dirty apron revisited

So the last time I made it over to Dirty Apron was in May and I was long overdue to try the rest of their menu. The memory of the amazing albacore tuna panini with the surprising and delightful pickled cabbage crunch is still something that I remember well because of the unlikely combination. Anyway, the reason why I don't really go to places like Dirty Apron and Meat & Bread that often is because I'm not a huge sandwich person. I really like my plain old tuna salad on multigrain and I can get it across the street from my office. Sandwiches that are made with fancy crusty breads are kind of hard to eat in my opinion. Oh, and another big part of the "meh" attitude towards sandwiches, is the fact that I don't really like bread. Well I like it okay but I don't crave bread and I really don't care for the dinner bread baskets. I do however, love rice and potatoes so there is no need to act appalled yet. :-P

I happened to have my real camera on hand that day so I whipped it out to take a bunch of pictures of the interior. It's like a neighborhood deli with delicious food set out to entice your senses.

It's just a smallish counter area to order and oggle at the sweets and savouries.

Fancy salts, olive oils, balsamic vinegars and general fancy foodstuffs. Although, my coworker that I went to lunch with told me proudly that he had most of the stuff in the store. He claims he is into cooking but until I see some proof of that I will continue to be doubtful :-)

Oh my, I seemed to have forgotten what I ordered. That's not good for someone who is blogging about food... Oops. Anyway ,it was a baguette sandwich with a base of roast chicken with shaved parmesan reggiano, sundried tomatoes (or as I like to call them, nuggets of sunshine), watercress and anchovies. I think they spread most of their sandwiches with a lemony, mustardy mayonnaise and I really like it. This sandwich also had a little swipe of the mayonnaise. The anchovies are optional and I got them just to try. If it had been spread on lightly, it would have added a neat dimension to the taste but alas, it was pieces randomly placed in the sandwich so I got some really salty bites of mainly anchovy. I ended up taking them out. 

This sandwich is about a foot long and my jaw definitely got tired from all the baguette chewing (see I'm not too crazy about bread). 

My friend ordered the pulled pork and he said it reminded him of Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwiches... I think it was the cilantro and the carrots. I think he liked the sandwich alright though.

Sweets to tempt us. See the poached peach tart sitting in the case? Mmm... I wish I had room for dessert. Although, I think if my friend had gotten some, I would have gotten a pastry too, super full or not. 

I'll be back for more soon!

Sciué

So there is this amazing little Italian cafe a block away from my office. My coworker had mentioned this place with amazing pizza a few times and I said "oh okay, sure" and filed it away somewhere. So finally after a year and a half, I finally went to Sciué to try out their amazing pizza. Let me just say, I completely regret not going there sooner. 

There are a bunch of pizzas for sale with fresh ones brought out every 5 minutes or so. The pizza flavours on sale always change but the smoked salmon is a big favourite so it's usually around. You just indicate to the server how much of each one you want and they slice it up for you. What I like about it is that they slice it into pieces and then heat it up for you and serve it on a little wooden chopping board! I love food served on wooden ware! The pizza is sold by weight. Unfortunately, I always want to try everything and I typically find that I always think I can eat a lot more than I actually can. 

In the past two months I've been there about four times. In the first picture, I had smoked salmon, mushrooms on tomato sauce and a potato and prosciutto. That was my first visit to Sciué and the pizza was so amazing that I've been going back since.The pizza isn't your typical fast food/delivery pizza. Traditional Italian pizza is made on a very thin dough that has a chewy texture to it. It gives a unobtrusive platform for the other ingredients to shine. I suppose I would say that the crust at Sciué can be a bit tough especially the edges but generally it's got a good chew/soft ratio.

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This one was an egg on something with olives. Fortunately or not, they flavours available always change and sometimes you go back and the one you want isn't there. They might have different ingredient combinations but it's just not the same. For example, I really loved the mushroom on tomato sauce and something with an egg on prosciutto and they didn't have it. So I tried this one above, with the olives but of course I don't like olives so I picked them all out... 

My phone was on macro so it took weirdly overexposed pictures.

Here's the storefront. They have some slightly enclosed tables out front with big orange umbrellas. It's wonderful to have lunch here on a sunny day. I looked up the meaning of Sciué and it's Italian slang for fast food I think. Basically the owners wanted to bring good fast dining to Vancouver and what a success. This place is always pretty busy. Oh, another touch I really like are the Italian servers that work there. It's very authentic feeling :-)

Here is the smoked salmon pizza. It doesn't look like much but it's a pizza crust spread with a bit of mayonnaise and covered with spinach leaves and topped with a generous amount of smoked salmon and then drizzled with olive oil. 

* I realized after that I wasn't allowed to take photos. There was a sign and a lady told me "no photos". Oops. 

i made some pasta

So in Japan I loved going to this pasta place called... Youmenya Goemon and they served the most AMAZING pastas. They had their Japanese flavours with shiso and umeboshi and mushrooms and corn... and then they had their Western flavours. Of course there are the usual bolognese and carbonara, but i got totally sidetracked from trying anything else because I feel in love with their  spinach, cheese and chicken pasta. I have no idea what the actual name is since it is in Japanese and I just roughly translated the name. Here it is:

This isn't the best picture but let me tell you, the garlicky white sauce, and the al dente noodles and the slivers of chicken and the sauce... omg the sauce in incredible. So of course, I ate this pasta as often as possible and one day it occurred to me to try to make my own. I had a rough idea of the ingredients... cheese and garlic hehe. I found a similar recipe on allrecipes (my fave recipe site). It's something with spinach, smoked salmon and lots of Parmesan Reggiano. Please don't confuse Parmesan Reggiano with regular parmesan. This one is packed full of flavour and amazing cheese flavour. It makes a world of difference!

I have only made this pasta one other time since coming back to Vancouver but the other night I decided to make it again. I had some leftover sockeye salmon that I baked the day before so I used that instead of smoked salmon. I think I prefer the taste of smoked salmon. Either that or I went totally overboard trying to use up all my baked salmon. 

Some garlic and sundried tomatoes. I love sundried tomatoes. They are like bursts of sunshine in your mouth. I didn't use any capers but the sundried tomatoes worked really well to cure the blandness of cream sauce.

Just the leaves of spinach... I don't like too much spinach since the yucky teeth feeling overrides the pleasure of taste.

I cooked the garlic in some olive oil first and added whipping cream (oh that's the reason why I don't make this too often... you can use milk and flour to thicken but I find it's easier and tastier to use whipping cream ---super fattening!) and then a cup of grated parmesan reggiano.

Mmmm, and then add everything else.... doesn't that sauce look great?

Okay, overload of salmon but it was still yummy! Try it was a few drops of hot sauce after a few bites. The kick is amazing in the cream sauce too.