In response to the Haiti disaster last Tuesday, a group of concerned Torontonians are launching “Toronto Works for Haiti” – Offering professional services in exchange for donations to support disaster relief efforts in Haiti.

• Are you looking for more ways to help the disaster relief operations in Haiti?
  

• Are you a small business looking for help?

• Do you have any professional skill sets that you would like to volunteer?

Serve 6:

1) Place bread in a large casserole. Whisk 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 tsp salt together. Carefully pour over sourdough. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 and up to 12 hours. For better results, turning the bread over once.
2) Melt 2 tbsp butter in the microwave for 2 minutes over mid-high heat. Over medium heat, cook garlic in a skillet until softened but not browned. Meanwhile, squeeze spinach well to remove water. Add to the pan and stir until combined. Add 1/4 tsp salt. Cook 1 minute, then stir in 1/2 cup milk. Cook until thickened and add cream cheese and salmon over medium heat for 3 minutes. Reserve.
3) Preheat over to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place bread slices on pan and stack 2 up at a time and brush tops with some of melted butter. Bake 8 minutes or until bottoms are golden. Flip bread, brush again with remaining butter and bake another 6 minutes. Remove pan from oven.
4) Divide spinach mixture among bread slices. Make a little and deep well in the spinach and crack one egg into each well. Carefully place under broiler. Broil 3 minutes or until eggs are just starting to set. Sprinkle each egg with cheese and broil another 2 minutes or until white is fully set but yolk is still runny. Eggs will continue to cook once removed from oven.

Ingredients
1 medium sweet potato
2, 7.5 oz cans low sodium wild salmon, drained
1/2 cup minced celery
1/2 cup minced green onion
1 tbsp minced dill pickle
1 tbsp minced fresh dill
1 egg
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
2 tbsp olive oil

In microwave, cook sweet potato on high until tender, about 8 minutes. Let cool. In bowl, combine salmon, celery, green onion, pickle, dill and egg. Peel skin from sweet potato. Place in bowl and mash with fork. Gently, stir into salmon mixture with breadcrumbs. Shape into 12 patties (about 1/2-inch thick). In a large skillet, heat 1 tbsp of the oil over medium high heat. Cook salmon cakes in two batches, until golden, about 4 minutes on each side. Serve warm, cold or at room temperature. Serve with Yogurt Dip: In bowl, combine 1/2 cup low fat yogurt with 1/2 cup grated cucumber, 1 tsp mint, 1 tsp lemon zest and 1 tsp finely chopped dill.

Updates: I did find some good eats in Toronto:

Meanwhile, I have come up with a few cool recipes:

Homemade Korean BBQ

1/4 bottle of Korean Shorts Ribs sauce (can get at TNT). Rinse ribs, massage sauce, roast @ 400F – 1 hour (flip at 30 mins)

Spinach and Smoked Salmon Pastry Balls

Various ways of pastry balls:

– Smoked Salmon, Feta Cheese, and Frozen Spinach

– Prosciutto, Feta Cheese, and mushroom

– Just tried this combo last night at Jamie Kennedy’s resto: Cauliflowers and Prosciutto.

Merry asked me for the recipe:

• Pastry: Frozen phyllo pastry / phyllo dough from your favourite grocer.
• Fillings: A box of frozen spinach (thawed and dried), a few pieces of smoked salmon (I usually get it from the St. Lawrence Market (or Granville Island for those in Vancouver) and get the end bits), and feta cheese.
• Thaw phyllo pastry. Layer 3 phyllo sheets and glue the sheets with egg whites. Cut into 3″ x 3″ squares. Brush melted butter to the base, then add a mush of spinach, smoked salmon, and a few clumps of feta, then take each side and glue them together with egg whites and twist top to make the package secured. Repeat.
• (Can be substituted with phyllo dough, then grab a handful of dough and flatten the dough to fit it on your palm, then add the mush, and glue the package together with egg whites.)
• Then baked them at 400F for 15 minutes.
• Keep them at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving.

Let me know how did yours go?

]]> http://elliotng.com/2009/09/23/nuit-mange-food-food-and-more-food/feed/ 0 http://elliotng.com/2009/04/07/april-2009-trip-to-arizona/ http://elliotng.com/2009/04/07/april-2009-trip-to-arizona/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:38:36 +0000 productionteams http://elliotng.com/?p=80

Close to 2,706 feet high

I’m glad I had cached The Today’s Hits of the Slacker Radio on my BlackBerry. We drove around Arizona for four days and the music certainly made the 1,775 km drive a lot more enjoyable.

I didn’t have much expectations of Arizona. I was blown away by the vast changes of rock formation and vegetation in this state. The 2,000+ feet, 3-hour hike up to Camelback Mountain in Phoenix was priceless (as seen above). Then on the same day, we drove to Tortilla Flat and quick change of altitude and landscape reminds me of the Rockies in British Columbia.

When leaving Phoenix en route to the Grand Canyon, we drove up 5,700 feet to Prescott Valley area. The vast changes of geography on highway 17 and 93 made you realize how insignificant our day to day life problems are compared to nature.




View Larger Map

]]> http://elliotng.com/2009/04/07/april-2009-trip-to-arizona/feed/ 0 http://elliotng.com/2008/12/28/finally-made-it-to-the-mandarin/ http://elliotng.com/2008/12/28/finally-made-it-to-the-mandarin/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:12:14 +0000 productionteams http://elliotng.com/finally-made-it-to-the-mandarin/2008/12/28/ As the creator of “Forks or Chopsticks” blog, I finally persuded my friends and my old high school buddy visiting from Orlando to try out the family favourite “Mandarin” buffet at the St Catharines.

Boy oh boy, I can’t even give it either a fork or chopsticks. Can’t understand why people like it so much. The better plates are shrimp and snow peas stir fry and bean sprouts.

Suprisingly, the desserts taste much better than the entrées. I had almond biscuit, bread pudding, tapioca pudding, brownies and creme caramel. Not sure if it’s worth $26.99.





]]> http://elliotng.com/2008/12/28/finally-made-it-to-the-mandarin/feed/ 0 http://elliotng.com/2008/12/13/getting-ready-to-hosting-a-christmas-dinner-with-17-guests/ http://elliotng.com/2008/12/13/getting-ready-to-hosting-a-christmas-dinner-with-17-guests/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:31:54 +0000 productionteams http://elliotng.com/?p=62 I set up the Christmas tree on Friday night. It’s lid up and decorated with ornaments. Though I have injured my shoulder/back/thigh when I was lifting the heavy armchair (the brown chair as seen on the picture below) in preparation for tonight’s party.

Update: The dinner was a hit. It went well into 2am. We did have a small incidence of smoky oven. But at least we didn’t trigger the smoke detector like our neighours did (close to midnight). Otherwise the food was well done. Turkey is always juicy and tender (thanks to Brandy!), Katherine’s deep fried dumpling was fantastic. I’m glad my butternut squash soup and philo pastries turn out very well.

Thanks everyone for bringing the food!



Group picture



Roasted turkey with brandy

Tonight’s menu:

Entrees
1) Roasted Turkey (with Brandy)
2) Steamed baby carrots and green beans
3) Scallop potato
4) Collard Greens

Appetizers
1) Butternut Squash Soup
2) Flio Pastry (Smoked Salmon, Spanish, Feta Cheese)
3) Olives, artichokes.
4) Warmed Brie with cranberry focassa
5) Homemade deep fried dumplings
6) Special salad

Desserts
1) Croquembouche
2) Francois’ mean mean Chocolate Brownie
3) Carol’s rice cake



Philo pastry with smoked salmon and prosciutto

]]> http://elliotng.com/2008/12/13/getting-ready-to-hosting-a-christmas-dinner-with-17-guests/feed/ 0 http://elliotng.com/2008/11/08/day-four-of-25-challenge-we-made-dumplings/ http://elliotng.com/2008/11/08/day-four-of-25-challenge-we-made-dumplings/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:31:11 +0000 productionteams http://elliotng.com/day-four-of-25-challenge-we-made-dumplings/2008/11/08/

On day four, we need to find new ways to stretch that $25. Fortunately with the Chinese diet, we can make dumplings at home. The cost is $1.96 for the off the shelve pastry dough. We bought around $6 of the minced pork and 50 cents worth of chives from the supermarket. And we made close to 80 pieces of dumpling out of the ingredients. so it’s about 11 cents a dumpling.
We were watching Grey’s Anatomy while we were chucking out the dumplings. We finished it before the end of the episode and I even managed to go to the gym that night.

We steamed the dumpling and bring them to work for lunch. Served with a dazzle of soya sauce and sesame oil and it was quite good.

]]> http://elliotng.com/2008/11/08/day-four-of-25-challenge-we-made-dumplings/feed/ 0 http://elliotng.com/2008/10/29/third-night-of-the-25-challenge/ http://elliotng.com/2008/10/29/third-night-of-the-25-challenge/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:51:56 +0000 productionteams http://elliotng.com/third-night-of-the-25-challenge/2008/10/29/ Latest update: We have two people voted themselves off the Challenge. Both of them worked in offices where they believe in giving back to their employees by pampering with a lot of free breakfast and luncheon from the firm and it was definitely exceeded the $25 budget.

I also went to an art auction last night. Although I only had two spoonful of o’dourves so I am still in the Challenge. My roommate is having congee for the past few days and she even found two pieces of lamb chop for just $1.96! So it works out to be $1.50 per meal including the Dijon mustard and the 5 herbes des provence.



The biggest challenge I have is I am starting to get cranky. I think the lack of sugar and sweets from my diet is making me agitated. I’m used to have either a Starbucks chocolate chip cookie a day or KitKat or some sort of chocolate a day. Of course these are well over my budget and I am only rationed with 4 squares of Ikea chocolate and 5 pieces of Ikea biscuits (as seen on the above picture).

Only 4 more days left, will see how we will all hold out.

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