What's your favorite restaurant and meal?

[shootingstar]

..Now where shall we start

We like well-executed ethnic food...and it doesn't have to be expensive. I prefer to order dishes/meals that I don't /seldom prepare myself (and I do cook 60% Asian-style meals).

So there are some favourite sushi restaurants. But one of them is actually a family-run Japanese grocery store where many Japanese-Canadians flock themselves. A good sign. They make fresh, diverse and well-priced sushi, sashimi, donurbi, etc. So we buy several packs and settle for 85 cent tofu miso soup bowl.

I like genuine Italian (not just pizza please), Thai, Middle Eastern, Greek and East-West fusion that's imaginative and has the right ying-yang feel in taste. To me, raw bok choy is crossing the line..is just dumb..and puzzling to anyone raised on Asian cuisine.

My partner comes from a family line of German pastry cooks...Black Forest Region. There's still a family inn-restaurant there. so I have adopted his strong preference for gourmet style cakes/tortes and flans. Ganache in downtown Vancouver is a upscale place near us where a French-trained pastry chef has lovely little cakes that are imaginative and well-executed. Also Thomas Haas in North Vancouver has excellent desserts. The guy is German and formally trained /from Black Forest Region.

You have to understand my partner's mother baked for family dinners, multi-layer light, flavourful mocha tortes, linzertortes (real German recipes call for aging which deepens the flavour), etc. Recipes that are very difficult to find in English language. We prefer to honour the memory of her cooking/baking... buying quality baking.

At home, favourite meals include:

something strudel done with bought phyllo --escargots, mushrooms, garlic and onions is delish. so is pear with ginger root, cinnamon, aniseed and honey in phyllo.

*Seared bison marinated in maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, with. With roasted beets on side. (roasted with star anise, very easy to make). Sauteed asparagus in onion, garlic and abit of soy sauce. With wild rice. Glass of merlot wine. We've had variations of this meal several times a yr.

*I make homemade foaccacia 3 ways --1. sundried tomato, basil, onion and garlic 2. black olives, rosemary, onion and garlic 3. fresh grapes with grated ginger root, crushed aniseed, cardamon, cinnamon, nutmeg and laced with honey. Fresh cut figs is nice too. Or add bits of goat cheese 5 min. before baking is done.

*Chicken breast with thyme, mustad yogurt sauce over rice or egg noodles

*Or just a lovely squash-apple/pear soup that my partner loves to make. He makes excellent carrot soup variations also. His specialties....

*And I always love to make a steamed fresh salmon fillet with some ginger root, green onion, abit of oil and soy. Sometimes put in rehydrated ****ake mushroom slices. Rice and sauteed/steamed veggies on side.

A steamed meat dish, done Chinese style, is actually a comfort, home food to me. It is a childhood , easy (and yes, healthy) type of cooking to me.

My idea of a LAZY meal at homeis: buckwheat noodles cooked for only 5 min. Drain and flavour with some sunflower oil and abit of soy. Or rice from rice cooker where a CHinese sausage was cooked in plus egg white thrown into cooking rice...to naturally cook. Just easy, lazy cooking...