Soy-Braised Pork Loin

If you’ve ever been to a real Chinese market, have a Chinatown near you, or hell… If you’ve been to China you’ve seen and hopefully tasted Siu Mei in all of its barbecued, glistening glory. It’s a take-out tradition that goes back to Guangzhou in the days when every neighbourhood had a local “oven master” that would roast various animals in special sauce to perfection and sell them to their neighbours to eat with a bit of rice and pickles. Read More

Smoked Trout, Two Ways

Holidays are the balm of body and mind. It’s been a couple days into our long-awaited stay-cation and I’m already starting to feel my soul regenerating and plotting future adventures just like the hedonistic super villain I remember myself to be.

Ironically, one of the first recipes I got to work on between mountain biking trips was a banger I perfected at work. A sublimely simple way to take trout – a tasty and plentiful local river fish – clean up its mealy texture and enhance the profound sweetness buried deep inside. Read More

Miso-Roasted Oysters

Oyster MotoyakiI know it seems like I throw miso in everything – like Jamie Oliver with all that damned rosemary – but if you’re a fan of oysters stay with me. If you have friends and family that are a little oyster-phobic this is the recipe that will turn ’em around. It’s that damned good!

And that’s impressive because there aren’t many things that people eat more polarizing than oysters. Shuck a couple and half the people at your dinner party will gag while the other half dig in with wild abandon.  My wife was one of the former (an unrepentant hater of oysters and most other bivalve mollusks) up until only recently. Now she tolerates a few raw oysters now and then but only if they’re the size of a dime and the larger ones get only scornful looks unless they arrive slathered in miso mayonnaise.

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Ultimate Steak, Part 2 : The Steakening!!!

Ultimate SteakAs the berries rot and the leaves spiral in the wind, there’s no denying it… Summer is giving way to fall. Sure, it’s still balmy every weekend (perhaps a St. Matrin’s Summer?) and I can still get from the door to the car without pants, but only just barely.

It is therefore essential to soak in as much of this gorgeous, late summer-corncobs ‘n beachfires- groaning as mom calls you in for dinner- sunshine as possible! One last big BBQ weekend!

I’m ‘gonna bring out those big-gun steaks we got from Gunter Bros, season those beasts well, grill ‘em fast and furious and then bang out a quick sauce to take it over the top. Heat ye coals, fill the flagons and gird thy loins; The Steakening is at hand! Read More

BBQ Pork Spareribs with Blackberry Hoisin Sauce

BBQRib1This BBQ Sauce is as close to an original recipe as I’ve ever come up with. I know, nothing is new and every recipe has already been thought of by someone, but I take some pride piecing this frankensauce concept together. It’s a traditional American backyard BBQ sauce at heart (with a built-in balance of sweet, sour, spicy and salty that I learned from Nick at Memphis Blues BBQ House) with summer blackberry sweet-tartness as it’s body and the brain of a Chinese fire-roasted duck. It’s just thing to slather all over fatty pork ribs. Read More