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Together, Joey and I are terrible eaters. Or, at least, we have been lately. Heck, we could have a blog about poutine alone. But, that said, we focus on our own dharma; perform our own duties- and therein lies our own happiness. So when and if it boils down to clogged arteries and poor health, we’ve no qualms about what will be ‘there.’ We are, after all, both ‘here.’ And ‘here’ involves a whole lot of high calories, meat, and southern barbecue from this week’s venue, Southern Ontario Smoked BBQ: a family owned pit barbecue restaurant that started its operation as a travelling trailer, now hunkered down in its own tiny, almost clandestined strip-mall venue, sharing its space with a few other almost unknown eateries. Even so, I imagine its incognito location does nothing to particularly work against it.
SOS BBQ has been around for some time, and its steady stream of patrons certainly advocated this, coming and going in a tiny space with contradictory, yet calming glaucous coloured walls, but totally anticipated caricatures of pigs and roasts, chalk-boards, television, and pleather place settings. How could we resist that charm? Or a nice sized menu with all the necessary kinds of barbecue we were both craving the night prior: Joey, ribs; me, pulled pork anything. And, of course, poutine. That was all Joey though. I thought I needed a break from all that. But you better believe that the novelty I always search for was there. This time in the form of a mix I’ve never heard of: Brunswick stew. A tomato base, six bean, corn, and smoked meat stew you could even put on your poutine if you were so inclined. Joey wasn’t. He, like me, got it on the side.
It was barbecue that shouldn’t otherwise exist in the dead of winter. But still, there it was, a full order of smoked ribs on Joey’s side, poutine with chicken and cheese, and stew. And then there was mine: pulled pork piled high on a bun slathered with mustard and sweet barbecue sauce, that Brunswick stew, and a whole lot of coleslaw- my only Mason Dixon weakness.
When it came to the meat, we couldn’t finish fast enough. Our enthusiasm was even rewarded with a pigtail on the side. Tender, fatty, briny; you couldn’t touch it without it sliding off the bone. I liked it; its pickled character was a little too alien for Joey when it came to meat, but if it were anything like his ribs, let me tell you, he’d have no qualms about coming back. I’m eager enough to say the same about my pulled pork. The deep, red ribbons of flesh were moist, tender, and salted just right; I could have easily had it without my pungent, spicy sweet sauce. Without my glossy, droughty bun. Anything meat was certainly the star at SOS BBQ. Our stew was a little too gummy, a little too canned, a brackish brew of overpowering, familiar tomato soup flavor. The slaw, certainly creamy looking, but more wet and lip puckering than we preferred. Any herbs used fell short; I couldn’t taste a thing besides sweet, saline, stale akali flavour. And it was a crying shame, especially with so little side dishes on the menu. We hated to think of them as obligatory options, but we were thinkin’ it. Either way, there was always anything meat.
SOS BARBECUE
525 Highland Rd. W.
Kitchener, ON
519-496-4052
Sunday 12 PM-8 PM
Monday 11 AM-8 PM
Tuesday CLOSED
Wednesday 11 AM-8PM
Thurs-Sat 11 AM-9 PM
ANY PAYMENT
Some years back on a late, cold January night, after I told the louts I worked with to go home, and re-cleaned a supposedly clean kitchen, my old Thai employers approached me in the wee hours of the morning: ‘Weezee,’ they said, ‘Our friends are coming here tonite- could you cook for us?’ It being 1 am, and me loving my job more than anything, I gave a jubilant, ‘Yes.’ Uncle told me what they wanted, and also told me to fry some chicken wings. Easy enough. Still, in my early years of cooking, I did a whole lot of doubting. I had no idea how to make good deep fried chicken wings, besides throw them in the fryer. That was more or less it. Uncle, on the other hand, showed me how he liked them. How he wanted the batter, and how he wanted them fried. Ever since, I’ve tenderly made them the same, unorthodox way. It was a good night. Late, but happy- and some Thai doctor, no matter how many times I said no, stuffed a 50 in my pocket for doing such a good job.
Some odd seven months ago, I went out to eat with my mother at a familiar Thai-Vietnamese restaurant and ordered tamarind chicken wings. A combination I had never, up until that late moment in culinary life, heard off. They were good: sweet, tangy, tart. I liked them a lot. So much so, I bet my mom I could make the same thing, maybe even better. And, as is my mother’s job to prevent her son’s ego from getting too big, she called my bluff. After that, we more or less forgot about the whole thing. That was, at least until last night, when I was bumming around one of three fridges and found a pack of chicken wings frozen and ready to ruin. But I say ruin with total temerity. Consider it a cool kind of valley speak, ‘ruin’ meaning: elevating to a level of pure radical. The trillest tamarind chicken wings in all the land. Here for me, and here for all of you. The ingredients are easy, the process a tad time consuming if you aren’t privileged enough to own a wok stove. But if you have the patience, you can, like my real uncle says, cook no problem.
Serves 3 (or 1 hungry bro)
Ingredients
12 chicken wings (y’know? The ones you get in club packs? They’re like 2 inches long)
¼ cup tamarind concentrate
¼ honey
1 clove of garlic (minced)
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 teaspoon of chicken stock powder (I know, right?)
Enough vegetable oil and a wok to deep fry the suckers.
Lime and spring onion to garnish.
Directions
Generally, I like to fill a wok with oil and keep it on low heat so I won’t have to wait as long later to make it hot enough to fry in; when I’m closer to cooking, I change the temperature to medium high heat. Anyway, I reckon if I’m doing stuff in the meantime, I may as well be productive. Chicken wing woking takes a lot of timing and speed, after all. Also, I like to let my chicken wings sit out and reach room temperature. This ensures even cooking when fried.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Take your wings and throw them in. If they’re a little wet, even better. What makes uncle’s batter so phenomenal is that it’s tacky, doughy, and gummy. No dusting wings in flour here. That said, take your chicken wings, and mix them as much as you can in the flour. Be tough, try and get the flour wet from the wings. If the wings are covered and not sticky, but dusted, you’re missing the mark. That said, you can just dust them too. You’ll just have a lighter batter. But a good, tacky batter- not a wet one used for fixings like tempura or onion wings- enables the sauce to stick to the wings even more effectively.
After a thorough mashing, put the wings aside.
In a bowl, mix the garlic, honey, tamarind concentrate, and fish sauce. Easy peasy. Set it aside.
Check the wok’s temperature (or whatever pot you care to deep fry in- just so long as the wings are completely submerged). If you have a candy thermometer, even better. If not, just drop a piece of gummy batter in and see if it floats to the surface. If it does, you’re ready. But before that, make sure you have somewhere to set the cooked wings. I like paper towel over a wire rack. Next, gently place the wings in the oil. Don’t crowd whatever pot for the sake of not cooling the oil too much. Fry 'em.
Wings will usually sink to the bottom and anchor up. When they’re closer to being finished, they’ll puff up and float a little. To be on the safe side, let them fry another 30 seconds after that, making sure they reach a deep golden brown. Use a spider or slotted spoon to move them around and fish them out of the hot oil. Place them on the paper towel and cook the rest.
Unless you have a second wok, this next part can be tricky. When all the wings are done cooking, drain the wok of all oil into a pot- I don’t care where you get it- but move fast. Wash the wok, and thoroughly dry it. Unfortunately, none of us have the luxury of a wok stove with a hose overhead, and a wirey brush we can use to quickly rinse it with (those were my salad days).
When it’s clean, put it back on the heat and heat it to the highest setting. Conventional stoves don’t even begin to match the heat of the wok, so you never have to worry about burning a thing. What you do have to worry about is losing all that heat quickly; that’s why it’s important to stir-fry quickly and have everything at hand. If you don’t have a wok, you can just as easily use a pan.
To test the wok’s sizzle, drop a bit of the sauce in the pan. If it sizzles furiously and you’re afraid it’s too hot and will burn and evaporate and become gummy fast, you’re ready. Drop all the sauce in, immediately after that, all the chicken wings. Coat whatever way you can. Toss the wok, flip with a slotted spoon, just coat those things and let them caramelize. If you can char them, congratulations: you have one hot wok. This step takes you no more than a minute. If you want a wet sauce, use less wok time. If a dryer sauce, more.
Plate, garnish with a lime wedge and slivered green onions, and enjoy. Sweet, salty, tart. Fantastic. Who needs any Ben Thanh?
Love,
Weezee
You’d think that the bowl of congee would otherwise be my White Whale. Well, guess again, that’s the Chinese bakery, but that’s another culinary critter altogether. It was the kid from Hong Kong though, and his ‘earth-to’ over a bowl of congee that made me really fall in love with everything Chinese food. Go further back, and it was that same Hong Kong kid and a chalky cup of Hong Kong tea that woke me up to a whole other world of culinary sentience. Ever since, I’ve been obsessed with a cuisine I’ve no doubt mastered in another life, and have been trying to return to in this one.
Happy Valley’s Congee & Bar’s lights were a marvel when I first saw them glowing and abandoned months ago in that poor plaza that burned down in 2010. Since its opening a month or two ago, I’ve wondered why it hasn’t been crammed with homesick out of town kids looking for a little simulacrum of the eating houses they miss in Hong Kong, Richmond Hill, Markham, wherever. It certainly was an egg in my beer, reminding me of all the pilgrimages I’ve taken to the culinary suburbs of Canada’s Rose Capital just for some sludgy tea and deep fried devils. It was almost too good to be true. Too good in fact, that the cynic in me was disqualifying it before even eating there; not getting my hopes up, thinking that what it had was already here, thinking it couldn’t last too long, despite its namesake in Hong Kong. I’ve watched enough police dramas and rom-coms to know better anyway. Still, something in my heart of hearts nagged me to pay homage to that emulsified porridge of fat and white rice that inspired my gastronomic vocation, if not career. So I’m paying my dues to the dish, and the dining hall of clinical Chinese cosmopolitanism that houses it. I’m talking wooden booths, flood lights, television screens, hearths, sleek browns and blacks coupled with plastic cookware and the homeliest Cantonese food I’ve come to know and love in my limited adventures of eating.
Happy Valley’s a remarkable place; of course, its menu’s a pastiche of Chinese soul food, and dim sum, but it also operates as a substitute to the banal bars and the typical fare we expect to eat when we go to them. Happy Valley’s a fantastic change of pace for these parts. If I’m not giddy about the boldly inexpensive alcohol, I certainly am about the even cheaper snacks you can grab if you’re adventurous enough. Have you ever paired a Hong Kong Tea with a pint of beer? You can there. I know, because I did it. I’ll never need any whiskey espresso bar again; why would I when I can get a pint of crisp beer with oaty finish for 2.66 and a one dollar cup of the most on-the-mark Hong Kong tea I’ve ever had in town: malty in aroma, bitter and sweet in flavor, chalky and mouth coating in consistency. I saw my future as a retired expat reading the Hong Kong Economic Times: flip-flops, relaxed flower print shirt, comb-over. All this while taking turns between fanning myself, turning pages, and having a sip.
And that was just the start. Deep fried devils, chicken feet, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaf, dumplings, barbecued pork steamed buns, condensed milk sandwiched between slices of toast, all on the cheap. It was a dream come true. So much so, I stayed after everyone left. If it really was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up. Our deep fried dough gleamed in the light, flakey, and chewy, the consistency was a treat all its own, better when dipped in my congee, bathing over every kind of ingredient: century eggs, meat, seafood, decked to the nines with white pepper and chili paste. The chicken feet, sweet and swimming in a garlic black bean sauce with a delightful caramel undernote- a fatty textural pleasure, especially when paired with beer. And the sticky rice, as expected, was embalmed by the vegetative earthiness of the leaves wrapped around it, aromatically reminiscent of tea. All the trinkets of meat and nuts made it that much more satisfying.
The dumplings- named after Chiuchow city- were another chewy Epicureanism. Packaged with stuffings like pork, spring onions, and peanuts, the pungent overpowering aroma was a memory of my serendipitous culinary youth. The barbecued pork steamed buns too. All too familiar, the sweet, smoky savouriness was good to eat when the things were hot or cold. Happy Valley certainly had it all- for me at least: familiarity, food, congee. It was, like that kid from Hong Kong said years ago about a good bowl of congee, like coming home.
HAPPY VALLEY CONGEE & BAR
140 University Avenue W
Waterloo, ON N2L
(226) 647-8818
SUN-WED 1130 am-12am
THURS-SAT 1130am-130am
ANY PAYMENT
Late last Sunday night I was awoken by a cumbersome phone text from Joey. My bizarre yearnings for searching out comestible spots in the city had Joey developing the same kind of sense of wanderlust. His particular request had me a little uncertain, especially when I considered the late hour at which it was texted. But my urge to stir up trouble had me tempted and saying ‘yes,’ seeing if we would be as serious in the morning as we were late that night.
Now, as much as I fear regret, I fear the acquiescence of my words even more. That’s why when Joey expressed his gut’s feeling for another day in Elmira, I stuffed caution down my stomach. We had gone before- to a place I thought was so bad it was good, no doubt- and I figured I could redeem myself of any kind of assumed acrimony I had last time with a much more patient review from the same town. (I wasn’t angry last time. Just so everyone knows.)
Thus, we went, parked our car on the downtown curb, and cased out all the digestible joints. And when our acquiescence for sitting still became too much, we did what we always do: ask whatever teenager working behind a counter about where they liked to eat. The Dollar Store is our preferred watering hole.
Our clerk suggested Candies Burger Suite, a place we passed entering town. A place Joey couldn’t stop making candy jokes about. A place I couldn’t stop making grammar jokes about. A place which’s fries our clerk couldn’t stop talking about. It was an easy choice. Any spleen from the two of us came from the cold and having to wait a few hours before Candies’ reopened, which we managed to pill with some donuts, too much pie, cookies, and soda. A gluttonous lapse in hindsight, but we never have any real qualms about eating like two fat Italians. Or greedy ones, for that matter.
So when Candies’ reopened, there we were, waiting in front of its screen door, excited about entering the 150 year old Georgian, Regency, Victorian, Italianate- whatever- home, and stuffing our semi stuffed faces. It certainly had the backbone of a diner, and the space of a cozy home, which made us both feeling more than welcomed, even if a little puzzled at how to place the fun décor. I said a manifestation of the B52’s song ‘Love Shack.’ Candie said it was Gothic Moroccan with a kind of hippie theme. Baroque lamps and leopard print booths in one room, colour splattered wooden chairs in another. ‘You can never have enough colour,’ Candie said. It was the kind of place you imagine girls with a lot of New School tattoos going. You know? The ones you dream about. Who love burgers and fries. And poutines. And coleslaw: the ambit of Candies’ menu. Everything’s made fresh. The burgers are only beef, the potatoes are cut and deep-fried to perfection, the slaw stewed in its own delicious juices. Even the stuffing’s are local.
Becoming the suckers for variety we are, Joey and I spoiled ourselves with a slew of options. I got the pulled pork poutine, and the cowboy burger; Joey, the Taco Poutine, and the Candian with back bacon and cheddar. We were musing having two big brewskies on the side. Alas, not yet, but maybe someday.
Swooning over a vestige of Elton John, it wasn’t long before Joey’s stunned face had me laughing and crying. In front of us were two steel bowls: mine, piled high with golden fries, cheese, pulled pork in a crimson sauce, and crystalline onions; joey’s piled with fries, cheese, seasoned ground beef, salsa, sour cream, and a red pepper, shaming all the sundae’s that romanticized our yesteryear . This could have easily been a big boy’s dessert; that is, if all the sweets we ate before hand were considered our dinner. Joey dove in and had no complaints. My fries were perfect. Hands down. I’ve no qualms about saying I’ve spent a good four years in front of a deep fryer, and these were the best chips I ever came across: crisp on the outside, airy, not oily on the inside; when rubbed together, they sounded like hay. Any fry conglomerate would gush. Joey agreed. He spent that work time with me too, after all. My shreds of pork only made the dish better. Tender and moist and slathered in a rich, sweet savoury sauce with a little spicy kick, my pulled pork shared all its reminiscence with baked beans and molasses. Did I mention the cheese melted?
My burger was another oeuvre. A good, soft bun covered a savoury patty which’s flavor was elevated by the smokey local ham that sweated over it. I can still remember the smell. But as far as I was concerned, Candie’s coleslaw was the magnum opus. Sharply brined and seasoned, of all things, with pickle juice, and dill, there was no boring balminess, no overpowering puckering. It was the most balanced and gracefully flavoured slaw I’ve ever had, and she made it all by her lonesome. I loved it so much, I took more home and wondered when I’d get another chance to trust Joey’s gut.
CANDIES BURGER SUITE
75 Arthur St S
Elmira, ON
N3B 2M8
(519) 210-0399
MON-FRI 11-9
SAT 12-9
CASH, DEBIT. NO CREDIT.
Joey and I were looking for something a little novel and dangerous. It had been a while since our last hankering for anything South East Asian, and Mango King’s washed out, faded, regal sign and frosted windows seemed just divey enough to satiate all our unprincipled peptic passions. There we were, imagining our good time: dilapidated tables, peeling paint, stained ceilings, steam rising from the kitchen, clucking voices floating to our ears. Boy were we wrong. An unfortunately clean, conventional dining hall greeted us. Contrived decoration embellished the room with pastoral landscape paintings, sleek tables and chairs, lumbered trims, faux rock splash backs, a bar with an array of alcohol, a chandelier, and clashing multi-coloured buttercup light fixtures. The only danger may have been the commonplace spread that made it so inviting to so many gregarious eaters. Not Joey and I, though. We were looking for lunch on the cheap, and boy did we find it, with lunch specials that were even cheaper. That may be Mango King’s only selling point, because beyond its more than affordable pricings lay a menu burdened with a miscellany of Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese cuisine. There was nothing really spectacular about any of it, except for maybe the crab meat fish maw soup, which is a fancy word for fish lungs (or bladder depending on how you look at it). But I’m saying this all too hermeneutically, with a little too much perspective. I’ll slow down.
Lunch specials are always a good thing, because you’re usually spoiled with a huge portion and a little something else. Mango King is no exception. Mine was the beef pad thai with tom yum soup and spring roll. Having spent a good deal of my youth working in the Thai restaurant, I’ve come to expect a little sternness with shelling out a decent lunch combination, so I expected some finesse; and while my order was a visually appealing spread of nuclear orange noodles on an enormously satired white plate- perfect for the haute cuisine world, I couldn’t help but be grossly disappointed with my food.
The tom yum, a spiritless bowl of sweet, sour, salty soup any kid could make at home, stocked with four boring button mushrooms, half a cherry tomato and the stalks- not the leaves- of cilantro had me a little heartbroken, but half expecting it.
The spring roll, though nicely coloured with a crispy exterior, was a muck of gluey insides that I thought could have used a little more time in the fryer. And the dipping sauce, a mere syrup with vinegar, could have had a little more punch.
But the pad thai, the star of the dish, was the biggest disappointment. An unappealing glowing orange mound of piled noodles with unhelpful smatterings of peanuts and cilantro leaves contributed to the dish’s very bland flavour. What little taste that did exist slowly disappeared the more I ate, and the incensed aroma that plumed off of it reminded me of the mysterious smoky character we associate with all that Chinese-Canadian food. Still, all it did was turn me off. Any vibrant, bright taste elements I usually associated with Thai Viet cuisine weren’t there. Unfortunately, a place that now defines itself as Thai Viet Chinese cuisine can’t differentiate from the multitude of dishes it offers, which is a shame, because everything seemed to have tasted the same.
I ordered an appetizer of chicken wings afterwards for the sake of experiment. They were nothing more than another commonplace dish of deep fried chicken wings with an obligatory serving of overly sweet chili sauce. Nothing magical, nothing new, stuff all too familiar. So much for novelty. So much for danger.
Mango King
2480 Homer Watson Blvd
Kitchener, ON
N2P 2R5
(519) 896-8188
MON-THU 11:00am - 10:00pm
FRI-SAT 11:00am - 11:00pm
SUN 11:00am - 10:00pm
ANY PAYMENT
Hindsight had me feeling pretty sore about the food I was leading Joey to lately. One late night it was terrible seafood chowder; one day it was bad Thai food. So, being the opportunistic dude I like to think I am, I took some suggestions, a little initiative, and looked to the supports I had spent a good 5 years fostering in food and thought I’d make it up to my broheme the only way my degenerate butt can- by cooking. So if you like riding culinary coat tails, enjoy this recipe that took two seconds to think up, but a good five hours to actually produce. Transit was slow, and I had to beg for some ingredients from old employers, but everything’s pretty accessible if you need a grocery store and have a car. If Barthes were still alive, he’d be pretty impressed.
There’s nothing authentic about this dish. You could call it fusion, but why bother? It’s a bunch of stuff mushed together, and it tastes great. It warrants enough cultural capital to create it and be taken into some charmed circle though, and it’s pretty inexpensive. For Joey’s sake, I made it mad expensive (which wasn’t really expensive), and I also rattled around in his pantry for whatever could be used to make a viable bowl of what I sloppily called Thai Beer Chowder when people asked and I was too lazy to explain the semantics of rhetoric in dish names and how they hypnotize the crap out of audiences. But again, it tastes great, and I implore you, don’t be afraid to substitute, it’s a pretty forgiving recipe. Have a shellfish allergy? Don’t use shellfish. Can’t eat flour? Forget the roux, or try gluten free. Hate butter? Use oil. You can make it work. This is a mere foundation for, in the words of my Old Mater, building high beauty.
Serves 4
Ingredients
1 medium sized carrot
1 large celery stalk
1 small white onion
½ cup of butter
¼ cup flour
1½ cups chicken stock
1 330 ml bottle of beer (Thai Singha beer for the sake of novelty)
lime leaf
3 inch knob of lemon grass
2 lobster tails (½ pound)
8 medium size shrimp (chopped)
400 ml can of coconut milk (cream for a thicker chowder)
Salt to taste
Thai basil to garnish
Directions
Mince the carrot, celery, and onion as best as you can (no pressure). Chop your lobster and shrimp and set it aside. In a heavy pot melt the butter at medium low heat. Throw in your minced vegetables and sauté those suckers. When the butter thickens and the onions become translucent and fragrant, sprinkle in the flour coating all of the vegetables. Now you’re making a roux. Keep stirring until it thickens and turns a light gold. Don’t go too dark. Not necessary. Throw in your liquids. Stock and beer only. No coconut milk yet. Throw in your lime leaf and lemon grass. Set the heat to medium high. It will be difficult to see a boil because the beer will foam. Throw in your lobster and shrimp. Simmer on medium low. When both meats become cooked (a bright supple, white flesh) shut off the heat. Pour in your coconut milk (or cream). If the milk is a solid, just dump it in and stir until it melts. Don’t you ever cook coconut cream. Salt to taste.
Plate, garnish with Thai basil, and serve. If you have any limes, feel free to squeeze ‘em in. Galanga too, if you really want to drop mad cash on all those hard bodies you’re dying to hold (but they’ll probably never eat anything so fatty. Ha).
There you have it. Thai food’s never been so easy. We came, we cooked, we concurred. And surprisingly stretched a course for 4 into a meal for 7 Italians (and a cat), 5 of which ate before hand. Fantastic. Enjoy.
Love,
Weezee
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