Canada, week four

My last week in Canada began with lunch for everyone at Kingsley, a Chinese restaurant in Brampton with all-day dim sum. This was a very big treat for Hideaki and me: dim sum does exist in Japan, but it's done a bit differently. Customers ordering from menus rather than choosing dishes from passing carts, which is way less fun. The one time we found a proper dim sum place in Tokyo, with carts and all, we loved it, right up until we were hit with the $80 bill.

Everything was delicious, with stronger flavours compared to Japanese dim sum, which is usually lightly flavoured and always dipped in a sauce before eating. Here, although soy sauce was available for dipping, nothing really needed it (and the short, unbroken journey from plate to mouth was a big relief for those of us not used to slippery, blunt-ended Chinese chopsticks). Above is beef rib in black bean sauce with sticky rice (which came wrapped in a lotus leaf, unlike Japanese chimaki which comes wrapped in a bamboo leaf).

The two vegetable dishes, ordered from the menu, were a welcome break. On the left is baby bok choy with garlic, and on the right are snow pea greens with garlic.

This was my favourite dish: eggplant stuffed with minced shrimp. A tad on the greasy side but so, so good.

The garlic chive dumplings were very good too, stuffed with a mixture of pork, shrimp and a restrained amount of garlic chives, compared to the usual Japanese nira manju most often made with pork only and an aggressive amount of garlic chives.

The only disappointment was that many of the dumpling style dishes came with broken wraps, as shown above. This is probably the only way that Japanese style dim sum is better, and I wonder how important it is. Are broken wraps a major flaw in authentic Chinese cooking? All in all, I vastly prefer Canadian style dim sum, Kingsley's included, to Japanese style. But which is more authentic?

We finished with two of my favourite sweets: sesame balls (which came stuffed with lotus seed paste instead of the sweet bean paste found in Japanese goma dango), and egg tarts (which for some reason I've never seen offered at any kind of Chinese restaurant in Japan).

My sister Julie with my nephew Aaron and niece Zoe.

My dad and Julie.

Me and my mom.

Back at home, I spent some quality time with the cats. Below is the newest member of the family, Toki (I can't take credit for the pretty picture, unfortunately: it was taken with my brother Greg's camera, either by him or his girlfriend Sherry):

I don't remember exactly how Toki entered our family (we have so many cat acquisition stories that it's hard to keep them straight), except that she was a kitten in need of a home and my family happened to have a cat vacancy at the time. After a trip home last year I blogged about Angus, the handsome cat who was the newest member of the family at the time. Sadly, just a few weeks after that post, I was told that Angus was hit by a car. It was devastating, but a few months later there was more news: a brand new kitten was working some kitten magic on my family, and although Angus will never be forgotten, his replacement was pretty awesome.

Toki gets along with Cocoa, the earless and not very photogenic (but really cute in person) cat shown above. Cocoa is a very easy going and and affectionate cat, who also got along really well with Angus. Toki is not quite as loving as Cocoa, but she's also not quite fully grown, and her kittenish antics are lots of fun to watch.

For more pictures of Cocoa, Angus, Toki, and other kitties I've known, see my Cat Album. 

I got to see some cats of a bigger kind when my dad took Aaron, Zoe, Hideaki and me for a trip to the Toronto Zoo. It was Hideaki's first time, and my first visit in over a decade, and as usual we only got to see a small part of it.

Also as usual, most of the animals were napping, but there was a bit of excitement when this tiger stalked and chased a chipmunk. Above it's cooling down after the hunt (the chipmunk escaped), but in full sprint it was amazingly fast.

Our trip was just a few days after we'd read in the paper about the death of one of the oldest elephants. She had died in an accident, after being knocked over by another elephant during feeding time and not being able to get back up. Watching a few of them eating peacefully it was hard to imagine the aggression that would cause such an accident.

 

Not all of the animals were in cages:

Caged and not, there were plenty of happy couples (some of them were really happy):

More zoo pictures can be found in my Zoo album.

Soon it was Canada Day, and we celebrated with a backyard get-together. We started by being underwhelmed by a Mentos soda-pop geyser:

Then were blown away by Greg's bbq ribs:

Along with burgers and other good stuff:

Then we were blown away again when Greg and his friend Jim did these fireworks:

And then I was underwhelmed again when I saw the pictures:

  

Oh well, fireworks always look better in real life.

I took a couple more trips downtown, once with Hideaki, Julie and Zoe for some rainy day shopping. Nobody got lost on this trip, and we even had time to admire Union Station. It looks really different from a tourist's perspective, especially looking up above the utilitarian signs and booths. I never noticed that each province's flag is displayed and that the names of major train stations across Canada are carved into the walls.

On the last trip downtown I returned to the Royal Ontario Museum with my friend Aspasia and checked out the old lobby, which I'd missed on my previous visit with my dad.

The stained glass windows and mosaic ceiling were just as impressive as ever, as were the totem poles that guard the stairs.

But we were there to see the Wedgewood exhibit. I'm not really a Wedgewood fan and my impression of the company was mostly as a maker of pricey wedding gifts, so I wasn't expecting to be particularly impressed. But I really enjoyed it and some of the pieces, especially the older ones, were breathtaking. I had no idea that Josiah Wedgwood was such a forward-thinking innovator, nor did I know of his relation to Darwin.

Sadly, the lighting made the exhibit hard to photograph, but here are some of the pieces I liked (and Aspasia shows her pictures here on her blog Domicile).

 

Apparently the exhibit has been extended and will be open until Spring 2010.

After the Wedgewood show we saw a bit more of the museum. I liked the section showing early plastic items, especially the plastic shoe heels in the picture above. I'd love to have a pair of these! 

I was also intrigued by this early timepiece, dating from the 16th century and featuring a rotating globe instead of a flat face. A figure of a black child (or baby faced man?) in a Roman gladiator costume holds a staff, the tip of which shows the time; meanwhile a weasel-like creature runs by his feet. What does it all mean? The black child seems majestic and dignified, which seems odd considering what Europeans were doing to Africans at the time. Or is the childish face and silly getup condescending? It is certainly nicer than the lawn jockeys that would be popular centuries later, but something seems off. And what's going on with the weasel?

More museum pictures can be seen here.

I continued to fill up on good food during my last week, including a long awaited Greek meal, Greek restaurants being a rarity in Japan. I fought with my family over yummy appetizers like the calimari above before settling down to a Greek salad, while Hideaki had his very first taste of moussaka, below.

He loved it and has requested I make it for him, pointing out that it's a lot like sheppard's pie so it really couldn't be so hard. We'll see.

I accompanied my Mom on a Costco shopping trip, which probably sounds boring to most people but for me, a Costco addict, was great. I was fascinated to see the differences between the Costco cafeteria menus in Brampton and Tokyo. The whole Costco experience tends to be extremely similar no matter where in the world you are so I've always assumed the cafeteria is the same too. But there aren't french fries at Japanese Costcos, and certainly not french fries with gravy, and definitely not poutine. Also, cheeseburgers, chicken strips, and Montreal smoked meat sandwiches. I do love the bulgogi bakes at Japanese Costcos, but I'd gladly trade them for poutine. Or at least a tub of gravy.

We'd been lusting over the summer edition of Food and Drink, the wonderful free magazine put out by the LCBO (Ontario's government controlled liquor retailer) when Sherry suddenly surprised us with a dessert made with the magazine's recipes (a big surprise, as I tend to treat food magazines as food porn rather than actually trying their recipes). Based on the Nectarine and Apricot Cookie Crumble  (page 169), but with strawberries, peaches and apricots. It was delicious, and although she thought there was too much liquid, I thought it was wonderful that way.

My mom made her famous lasagna and caesar salad based on a request by Hideaki (sloppy plating my fault). I thought it was a silly choice for summer, but the weather was so cool that it all worked out.

More classics: bacon-wrapped scallops and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. They never went out of style as far as I'm concerned.

Another first for Hideaki: crumpets. I've never seen one in Japan, which is crazy considering how good they are. Maybe I should go into the crumpet business.

But we waited for Hideaki to leave (he went home a few days ahead of me) to eat the really good stuff. We bought live clams, mussels and lobsters from the Asian market, and while none of them were local (we live in southern Ontario, after all), they were a huge treat. Proper lobsters, with claws, are extremely rare in Japan, and although I occasionally come across mussels, I've never had a good one.

The lobsters were steamed and served in halves with garlic butter.

The mussels were steamed in wine and served with a baguette.

And my mom put the clams went into a pasta sauce, along with cherry tomatoes and pancetta. Yum!

For dessert, Sherry made strawberry shortcake with fresh local strawberries. Mine above was done with just a touch of cream as I'm not a whipped cream fan, but even if I was I wouldn't need much as our Ontario berries need no embellishment.

And suddenly I found myself on a plane home, my belly full of good food and my head full of happy memories. I can't wait for the next visit.

See more pictures from my visit here.