Easter eggstravaganza with Chocolate Arts
9 Comments
Karen Hamilton
March 30, 2010
Congratulations, Dilara – you’ve won a Large Signature Egg from Chocolate Arts just in time for Easter. Karen will contact you today to arrange for a meet, as it’s a little difficult for her to get outside of downtown Vancouver with the new baby!
I took a break from the newfound joys of maternity to attend an Easter Extravaganza course on the invite of Chocolate Arts, a chocolate shop in Kitsilano that my friends and I have patronized over the years.
No cooking required
The last time I had attempted to work with chocolate at home resulted in a messed pot and burnt ganache, despite my confidence when making it for the first time at the Dirty Apron Cooking School. It was therefore with elevated levels of anxiety that I arrived at the production kitchen of Chocolate Arts for three hours with head chocolatier Greg Hook and his assistants Joseph and Gen.
As it turned out, I was in for a relatively stress-free experience. No slaving over a hot stove, no ratios to learn, no finicky cooking techniques to practice. It was more of an exercise in the final stages of confection assembly. Chocolate shells sat at each station asking to be filled; ganache, caramel, and house-made preserves were prepared by the pros for our use; molds and stencils for Easter creations awaited our personal touch.
I saw it as an interactive walkthrough of Chocolate Arts’ production line, giving us consumers an idea of their materials, processes, and tools of the trade. Through capping my own caramel eggs, folding cornettes, filling molds, and pairing up with the other students for more elaborate finishes, I gained an appreciation of the skill and resourcefulness needed to make chocolate pieces for a living (taste-testing all the while, of course).
High tech assembly
The technology we used in the kitchen left the biggest impression on me. Tempering machines along one wall rained dark and milk chocolate while the chocolate enrober on the opposite end drew our ganaches along a conveyor belt for final flourishes.
Using the enrobing machine was a highlight – I got to place myself in the shoes of Lucy Ricardo in that memorable chocolate factory episode, even though it wasn’t food safe for me to be allowed gulp my treats straight off the assembly line.
The verdict
Having now experienced this Easter Extravaganza course first hand, I can see why the workshop had a hefty $190 price tag. Our class of 12 churned out over 110 individual chocolates for each person to take home, plus a chocolate bunny showpiece for us to display to friends and family at Easter.
The abundance of product plus the hours of patient instruction would have seemed a good deal had I paid to attend this course. Heartily recommended as a special occasion buy for that chocolate lover in your family, or as a personal splurge if you love to entertain and have loved ones that you can gift your handmade chocolates to for the holidays.
This was the inaugural Easter course that Chocolate Arts has put on, but they have been offering similar Christmas Extravaganza courses for the past 5 years. If this sort of weekend activity sounds right up your alley, you may want to lurk their website to register for the various workshops and classes that they put on throughout the year.
Other Easter treats at Chocolate Arts
While I would love to distribute what I had made at this workshop to each of you, these candies are earmarked for my family’s Easter celebrations. However, Chocolate Arts did give me a Large Signature Egg to give away to one reader…and that reader is Dilara!
You can visit Chocolate Arts and pick up your own Large Signature Egg for $42.95 or browse their assortment of sweets for something to match your Easter plans this year.
Chocolate Arts
2037 West 4th Avenue | Kitsilano
(604) 739-0475
chocolatearts.com
Categories: Events, Food, Food Purveyors
A play-by-play of the 11th annual Healthy Chef Competition
8 Comments Karen HamiltonMarch 17, 2010
My husband and I are heading over to the Hyatt Regency tonight on the invite of the organizers of the Healthy Chef Competition. In fact, they were kind enough to give us a full table to fill with colleagues in the food writing community, so we invited some of the folks behind Foodists, Granville Magazine, Vancouver Foodster, Victoria’s Food Secrets, and Follow Me Foodie along for the ride.
If my iPhone cooperates with me, this post will be running commentary as we take in the event and dine our way through the competitors’ submissions. Come see us on Twitter using the hashtag #hcc2010 if you crave more immediacy!
7:15pm. …And we’re here! A little bit of mingling with our cohort followed by a few snaps of the showcase of competitor dishes at the back of the ballroom, all of which having undergone the scrutiny of the judges’ panel.
7:30pm. Our table is seated and being directed to open the envelopes on our place settings. They tell us which of the competitors we’ll each experience tonight. Me? I’ve get to try the entree from the Hyatt Regency and the dessert by the Sheraton Wall Centre. I’m a little envious of Victoria, who will be trying VCC’s lobster main. But I’m sure all will be delectable.
7:45pm. Ooh, sneaky! Our emcee told us to pass the envelopes in front of us 2 to our left, 3 to our right! We jumped the gun…now I’ve got Kettle of Fish for my main and Carvers Steakhouse for dessert.
8:20pm. Many of the mains were given two thumbs up, so when the emcee announced that seconds were available at most stations, a stampede ensued. Paralyzed by indecision, I wound up getting a dish that didn’t have much of a line – pork loin and quail eggs as a fine dining equivalent of bacon and eggs.
8:40pm. Dessert round commences with guests simply deciding to go up to their designated chef stations. Some, knowing there will likely be seconds, stole their seconds early…our table certainly containing more than a handful of those culprits.
9pm. Best desserts according to our table: strawberry shortcake by the Hyatt, chocolate mousse from Four Willows, and a duo of cakes (one was mango) whose origin currently eludes me.
10:30pm. Home early after a go-go-go evening of eating, mind whirling with ideas on how we’ll use the box of produce that we got to take home.
Because we had to rush home to our daughter, we missed hearing the winners announced for best entree, best dessert, and so forth, so once I receive the intel, I’ll update this post and share with you.
In the meantime, I’ve managed to complete a speedy upload of the pictures I took with my trusty SLR, which for brevity’s sake was not my lens of choice when I was blogging live. I’ve since replaced some of the shaky iPhone snaps with ones that I hope are more drool-worthy, but some of these will have to stay put until the rest of my table (namely Ed) lets me share more high-resolution images with you.
I’ll do one more update of this piece tomorrow within the week to air my overall thoughts of this event. If you have questions or comments – especially those of you that were at my table tonight – please leave a comment here and I’ll try to fill in the gaps for you. Good night for now.
Categories: Blogging for Social Change, Events, Food
First impressions of Ramen Santouka
1 Comment Karen HamiltonMarch 7, 2010
Whenever I want to go adventuring in the land of Japanese cuisine, I ask my brother. His inner circle is populated with so many Japanese students and ex-pats that he’s practically foresworn our Filipino culture for theirs. When it comes to the food, he’s one of the biggest snobs and best scouts that I know, having introduced our family to Kingyo, Alpha, Kaide, and Motomachi long before ramen and izakaya entered Vancouver’s mainstream vernacular. It should therefore come as no surprise that it was he who made me curious about Ramen Santouka.
My brother haunts the non-touristy end of Robson Street for its array of Japanese and Korean dining options. A week and a half ago, he happened across the soft open of Ramen Santouka, the newest of the chain of ramen shops originally based out of Hokkaido and starting to make its conquest of North America.
The restaurant decor is peppered with bears – the symbol of Hokkaido, according to my brother
Soft open / grand opening signage and tasty, tasty visual menu
Even if he hadn’t already eaten at Ramen Santouka during his last trip to Hokkaido, the place still would have captured his attention. The storefront, while modest in signage and obscured by a bus stop, has an arresting display in the front window of what one could eat inside its doors. It would have been enough for this curious diner to try it without further recommendation; I imagine the descriptions and visuals would interest a ramen neophyte as well.
My brother stepped inside for his first Vancouver taste of Santouka’s shio ramen. One slurp was enough to sell him on a second visit in the same week – another positive experience which led him to suggest Santouka for lunch the next time he and I hung out. He tried the shoyu ramen and the cha-su don while I wasted no time in ordering the most unusual items on the menu: the kara miso ramen and ikura don. Our picks were conveniently available as ramen/don combos for $11 and $13. Gotta love a place that makes sampling this easy.
Kara miso ramen: spicy tonkotsu broth flavoured with chili oil and miso
Ikura don: rice bowl topped with salmon roe and thin shreds of scrambled egg
Shoyu ramen: tonkotsu base flavoured with soy
Cha-shu don: rice bowl topped with slowly simmered pork
Yum, yum, yum! Easily the best tonkotsu I’ve had in Vancouver. The regular pork in our ramen was already so superb in tenderness, marble, and rich flavour that it’s gotten me drooling in anticipation for the premium pork jowl of the toroniku ramen that I will no doubt order upon my return.
A few observations: 1 slice of pork in my bowl and the default portion size were not enough to appease my normally peckish appetite, and certain items on the menu were not yet available for order. I recommend immediately upgrading your bowl to the large portion and requesting extra pork when you visit. Don’t let the limitations in the current menu stop you from coming down to eat there, as food lovers in the know and Santouka fans happy to see its presence in Vancouver are already causing a formidable line-up during service peak times. Oh, and don’t forget your cash – no debit or credit cards accepted yet.
This is a promising ramen find for me. As for my brother – who isn’t wild about Kintaro and who prefers the likes of Motomachi – he has found a new favourite in Santouka. He’s even posted photos and rave one-line reviews of his Santouka meals on his Facebook profile without telling his friends where to find the place. Tease.
Chow Times and La Petite Vancouver can give you more detailed accounts of this newcomer to Vancouver’s ramen scene, so read about their dining experiences if you aren’t already en route to Ramen Santouka.
Categories: Downtown, Food, Restaurants, West End
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