Restaurant: Savera

Food critic Joanne Kates once glowingly reviewed an Indian restaurant in Toronto. During the course of the glowing review she said how it was so nice that there was finally an Indian restaurant that catered to the upper class. All the others, you see, were centered on serving the plebeians and thus could not devote the proper resources to preparing sauces and such (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much). Savera is not the kind of chic-chic Indian place that Kates was lauding. It's a cute, small family-owned place that has good food.



Like many Indian places, I find the waiters are very attentive and are always refilling my water glass. I like having water, though the problem is I inevitably drink it whereupon it is filled up again and the cycle continues. The end result is that I leave the restaurant having had far too many glasses of water. We maybe ordered a little too much food – though its never a bad thing to have leftovers. We started off with samosa, which were solid – not great. Next we had some naan and rice (we had too much naan and not enough rice) with the Aloo Gobi, Channa Masala and Dal Makhani.



I really liked the Aloo Gobi, though then again I always like the Aloo Gobi. As always, I secretly prefer the potato element. The Dal was a little soupy, but that wasn't a problem for me when spooned over rice. The chickpeas weren't my favourite but they did a pretty good job with them. For those who like that sort of thing, the ambience was very nice: there was a lot of light and the interior was pretty. All in all, an enjoyable meal.

Savera Indian Cusine
815 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto, ON

I'm bored of cheap and cheerful

The Wall Street Journal reports that the reccession is causing consumers to shift away from premium beers. And – btw – by "premium" they're referring to beers like fraking Budweiser so its even worse from a beer snobs perspective. Ironically, I'm going the other way [That's not what ironic means! Was Alanis Morisette your english teacher --ed]. I have decided to move away from cheap beer.

Oh we had some good times, cheap beer and I. I fondly remember drinking, say, warm Lakeport Honey at parties. Heck, I was drinking Lakeport before it cool: back when it was a lucky find at The Beer Store. I thought the romance would never end. But lately, I've felt a sense of estrangment from buck-a-bottles. I've been feeling this way for a while but I think what clinched it was last week when I was having some beers with my friends at our old drinking hole. We were drinking their sourbrew house ($8 a pitcher!) but after a couple of pints I felt sick. If I'm going to feel sick from drinking I expect to be drunker!

So goodbye, cheap beer. Its not like I'm going to turn into one of the aforementioned beer snobs (not that there's anything wrong with that). Probably, I'll just be drinking Steamwhistle or Sleemans or even Keiths. How will I afford it? Drink more at home/parties and less at bars. Or brew my own beer. Or brew my own mead! I can put a beehive round back.

Note to my foreign readers (yes, I do have readers in other countries or, more accurately, people who have visited TFV from other countries): Steamwhistle, Sleemans, Keiths and Lakeport are all Canadian beer companies. I guess that should be "Canadian" as Sleemans is owned by the Japanese and Keiths and Lakeport are owned by the Belgians. The Beer Store is a business that has a monopoly on selling beer in Ontario for the protection of the public. Naturally, it is also not owned by Canadian companies (although, technicially speaking no one can "own" a corporation as they are legally people). The monopoly is limited as you can buy beer from, inter alia, the LCBO: a government-controlled corporation.

Four sad vegetables and their story

As I left Toronto, my parents reminded (via phone) that I could take some food back with me. I grabbed some pasta (because I was out of pasta) but I allow opened up the refrigerator to salvage some food that was just going to sit their until it got thrown out. I felt like a real humanitarian, saving those vegetables (though I guess they probably would've prefer a slow rot than a fast burn). I retreived an old cauliflower, a fragment of a red onion, part of a cabbage and a piece of celery that was actually holding up pretty well.

I decided I would turn these into a meal. Unfortunately, it did not end as well as I hoped. I decided that you, the reader, might be tired of my 3CSBOOS (curry/cumin/cayenne/small bit of other spice, pronounced three cees booze) method of cooking so I decided to do some experimenting.

Four Vegetable Experiment

1 onion, chopped

The four vegetables above (say 1/4 cabbage, 1/2 red onion, medium cauliflower and 1/2 celery stack)

1 carrot, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp vineger

1 teaspoon chili paste

1 teaspoon black bean paste

Rice

Start cooking the rice – I used my rice method. This gives a 20 minute opportunity to cook the vegetables on medium-high. I added the onions to the pan and started steaming the cauliflower. 5 minutes later I added the red onion and celery. 5 minutes after that, the carrot. 5 minutes after that the garlic, cabbage, steamed cauliflower and sauces. I cooked it for 5 minutes until the rice was done.

Serves 2

So what went wrong? In a word, blandness. Now, I liked the vegetables fine but there was no kick. I had made a rocky mistake and underspiced, fearing an outcome that was too salty or too vinegary. But all is not lost! Note the "serves 2". Tomorrow, I will reheat the leftovers and add more flavourings. Hopefully, it will be a better dish.

Restaurant: Mexitaco

Mexitaco is a wretched little restaurant. That means that this review will be less promotional than the others I have written, therefore there will be none of the accoutrement in other reviews. To make up for that, I will write up the evening akin to the game of Fortunately/Unfortunately.

Fortunately, I was going to Nazereth with my friends.
Unfortunately, it was closed for renovations.
Fortunately, that meant that, hopefully, when it reopened there would be more room.
Unfortunately, we didn't have anywhere to eat and we were hungry.
Fortunately, there was a mexican place nearby.
Unfortunately, one of my friends had a bad feeling about it and didn't want to go inside.
Fortunately, we convinced him it would be good.
Unfortunately, we were very wrong.
Fortunately, we didn't know that yet and had some delicious guacomole (though as Chris Rock says you shouldn't get credit for shit you supposed to do and its easy to make good guacomole).
Unfortunately, the entrees were about $10 each (way overpriced for the quality as we shall see).
Fortunately, the rice was alright.
Unfortunately, the burrito that I ordered had not-particularly-great beans and as for the vegetables... The vegetables were insipid carrots, peas and lima beans whose flavour had been cruelly boiled away. I thought I had gone to a Mexican restaurant – not WASP family dinner from the 1950s.
Fortunately, well actually there weren't any more fortunatelys there...
Unfortunately, there was a piece of chicken clinging to the bottom of my friend's quesadilla. When we brought it up the waitress basically shrugged it off. Then, after we'd paid for the $42 meal amongst the 3 of us with 3 twenties, she had the chutzpah to ask if we wanted change.
Fortunately, I bought a cheap Korean dvd from a random Korean dvd store afterwards.
Unfortunately, I then walked past Tacos El Asador which would've been a far better restaurant.

Mexitaco
No, I'm not giving an address – I'm not going to make it easier for people to find this awful place

Restaurant: Khmer Thai

It's a bit disingenuous of me to review Khmer Thai as a restaurant. Sure, it has my usual likes in a restaurant: not expensive, a little shabby and vegetarian selections but that's not why I go.



I only go to eat a Cambodian tofu dish I used to eat all the time back in Kingston. Alas, I haven't been able to get back to Kingston recently and thus have not been able to have the real thing at Cambodiana Restaurant. I had it last when I was in town for a wedding, staying at my grandfather's empty condominium. Everything had been cleared out for his move to Toronto, leaving rooms hauntingly devoid of anything. I sat on the floor (as there were no tables), eating the tofu with a plastic spoon (as there was not cutlery) and hoping not to drop anything and stain the carpet. That's a rather long winded way of saying that since then I have to get my spicy basil-chili-tofu fix at Khmer Thai:



I generally don't like sweetness in my meals but this dish combines sweet, sour and hot beautifully together. If this dish doesn't sound appealing to you, I can't recommend this restaurant in good conscience. After all, I'm only in it for the tofu.

Khmer Thai
1018 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto, Ontario

More Absorption

In what I hope won't become a trend, I'm going to yet again recap one of my earlier entries– infusion pasta. I could say that the recipe below is sufficiently distinguishable from the first post – which is true – but that's not the whole story. Really, I don't know if the first post made the best argument for absorption pasta. Firstly, the picture is kinda ugly. If a parodist wanted to aim low and lampoon my blog they would probably start by noting the number of dishes that resemble some sort of brown (or dark orange) mess on a plate. When I'm trying to preach a new form of pasta making I should've probably led with a more vibrant colour (to say nothing of grounding it in tradition with tomato sauce). Secondly, its about twice as fast because you don't need to boil the water first. Thirdly, you don't have to bother with straining the pasta. Straining isn't the end of the world but its difficult if you have a full sink and a big pot. WIth this method, it just goes right on your plate. Finally, I mentioned that it was a better method for the environment but didn't break it down: If everyone in the US cooked pasta this way it would save half a million gallons of oil. Here I use whole what pasta – you don't need to of course – which I think really benefits from this style of cooking:

Whole Wheat Absorption Pasta with Tomato Sauce

Pasta

1 cup whole wheat pasta

2 cups liquid
Tomato Sauce

1 can (28 ounces) tomatoes

1 large carrot, chopped

1 onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

Sautée the onion in the oil on medium-high for a few minutes. Put some oil in a pot, turn to high and add the pasta and then the liquid. Cook for the normal pasta cooking time. Normally I use stock, but for this meal I used a mixture of 1 part chickpea liquid to 1 part water (from cooking dried chickpeas, not that awful liquid from a can. More on that story later). I turned out quite well, I think. Meanwhile add the garlic, carrot and then the tomatoes to the onions. Turn down to medium and simmer for about 10 minutes. Puree and pour some over the pasta.

Serves 1, but its easily scalable.

Observent persons may notice that there are no mentions of mushrooms in the recipe, yet the picture shows mushrooms. That's because I made the pasta sauce in advance (that recipe will sauce many different meals) and sauteed some mushrooms for this meal. I don't know if I'd really recommend having three burners on the go as a routine matter as I did talk up environmental considerations.

"Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat"

I've always compared vegetarianism to Judaism, we look down on those less observant but think those more observant than us are crazy (I guess I'd proably be a equivalent of Conservative; the vegans are Lubavitchers). Yet veganism does have a compelling intellectual draw for vegetarians. If its wrong to eat a chicken, then why is it right to eat its eggs produced as they are by a killing of male chicks and locking the female ones up in a tiny cage where they are treated horribly? I don't have a particularly good answer for that, though I guess I can say I'd never, for example, murder a Congolese child but I did buy a cellphone that is produced, in part, by the death and exploitation of people in the Congo. There are actually long periods of time I am effectively vegan, I don't eat out that often and I don't usually use a lot of animal products in my house. Now is not one of those times though, I took the advice of my co-workers and bought some eggs. While you can use eggs for many things, I'd like to sing the praises of the softboiled egg. Many people don't particularly care for egg yolks, but they are glorious here: like silky delicious lava.

Soft-Boiled Eggs

Egg

Boil water in a small pot. Place the egg in the pot with a spoon and set it to a simmer. Cook for about 4 minutes and extract the egg.

Serves 1.