Italian - a trip to the Sicilian Pasta Kitchen

Italy, well I know that Italian food was not one of our chosen country foods, however I graced the doors of the Sicillian Pasta Kitchen (downtown location) on Saturday.

In Edmonton we have a large population of Italians and with this we have quite a few restaurants dedicated to the tastes of Italy. Italy has many regions; each region has different foods and cooking styles. Though most Italians will tell you that breakfast is the smallest meal of the day and lunch was there biggest meal usually consisting of a few courses. Though with the change in times Italy now eats a larger supper than Lunch.

The northern part of Italy favours the Ribbon shapped pasta and the South favourite pasta dish is the Macaroni with tomatoe sauce.

At the Sicilian Pasta Kitchen I had the lunch special the Penne All' Arrabiata; Penne in a spicy tomato sauce with finely chopped pancetta ham and crushed chilies and the Fetticini with roasted red peppers in a cream sauce, with bread and olive oil and balsamic vinager for dipping.

Doing some web surfing i found that most of Sicily uses fresh vegetables and fruits, such as tomatoes, artichokes, olives (including olive oil), citrus, apricots, aubergines, onions, beans, raisins to compliment sea food, freshly caught from the surrounding coastlines, including tuna, sea bream, sea bass, cuttlefish, swordfish, sardines, and others.

The most well-known part of Sicilian cuisine is the rich sweet dishes of ice creams and pastries. Cannoli, to name one, is a very popular pastry it is a tube-shaped shell of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet filling usually containing ricotta cheese. As with most of the southern part of Italy pasta plays an important part in Sicilian cuisine, as does rice.

For the most part it seems that the Sicilian Pasta Kitchen has remained true to its roots.

Kaiten-Zushi

Sushi is described as foods that use rice seasoned with sweet rice-wine vinegar. It can be topped with other ingredients; the most common ingredient is raw fish, known as sashimi. Sushi can also be rolled or put into fried tofu pouches.
Kaiten-Zushi is a popular form of sushi restaurants in Japan. In these restaurants, sushi plates travel around your eating area on a conveyor belt. You pick your sushi right off the conveyor belt and eat it. Kaiten-Zushi restaurant are less expensive than regular sushi restaurants. Typically the color of the plate indicates the price of the sushi. For example, inexpensive sushi pieces might be on plain colored plates, where as more expensive pieces might be placed on gold colored plates.
Unfortunately, we no longer have any conveyor belt sushi restaurants in Edmonton. There used to be one on Bourbon Street in West Edmonton Mall called Sakura, but it's been closed for some time now. We do, however, have a variety of regular sushi restaurants to choose from. They include Kyoto, Tokyo Noodle Shop, Wasabi Sushi Take Out, Banzai, Japanese Village, Mikado, Yokozuna, Furosato, Kobe, Osaka and Shogun.

Sources include www.gojapan.about.com and www.wikipedia.org

Picture courtesy of www.web-japan.org

Ukrainian vs. Indian cuisine

Recently, I found that despite the fact that many Ukrainians live here, in Edmonton, there are only three Ukrainian restaurants >. Compare this number to the number of Indian restaurants in our city. There are 25 Indian restaurants in Edmonton! (http://www.edmontondining.com/)

http://empire2.ru/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/food_5-600x449.jpg

I began to think about the reason of such state of affairs, and I want to share with you what I think about this situation right now.

First of all, although the Ukrainian-Canadian community in Edmonton includes about 10 percent of the city's population, the number of Ukrainians that want to visit any Ukrainian restaurant is not big. I think, traditionally, Ukrainians prefer to eat at home, going outside only at special occasions. Moreover, during these occasions, Ukrainians mostly prefer to choose the cuisine different from their own, for example, Indian, because they eat their traditional Ukrainian meal every day, and want something different and special when they decide to eat somewhere outside their houses.

Secondly, for Canadians that are not Ukrainians, this kind of restaurants doesn’t look as attractive, as Indian or Asian restaurants because many Ukrainian dishes are very close to the regular Canadian dishes, and Canadians can find them at stores or cook by themselves. At the same time, some specific dishes, such as borsch, are so specific that not everybody can enjoy them.

Finally, prices in Ukrainian restaurants are usually higher than in other restaurants with the same level of service and quantity of food. Plus, for the same price, you can receive bigger portions of meal and variety of food in other restaurants. At the same time, many Indian restaurants, for example, suggest people a buffet style, while Ukrainian restaurants don’t do it. Thus, for a certain price you can try a variety of dishes in Indian restaurants.

Next time, I want to introduce you several traditional Ukrainian dishes that you, may be, want to try if you decide to go to an Ukrainian restaurant.

Beijing roast duck

Coast duck was a special food in Beijing. It was initially introduced to Royal court in 1330. Now Beijing roast duck is famous around the world.
The duck that is chosen belong to force feed duck. After cleaned skin and inside, the duck is full of air between skin and meat in order to separate them. Brush maltose liquor in the skin and pour hot water inside of duck before roasting it. It takes 40 minutes to roast it, and then a delicious Beijing roast duck comes out.
The whole process of eating a roast duck is cultured. A 5 liters duck is supported to be cut into 108 pieces, and there is not only in right number but also strict rules about time and shape that is any slip must have meat and skin, and the entire duck has to be finished in 5 minutes to keep the temperature warm. A person uses a thin pancake to roll up pieces of roast duck and green onion.
In Edmonton, there are two restaurants that offer roast duck, BeijingBeijing Restaurant (700, 3803 Calgary Trail Edmonton) and Golden Rice Bowl Chinese Restaurant (5365 Gateway Boulevard NW Edmonton).

The Tastes of Vietnam

According to Vietnam-beauty.com, they describe Vietnames cuisine like this "With the balance between fresh herbs and meats and a selective use of spices to reach a fine taste, Vietnamese food can be considered one of the healthiest cuisines worldwide. Please come to Vietnam and you can enjoy many kinds of local food such as special noodle soup (pho), spring rolls, grilled shrimp paste, grilled minced fish, etc."

Well we know we cannot at this time visit Vietnam, as we are full time student of NAIT. However, we have a variety of Vietnamese restaurants in the City of Edmonton that we can visit and try the
Different menu items they have to offer.

Here is a list of restaurants:

Thanh Thanh Oriental Noodle House www.thanhthanh.ca

The King and I Thai Cuisine www.thekingandi.ca

Doan’s Vietnamese Restaurant www.doan’s.ca

Ninh Kieu Restaurant

Bua Thai Restaurant

Pagolac Restaurant

We will be visiting Thanh Thanh Oriental Noodle House; our goal is to see how much the cuisine has changed to adapt to Canadian culture.

We will be askingthe following questions:
How authentic are our Multicultural cuisines?
Have they changed from their original beginnings or have they stayed the same?
By bringing the foods to Canada have the recipes changed due to the lack of ingredients from its native country?
what is the target market of these Restaurants?
Who do they most appeal too? (e.g. higher or lower income, gender, and age)

The nature of the blog is to visit a variety of different cultural restaurants so we can bring to you an ultimate food experience.

Darlene
Memeber of
NAIT Foodies

Canadians are multicultural eaters

Due to our diverse multicultural society, Canadians have adopted a taste for multicultural cuisine. Throughout this blog we will be analysing and comparing cuisines from around the world which have adopted a Canadian flare.

We will first start by looking at the cuisine of China, Ukraine, Japan, Vietnam, and India. Plus we will be looking at Hudson’s which is a Canadian version of an Irish Pub.

Last but not least we will be taking in our very own Culinary Arts Restaurant at NAIT, one of the cities world renown Fine Dining Experiences "ERNEST's".

Feel free to share your own experiences with different multicultural cuisines.