White Chocolate Glaze

Each summer, I work on a plan to better our existing culinary program at Jean Augustine Secondary School. Since the school first opened in the fall of 2016, I have been taking steps every year to improve the delivery of the program, and ensure that it is engaging and enjoyable for the students. We started off slowly, setting up our new kitchen and preparing meals for staff and minor events. Soon after, we were able to make a connection with a local food bank and our students are now serving the community by preparing meals for those in need. This year, I plan on introducing a few new things to challenge them: fermenting and preserving, glazing mini cakes and entremets, and artisan bread baking. Read More

Gelatin Mass

What is gelatin mass?
Gelatin mass consists of two ingredients: gelatin and water. The ratio is usually 1 to 5 times its weight: i.e., 1 part gelatin to 5 parts water. For example, if you are using 10 grams of gelatin powder, you would use 50 grams of water to hydrate the powder to make the mass.

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Carrot Crisps

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Are you a juice person or a smoothie person? Royce likes juice — fruit juice but also veggie-forward juice…especially on those days when we haven’t been eating very healthy. Personally, 9 times out of 10 I would rather have a smoothie than juice. I have a couple of issues with juice. First, from a health standpoint I’m suspicious of the nutritional value because it’s missing so much of the original fruit / vegetable. And second, something just seems really wrong about pulverizing all of these vegetables, only to drink the liquid and toss the rest. Especially given the statistics we see nowadays about food security and food waste! Read More

Gwai Fa Go (Osmanthus Flower Jelly)

This is one of my favourite desserts at dim sum. We came across a recipe when we were researching snacks for Chinese New Year, so of course we had to try it! The first recipe we found used only agar to set the jelly. It held the liquid, but the texture had way too much crunch and not enough of a softer jelly feel. We decided we needed a mix of gelatine and agar — it turned out that finding the right proportions were a lot harder than we thought. After numerous trials, this is the recipe we settled on! We are pretty happy with it, but I guess it all comes down to personal taste. If you like a bit more crunch, then you can add a little agar and take out some of the gelatine mass. If you don’t like any crunch at all, you could try using only gelatine (though we’ve been strongly cautioned that is not authentic). For a little more firmness, you could reduce the amount of tea (or simply simmer for a bit longer to reduce the water content). There are so many variables! We had these cute little silicone moulds that I thought were perfect for bite-sized jellies, but a square pan works just as well! Once the jelly is set you can simply cut them to size.

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Mango Ducky with Coconut Bubbles

I first saw the play on soap and bubbles as a dessert  by Andoni of Mugaritz. Inspired by this, for some time now I had been meaning to work on a rubber ducky and bubbles dessert. I finally got around to putting something together the other day. The resulting dish was nostalgic and playful — and it gave me the chance to try out a fun application of an aquarium air pump.

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