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Scott and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary last weekend. We had a really nice day, except for the 20 minutes we accidentally spent right in the core of the downtown East side. Yikes it’s pretty bad there in the summer!!!!

Anyway, first we overloaded our senses on the FlyOver Canada ride at Canada Place. It’s like one of those 4D theatre rides they have at amusement parks where the seats tip back and forth and they spray water on you except this one is REALLY WELL DONE. The big curved screen covered our ENTIRE peripheral vision. You really feel like you are flying through the Canadian landscape! It had smells and mist as well. It was so short though, I wish it was like 5 times as long. And they skipped right from Newfoundland to Toronto! Poor neglected Atlantic Canada. I have pretty high standards for things like this and other than the length I thought it was great. Really cool!

After the ride we headed over to Dark Table for dinner to deprive our senses. It’s one of those restaurants where the waiters are all blind and you eat in complete darkness. When we arrived at the restaurant we were given menus outside and directed to a bench on the patio to pick what we wanted to eat. You actually only pick the main course, the starter and the dessert are always a surprise. You can choose for the main course to be a surprise too, actually. I picked the prawn dish and Scott went for the mystery main course. Please don’t worry about me spoiling the surprises because they are supposed to change every day.

When they say dark they mean DARK. There is not one bit of light coming into the place. Our waiter led us to our table in train formation. We sat down and then he left us for a little while, I guess for us to settle down and figure out the lay of the table. It was sooo funny trying to figure out what was going on. We touched everything, haha. I kept worrying that I was going to knock over a flower vase or something but that’s pretty silly… obviously they don’t need table decorations. You keep expecting your eyes to adjust to the darkness but they really do not! It took a bit to realize that if we didn’t say what we were doing or thinking the other person has no idea what you are doing or thinking. We had lots to talk about though, like trying to figure out how many other people were eating there as well, or a packet of butter that you found on your side plate, hahahaha.

The starter dish.

I’M HILARIOUS.*

We got salads for our starter. Salads are hard to eat in the dark! I brought an empty fork to my mouth so many times, haha. Eventually I just used my other hand to ensure I actually got something on my fork. Classy.

Main course. Hehe.

My prawns and risotto were very nice. I was relieved to find that they had removed the shells for me. I wasn’t sure how I would do that on my own. Scott still isn’t sure if he had chicken or pork (I think pork.) Sharing bites of food was NOT EASY. Scott dumped his prawn sample on to his shirt. I got sauce all over my hand.

Dessert. Is this joke old yet? Hope not cuz I’m still laughing.

Raspberry cheesecake! It was tasty and I appreciated that it was not chocolate (chocolate late on a worknight is not ideal for me).

After eating we got led train style to a semi-lit room to pay the bill and then led outside into the BLINDING LIGHT. It was funny to see the damage to Scott’s shirt and my arms, haha.

Overall very funny experience. Definitely will be a memorable anniversary. The food was good but not the greatest thing I ever ate or anything. I recommend going there though, it’s a pretty unique experience.

Dark Table Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

*Actually Rosemarie is hilarious cuz she told me to post those “pictures”.

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A day late!! Oops!! I swear the past few days haven’t had 24 hours in them…

This is a pretty weird collection of food. It pretty much covers the entire time that Scott was in Australia. I always have very little motivation to cook when I’m only cooking for me. But actually doing these daily dinners post did motivate me to eat real things for dinner instead of chips, so that’s good. Prepare yourself for a lot of cheddar smokeys.

june 30th, 2013 – party leftovers: bbq chicken, sriracha hummus

july 1st, 2013 – party leftovers: cheddar smokeys, corn, sriracha hummus, garlic bread

july 2nd, 2013 – more party leftovers: 7 layer dip, chicken skewers

july 3rd, 2013 – pupusas from the latin restaurant across the street

I only realized yesterday that I was supposed to put that baggie of veggies on top of the pupusa. That probably would have made it a little less dry, oops.

More pictures after the jump… (sorry Auntie Hsi!!)Continue reading

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Half way through the year!

We got our new (to us) bbq running and it is great. I’m really loving grilled eggplant at the moment. The grilled corn I made at our housewarming was really nice too, and it’s a good thing because I’ve got about 8 more ears of corn to eat this week!!

june 16th, 2013 – goat cheese stuffed zucchini flowers, tempura broccoli, cheese nip crusted chicken

Mmm nutrition. We found the zucchini flowers at the farmers market and just had to try them. They’re one of those foods that they are constantly using on Masterchef and we’ve never really tried them. They were tasty. Other similar Masterchef things: verjuice and figs (although we have tried plenty of figs now). Oh yeah deep frying is terrifying. I think once every 2 years is about as often as I want to try that.

june 17th, 2013 – garlic and chili pasta with scallops and peas

june 18th, 2013 – perogies, cucumber and tomatoes

more after the jump…Continue reading

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via http://thedapperdude.com/2011/07/04/meat-bread-vancouver/

This Vancouver restaurant is known for their simple and delicious sandwiches. Their most popular sandwich is the porchetta, which has juicy pork and crunchy crackling in between a ciabatta bun. Very tasty.

So tasty that we wanted to eat it again. But we can’t afford $10 per sandwich!! So instead we tried making it at home. I mostly followed this recipe and these butterflying instructions, and it turned out AMAZING. The only tricky part was actually preparing the meat because my piece of meat was not exactly the same shape as the ones in the instructions. So I took a few pictures of the process to hopefully help out a bit.

First I prepared the salt rub and the herb rub. I didn’t have fennel seeds because I don’t like the taste, so I just left that out. I used fresh parsley, but everything else was just dried spices.

Have I mentioned that we live a block away from a real butcher now? I bought this 4 lbs piece of pork shoulder with the skin on for $12. The actual shoulder was much bigger but the lady cut it down into a 4 lbs chunk for me. (This odd cut was why the butterflying instructions seemed really hard.)

My butterflied piece of meat. Butterflying SEEMED really tricky, but actually it’s not! I promise!! You don’t have to do as good of job as you think you do! My piece of pork was very thick in some spots still and it still turned out perfectly.

Put the meat skin down (the yellow is the skin)and cut out any bones. Then cut your meat horizontally from the left so the piece touching the counter is reasonably uniformly thick. Cut almost all the way to the right side and then unfold your meat like a book. Then repeat! When you are done you are left with an oddly shaped flat piece of meat.

Cover it with half of the salt rub and all of the herb rub.

Then you roll it up and tie it up as tight as you can with string. You want the skin to be totally on the outside of the roll, otherwise it won’t crisp up and won’t be nice. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t enough skin to cover the whole roll, my skin part only covered about 50% and that was fine. Oh and don’t worry about making lots of rolled layers, mine barely went around 1.5 times and it still turned out beautifully like the pictures.

Then you rub the rest of your salt rub on the outside, place it on a paper towel on a plate and refrigerate uncovered for 24 hours.

The next day place it directly on your oven rack with a pan underneath to catch drips. Roast at 275 F until the inside of the pork reaches 150 F (if you don’t have a meat thermometer, go get one!! They’re like $5 and WORTH IT.) This took about 2.5 hours for us. Then turn up the heat to 450 F and roast until the skin looks brown and crispy and delicious. Keep and eye on it because it doesn’t take long (maybe 10-15 minutes).

This is when our smoke alarm started going off non-stop. I suppose there was a bit of smokiness from the splatters. Made a bit of a mess of the oven but… the smell…. oh it was amazing.

Cover it with foil and let it rest for 20 minutes. Then slice up and enjoy!!!! We had it on chewy rolls from Safeway with a bit more salsa verde on top. DELICIOUS. Oh how tasty was that crunchy skin. Mmm.

PS did you notice that our pork had a tattoo?? WE ATE THE TATTOO. Kinda weird.

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I’m not going to say too much here because… PORK. Speaks for itself.

june 2nd, 2013 – porchetta sandwiches with salsa verde

In all the excitement of having a delicious smelling crackling covered piece of pork in front of me I forgot to take a picture of my actual sandwiches. I am so so so happy with how this pork turned out, omg. We sliced the pork into thin pieces and put it on rolls with a bit of salsa verde. The crackling was crunchy and salty and the meat was super moist. It was definitely channelling Vancouver’s Meat & Bread. This porchetta turned out so well I think it deserves its own post. Coming soon.

june 3rd, 2013 – vegetarian green curry

june 4th, 2013 – maple dijon chicken with sweet potato and green beans

More after the jump…Continue reading