Restaurant Review- The Oyster Shack

I love seafood so I was really happy that the blogger meetup group to which belong was going to The Oyster Shack. Then again, I did pick the restaurant. ;)

The Oyster Shack is a restaurant which tries to replicate the food and the atmosphere of an East Coast seafood shack. I think they succeed and the inside is nice and cozy. We went on a Friday night and it was lively but not too loud.

When we got there we found out that Martinis are only 5 dollars on Fridays. I had had a rough day on that Friday so this instantly made me perk up. My friend Irina had a dirty martini.

I had a lychee martini. They didn’t have any lychee juice so they used cranberry, hence why it was pink.

For my second martini I had a melon one.

I was starving by the time we ordered so I was more than happy when the bread was brought to the table. It was warm and crusty. I really appreciated the fact that it was warm since most restaurants serve stone cold bread; it was a nice touch. Service was a bit slow and it took roughly 45 minutes for all the appetizers to come. Unfortunately that always seems to be the case when eating out in a large group.

Fried Calamari.

Oysters Rockefeller.

Crab cake.

Clam Chowder.

I hadn’t ordered an appetizer and after seeing everyone’s food I was really wishing I had. Lucky the main course came soon after.

Mussels.

Fish and chips.

Lobster and steak surf and turf.

I had a bucket o’ scallops. Sorry about the blurry picture. It was deep fried scallops on top and fries on the bottom.

It actually came in a little silver bucket which was rather cute, along with two dipping sauces.

Lobster roll and fries.

The food was really good and the seafood was of good quality. The scallops were nice and tender with a light, crisp batter. Everyone else also really liked their food.

Since I had skipped the appetizers I decided to have dessert which was only two dollars more. I had a Tia Maria vanilla cake with chocolate icing. The cake came with candied citrus peel sprinkled on top and it was really good and not too heavy.

Vanilla custard. The custard had a top layer of caramel pudding with vanilla custard underneath.

Chocolate profiteroles. I forgot to ask whether or not that was ice cream or whipped cream.

All in all the food was delicious and more than worth the price. The seafood tasted fresh, not frozen and the scallops in particular had a great texture and were not rubbery like some restaurants make them. Everyone was happy with their meals and I most definitely will go back.

del.icio.us Tags: Seafood

Maple Mille Feuille

A week ago I went to a Sugar Shack and I had a completely amazing Maple Mille Feuille. Ever since then I’ve thought about recreating the recipe. Since Easter was coming up I decided to try out my version this weekend. I’ve never made a Mille Feuille before so I played around with a version that I found in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and adapted it to a maple syrup version.

To start off I rolled out a package of puff pastry.

A lot of Mille Feuilles have three layers of pastry but I decided just to make two. The puff pastry I buy comes scored down the middle so that’s why it looks like two sheets side by side rather than just one.

I baked both layers until they were golden brown. The pastry puffed up a lot so I just patted them down a bit so that they were even.

You can find the pastry cream recipe here. Pastry cream sounds intimidating but it is really easy. The recipe calls for whole milk but since we buy 2% I just mixed some of it with a few tablespoons of heavy cream.

The recipe also calls for egg yolks.

White sugar.

and cornstarch as well as a pinch of salt.

All mixed together.

Ok, the next part is where you have to be careful or you will end up with scrambled eggs. You need to heat up the milk and then carefully pour it bit by bit into the egg mixture. By raising up the temperature of the eggs gradually you make sure that they don’t cook on the spot and you don’t end up with little eggy bits in your cream.

You then need to pour it back into the pan and bring it up to a boil while whisking constantly to make sure that you don’t end up with lumps. Normally there would be a vanilla bean in the milk at this stage but since I wanted to flavour the pastry cream with maple I left it out.

After a few minutes it was nice and thick with a lovely sunny colour.

Since maple syrup would make the filling too liquid I decided to use maple butter. Maple butter is basically maple syrup which has been reduced until it is a spreadable consistency. In spite of the name there isn’t any butter or dairy in it, it is just pure maple syrup.

To finish off the pastry cream I added in a generous amount of maple butter and a tablespoon of cream.

I used a beater to incorporate the maple butter and kept on tasting and adding more until the maple taste was strong enough.

I put the pastry cream in the fridge to thicken with plastic wrap directly on top to make sure that it didn’t form a skin.

In addition to the pastry cream I wanted to put whipped cream in the middle. To add another bit of maple flavour I added some to the whipped cream to sweeten it.

Since I wanted to make sure that the whipped cream didn’t become liquid I didn’t add too much maple syrup.

Now for putting the Mille Feuille together: first, a layer of puff pastry.

Followed by a thick layer of the maple pastry cream. I left a slight border around since I knew that the weight of the top layer would push the filling outward.

Next was the whipped cream.

It was already starting to look really good.

Then the top layer. It looks like a gigantic Passion Flakie doesn’t it? (For you non-Canadians it is one of these.)

For the icing on top I used icing sugar, a splash of milk and maple syrup.

Since puff pastry flakes easily and isn’t the easiest surface on which to smooth out icing I made it more liquid than usual.

A bit ended up dripping off the sides but not too much.

The Mille Feuille was amazing. Flaky cream + smooth maple filling + slightly sweetened whipped cream = amazing. This made a ton and even right now we have at least half sitting in the fridge. I suggested to The Husband that we could freeze it and he gave me a look and said “are you crazy?! I’ll eat it!”. So The Husband is taking one for the team and finishing it off. lol. I might be helping him to make a dent in it though.

del.icio.us Tags: Mille Feuille,Pastry,Dessert

Pasta e Fagioli (Pasta and Beans)

I love chickpeas. They are incredibly versatile and are part of my “I forgot to plan dinner and am stuck rummaging around the pantry” arsenal. For this recipe you just need a few pantry essentials and you can pull it together in less than 20 minutes.

First off a chopped onion.

Once that is cooked a generous amount of pureed tomatoes.

And some fresh garlic.

As well, some red chillies that were hanging around the fridge.

Some salt, pepper and dried basil.

 

You then need to let that bubble away for a few minutes until it thickens.

Now for the beans part of the recipe. You can use whatever you would like but I’m rather partial to chickpeas. I always rinse them since I can’t stand the liquid that they come in.

Stirred into the sauce.

I used penne for the pasta but you could just use spaghetti.

After giving it a taste I decided that something was missing and grated in a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

Fast and cheap. What is there not to love about this? And since there is no such thing as too much parmesan, I added some on top at the end.

del.icio.us Tags: Pasta