Tasty Recipes from Recipe Wizards

Sticky rice with mango

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 35 minutes

Serves 2 to 4

This recipe comes from Vitoon Assavarungnirund of Tuk Tuk restaurant in Natomas.

Note: The prep time does not include the 1-hour soak time for the rice. Sticky rice is also known as short-grain, pearl or glutinous rice.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups uncooked sticky rice, soaked in cold water for at least one hour and drained

1 1/4 cups coconut milk

Pinch of salt

1 1/4 cup water

2 tablespoons sugar

2 large ripe mangoes, peeled and sliced

INSTRUCTIONS

In a saucepan, bring to a boil the rice, coconut milk, salt, sugar and 1 1/4 cup water. Stir. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, 8 to 10 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand 5 minutes. Transfer rice to a steamer or double saucepan and steam 15 to 20 minutes over boiling water, until the rice is cooked through. Mold the cooked rice into individual ramekins or small cups lined with plastic wrap. Cool to room temperature. At serving time, unfold onto a plate and top with mango.

Per serving based on 4 servings: 472 cal.; 6 g pro.; 79 g carb.; 15 g fat (14 sat., 1 monounsat., 0 polyunsat.); 0 mg chol.; 84 mg sod.; 4 g fiber; 23 g sugar; 29 percent calories from fat.

Thai beef salad

Prep time: 40 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Serves 2-3

This recipe comes from Vitoon Assavarungnirund of Tuk Tuk restaurant in Natomas.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound sirloin or similar-quality steak

5 fresh hot Thai chilies (prik kee noo), sliced crosswise very thin; or substitute jalapeños, minced (wear gloves)

2 large cloves garlic, sliced crosswise very thin

1 tablespoon sugar

5 tablespoons fish sauce

5 tablespoons fresh squeezed lime juice (1 medium lime)

1/2 hothouse cucumber or 1 small cucumber (seeds removed), peeled and sliced thin

2 to 3 shallots, sliced crosswise very thin, or 1 small red onion, sliced very thin

1 head Bibb or Boston lettuce, or one heart of Romaine lettuce

3 or 4 sprigs cilantro, stems removed

INSTRUCTIONS

Grill or broil the steak until medium rare. Trim off any fat. Cool and slice thin, into pieces about 2 inches across and 1/8 inch thick. Mix chilies, garlic, sugar, fish sauce and lime juice in a small bowl. Add the sliced meat and toss with the cucumbers and shallots. Taste and add more fish sauce if desired. Make a bed of the lettuce on a serving plate. Place the beef on top. Garnish with cilantro.

Per serving based on 3 servings: 374 cal.; 49 g pro.; 15 g carb.; 12 g fat (5 sat., 6 monounsat., 1 polyunsat.); 135 mg chol.; 2424 mg sod.; 1 g fiber; 6 g sugar; 30 percent calories from fat.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Leave it to sportswriters.

Surrounded by myriad dining options in a city that arguably is one of North America’s culinary capitals, we line up at a hot dog cart on Burrard Street.

But give us credit for this much: The Japadog is no ordinary hot dog.

We’re not talking foil-wrapped, soggy ballpark dogs here. Or the water-boiled, kraut-topped street-vendor ilk. These heated canines are haute cuisine

That’s why the all-day lines at the two Burrard Street carts are the longest this side of Canada Hockey Place – or anywhere Molson’s is sold.

And soon an indoor Japadog – the first of many, its creator hopes – will open in a storefront near crowded Robson Square.

“You have one of these,” said Ed Hamilton of West Vancouver, as he waited recently in a 20-deep lunchtime line at the cart outside the Sutton Hotel, “and you’ll never want a regular old hot dog again. Believe me. I have one just about every day. Sometimes two.”

The Japadog is a unique by-product of Vancouver’s unique culture. This Pacific Coast city sometimes, and in some places, seems more Asian than Canadian.

Noriki Tamura arrived here from Japan in 2005 and was immediately struck by that cultural duality. Being a former advertising executive in Tokyo, and inspired by British entrepreneur Richard Branson’s book, he looked for ways to capitalize.

Asian-fusion restaurants were as commonplace as hockey fans. While he researched, he vended traditional hot dogs. After a few weeks, he hit on his brilliant concept:

Why not combine North American and Japanese cuisines in a fast-food sort of way?

Voila! The Japadog.

Tamura’s homemade sausages are concocted from various meats – some turkey, some pork, some Kobe beef. They’re delicious in themselves, but the secret to why the Japadog is hotter than a Vancouver winter is in the toppings.

Wasabi, seaweed, bonito flakes, daikon, nori, and such sauces as teriyaki, tonkatsu and soy. Tamura used them all in creative combinations.

Among the varieties of on-the-site grilled Japadogs are the Misomayo, a turkey sausage topped with radish sprouts, sesame miso, and a Japanese mayo; the Kurobuta, a pork hot dog smeared with soy, daikon relish, and seaweed; an Oroshi, a traditional bratwurst topped with green onions, grated daikon, nori, and teriyaki sauce; and an Okonomi, a flattened Berkshire pork sausage garnished with cabbage and bonito flakes.

No surprise, the Japanese journalists and competitors at these 2010 Winter Olympics were quick to discover Tamura’s downtown carts. And when one Tokyo TV reporter asked if he had anything honoring Japanese figure skater Mao Asada, the Mao was born.

While most of the dogs sell for between $4 and $7, the Mao goes for $10.

The dog itself is made from expensive Kobe beef. Tamura sprinkles it with tonkatsu sauce – a ginger-flavored dipping sauce. He tops that with tiny shreds of red and gold yuba – a variety of tofu – cut into the shape of tiny Canadian maple leafs.

“I think I can take Japadog around the world,” Tamura, by now accustomed to being interviewed, said as he grilled a row of dogs on an oversize hibachi. “You can see. The Canadians love it. The Americans love it. The Japanese love it.”

As far as anyone can tell, there’s just one problem with Japadogs: The “fast” in fast food might be something of a misnomer. Tamura and his helpers painstakingly grill and top every individual dog. Customers, particularly those at the back of the glacier-paced lines, often drop out in frustration.

“That’s OK,” said Hamilton. “You don’t want something that’s been sitting around for hours, do you?”

Alois Lageder (pronounced “ah-loh-IS lah-GAY-der”)is the fourth generation of his family to manage this eponymous winery in the northeastern Italian province of Alto Adige. The region belonged to Austria until after World War I, which explains why many of the wines don’t taste stereotypically Italian and why wine labels are written in German as well as Italian.

Lageder has explained the dichotomy this way, saying Alto Adige’s wines combine “the richness and body of the south with the elegance and finesse of the north.” Now, he’s moving to add a third factor to his wines: biodynamic agriculture.

Think of biodynamic as beyond organic. Based on the beliefs of Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and scientist, biodynamic farming is a method that calls for the creation of a complete, self-contained ecosystem by introducing a variety of animals and plants to the landscape. Biodynamic agriculture encourages good grapes without the winemaker having to resort to chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

While some remain skeptical of the method, especially some of its more New Age-y aspects, a growing number of winemakers are looking into it.

Enter Lageder’s Beta Delta, a blend of chardonnay and pinot grigio made from certified organic grapes farmed biodynamically. The 2008 vintage, Lageder’s second, is on store shelves for about $20. It’s an elegant wine, smooth and fragrant.

Lageder plans to expand his biodynamic holdings. He’s working to have all his estate and single vineyard wines certified as biodynamic. They’ll be grouped under a new label in 2010 called Tenutae Lageder. The price range will be $20 to $75 a bottle. His classic wines, sourced from other grape growers, will continue to be non-biodynamic and will be sold under the Alois Lageder line. List price will range from $14 to $25.

In a telephone interview from Italy, ageder explained why biodynamic agriculture is so important to him and his winery.

Q: Why a biodynamic wine? And why now?

A: Biodynamics is my world. It’s something I’ve been interested in for many, many years. The philosophy of Rudolf Steiner always excited me. My mother worked in that direction, not in vineyards but in a vegetable garden. Biodynamics opened me to this other world. You learn to see everything in a different way. In the 1990s, we thought to do some experiments in biodynamics. We were not successful, I have to admit. We did something wrong. We needed more time. In 2004 we decided to convert all of our vineyards to biodynamic farming methods.

Q: Why should biodynamic wine be important to a winemaker? To the public?

A: The winemaker has a big responsibility. He has to be respectful to the consumer. His objective is to have very good grapes, healthy grapes. Today, too many winemakers are forcing the wines to have very high (critics’) scores. That’s the wrong approach. We have to produce wines that are enjoyable. With biodynamically farmed grapes, you have a more entire, more intact product. It’s important to the consumer that there be no chemical residues. Biodynamic wines are more harmonious, more elegant, more expressive of the terroir and more authentic. The vines are healthier and more able to withstand heat stress, so they ripen earlier and have lower sugar levels.

Q: How did the name Beta Delta come about?

A: In the beginning, we wanted to come out with one biodynamic wine and see what sort of feedback it got from the market. So, we decided not to select one single cru, one single vineyard, and to select the best grapes from all the vineyards we own. We had to find a name. B.D., for biodynamic, is what we called it in the cellar. So we said, let’s use the Greek letters, beta delta.

Q: Where do you want the Alois Lageder Winery to be in 2020?

A: I think we have big work still to do. Farm the vineyards biodynamically, and the more you work, the more you realize you are at a beginning. Biodynamics speaks from the closed circle of a farm, it never speaks from just one part like the wine estate. You should grow other products. You should have animals. Our objective is to produce other products and have more animals. If you can optimize the biodynamic product, you will make better wines. That’s our objective for the next 10 years.

THE WINES OF LAGEDER

These wines are generally available in the United States.

Classic Wines:

A series of wines in two quality classifications: denominazione di origine controllata or DOC, and indicazione geografica tipica or IGT. DOC wines include Muller-Thurgau, gewurztraminer, lagrein, lagrein rosato, pinot nero (pinot noir). IGT wines include pinot bianco (pinot blanc), chardonnay, pinot grigio.

Single vineyard DOC wines:

Haberle pinot bianco

Benefizium Porer pinot grigio

Lehen sauvignon blanc

Coreth chardonnay

Rain riesling

Vogelmeier moscato giallo

Romigberg Kalterersee classico

Estate wines:

Lowengang chardonnay

Krafuss pinot nero

Lindenburg lagrein

COR Romigberg cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot

Beta Delta pinot grigio/chardonnay

If you look at it, smell it and taste it, whiskey would probably be one of your last guesses.

But white whiskey – which can also be called young or unaged whiskey – is most definitely whiskey. More or less.

The whiskey we are accustomed to, that delicious woody brown stuff, is distilled from grain, but takes on much of its look, aroma and taste from the barrel where it was aged. Death’s Door White Whisky, produced in Madison, Wis., is distilled like a classic whiskey (from wheat and barley in this case), but aged 72 hours at most.

The aging is a procedural step necessary to call the product whiskey. What results is a spirit clear as water with a nose somewhere between vodka and tequila that is showing up more frequently in bars and on liquor store shelves.

“It’s not whiskey, but it’s not not whiskey,” said Death’s Door owner Brian Ellison, 37.

His white whiskey is a strange and fascinating spirit that makes a complex cocktail base. I’ve asked a dozen bartenders and liquor store employees how it should be used, and the answers have crossed the board. Some said to think of it as a whiskey, and try it in a manhattan with dry vermouth. Others preferred it as a gin stand-in, maybe in a Martinez (mixed with sweet vermouth, maraschino liqueur and bitters). One said it reminded him of tequila.

Though Ellison has been particularly impressed with a white whiskey manhattan and a white whiskey margarita, he recused himself from the debate.

“We make these products for people to explore further,” Ellison said. “We do the canvas, the mixologist is the painter.”

Chicago-based Koval distillery does something similar, distilling individual spirits from wheat, rye, millet, spelt and oat, but without the brief barrel aging. Each is clear, with a unique and luscious flavor profile. They stand alone brilliantly on ice or make wonderful cocktails.

Both Death’s Door and Koval are working on traditional barrel-aged whiskies, but they are happy to shift attention toward clear grain spirits.

“We love being able to taste the grains,” said Sonat Birnecker, who co-owns Koval with her husband, Robert. “It’s a gap in the marketplace. There just aren’t enough craft distilleries doing this kind of thing in America.”

This is the story of a legendary food. And as with all legendary foods, there are tall tales, controversies and – at least with Nanaimo bars – the discreet mention of sex.

The layered cookies get their name from a town called Nanaimo – say nuh-NIGH-moe – on Vancouver Island, a bay away from Olympics 2010. They are a sweet pleasure with a base of crushed graham crackers, nuts and coconut topped with a buttery middle layer, then finished with glossy semisweet chocolate.

There are variations on this theme, of course. Some recipes use Bird’s Custard Powder in the filling, others peanut butter.

By most accounts, the recipe traces its roots to the church ladies of Nanaimo. Some say the treats were originally called Mabel bars. The biggest dispute? That the bars really were created thousands of miles away and are called “New York Slices.”

For insight we tracked down a University of Victoria English professor and fifth-generation Nanaimo native named Kim Blank. When he wasn’t writing about Wordsworth and Shelley, Blank wrote the humor book “Sex, Life Itself and the Original Nanaimo Bar Recipe.”

“Nanaimo bars always have been famous around here as having mythological origins,” he told us. “However, no one has been able to claim to have found the origins of the recipe, except my dear old mum.” Mum it turns out, had a beat-up recipe book from the Women’s Association at Brechin Church dating to the early 1950s. “As far as I was concerned, being a literary scholar, now I had textual evidence.”

He also stuck the recipe in the back of his “Sex” book. “How could you go wrong with sex and food?”

Can’t argue with that.

NANAIMO BARS

Prep: 25 minutes

Cook: 12 minutes

Chill: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Makes: 48 bars

Canadian Living magazine has run numerous recipes for these bars, including this basic version.

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/3 cups butter, melted, plus 2 tablespoons unmelted

2/3 cup cocoa

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3 cups graham cracker crumbs

2 cups shredded coconut

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

1/4 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 cups confectioners’ sugar

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 13-by-9-inch cake pan. Line with parchment paper, leaving 1-inch extending over long edges; set aside. Whisk together eggs, 1 cup of the melted butter, cocoa and sugar in large bowl; stir in crumbs, coconut and walnuts. Press evenly into prepared pan. Bake 10 minutes. Cool in pan on rack.

2. Stir together remaining 1/3 cup of the melted butter, milk and vanilla in medium bowl; beat in confectioner’s sugar until smooth. Spread evenly over cooled base. Refrigerate until firm, about 45 minutes.

3. Place chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl with remaining 2 tablespoons of the butter. Heat 1 minute; stir. Heat 30 seconds; stir until melted and smooth. Spread evenly over filling. Score the surface into serving size pieces. Refrigerate until set, about 1 hour. Use parchment paper to lift bars from pan; peel off paper. Cut into bars.

Nutrition information

Per bar: 184 calories, 50 percent of calories from fat, 11 g fat, 6 g saturated fat, 24 mg cholesterol, 22 g carbohydrates, 2 g protein, 47 mg sodium, 1 g fiber

Is it blasphemy to give hallowed gumbo an Italian makeover? This idea was inspired by a half-full jar of giardiniera in the fridge, and the desire to use this popular Italian staple in something other than a sandwich.

For the unacquainted, giardiniera is a spicy Italian relish made of pickled vegetables (onions, celery and carrots are common ingredients). It’s typically offered in mild or hot versions at Italian markets, most supermarkets and sometimes at the deli counter.

Gumbo starts with a roux, made by blending flour and oil. We thought using the oil and vegetables from a jar of giardiniera – not to mention the seasonings already in the relish – would add an interesting approach to this one-pot dish. Be sure to buy an oil-based giardiniera (most are). Frozen chopped vegetables add speedy support.

Tips

If you’re using hot giardiniera, you might want to omit the ground red pepper.

Italian sausage is delicious in this recipe, but it requires an extra step: Saute the sausage in a large skillet until it’s cooked, 10-15 minutes. Then add it to the gumbo.

Beverage

An Italian beer would pair well with the spicy flavors of the gumbo.

GUMBO ITALIANO

Prep: 20 minutes Cook: 20 minutes Makes: 6 servings

1 package (8.8 ounces) microwaveable white rice

1/4 cup mild or hot giardiniera plus 2 tablespoons oil from the jar

2 tablespoons flour

3 ribs celery, diced

1 bell pepper, diced, optional

1 cup frozen each: chopped onion, chopped okra, see note

1/2 teaspoon each or to taste: salt, ground red pepper

1 container (32 ounces) low-sodium chicken broth

1 can (16 ounces) diced tomatoes

15 precooked frozen shrimp, tail off

2 to 3 links flavored smoked chicken sausage, such as artichoke and garlic, cut into 1/2-inch slices

1. Prepare rice according to directions; set aside. Meanwhile, heat the giardiniera oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat; add flour. Cook, stirring, until flour has browned, about 3 minutes. Add the giardiniera, celery, bell pepper, onion, okra and red pepper; cook, stirring, until vegetables have browned and softened, about 5 minutes, adding additional oil if necessary.

2. Stir in the broth and tomatoes; heat to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer; stir in the shrimp and sausage. Cook until meat and fish have warmed, 3-5 minutes. Divide the rice among six bowls; add the gumbo.

Note: If you only find whole frozen okra in the freezer case, add the whole pods to the pan; before serving, just chop each pod into large chunks with a pair of kitchen shears.

Nutrition information:

Per serving: 349 calories, 24 percent of calories from fat, 9 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 43 mg cholesterol, 49 g carbohydrates,

17 g protein, 624 mg sodium, 3 g fiber