Scotch Eggs - Champ Style

As I have been working every Saturday since my last post, Sorry to my 5 followers that it has been so long since I have done a post. Since my last post,  I have tried the scotch eggs from The Old Dairy which are the 2nd best I have had next to The Bull and Last. All the research I did to find the best scotch eggs in London inspired me to take it up a notch. Try making them myself. Well, as you will see over the next couple paragraphs, I was somewhat successful. I would say 63% to be exact. Most importantly, I learned a couple valuable scotch egg lessons along the way. First off, my personal taste in scotch eggs is to have the great crispy exterior, really well seasoned meat, and an ooey gooey interior egg yolk. If I was taking them with me on a hike, or a picnic, I would probably want a more cooked egg than you will see. After some exhausting research (which I refreshed with a Balvenie 12, as I am also currently having), I decided to go with Heston Blumenthal's scotch egg recipe. I am not going to decifer the recipe step by step on this blog, because I am far too lazy to do that, but you can find the link here. To paraphrase, here are the ingredients.

In case you were wondering, the one thing I changed from the recipe, for all the hippies out there and my wife, I made them gluten free. The first and really the most annoying, time consuming, and purely lame part of this process was doing the eggs. Since I wanted a nice runny yolk, I had to soft boil the eggs just long enough to to be able to peel them. I nailed the cooking time on the eggs, but 45 minutes later, I had 5 of the 8 eggs I boiled peeled, with 3 in the garbage. If you have never peeled a soft boiled egg, give it a shot and for the love of god, please give me tips.

So once I finally prepped the eggs, I made the sausage mixture, and made my first mistake. I followed the recipe, which called for pork mince, and some seasonings. Unfortunately, it didn't add any kind of fat into the pork, which ended up giving me a bland, dry end product, which was definitely -20% on the final score. Luckily I did add an egg so the mixture kind of bound together. You will see a piece of cling film on the counter under the sausage. If you try making scotch eggs, please use this method, it really made wrapping them up really easy, or at least easier than not doing it this was, especially with really soft eggs.

And now the fun part.

After setting up the assembly line of flour, egg, and bread crumbs, you deep fry the eggs for a couple minutes, then place them in a preheated oven for 10 mins to finish off. Some recipes just ask for all deep fry, but I classed it up a bit. Here is the final result.

So moral of the story, I will be a pro scotch egger by the time I get back to Vancouver. Mistakes that I am going to learn from.
      1. Make a better sausage mixture, or buy sausages and use that meat. Next time I will try black pudding ones as well.
      2. I am going to boil the eggs just a minute or so longer than the recipe just to help with the peeling process, but not too long to petrify the yolk.
      3. Buy a rack for the oven. When I moved the eggs from deep fry to the bake part,  I had to cook them on a baking sheet, which made the very bottom go a touch soggy from the oil build up. The rack will prevent that.

Once I perfect these last few things, my that will be my ticket out of visual effects. Well....maybe just a side gig on weekends. Watch out farmers market, Champ's Juicy Eggs will be coming your way.
Please leave your comments and happy eating!

British Food 101 - Scotch Eggs

So, apparently, as explained by a few friends of mine who come from or resided in London and by the general stereotype, British food is bland and boring. A recount of my first British food experience. My friend Mark told me the first thing I need to do at Heathrow is march into M&S, and have a scotch egg. I like food, and trying new things, so that is exactly what I did.

Honestly, it was pretty gross. The egg was really really hard boiled, the sausage was ok, but the outer crust was moist and chewy. Granted, it was probably on the shelf for a week, and if it wasn't please PLEASE, don't judge scotch eggs from M&S or any supermarket.

What is a scotch egg? A scotch egg is consists of a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. I know, sounds amazing. Well, guess what? When they are made fresh, they really can be some of the finest of British cuisine.

Black Pudding Scotch Egg

Some of the best scotch eggs that I have devoured are from EAT MY PIES at Broadway market. They usually have a choice of about 8 different eggs ranging from a traditional pork sausage to more adventurous flavours such as Red Thai curry pork, Haggis and my personal favourite, Black Pudding. At the market, they slice them open, sprinkle with cracked pepper and salt, and down the hatch.

My favourite scotch egg thus far must be from The Bull and Last.  This place is my favourite pub in London, the food is amazing (and will have its own blog entry at some point), and they make the best scotch eggs ever. When I make a reservation here, I always order scotch eggs over the phone. They use great tasting pork, and when they half it and serve it to you with some Coleman's mustard, the yolk is nice and runny for an ultimate flavour explosion.

Note: Just to see if anyone really reads this thing, and for anybody interested. This Sunday I will be donning my apron and taking a crack(hopefully not the egg) at homemade scotch eggs. I will start basic with pork sausage most likely, but once I perfect it, you will want to come around for breakfast! Stay tuned for the results.

There you have it. Scotch eggs = nomnomnom. If you have a favourite in London, please let me know, and I will go there and compare to my findings. Please leave your comments and happy eating!

Prague - Beer and Bread

Here we go. Back in February, I took my first trip to mainland Europe. So were do we decide to go? Minus 20 degrees worth of Prague. We saw a castle, a clock, a giant square, a church made of bones, and the largest stadium I have ever seen. But the highlight for me was our culinary experience. Deep in the heart of communism, well former communism, they do 2 things very well. Beer and Bread. I swear, every single thing we ordered came with bread dumplings. Eggs, steak, pork, chicken, everything with a side of bread dumplings. I even ordered a starter of bread dumplings, and it came with a side of bread dumplings. These people are crazy for carbs. I guess the main reason is to be able to drink more beer, and that I am all for. I really don't know how Czech people are skinny. Communism?

I really wish I had internet back when we went so that I could write this post a lot earlier, but I will do my best with remembering what we had to eat. This one will be heavier on the pictures, and lighter on the descriptions.  The best restaurant that we tried was called Cafe Savoy. It is a french/czech place that was recommended to us by our friend Laura. The food was amazeballs. I had Schnitzel, and Laura (my wife) had Steak Tartare. We had a sommelier who I will just say was rather flamboyant, but did an amazing job. He actually tasted the wine he opened for us, realized it was off, and brought us a new bottle. A great experience overall, and if we had this dinner in London, it would be 2 to 3 times the price.

Cafe Savoy - Steak Tartare

Cafe Savoy - Schnitzel(or however you spell it)

One thing that really sucks about Prague is that you can still smoke in a lot of bars and restaurants in the city. When you travel with 2 people with asthma, it really makes the experience not enjoyable for everyone (Landon and Laura did very well though). One awesome thing about smoking in restaurants is that some places make you feel like you are in the 1950's sitting next to the rat pack (for all the old timers reading this thing). Beware of this if you decide to travel to Prague.

Fish wrapped in Bacon

Pork and beef Kebab with bread dumplings somewhere

Next up for us was a day trip to Kutna Hora. This place was creepy and smelled of communism. It was actually a really cool town even though it was freezing. It is the home of the Bone Church. Exactly what it sounds like. Seriously, google it. It also has a beautiful cathedral that was almost the replica of the cathedral in the Prague Castle. We were recommended this side trip by our friend Brendan and Becca, and we were not disappointed. I did do my research though. Dačický beerhall. Awesome old pub in the middle of the town. When you go, there is one thing to order. The pork Knuckle (as follows). This was probably the best pork roast I have ever had, and it is even served on a spit. Amazing. I made the mistake of ordering a traditional Czech dish, svickova na smetane (Also as follows). It is beef sirloin in cream sauce, and by cream sauce, I mean cream sauce with whipped cream on top. Weird, I know, but rather tasty. The only reason why it was a mistake was because the knuckle was so good. I am getting excited thinking about it right now.

Pig Knuckle

Beef Sirloin in cream sauce

That brings me to the beer. Czech Pilsner is one of the greatest inventions of all time. 3rd only to my mom's lasagna and chicken n' waffles. Maybe not that awesome, but I enjoyed many many of them whilst in Prague. Krusovice, Pilsner Urquell, St. Norbert (which we visited and loved very much, also their garlic onion soup) and real Budweiser Budvar are all great. My favourite by far is staropramen. It is very available in London at a lot of pubs, but for some reason, just doesn't taste quite that same as a fresh pint in a smoky, Praha tavern.

St. Norbert Microbrew

Glass speaks for this one

So I say, go to Prague, plan to walk around a lot to work off all the carbs you will ingest, and honestly, just try some random, smoky, dirty, communist looking place, order a pils and some bread dumplings and enjoy one great city. I will leave you with a few random food porn pics. Please leave your comments and happy eating.

Czech Pate

Garlic Onion Soup at St. Norbert

RIBS!!!!!!!!!

Back, and hopefully fatter than ever!

Hello Loyal Readers (all 4 of you),

Finally, in this 3rd world country that I live in, I finally have internet at home. In this awesome bureaucratic country they call the UK, after 7.5 months, 3 different companies, and about 20 phone calls and 2 engineer visits, we are finally up and running.

I have assimilated into London culture. Except for the fact that this country makes me a miserable person on a day to day basis, I am having a great time here. Anyone who says food in the UK is terrible, really needs to have a wake up call. All across the city you can find great hidden treasures from Michelin star restaurants to great homely pubs to amazing street food and unique markets. Since we have arrived, we have been to Prague, Belgium, France and Spain, and in future blogs I will get more specific about everything. Honestly, I just wanted to say hi, let everyone know that we have internet, and hopefully this will push me into trying to blog on a regular basis.

Thank you everyone and Happy eating.

Love,
Champ

Getting Fat with Champ is on a Diet

Hey Everyone,

And by everyone I mean the 4 people who follow my blog. Getting fat with champ is currently on a diet, but don't worry, it is mainly caused by having no internet at home. We are working to recify this situation, and then you will hopefully be overblogged by myself. By we, I mean BT, so anyone who has lived here knows I will be lucky to have this solved by the Olympics.

On a bright note, I made it here, have had scotch eggs, fish and chips with mushy peas, chicken wellington(probably not as awesome as beef, but f'ing tasty) and many pints. I will try to find an alternative and keep you 4 posted. Thank you for not unfriending me. I do love you guys.

Cheers,
Champ

Panz Veggies - Vegan Chinese

Before anyone says anything, I want to let everyone know, I will try just about anything once when it comes to culinary adventures. So yes, I did voluntarily go for Vegan chinese food with my wife, and my friend Sarajane (author of the blog Vegan Chicks Rock). Living and working in Yaletown, one of my big pet peeves is that it is very difficult to find an affordable lunch. You are lucky to get out of most restaurants cheaper than $15 Dollars. I have a solution that is both affordable, delicious and a massive amount of food. Panz Veggies on Hornby St. offers up all vegan fair for $8 plus tax.

 At Lunch at Panz Veggies, the $8 lunch special is the only way to go. You get soup to start, a spring roll, your choice of steamed rice/fried rice/chow mein, your main dish, and dessert. For my liking, the chow mein has been better than either rice. You generally have a choice of about 8 main dishes which usually include a sweet and sour dish, a couple stirfrys, a lemony sauce thing, and a couple other choices. I especially love the fact that they have soya products that mimic meat. Don't ask me how, or what is in them, but they have soya sausage, soya short ribs and of course the usual tofu options. Everything I have tried at Panz has been great so far in 3 trips, and in my opinion, could be the best bang for the buck within a 10 minute walk from Yaletown. Be prepared, you get a ton of food, so don't be surprised to be in a little bit of a food coma when you get back to your desk. The biggest perk of this vegan chinese food is that you don't feel gross after gorging yourself. Don't get me wrong, I do miss some msg from time to time, but this is a great healthy alternative that will satisfy you enough to get you through the rest of your day. Please leave your comments, and happy eating.

Dona Cata - Authentic Mexican

Alright, first and foremost, I would like to thank the 3 people who follow this blog for not unfriending this blog. Over the past 2 months, I have successfully moved out of my apartment, moved back in with my parents, and ready myself for a year long adventure in London. Over the Christmas break, I am going to do my best, and leave you guys with some of my favourite places in my hometown.

Dona Cata. Victoria Drive and 34th Ave in East Vancouver. Currently, this is in the top 5 of my favourite restaurants in Vancouver. It feels like it is run by the only Mexican family in Vancouver. Every time I go here for food, I am never disappointed. I was first introduced by my friend Daniel, who being from LA is very picky with his tacos. On his recommendation, I took my wife there for lunch, then dinner, then lunch, then lunch, then dinner, all within about 2 months.

My wife, friend Daniel, and 3 mexicans (Manny, Pepe, and Liz) enjoying the aftermath.

Growing Up, I always thought that a taco was a hard shell/flour tortilla with ground beef, lettuce, tomato, cheese, olives and sour cream. Apparently, my mom wasn't an authentic Mexican like 3 of the 5 of friends of mine in the above picture. Something awesome about having Mexican friends (besides free oil changes on my El Camino) is showing me what authentic Mexican food really is. And in that regard, Dona Cata seems to hits on all levels.

Nopales and Longaniza Tacos

A traditional taco is your choice of filling with raw onions, cilantro in a corn tortilla. I have tried most of the fillings at Dona Cata but the hits are definitely the BARBACOA DE BORREGO which is slow braised lamb in secret spices, and the LONGANIZA which is cured pork sausage. Always remember as well,  you can never squeeze enough lime on your taco.

Barbacoa, Al Pastor, and Carnitas Tacos

Other great hits on this menu are the nopales tacos (my wife's favourite) which is cooked cactus served with Longaniza and all the fixin's. Gringa's, which are folded over tacos on a flour tortilla, cheese, and your choice of taco fillings. My personal favourite, the Mole chicken. Chocolate and Chicken, does it get better than that.

Mole chicken with Beans and Rice

A nice perk of Dona Cata is their salsa bar (see picture below). 8 homemade salsas, ranging from mild, quality taste to "Wow, i am not going to enjoy this experience in about 2 hours" hot.

Dona Cata's Salsa Bar

So, in summary. $2 tacos, 2 margaritas for $8, and if you go here and drop $50, you will eat and drink like a king. Dona Cata is a hit on all levels. Go there with some friends, order 5 tacos, a couple dishes to share, and a michelada (a sort of beer caesar) and a couple margaritas and you will definitely be satisfied or champified (I believe that will now be an official term). So, on that note, enjoy one of these below, please leave your comments and happy eating.

A cold Negra Modelo served always in an ice cold glass