towards brand new wooden flooring for the new dedicated "tango nook" in your home. Non-Tango friends? Non-Tango husband/wife and children? You don't have time for them anymore if you are trasnochando-ing all night at the milongas weekend after weekend and traveling to Buenos Aires for weeks at a time for tango bootcamp at DNI - I'd say all sorts of divorces are in order. Have a promising career with steady income but staid, boring old 9 to 5 just doesn't mesh with the new spiritual mindset of your Tango lifestyle? Do a Marina Palmer, give it all up and dance for change on Avenida Florida!

Luckily, Man Yung and I haven't had to make many sacrifices for the sake of tango (the last time I checked I'm still at my job) but there's one thing we won't be able to do soon in the foreseeable future because of Tango. We're already committed to a trip to Buenos Aires in March 2009 for the Camicando festival - there's so many people we've promised to see - and we're at the stage where we can't even imagine going anywhere else with our precious vacation days (and precious vacation money) EXCEPT Buenos Aires.

This means that we aren't very likely to be here anytime soon:

Before Tango, we used to talk about all the places we wanted to travel to - Florence, Rome, London, Moscow, Tokyo - and about the trips we'd take looking for Bourbon distilleries in Kentucky, Scotch distilleries in Scotland etc.

But our most favourite, favourite place of all was Paris.

We had two wonderful trips there, but we won't be going there again soon as we must go to Buenos Aires. Thinking about Paris, Man Yung would sigh and say he misses the culture, the streets, the museums, the art, the quiet green parks, the architecture, the concerts in the cathedrals, the views of the Seine etc.

I can rhapsodize about the same things too - but who am I kidding?

What I REALLY miss is Berthillon ice cream.

Berthillon ice cream shop on the Ile-Saint-Louis in Paris

In the far distant days of my youth, I once stayed an entire month and a half with my aunt and uncle who lived (and still lives) in Paris. They were the ones who introduced me to Berthillon ice cream.

One taste, and I was hooked for life. Where else can you find a glace de chocolat noir that tastes more chocolate than chocolate? A sorbet de mangue more mango-ey than a bursting ripe mango straight from the tree? Or a glace de vanille that inspires dreams of flight in pale golden, soft, fragrant vanilla scented ice cream clouds years after you took the last bite?

I spent almost every single day of my stay in Paris walking three hours from my aunt and uncle's apartment in the 15th arrondissement near the Place du Commerce to the Ile-Saint-Louis in the 4th arroundissement for two scoops of Berthillon's ice cream. If that isn't passion I don't know what is.

Nope, none of the ice cream specialists here in Toronto can compare - and I apologize, but reknowned Freddo and Una Alta Volta in Buenos Aires doesn't quite make the cut either (although they are both very good).

What I have given up for Tango is Berthillon ice cream...

(cut to sound of teeny-tiny violins playing a tinky-tanky sad music)

Well, that is, until I decided to be pro-active about it, and MAKE MY OWN ICE CREAM! I did some research on the web, and apparently, all you really need to make ice cream like Berthillon are the following:

1. All real and natural ingredients with no preservatives and nothing artificial. You know, like real cream, real chocolate, real eggs, real (ripe) fruit...

2. An ice cream maker that operates by mechanically turning the canister instead of the beater. This results in a less airy ice cream, but there is more flavour precisely because there is less air (commercial ice cream makers call the extra volume you get by beating a heck of a lot of air into your ice cream "overrun" - and you can have up to 120% overrun in some commercial ice creams). Less air also means that the ice cream is less likely to go into "shock" in the freezer within a few days of making it, resulting in a lot of crunchy, tasteless and distracting ice crystals.
For my ice cream making endeavour, I chose the Cuisinart ICE-30BCC.

The Cuisinart ICE-30BCC churning Pistachio ice cream

3. A copy of David Lebovitz's ice cream recipe book "The Perfect Scoop". This man is an ice cream/dessert genius. Not to mention a very funny blogger. And his salted butter caramel ice cream recipe (available only on his blog) makes a caramel ice cream which is allegedly superior than Berthillon's!

I have only had my ice cream maker for a week, but I have already made a honey vanilla ice cream (recipe from the internet - way too sweet), Vietnamese coffee ice cream, Chocolate sorbet (both from David Lebovitz's book - both absolutely delicious and it's the first time I have had a chocolate ice cream that matches Berthillon's glace de chocolate noir in intensity) and, Man Yung's current favourite, which I think is even better than Berthillon:

Durian ice cream

Ingredients

2 cups of heavy cream
one package of individually quick frozen durian (yields about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of durian paste)
1 cup of half and half
1 300 ml can of sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

Remove seeds from durian and mash flesh into paste.
Whisk all ingredients together thoroughly to form a smooth liquid batter. Freeze according to the ice cream maker's instructions.

This recipe yields about 2 litres of scrumptious, sweet, creamy, fragrant durian ice cream. And because the durian quotient is not too high, you are less likely to make sensitive tangueros and tangueras run screaming for the exits.


Still, enjoying this lovely dessert at any of your local milongas is not entirely recommended.