Chinese Comb-oh-no!

Last week the culinary students disappeared from the lower cafeteria, leaving a small handful of graduates in charge of the food preparation.  I had high hopes for the meals this week, as surely the graduates have superior abilities in the kitchen than the students would.  I discovered that I was wrong, however, when I ordered the Chinese combo plate.  It was more like comb-oh-no.

The Chinese combo plate consisted of sweet and sour chicken, a spring roll, stir-fried vegetables, and either rice or noodles.  I had the privilege of trying both the rice and the noodles, and while the noodles and the spring roll were acceptable, they were the only acceptable items on the entire plate.

I was surprised to discover that the Chinese rice I was hoping to get wasn't traditional stir-fried rice.  For that matter, it wasn't even plain sticky rice.  Nor was it plain long-grain rice.  No, the cafeteria actually tried passing off plain minute rice as part of a traditional Chinese combo plate.  If the cooks in the cafeteria think that their customers can't tell the difference in taste between regular rice and minute rice they had better make an appointment with an otolaryngologist.  Unfortunately, the rice wasn't the only serious offence with this meal.  I haven't even mentioned the "stir-fried" vegetables or the sweet and sour chicken yet.

Let's suppose for a moment that you have never had training in how to prepare stir-fried vegetables and you want to make them.  Common sense says that after chopping the vegetables you place them in a wok or fry pan and stir them while they fry (hence the name "stir-fry").  If you wanted to prepare them in the traditional method that a Chinese restaurant would, you then would coat the vegetables in a glaze made from broth, corn starch, and soy sauce.  So how did the cafeteria prepare their stir-fried vegetables?  They steamed them.  That's right.  No stirring, no frying, no other ingredients.  I'm even willing to overlook the non-traditional cauliflower that was mixed in with the vegetables, but I am not willing to overlook the cooking method. Now don't get me wrong, they were colorful and flavorful, but they were not stir-fried Chinese vegetables.

Speaking of non-traditional Chinese food, I must address the topic of the sweet and sour chicken.  Since when is it acceptable to drizzle deep-fried chicken nuggets in sweet and sour sauce and call it Chinese food?  Not in any Chinese restaurant that I have ever been to!  How hard is it for the chefs in our cafeteria to stir-fry (or even deep-fry) some plain chicken pieces coated in cornstarch and top them with a sweet and sour sauce made from scratch just like a Chinese restaurant or home cook would?  And yes, I am accusing the cooks of not making their sweet and sour sauce from scratch.  The neon-red color of the sauce was more like a red flag.  While most traditional Chinese sweet and sour sauce recipes call for red wine vinegar (don’t even think of using ketchup if you're making it in the traditional way), they don’t call for so much of that ingredient that the food would glow in the dark.

On behalf of all the Canadian students at VIU I would like to offer my most sincere apologies to our Asian exchange students for any insult that our cafeteria has caused to you by claiming that this meal was Chinese.  You can take heart in knowing that you were not the only ones who were offended.

Donut Make My Brown Eyes Blue

I may not be Homer Simpson when it comes to eating donuts, but I do have a little more experience in the area of making the sweet pastries than most people.  I have a family member who used to make donuts by the hundreds every day using his own secret recipes, which he kindly shared with a few other family members (including me) before he passed away.  The donuts made using my family’s secret recipes are so good that one taste of them makes the Krispy Kreme variety seem bland.  Of course, it’s not fair to compare an ordinary donut made by a culinary student at VIU to my secret family recipe, so I decided to compare the ones in the cafeteria to the usual donuts sold at most donut shops or bakeries.  Additionally, I was privileged to have some assistance from a few of my classmates for this taste test.  We purchased an apple fritter and a lemon-filled jelly donut, and shared them.  Then we each gave our opinions.

The jelly donut was a delightful surprise.  While the pastry itself did not taste as flavorful as a traditional donut would have if it had been fried in lard (or vegetable oil with some bacon added to mimic the lard flavor), it was nevertheless quite good.  One thing that stood out in our taste test, however, was the genuine lemon curd that the bakery students had used as the filling.  My classmates and I felt that because of this lemon curd these donuts were dramatically superior to other lemon-filled jelly donuts.  I would personally like to add that I found them better than the ones made at Tim’s (please, I beg of you, do not revoke my Canadian citizenship for that statement).  We all loved the tart flavor on the tongue that comes with a genuine lemon curd, and one of my classmates said that she especially appreciated how the filling did not taste like a cough drop.  Would I recommend the lemon-filled jelly donut to other students and staff at VIU?  Absolutely!  But like all foods that are unhealthy, of course I must include the caveat that these donuts should be consumed in moderation.

As for the apple fritter we tried, that is another story.  I would like to say that we divided it evenly and ate the whole thing, but I would be lying.  We each took a bite, with anticipation of more bites if we approved, but we did not approve.  This was one of the worst apple fritters that I have ever eaten.  One of my classmates was disgusted at how raw the dough was on the inside (as was I), and my other classmate’s only comment, which I wholeheartedly agree with, was a concise, “Ew.”  The fritter was mostly raw dough on the inside, had an exterior that was rock hard and looked much too dark than it should have, contained no visible pieces of apple, and tasted like an unpleasant combination of raw dough and french fries.  Cutting into one of the pieces I noticed that the dark brown fry oil had soaked through the exterior of the fritter, a sure sign that either the oil temperature was too low at the time of cooking or else the temperature of the dough was too warm when it entered the oil.  Additionally, the color of the fry oil that had absorbed into the dough indicated that the oil had been over-used and should have been changed.  The dark brown oil would also explain why the fritter tasted like french fries. To say the least, we were very disappointed.  We were so disappointed in fact, that we considered asking for a refund.  Perhaps someday I will try the apple fritter again to see if there are any improvements, but for now my stomach needs to recover.

The over-used cooking oil has visibly soaked through the mostly raw dough

Focaccia or Fork At Ya?

While in the cafeteria this week I picked up a loaf focaccia bread made by the VIU bakery, as I thought that it would be lovely to have some with dinner.  Normally if I am craving some focaccia bread I will either just buy some at a local bakery, or if I am in the mood for a personalized recipe I will make a loaf at home and sprinkle some parmesan cheese on the top instead of coarse salt.  Needless to say, I have tried a few different types of focaccia over the years and was open to finding out how VIU interprets this recipe. 

While the focaccia initially appeared to not have a lot of rosemary on it, I found that there was actually just the right amount of the herb hiding in the dimples.  Additionally, there was just the right amount of coarse salt sprinkled on the top.  The texture of the bread was soft on the inside, yet slightly chewy, and reminded me of my own recipe.  It tasted wonderful after I had slid it through the olive oil and balsamic vinegar on my plate.  I certainly approved of it that night, as did my volunteer taste testers at home.  The true test of focaccia bread, however, is the “day-old test.”  I find that Focaccia from bakeries has a tendency to go stale and rubbery very quickly, almost like sourdough bread, whereas my personal recipe tends to not do that.  I wanted to do a thorough comparison with this focaccia, so I made sure to leave some of the loaf for the “day-old test.”  For breakfast the next morning I sliced some of the focaccia in half horizontally and applied butter and a hot skillet to the sliced side to create a crispy layer of flavor.  I then placed a fried egg on the bottom half of the focaccia and topped it with the other slice to create a focaccia and fried egg sandwich.  I am pleased to report that the day-old focaccia was not too stale and was not at all rubbery. 

This bread exceeded my expectations and I hope to buy some more of it in the future.  Mostly because I wonder how it would taste if I used it to make a chicken salad sandwich…

Thanksgiving in The Cafeteria

On Thursday both cafeterias served a Thanksgiving meal to the students for a very affordable price.  My plate was so full that not only did I turn down the complementary soup or coffee, but I was hoping that I could grab a nap sometime during afternoon classes.  Overall, it was an excellent meal, but there were so many fine details which must be mentioned that I feel the need to break down my review and discuss the individual foods that barely fit onto the plate.

The star of any Thanksgiving meal is the turkey, and to be honest I expected the culinary students to serve up a dry, flavorless, bird.  I was happily mistaken.  The bird was moist, well-seasoned, and as stated earlier, they did not skimp on the portion.  It's not easy to cook and serve a moist and flavorful turkey to hundreds of people so my congratulations to the culinary students for pulling off that feat. It would have been nice to have cranberry sauce included with the turkey, so that was a disappointing oversight, but hopefully it is an oversight that will be remedied by Christmas.

Next on the plate for attention was the dressing.  I would love to call it stuffing, but technically it can only be called true stuffing if it was actually stuffed inside the bird during cooking.  I am certain the biology students would be quick to panic if they were served true stuffing, as the risk of a bacterial-borne illness is greatly increased with that type of recipe.  Thankfully the culinary students must have known that as they put dressing on the menu, instead. Dressing is a touchy subject. It is one of those hit-or-miss recipes.  There are so many variations of it and, let's face it, your mom's recipe is always the best recipe.  For most people, however, the worst recipe for dressing is the one that is primarily made of spices and chopped onions mixed with mushy bread.  Unfortunately, this is what the cafeteria was serving.  No potatoes.  No dried cranberries.  No apples.  No sausage.  Just mushy bread.  It was like eating a handful of croutons that had been soaked in the leftover liquid from a cup of instant noodles.  I nearly cried.  If I may make a suggestion for next time?  If the cafeteria is going to serve plain bread dressing, how about eliminating the mushy texture by baking individual portions in muffin tins?  That way the dressing is less likely to have a mushy interior and the exterior of every dressing portion will have that delicious caramelized crust that everybody loves.  Alternatively, if the culinary students are not interested in baking dressing in muffin tins, they may wish to attempt to get even more creative by making the dressing into a variation of hush puppies by using a small scoop to form them into balls, then coating them in egg wash, rolling them in panko bread crumbs, and deep frying them until they are golden and crunchy.  A little bit of kitchen creativity that I'm sure will be a hit with both the culinary students and anyone trying the dressing that day.

Of course, what Thanksgiving meal would be right without gravy?  I found the gravy with this meal to contain a lot of rosemary.  In all fairness, some people like to have rosemary in their gravy, but I think this may have been a little too much. It was, however, the perfect thickness, and it was nice to see that the gravy did contain some herbs, unlike most gravies served at restaurants.  In spite of the strong rosemary flavor it was a good effort.

Vegetables are frequently overlooked during most Thanksgiving meals, as a vegetable is a vegetable is a vegetable.  But the reality is that vegetables are important both in maintaining good health in the human body, and in making a dinner taste exciting.  I would like to say that I have noticed the menu planners in the campus cafeteria going out of their way for every meal that they serve to ensure that students receive nutritious veggies in a way that is flavorful.  For this I am thankful year-round.  I appreciated the variety of vegetables served with this meal, and they were all delicious and appropriately seasoned.  I must especially thank the students who likely spent over an hour scoring the bottom of each brussel sprout--a task which I am sure may lead to a later discussion on the causes of carpal tunnel syndrome. Click here to see How to correctly prepare brussel sprouts? Too bad that the brussel sprouts were undercooked.  I am going to let that one slide, however, since it is easy to overcook a brussel sprout and nobody finds the smell of overcooked brussel sprouts appealing.  As for the mashed potatoes, they were smooth but not gluey, which can be a challenge when making enough potatoes to serve several hundred people, so they were perfect. 

The dessert.  Oh, my word, the dessert!  Real, thick, whipped cream. None of that phony "edible oil product."  None of that stuff that comes out of a can and dissolves into a dairy puddle within seconds.  No, this was real, thick, whipped cream!  I am happy to know that the culinary students are learning to not take shortcuts on this small detail.  A customer will often accurately judge the overall quality of the food at a restaurant based on the quality of the condiments and garnishes, and the whipped cream on this pumpkin tart was a perfect example.  Case in point:  The little marzipan pumpkin with clove stem was adorable and delicious, although I was surprised to not see an allergy alert posted anywhere.  Are the culinary students not aware that the main ingredient in marzipan is almonds?  As for the little chocolate crunch balls, they were also delicious, although they did not complement the spices in the tart very well. The pumpkin filling itself was fairly run-of-the-mill, and it would have been nice to have a little bit of extra ginger in there, but it was still quite good as it was.  Most of all, however, I must emphasise how amazing that tart crust was.  It was as if some culinary genius woke up one morning and said, "I wonder what would happen if I combined a cookie dough crust with a traditional pie dough crust?"  The Nobel prize for baking, that's what!  I don't think that I have ever tasted a better pie crust in my entire life, and I am not exaggerating when I say that.  If the Pillsbury company wants to offer the creator of this recipe half a million dollars for it, he or she should accept (but first hold out for more money because it's worth it).

All in all, I must congratulate the culinary students for pulling off such an enormous task of Thanksgiving dinner, without stooping to  heavily rely on the folks at Sysco. Well done!

An Introduction to The Campus Food Critic

After much encouragement from my friends I have finally decided to start a blog about the food on the Nanaimo campus of Vancouver Island University.  Sometimes the entries will focus on the cafeteria food, and sometimes they will focus on the lunches brought from home; after all, what student doesn't bring lunch from home?

What makes me so qualified to be a food critic, even though I have never had formal culinary training?  Well, for one I am a student who eats lunch at school just like everybody else and I believe that food should be enjoyed.  I suppose my other reason is because I have earned several local awards for my cooking, and even a national award.  Clearly I am experienced in the kitchen and capable of recognizing good food when I eat it. 

Before I begin discussing the food on campus, however, I must address the subject of my anonymity.  It is paramount that my identity remain mysterious so that the culinary students don't become aware of who I am.  It will be difficult to judge their creations if they go out of their way to impress me for the sake of these reviews.  In that light, I would kindly ask anyone who knows my true identity to please keep this secret to themselves, and I thank you in advance for your co-operation.