B-b-b-baking: Merry Mayhem and Magic

Yesterday was the most intense 90 minutes of constant baking I've done in a while - what I do for Christmas parties... I went to a Christmas party yesterday, and I unfortunately still don't have the funds to buy fancy gifts for everyone, so this year's holiday season is going to be filled with snail mail and baked goods. I was at a meeting in the morning, which ran quite a bit longer than I had anticipated, and I had somewhere else to be just before the Christmas party in the later afternoon, but somehow, I managed. However, because I was in a bit of a hurry, the pictures suffered a bit - not that they are usually that amazing anyways considering how I use my phone camera...

I decided to try two new things this time around - cookies with potato chips in them and biscottis. Yes, potato chips. But let me explain. I had been introduced to the idea of putting other obscure things in cookies about a year ago when my cousins took me to a place called Momofuku Milk Bar in Toronto. They had something called a "Compost Cookie", which had pretzels in it in addition to the potato chips. But when you really think about it...it's not actually that weird. Salty sweet things and molecular gastronomy have surfaced in the culinary world, and it isn't uncommon! Kettle corn has a good mix of caramel and butter and salt, crispy bacon strips are being put into icecream sundaes, so why not potato chips in cookies? So, I gave it a shot, and they were actually amazing. It was your traditional chewy, chocolate chip cookie, but with an extra element of salt and crunch! Magic. And on the slightly less exciting side, I decided to make biscottis. I hadn't made them before until yesterday, but had been wanting to try for a while. They didn't turn out half bad either :)

What I learned yesterday about potato chips in cookies and biscottis:
- Potato chips, of the kettle-cooked, thick-cut variety do belong in cookies at least sometimes.
- Mixing the mix-ins into cookie dough is better with hands because you get a more even distribution, but your hands can get sticky, but whatever.
- Biscottis are essentially a twice-baked biscuit, but because they are baked twice, it takes a tad longer to make them.
- Biscottis are a lot easier to make than one would think - you should give it a try too!!
- It is apparently possible to bake a batch of drop cookies and a batch of biscottis within 90 minutes. It's just kind of stressful. (Holiday baking should be more on the stress-free side of things.)

Chocolate chip potato chip cookies, in all their glory.

First stage baked biscotti. The once thinner logs expanded into blobs of biscotti biscuit thing. You should bake it until it's a bit golden brown, but I didn't have time for that. Yours will likely look miles better than mine!

After being sliced, they looked more biscotti-like. They would have looked a bit better if I wasn't in such a hurry, or at least I'd like to think so? Into the oven for the second, and final bake!

A drizzle of white chocolate makes them a bit more magical, don't you think? I decided on white chocolate since there was dark chocolate in the cookies, but you could go with any chocolate, or multiple kinds of chocolate if you wanted to :)

Chocolate Chip Potato Chip Cookies (Adapted from How Sweet It Is)
*Makes 16 large cookies*
1 1/2 all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
12 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 cup white granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups crushed kettle-cooked thick-cut sea salt potato chips
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 325 F. Prepare 2 cookie sheets with olive oil or parchment paper. (I had to use olive oil for most of the baking because I ran out of parchment after one cookie sheet!)
2. Mix olive oil and sugar in a medium bowl until combined.
3. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.
4. Add flour and baking soda and mix gently until combined.
5. Fold in crushed potato chips and chocolate chips. It's easier to ensure a more even distribution if you use your hands, but it gets a little messy.
6. Drop 16 balls (about 3-4 Tbsp big) of cookie dough onto your cookie sheet, leaving space in between them to expand.
7. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes. You don't want to make the cookies too crunchy so that you have a good textural contrast, so don't wait until they're golden brown. Well, you could, but trust me. It's better this way. :)
8. Allow to cool and enjoy!

Cranberry-Almond Biscottis (Adapted from All Recipes)
*Makes ~24* (I made 23, But I could have totally made another one if my slicing was better.)
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup whole roasted almonds

1. Preheat oven to 325 F. Prepare a cookie sheet with olive oil or parchment paper.
2. Mix olive oil and sugar in a medium bowl until combined.
3. Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.
4. Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix gently until combined.
5. Fold in dried cranberries and almonds.
6. Shape the dough into 2 equal sized logs about 12 x 2 inches, Try not to make the center taller than 2 inches.
7. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.
8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before slicing. Use a sharp knife (or cleaver) to slice the logs diagonally into 1 inch thick pieces. You can make them thicker, but be aware that thicker slices will take longer to bake/dry.
9. Place biscotti slices flat on the cookie sheet. Reduce heat to 300 F and bake for about 10 minutes or until they are dry and a bit golden brown around the edges.
10. To make them slightly fancier, melt some chocolate with about 1 Tbsp olive oil, and drizzle over top. Allow to cool completely, and enjoy with some coffee or tea!

P and I were at Winners looking for Christmas cards and stuff, and I came across these cute little trays. For $4, you got 4 easy-to-assemble cardstock boxes with 4 strands of red ribbon, 4 snowman tags, and 4 tall cellophane bags. I used the tags to label them so that people knew what they were at the party. :D

Thank you, Winners for your cool cooking and baking stuff, and for encouraging my obsession with stationery and crafty things  don't really need, but buy from you anyways.

All ready to go! Chocolate chip potato chip cookies on the left and cranberry-almond biscottis with a white chocolate drizzle on the right! (I labeled the cookies as "chocolate chip" before the "potato chip" part, so people wouldn't be like "potato chip cookies...hmmm" and would instead be like "chocolate yay!!")

Happy holidays and may your homes smell oh so very magical~

-M

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B-b-b-baking: Layered with Love

Tonight, I made dinner for my parents. It happens every now and then, and today was one of those days. My parents had stuff to do until 9:30 tonight, giving me ample time to put something together. I decided to tackle homemade lasagna from scratch.

What I learned tonight about lasagna:

- Humidity matters. It was wayyy easier to roll pasta manually when I was in London. Here, I had to do the chill and rest trick, and my arms got tired. I think I want a pasta roller...

- Be careful when cooking with wine. I actually added too much red wine to start with, so when I tasted it before assembling the lasagna, it was rather boozy. Surprise! I managed to even it out by adding beef broth and reducing it again afterwards...
- Tomato paste probably makes for a better sauce. It's not to say that this one didn't turn out, but it was not very tomato-ey. The red pepper was likely a factor too, because the flavour of bell peppers is quite strong. I was trying to use whatever was in the fridge.
- It only took me about 2 1/2 hours to make, although, I did skip the bechamel. Curse my stomach and its inability to deal with milk things!
- It's probably not a good idea to fill your baking pan to the rim. The cookie sheet that I put underneath helped, but I had to scrub off burnt overflow after dinner :/ 
- Making this makes you feel super accomplished. I'd highly recommend giving it a try!

Clearly, I need to work on my serving skills, but yay! Lasagna was made!

3-Layered Meat Lasagna from Scratch (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Half-Baked Harvest)

*Makes 8 servings*

Sauce

1 medium onion

4 cloves of garlic

1 lb. ground beef 

6 white mushrooms 

1 red bell pepper

1-28 oz. can of peeled, whole tomatoes

2/3 cup beef broth

1/3 cup red cooking wine

Basil

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Pasta

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp salt

4 eggs

Assembly

1 1/2 cups sliced or shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Add 1 tbsp olive oil into a medium pot over medium heat.

2. Chop garlic and onion, and saute in the pot until fragrant. 

3. Add ground beef, and stir until the meat is no longer pink, adding about 1/3 cup red cooking wine half way through.

4. Empty the can of whole tomatoes into a blender and pulse a 2-3 times with basil, salt, and pepper to your discretion.

5. Add the tomato mixture into the pot with the beef, and stir until combined, then bring to a boil.

6. Slice mushrooms and bell pepper, and add into the pot, bringing the heat down to a simmer. Allow sauce to reduce to desired consistency, stir, and remove from heat.

7. In a medium bowl, add flour and salt, and make a well in the middle.

8. Break 4 eggs into the well, and stir with a fork until roughly combined. Knead until it comes together.

9. Divide into 4 portions. Keep other portions in the bowl covered with plastic wrap while you work with each one. 

10. Individually roll each portion of dough into a flat rectangle to fit the bottom of your baking pan (the pan I used was 7 x 12 x 2"). If you find that the edges of the dough begin to spring back when you are trying to flatten it, it's being overworked. Loosely roll it up, wrap in plastic wrap, and allow it to rest in the fridge while you work on another portion. After at least 5 minutes of resting in the fridge, take the dough out from the fridge, unroll, and continue to roll it out to your desired size. 

11. Use a paper towel to grease the inside of your baking pan, preheat your oven to 375 F, and begin layering. 

12. Start by spreading about 3 cups of the sauce in the bottom of your baking pan. Lay 1 sheet of fresh pasta over it, cover with a layer of cheese, and repeat these steps until your baking pan is full. The last layer should be a generous amount of cheese. I found that for the pan that I used, I had 1 sheet of pasta leftover. I plan to slice it into tagliatelle to have with the leftover sauce.

13. Place the baking pan on top of a cookie sheet in case any of it spills over (mine did a bit ._.). Cover with foil, and bake in the oven for 1 hour. After 45 minutes, remove the foil, and bake uncovered for the remaining 15 minutes. 

14. Remove from oven and slice into 8 squares. Serve with salad and/or bread. (I opted for a salad with romaine lettuce, mandarin oranges, sliced almonds, and a balsamic-honey vinaigrette.)

15. Enjoy!

Saucy! I had probably 2 cups leftover of sauce. Good enough for the leftover sheet of pasta! 

Preparing to get messy...

The first layer of meat sauce, pasta, and cheese. This was probably my best looking pasta sheet of the 4. One of them resembled a large oven mitt.

All assembled and ready to bake! Spoiler alert: It's also too full.

The finished product - this is what it looks like when you're too lazy to grate all of the cheese and/or when you need to spread the cheese sparingly. And when you fill the baking pan too high so that stuff overflows when it bubbles in the oven, and you have this mixed combination of feeling accomplished for finishing your masterpiece, relieved that you can finally eat, and reluctant to do the dishes afterwards.

I love having lasagna once in a while, and it's good for serving multiple people. I've gotten so accustomed to making enough food for 1 or 2 people, that I'm somewhat limited when it comes to making food for other people that isn't dessert. Thank goodness for stews and casseroles!

Until next time, Christmas baking is soon to come...

-M

Love for the Locals: Remedy Cafe

I'd like to introduce you to my favourite spot in Edmonton for a good Chai tea latte, as of a year and a bit ago - Remedy Cafe. I meant to write about it much earlier, but only remembered to do so after having revisited the place last night!

Remedy Cafe, where the slogan is "Be Spicy - Drink Chai!", isn't your ordinary cafe. In addition to its assortment of coffees, teas, and desserts, Remedy serves quality East Indian/Pakistani food. Remedy Cafe offers full meals of rice and curries, as well as some great deals including the "2 Chai lattes and 4 Samosas" combo for only $12.50. As well, most of Remedy's baked goods and savoury eats are of the vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free sort, so in addition to the options of 1% or 3% milk to be added to your beverages, you may also opt for soy or almond milk.

There are 4 locations in Edmonton - 1 in the University area on 109 Street, 1 on Whyte Ave, 1 on 124 Street, and 1 downtown on Jasper Ave - with a new cafe-to-be in the Terwillegar neighbourhood on the southside!

Each location gives you a bit of a different experience. All are run by hipsters, as seems to be the case with many cafes and coffee shops these days. P first brought me to the University location, and we have since been back at least a couple of  times. The location in the University area tends to be louder in terms of the music being played in the background as well as the people that hang out there. Not the best place to study, but there's a really neat vibe if you sit upstairs by the windows when it's rainy out. The staff also tend to be a bit more laidback, which can be good and bad at times. I find myself preferring the downtown location the most (so far). The music is played at a more comfortable volume, there's a bit more space, and there's better lighting. Service is also arguably a bit better at the downtown location because they give you a number to take to your seat, and bring everything to you, whereas you're expected to wait and pick up your order from the counter at the University location. It's also a nifty feeling to be at a cafe in the middle of downtown at night :)

All locations are open from 7:30am until midnight Monday to Friday, and 8:00am to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.

Remedy Cafe at 10279 - Jasper Ave.

Mini bar seat area.

Hustley-bustley downtown location around lunch hour on a weekday.

Diverse assortment of furniture and weird lamps. Love.

High tables and high chairs?

The Kashmire Chai - a delicious Chai latte topped with pistachios and rose petals. This is good at any time of the day. I highly recommend it.

Traditional Chai - another delicious Chai latte topped with ground cinnamon. Quite nice too! :)

If Chai isn't your thing, there are so many other kinds of tea to choose from, but to be honest, if you don't have their Chai at least once, you are missing out.

The 4 Samosas that came with our Chai lattes last night. They were filled with potatoes, peas, and delicious spices. So good...

The hallway leading to the washroom in the downtown location has chalkboard walls with multiple colours of chalk for you to draw and write things with. Fun!

Remedy Cafe makes for a nice date or relaxed hangout with friends. Their hours and products make it suitable for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a late night thing! Thanks to P, this is one of my go-to spots in Edmonton for a smooth latte and a snack (usually a slice of cake or some samosas). I have yet to try any of their curries or even half of the kinds of cake they serve...all the more reason to return! But please for the love of all that is good in the world, try their Chai for me.

-M

B-b-b-baking: The Gastronomicon/Necro-om-nomicon

After a two month-long hiatus, I figured that I should get back to blogging! It has been insane lately... For instance, I recently attended my graduation from library school - I am a Master of Library and Information Science! I hope to resume posting at least once or twice a month, but please bear with me while I re-adjust to life :) And what better time to return to writing than to recapture one of my favourite days of the year, Halloween?

This year, P and I enjoyed a quiet, low-budget Halloween at home with homemade dinner and a movie. I tackled the "Gastronomicon", a ghastly but tasty homage to H.P. Lovecraft's "Necronomicon", originally crafted by Elizabeth Ellis on her own Blog of the Fed! H.P. Lovecraft was a horror fiction writer of the 1920s, and is well-known for his stories encircling the "Necronomicon" (or "Book of the Dead") and "Cthulu". His stories are one of my guilty pleasures that I enjoy time after time. You can learn more about H.P. Lovecraft and his other creations on The H.P. Lovecraft Archive.

My 9 x 13" monstrous masterpiece! I am happy to report that we succeeded in consuming the entire thing on Halloween night. :)

The "Gastronomicon" (Adapted from The Blog of the Fed)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp granulated white sugar

1 tsp table salt

1 cup warm water

1 packet of quick-rising yeast

1 Tbsp olive oil 

Pizza sauce or tomato-based pasta sauce

2 cloves of garlic (for the eyes)

2 black olives (for the nostrils)

Onion (for the teeth)

Shredded cheese 

Your other desired toppings

1. In a small bowl, combine the water, quick-rising yeast, sugar, and salt. Stir gently until dissolved.
2. Add the flour to a large mixing bowl.
3. Add the yeast mixture into the flour, and mix until combined.
4. Knead the dough, then form it into a ball. It'll be quite sticky at first, but keep kneading until it no longer sticks to your hands.
5. Smear oil on the inside of the mixing bowl, and place the ball of dough in the center. If you use an herb-infused olive oil, it makes the dough smell really good, and you can save on buying fresh herbs! I used the oregano-infused extra virgin olive oil from Oliv!
6. Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap, leave it in a warm place, and allow it to rise for at least 1 hour. The air can be dry and cool in Alberta, so I like to put the covered bowl into the microwave *turned off* along with a mug full of hot water. While the dough is rising, you can use some time to prepare your toppings.
7. Once the dough has doubled in size, prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or non-stick spray, and preheat your oven to 400 F.
8. Remove the dough from the bowl, and knead it a couple of times to incorporate the olive oil.
9. Gently press and spread it until it evenly fills the pan's surface, and sculpt the face of the Necronomicon on the surface of your pizza dough. It works well to create ridges that stick out a bit to pronounce the facial features.
10. Coat the surface of the dough with sauce, right to the edges so that no piece lacks it. I tend to use pasta sauce more often than purchasing actual pizza sauce, because it's what I have on hand. Still super delicious!

Saucy and evil, just the way I like it :P

11. Add toppings to your heart's content! Aside from the garlic, olives, and onion, I opted for diced tomatoes, spicy genoa salami, sauteed mushrooms and onions (prepared by P), and of course, shredded cheese (We got the pre-shredded "Pizza" one by Kraft that has mozzarella, cheddar, and provolone). I forgot to get baby shrimp that I could use for maggots. The Necronomicon didn't have maggots as far as I know, but it would have looked pretty awesome!

Toppings galore!

12. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, until the cheese is super melty and kind of bubbly.
13. Enjoy with a bloody-coloured beverage, and hope that your Gastronomicon doesn't attempt to devour your soul from inside your stomach! >:)

If making sparkling cranberry juice like I did, be sure to use at least 2 thirds cranberry juice to 1 third 7-Up/Sprite, or it'll just taste like cranberry-flavoured 7-Up, unless that's what you like. To each their own...

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween! :D

-M

B-b-b-baking: Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danishes

Last summer, P had rhubarb growing in his backyard, so I had a harvest of fresh rhubarb to bake with. Unfortunately, I never got around to blogging about it. Fortunately, my dad's friend gave him some fresh rhubarb from his backyard!

What I learned this summer about rhubarb:
- Actually, last summer was the first time I ever tried rhubarb. I thought it would taste like celery, but it just tasted very tart. Very very tart. The texture, however, when raw was very much like celery.
- You can cut that tartness with sweetness or something creamy. For example, Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie is definitely not unheard of, and cream cheese is often used to offset the tartness of apples in pastries.
- Rhubarb breaks down really quickly and easily, which makes it really easy to bake with as a filling or topping.
- While it's typically used for desserts, apparently, rhubarb is considered a vegetable!
- Rhubarb freezes very well, but when you work with frozen rhubarb, it'll retain more of its reddish pink colour when cooked. If you use fresh rhubarb right away, it'll turn a caramel brown sort of colour, which is what happened with my pastries last summer. This summer, I didn't have time to bake it right away, so into the freezer it went!

These are the Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danishes I made last week. I've made puff pastry in the past, but this time, I halved a recipe from a "Bake with Anna Olson" video on YouTube. I find myself liking this puff pastry a lot! It's pretty fool-proof! Do note that making puff pastry is a time-consuming process. These danishes took me a total of 10 hours to make where half of the time was spent chilling dough in the fridge. However, I found that it was very worthwhile at the end.

One stalk of rhubarb, and very necessary cleaver, because Asian.

Pastry diamonds ready for the oven!

The finished product! Some didn't puff up as much as others because I still need to work on the whole "equal sized portions of pastry dough" thing. But it's okay, because now they're rustic :P

Rhubarb-Cream Cheese Danish!

Rhubarb Danishes
*Makes 12 rhubarb danishes with leftover puff pastry for about 6-8 more danishes*
Puff Pastry (Adapted from Bake with Anna Olson)
1 cup room temperature butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp table salt
1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup chilled butter

1. Line a 6-8" container with a large piece of plastic wrap.
2. Mix 1 cup of room temperature butter and 1/3 all-purpose flour until just combined. Spoon out on plastic wrap in container, and cover surface with plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for 2 hours until solid.
3. In the mean time, combine and knead remaining puff pastry ingredients into a rough dough. Wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
4. After chilling, take the dough and roll it out as flat and wide as possible on a floured surface. Place the square of solidified butter in the middle.

Yes, that large mass in the middle is butter.

5. Fold each third into the center to cover the square of butter. Roll out the dough and fold each third into the center again. Chill and rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours before handling again.

A double fold before sticking it into the fridge for the first chill.

6. Remove the dough from the fridge, roll it out to be about the length of the rolling pin but a bit less wide than it, and fold each third into center. Repeat once. Chill and rest in the fridge for another 2 hours. Try to avoid doing more than 1-2 folds between chilling so that the dough isn't overworked, and remains tender.

Another double fold and back to the fridge for the second chill.

7. Repeat step 6, but only do one fold. Chill and rest in the fridge for another 2 hours.

A single fold this time, and back in for the third and final chill.

8. Remove the dough from the fridge, and roll it out as flat as you can into a rectangular shape for easier division. It's ready to use and shape!

Rolled out as flat as I could make it. A lot of elbow grease went into that! Phew!

Fillings (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
4 stalks of fresh/frozen rhubarb
1/3 cup white granulated sugar

1 cup cream cheese
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup white granulated sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice

1. Chop rhubarb into bite-sized pieces.
2. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, add rhubarb and 1/3 cup of sugar, and simmer for 15 minutes covered.

Rhubarb and sugar! The sugar is very dissolved already, because I made the decision to take before and after pictures a bit into the simmering.

After simmering for 15 minutes without stirring, magic happened. 

3. In another medium sized bowl, combine cream cheese, egg yolk, 1/3 cup of sugar, and lemon juice.
4. Keep covered in fridge until ready to use.


Rhubarb Danishes
Rhubarb filling
Cream cheese filling
Puff pastry

1 egg
1 tsp water

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F, and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment.
2. Divide rolled out puff pastry into 20 equal squares. It's a good idea to keep the remainder of the dough chilled in the fridge if you're not working with it right away. Butter and science is why. I only did this for one baking sheet, and it turned out the best.
3. Take one square, and roll it out a bit if it's too thick. Shape it however you'd like. I used a diamond fold, and have included pictures below, however, it's also at 6:50 in the Anna Olson video.

Use a paring knife to slice 2 L's facing each other, but make sure they don't touch so that you cut out a square.

Take one corner of the "frame", and bring it to the opposite side of the inner square.

Do the same thing with the other side, and adjust if needed, et voila!

4. Place about 4 unfilled pastry shapes on each baking sheet, making sure that you leave plenty of space between them so that they puff up nicely while baking.
5. Add a dollop of cream cheese filling and rhubarb filling on the pastry - I used 1-2 tsp of each.
5. In a small bowl, beat 1 egg with 1 tsp of water, and brush exposed surfaces of each pastry with egg wash. This will cause the pastry to brown a bit. You could also opt to sprinkle some turbinado sugar on top, but I didn't have any.
6. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
7. Carefully remove from the oven and cool for a couple of minutes before serving. Considering how it is a pastry with cream cheese and rhubarb, they should freeze quite well, but who would want to do that?

Of course, this puff pastry recipe would work for any kind of topping. Anna Olson made smore pastries, salted caramel pear tarts, and apricot-marzipan tarts. They looked really good, but I had rhubarb. There's always next time, because I still have enough puff pastry left over for 6-8 more pastries!

I guess this is a farewell to summer baking for the year, since it snowed yesterday in southern Alberta.

-M

P.S. I can't believe that I've officially had this blog for 2 years (and counting)!

Love for the Locals: Sushi Train

Sushi Train (10725-104 Avenue, Edmonton, AB), the only conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Edmonton opened for business last month in the MacEwan University area, next door to Happy Harbor Comics (another place worth visiting to satisfy a different kind of hunger)! I was super excited when the Edmonton food blogs started talking about it, and my friend Melissa made a visit. However, this apparently isn't the first time a restaurant of its sort has been in town. According to my parents, there used to be one in West Edmonton Mall called Sakura, but it closed a long time ago. Seeing as I had never been to a kaiten-zushi or "rotation sushi" place before, P and I gave it a try last week!

The way that kaiten-zushi works is the sushi chefs in the centre will make dishes, and place them on certain coloured plates to indicate pricing. A short list with a legend will be provided to customers at the tables. Most people will be seated around the elliptical sushi bar, and in this case, there were also some tables for groups on the sides. The dishes on the conveyor belt are self-serve, and it's essentially a la carte. For nigiri, you'll get 2 pieces, and servings of appetizers and maki will be half-orders. You also have the option of ordering from the menu directly if something you want isn't travelling on the belt. 

A big thank you to P for his awesome photos! The less than awesome photos were provided by yours truly...

Sushi Train!

Woo~ Conveyor belt!

Sushi chef at work!

The menu! They even have the pictures on the appropriately coloured plates for your reference. Pictures are helpful.

Their price list. P said that for kaiten-zushi, the prices are a bit steep, but yay for colour-coding!

Avocado - inside-out maki with cream cheese and crab flakes with avocado slices on top. Our first plate of the meal! This is actually the first time I've enjoyed maki with cream cheese inside! I usually pick it off and put the slab of cream cheese on P's piece, but I think it was just the right amount to give the roll a creamy taste and texture without the weird cow's milk aftertaste I usually get from cream cheese. Bravo!

Salmon! - nigiri with a slice of fresh salmon held together by a dab of wasabi. A staple in our sushi orders, so we got 2 plates of it. 

Red Dragon - inside-out maki with tempura shrimp and cucumber inside, topped with salmon, tobiko, and spicy mayo.  Not bad, but not spicy. We grabbed this one from the conveyor belt, so it was like a half-order. So actually, if you get two from the conveyor belt, it costs less than getting an order from the sushi bar.

Spicy Pork - This was the special of the day, and it was similarly cooked to "Sweet and Sour Pork", but seasoned with Korean gochujang instead. P and I were not really fans...it was interesting that they used gochujang instead of a Japanese marinade.

Chop Chop - maki with chopped fresh scallop with mayo and tobiko. My favourite thing to order when we go for sushi. I missed it so much since they didn't have this on any Japanese menu in Londontown. It wasn't showing up on the conveyor belt, so we ordered this one. Good ratio of chop chop to rice :)

Takoyaki - Balls of batter with pieces of octopus fried in a special takoyaki pan, topped with takoyaki sauce (like a thicker Worcestershire), mayo, green onion, and bonito flakes. This is a popular Japanese street food, and another one of my favourites (if done well, and this one was pretty decent).

Tai - nigiri with fresh snapper held together by a dab of wasabi. Not bad :) 

Dynamite - inside-out maki with tempura shrimp, mayo, avocado, crab flake, and cucumber inside, with spicy mayo drizzled over top. This is what I expected for a Dynamite roll. They always had one of this name on menus in London, but it was never spicy, and it's not because it wasn't spicy enough. There was actually no spice. This one was good though  :)

Toro - nigiri with fresh tuna held together with a dab of wasabi. Not bad, but not as fresh as most tuna we've had. P seemed a little bit sad. (Triple rhyme!)

Spicy Tuna - inside-out maki with fresh tuna, cucumber, and gochujang. Again with the gochujang...not what we were expecting taste-wise, and not one of our favourites. Poor P and his less than amazing tuna fix on this trip...

Our haul of 11 plates - 7 red, 2 green, 1 blue, and 1 black. We purposely didn't eat until we were full because the prices add up quite a bit, and we were going to play badminton anyways. This was about $55 worth. 

Overall, Sushi Train is not bad. I felt like it was more novelty than anything, especially because the prices were a bit higher than most kaiten-zushi. If we were looking for a more filling meal for a more reasonable price, we probably could have gone for AYCE. We could have also gone elsewhere for better quality sushi. However, given that the place is the only one of its kind in Edmonton, they can afford to be like that. Was the sushi spectacular? Mmm...not really. Even so, it was exciting and satisfying for my first experience with sushi coming to me on a conveyor belt. If you're a first-timer in that realm like me, then give it a shot! The service was very welcoming and pleasant, and if you're in the area, why not?

P says that there's a real sushi train place somewhere in Banff, so I'm super looking forward to that!

-M