Applause Restaurant (April 13, 2008)

http://www.applauserestaurant.ca/

Two reviewers: ts and js

[ts]
Again with the difficulty finding a place to eat lunch!

Granted, this time around it was already a bit late (2pm). Anyway, after wandering around for a bit, we drove by Applause on Oak (the space formerly Japone) and saw they were open.

I didn't have the camera on me, so I guess their website will have to do, picture-wise.

Lunch Special: served with miso soup, house salad and Yasai croquette
B.C. sushi combo $7.95
Salmon, tuna, hokkigai sushi & B.C. roll

[ts]
I had this. It was actually very pretty in that bento box way. I don't think their site has a picture of their lunch specials in their entirety. I don't really eat sushi or sashimi, in general. I like my raw foods "prepared" in some way (eg, beef tartar, carpaccio). As for dipping sushi/sashimi into soy sauce? The whole thing just tastes like soy sauce! Anyway, let's not get into that. I do like sushi rice and nori. When I do eat sushi, I never eat it with soy sauce.

The sushi I had was not bad at all. I don't like those "fast food" type sushi seemingly on every block, but this wasn't like that. The salmon and tuna were their usual selves, no complaints. I liked the hokkigai; clam-my. ;D The BC roll was very nice. The salmon skin was actually very crispy, like it's supposed to be! Imagine that. The sushi rice was above average; it was more room temperature than slightly warm, but it wasn't ice cold. I also liked the soup and croquette, and even the salad, even though it was an iceberg one! So I guess I liked everything placed in front of me.

[js]
I have to agree about the sushi. The rice, I thought, looked better than "regular" fast food sushi joints. I'm very wary of those fast food sushi joints -- because, well, they are handling raw fish.

My take on the soy sauce thing: if it's bad sushi, yes, slather on the wasabi and dip the darn thing in soy sauce, to distract from the fact that you are eating BAD SUSHI. Kind of like my take on fries and ketchup.

If the sushi's good, there is very little need for soy sauce and wasabi. The fish and the rice is more than enough.

Shoyu Ramen $6.95

[js]
I'm a big fan of ramen. There's something about the springy noodles that I love. I love instant noodles for their springy noodles. (I hate soggy noodles!)

Ramen, like pasta and pizza, is another one of these food items that is simple and difficult to do at the same time. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I've eaten passable, pretty good ramen, but by my count, I've only eaten one bowl of great ramen.

That great bowl was years and years ago when a ramen joint opened near our house. That ramen house have since changed hands twice or three times. It's gone, gone, gone, like the warm toffee cake. I had the shoyu ramen there and it was a revelatory experience. "Simple yet profound," as the oft-repeated phrase goes. The shoyu broth sang and the noodles danced. It was a great bowl of ramen.

The shoyu ramen at Applause was passable-good. I loved the noodles (they were ramen noodles) but the broth seemed a little bland.

Oh, a couple of days ago, we went by Ajisen in Richmond. I ordered the spicy pork ramen. I was quite disappointed with the ramen there: the noodles were more like spaghetti than ramen noodles. Don't know if it's a bad day for them and I don't know if I'll venture there again.

(Some info on & a review of Ajisen here. It's an international chain, apparently.)

[ts]
I don't really like ramen. I haven't met a bowl of ramen I liked. Yeah, just, please, no ramen for me.

Saba Shioyaki (mackerel) $6.95

[ts]
I love mackerel. This was good. One really has to try to screw up the great taste of grilled mackerel!

[js]
I'm a purist so I thought this grilled mackerel was TOO PEPPERY! It had black pepper! All the previous saba shioyakis I've ever had just had a sprinkling of salt. I thought the pepper distracted me from the fish.

[ts]
Well, we did grow up during Letty's black pepper regime. So, black pepper is just neutral to me. In fact, I love black pepper!

[js]
Overall, I thought the restaurant was better than most Japanese restaurants we've been to, but my Japanese restaurant card is already full. We usually go to Ajisai on West Boulevard and 42nd because they have the best sushi in our 5 km radius.

[ts]
I wouldn't mind going here again; much better than other places (especially those really inexpensive "Chinese" Japanese restaurants). Although, yeah, Ajisai is one of the few Japanese restaurants I go to, when I actually agree to go to a Japanese restaurant. =) I think I prefer izakaya fare.

(There is a new Starbucks under construction beside Applause. DIABOLICAL!!!)

Squid with Black Pepper (Vietnamese)

[ts]
Inspired by this recipe on Mark Bittman's blog, JS bought some squid. This was very fast and very easy and very tasty. And look, it's kind of pretty too!


Wow, it looks like an actual dish you would get in a restaurant! ;)

First, I sliced the squid into rings or whatnot. The squid we had were very small, so I just sliced the body in half. Tentacles stayed whole. Also prepped some garlic, chile peppers and cilantro.



So easy and fast. Wait, did I mention that already?

Here's how it went down:

Hot pan.
Squid.
Garlic & Peppers.
Fish Sauce.
Black Pepper.
Cilantro.

Done!











Here's that money shot again:


[ts]
Yes, this is a definite keeper. Another one of those greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts dishes.

Unfortunately, there was less than a pound of squid (0.778 lbs, to be exact), so the yield was very small. However, it was so hot that it stretched a little bit (not by a whole lot, though). JS pulled out those 3 peppers and I had to use them!

Oh, of course we ate it with plain white rice. Of course.

But then, JS also took it upon herself to eat it with some romaine. I guess the cool, crunchy romaine countered the heat.

[js]
Well, the dish stretched out is right! That's one way to stretch a food budget, making the protein really spicy, so one is forced to eat more rice and vegetables. Although the price of rice is also on the rise.

The squid was delicious, very umami, and the two different kinds of heat, from the black pepper and the chili peppers, just added another welcome dimension to it. I find it quite surprising that was such a simple dish, with 6 ingredients, would be such a hit.

Squid waves bye-bye!

Vietnamese food at eatingclub vancouver
Squid with Black Pepper
Trout in Vietnamese Caramel Sauce
Pho Bo (Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup)
Vietnamese Salmon Steaks with Cucumber, Garlic and Ginger
Pho Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)
Vietnamese Chicken Cabbage Salad (Goi Ga Bap Cai) on Sesame Rice Cracker (Banh Trang Me)
Vietnamese Spring Roll (Cha Gio)
Asparagus and Crab Egg Crêpes

"Warm Toffee Cake" a la Rekados

"Warm Toffee Cake"... {sigh}

[ts]
Even before the earth-shattering catastrophe of Rekados removing its "warm toffee cake" from their menu, JS and I had been wondering how to make it. (I told you we would just spontaneously think of it!)

Oh, I believe the Rekados site still has a picture of the "warm toffee cake" (to mock us!). It's the final picture in their Gallery section. They serve theirs warm inside a coffee cup (or ramekin) with the sauce and ice cream on top.

There are basically two components: the cake and the sauce. (Well, the ice cream too, but hey, I don't need to worry about that. Hah.)

The cake

We were thinking of the type of cake it is, and JS settled on it being like "ma lai kuh" (Malay Cake). The ma lai kuh we're used to seeing are the ones in dimsum. They're really high and fluffy, and could be anywhere from pale yellow to a taupe-ish color. Rekados' "warm toffee cake" leaned towards the taupe end, I believe.

There were lots of recipes for ma lai kuh online. After looking through a number of them and judging by the pictures of the finished product, most ma lai kuh were too pale and seemed to have a more "cake-y" crumb (for lack of a better word) than what we were looking for. I finally settled on basing ours on this recipe by Big Boys Oven. Unlike other recipes, this had a darker hue. As for the crumb, I could only hope for the best.

The sauce

I don't remember if the Rekados menu specified a "toffee" sauce or a "butterscotch" sauce. I looked up the difference between the two in my trusty Food Lover's Companion.

Butterscotch = butter and brown sugar
Toffee = a candy made with sugar, water/cream, and maybe butter

So, butterscotch it must be! For the recipe, I looked through our America's Test Kitchen and How To Cook Everything cookbooks. I finally decided on Bittman's since it basically was a dump-into-a-pot thing (whereas the America's Test Kitchen recipe called for making the caramel first).

Here we go!

Look, a recipe using weight (not volume)! I had to whip out the seldom-used ghetto kitchen scale of ours.



In the scale above was 150 grams of all-purpose flour and 10 grams of cornstarch. The recipe called for 160 grams of cake flour, but I didn't have that. I believe AP flour + cornstarch is a substitution I learned from our America's Test Kitchen cookbook. I'm not sure if it's the exact subsitution, but I figured it should be OK. In with the flour was 1 tablespoon of baking soda. I read it twice to make sure it's soda, not baking powder.

I whipped a 2 large eggs until frothy...



...then added 100 grams of sugar (I took castor sugar to mean regular white sugar). I whipped until thick and white.



I added the flour + baking soda to the eggs, then 70 mL of brown sugar (I didn't use palm sugar as per the recipe) and 200 mL coconut milk.



I then let the mixture rest for about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, I don't have a shot of the rested batter. Its texture was only apparent as I poured it out of the bowl. It was foamy and had quite an "elastic" consistency... perhaps a texture like a bread starter?

Here they are in cups, ready for steaming.



Our steamer is huge!



While the cakes were steaming, I went to work on the butterscotch sauce.

I believe Bitman's recipe called for 6 tablespoons of butter, 3/4 cup of brown sugar, and... I forget how much cream. I guess about one cup. I didn't actually have cream on hand, so I used canned Nestlé cream instead (gasp!). It was one small can. I don't think it made much of a difference. For the brown sugar, I used 2 parts light brown sugar and 1 part demerara sugar. Bitman called for a "pinch" of salt, but since what I liked about Rekados' "warm toffee cake" was the play between sweet and salty, I added a whole teaspoon of salt.



Then it was a matter of heating, stirring and waiting. It was actually the PERFECT consistency at one point, but I let it sit on the heat longer than that, so our sauce turned out a tad separated. (Still good and buttery and sweet and salty, though!)



After a bit, the cakes were ready! Those holes are from my gratuitous pokings to test for doneness. They're big because I used a wooden chopstick instead of a toothpick. But, I was also thinking ahead, see. I wanted the cakes be even more porous so the butterscotch sauce can soak right on through.



The finished product, half-eaten, as the mouth was faster than the camera.



[js]
This is actually the second time we attempted a "ma lai kuh," in the hopes of replicating that precious, precious warm toffee cake of Rekados.

The first time was ages ago (six to eight months ago). If I remember correctly, it had a tighter crumb and it was not as soft and moist as this second time.

For me, this second attempt is closer to our goal: crumb is just right. The only thing was that it was SO BITTER when eaten by itself.

Regarding the butterscotch sauce, I would like it to be thinner and smoother than the one we had this time.

This is a good second try -- and I suspect our third time is going to be the charm. We might finally invest in those ramekins for this toffee cake.

We served this with a crème brulée flavor gelato that was, of course, superdelicious.

[ts]
Yes, the bitterness!!!

I believe the bitterness was from the baking soda. I wonder if using baking powder instead would eliminate that bitterness, since I usually see baking powder in larger quantities (than baking soda) in recipes. I just hope it doesn't mess with the crumb!

The cake was BEYOND bitter, so one really had to eat it with the butterscotch sauce. I confess, the sauce may have been a tad too salty, because I added a second teaspoon of salt to the mix while it was heating. I won't do that next time. It wasn't unbearably salty, but I think cutting back a little would be better. And I guess more cream will make it thinner?

Of course, how can there be anything wrong with that gelato! Impossible! Teehee.

This dessert really had to be eaten all together. The sweetness and saltiness of the butterscotch sauce hid the bitterness of the cake while the gelato mellowed out the whole affair with its coldness and melty-ness.



Look at that perfect crumb!

I say again, "Warm Toffee Cake"... {sigh}