Since Hokkaido has the best dairy, seafood, and produce in the country of Japan, it only makes sense to have a festival centering around all of it in the harvest season! From September 9th-30th there’s the Sapporo Autumn Food Festival that happens every year in Hokkaido’s capital city of Sapporo. It takes place in Odori Park, the heart of Sapporo city centre. At this food festival, you could sample many of Hokkaido’s specialty dishes, such as soup curry, ramen, soba, as well as dishes from other parts of the globe. You could also buy some fresh seafood caught in the many rivers in Hokkaido. As for drinks, there are stands specializing in craft beer, sake, and wine sourced within and outside the region. There are tents and chairs set up beside each of the unique festival venues, making it easy to sit down and enjoy your food while watching the live music and dance performances.
If you’re planning to attend this festival in 2019, you might as well sit and watch the Rugby World Cup, which is happening at the same time as the Sapporo Autumn Food Festival!
With now two major events marked down in your calendars, you probably need a budget for your trip and a place to stay for that September next year (for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to be referring to the cost of one person). Well, if you live in Ottawa, Canada, a flight to Sapporo lasts 19 hours and 15 minutes, and costs $2,286.00 for an adult. Now once you get there, you need a place to stay, and preferably close to downtown when you’re going to be walking down there to sample the large variety of local and international food at the Autumn Food Festival. There is the Karaska Hotel Sapporo which is C$181 a night (down from C$241 a night) and 0.62 kilometers from downtown. You can click here to reserve a room if your mind is set on this hotel. But if you want a less expensive option that is closer to downtown, then you could stay at the APA Hotel TKP Sapporo Ekimae, which is C$100 a night and only 0.31 kilometers away from downtown. If this is the hotel for you, click here to reserve a room.
I say that Hokkaido has some of the best food in Japan, so I better give some recipes of a few iconic dishes from that region. One of the most unique dishes I have found is Soup Curry, a curry flavoured soup served with some meat and heaps of delicious cooked veggies. There’s also a bowl of rice served on the side to eat your soup with. Below is what it looks like and the recipe.
SAPPORO CHICKEN VEGETABLE SOUP CURRY RECIPE SERVES 2 GENEROUSLY
Soup:
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, minced
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 teaspoon – 1/2 tablespoon cayenne, based on spice tolerance
2.5 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon soy
1 tablespoon mirin
1 bay leaf
2 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
Vegetables:
butternut squash, sliced
kabocha (Japanese winter squash), sliced
zucchini, sliced
mushrooms, halved
carrot spears
broccoli florets
okra
boiled potato, cut into wedges
oil, to deep fry
To serve:
steamed rice
In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the ginger, garlic, and onion, and cook, until soft, but not brown, about 2-3 minutes. Sprinkle on the flour and stir in, cooking over medium heat. Add the curry powder, garam masala, and cayenne, stirring to combine. Slowly stir in the chicken stock, sake, soy, and mirin. Add the bay leaf and turn the heat up to bring the soup to a simmer. Add the chicken legs and adjust the heat so that the soup is simmering very gently, only a couple of bubbles should break the surface. Cook, partially covered, for about 30-40 minutes, or until the chicken is tender and cooked through.
While the chicken is cooking, make your rice according to your favorite method, then get started on the vegetables. You can use any kinds of vegetables as toppings, all we’re going to do is deep-fry them. Make sure all of your vegetables are very dry with no water on the surfaces whatsoever.
Heat up 2 inches of oil (I prefer grapeseed) in a deep-sided, heavy bottomed pot over medium-heat, until the oil reaches 375°F. Fry the vegetables, in batches, until they take on a crisp, slightly brown color. Drain on a wire rack or paper towels. The vegetables will take varying times in the hot oil, but generally, things take about 1-3 minutes. The potatoes will take much longer (the potatoes need to be boiled until tender, yet firm, before frying).
Once all of the vegetables are cooked, ladle some soup into a shallow bowl and place the chicken in the bottom of the bowl. Arrange the vegetables around and serve rice on a place, on the side. Enjoy!
Along with a savoury recipe, I should give a sweet one that comes from Hokkaido. These chiffon cupcakes are light, fluffy, filled with whipped cream, and not overwhelmingly sweet. These are probably the best cupcakes I’ve had. Here’s the recipe!
Light and Fluffy Hokkaido Chiffon Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
3 large eggs, whites separated from yolks, room temperature
45 grams granulated sugar, divided into 20 grams and 25 grams
35 ml canola oil
60 ml milk
70 grams cake flour, sifted
For the Whipped Cream:
240 ml heavy cream, chilled
25 grams granulated sugar
1.25 ml vanilla extract
For the Assembly:
Confectioner’s sugar for dusting
Instructions
For the Cupcakes:
Preheat oven to 325F.
In a large bowl, whisk 3 egg yolks and 20 grams sugar until significantly lighter in colour.
Add 35 ml canola oil and 60 ml milk and continue whisking until thoroughly incorporated.
Add 70 grams cake flour. Whisk until just combined. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat 3 egg whites until foamy. Gradually add 25 grams sugar until you reach stiff peaks.
Fold your egg whites into your egg yolks until just combined. Be careful not to overdo it so as not to deflate your egg whites.
Transfer your batter into cupcake cups (see notes) until they are 3/4 full and place on baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops start to turn light brown and crack. Set on a wire rack to cool completely (see notes).
For the Whipped Cream:
Get a bowl and whisk and whisk all your ingredients until you reach stiff peaks.
For the Assembly:
Ensure your cupcakes have cooled down completely before filling them with whipped cream.
Transfer your cream into a piping bag fitted with your preferred tip. Insert tip in the middle of cupcake and gently press to fill the cakes (you will feel the cakes getting puffy).
Stop the minute you start to see the filling show on top. Dust with confectioner’s sugar.
Notes:
For best results, use cardboard cupcake cups (the ones that don’t need to be put inside a cupcake pan to hold their shape).
The cupcakes are going to be super fluffy freshly baked then will deflate slightly as they cool down. This is normal.
This recipe yields 9-13 cupcakes depending on the size of cupcake cups you use.
So for the next three posts I’m going to be talking about my life, not Hokkaido. Now that you’ve been informed, let’s get into this lengthy review!
I recently went to the restaurant Moxie’s located on Hunt Club road, and throughout the meal, I wrote down all of the things that I had experienced, and because I have this blog, I want to share those notes with you. Here we go!
First walking into the restaurant, I noticed that it was dimly lit and I could hear some faint pop music playing in the background. Personally, I would think that it being winter, the lights would be brighter so that I could see my food, and pop music wouldn’t be my first choice for a grill, I would pick some jazz. Other than that the restaurant was clean and well decorated with fake potted flowers. Once my dining partner and I sat down I took a look at the menu and realized that there were many dishes on there with ingredients that I was allergic to, such as fish and nuts, making dish selection difficult. Looking at their drink menu, I noticed that there were only nine beverages that were non-alcoholic, and this is a family restaurant. Our waitress came to our table and immediately told us about their special ales that were on sale, but we don’t drink alcohol so I disregarded that information. Other than that she was very nice and friendly, and she seemed informed enough to tell us about the beer on sale. Though when my dining partner ordered a lemon pineapple craft soda off of the non-alcoholic drink menu, the waitress said that there might not be enough pineapple syrup, and that she would have to check.
We did receive the drink, but the pineapple simple syrup wasn’t fully mixed into the carbonated water, so the initial sip was very sweet, but later on everything became incorporated to create a refreshing drink.
Lemon Pineapple Craft Soda
When ordering the appetizers, our waitress wasn’t 100% sure what the soup of the day was, so my dining partner ordered a broccoli cheddar soup with a garlic baguette. It arrived very quickly, and the waitress even asked if we wanted some pepper on the top.
There’s where the positives end because the soup wasn’t a broccoli puree, it was a salty cheese soup with big chunks of overcooked broccoli that wasn’t piping hot. The soup had an undertone of processed cheese and there were unidentifiable hard chewy bits floating around. The baguette wasn’t made from scratch at all. Then the appetizers and my main came.
Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Garlic Baguette
First were the Korean fried cauliflower with two dipping sauces and sushi cones with a sesame dipping sauce. The cauliflower was under-cooked and the coating of batter was greasy when it should have been crispy. The dipping sauces tasted good on their own, but they didn’t bring anything to the dish as a whole. The second appetizer was the sushi cones: rice, tempura shrimp and vegetables wrapped in colourful rice paper with a sesame dipping sauce. While the rice paper looked appealing on the plate, there was too much rice in the cones which overpowered the other ingredients, the tempura shrimp was tiny and the batter had an almost grainy texture, and there was a sauce in the sushi cones even though there was already a dipping sauce on the side.
Korean Fried Cauliflower and Sushi Cones
My main course, a medium sirloin steak with shrimp, roasted baby potatoes, broccolini, and beets was entirely cold. The steak was slightly under-cooked and bleeding so I sent it back to be reheated as I tasted the vegetables and shrimp. The exact same problem occurred before when my parents went for dinner, but the steak was blue when they got it. The beets and the roasted baby potatoes were cooked and seasoned well, if not, a little over seasoned. The broccolini was so under-cooked that I could only eat the heads. The shrimp were perfectly cooked, although they were plated in a manner which I had to separate them with my hands before eating. Once the steak came back, my dining partner noticed that is was overdone on one side, but at least it was hot, unlike the rest of the dish. Another thing, I felt that the steak needed a sauce of some kind, it would’ve added an additional flavour and make the steak the hero instead of the vegetables. The portion size of the dish was quite large as well.
Sirloin Steak and Shrimp with Seasonal Vegetables and Roasted Baby Potatoes
Now onto the dessert, which I had been waiting for since the beginning. My dining partner and I wanted the sticky toffee pudding, but the waitress informed us that they were out of sticky toffee and would have to go check. She came back and told us that the oven wasn’t working, so they couldn’t cook it. Defeated, I ordered a white chocolate brownie instead. It came, and what I saw before me was a triangular white chocolate brownie, a big dollop of whipped cream, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a large drizzle of chocolate sauce on the bottom of the plate. The brownie itself had only a subtle taste of white chocolate and was very dense. The whipped cream tasted like Cool Whip, the ice cream tasted like it was from a carton that you would get in Loblaws, the chocolate sauce was also artificial and overpowered everything else on the plate. There needed to be more contrast in colour, flavour, and texture, because dessert was three sweet, soft, white food items with way too much chocolate sauce.
White Chocolate Brownie with Whipped Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, and Chocolate Sauce
Luckily our waitress was sympathetic and gave us half-off on our main because it was cold, and a free dessert. She practiced some of the principles of customer service, being that she was empathetic, honest about what she didn’t know, quick in bringing us our food, friendly, and she connected with our struggles. But she wasn’t too informed when it came to knowing what the soup of the day was, if the soda could be made, and what was stopping the production of the sticky toffee pudding. Being informed and practicing the other principles I mentioned earlier are really important in the Hospitality setting. This is because having excellent service is part of what keeps the customers coming back to your business, and earning you that profit. Overall, I would give the Hunt club Moxie’s 2 stars out of 5. Hope you enjoyed this lengthy review.
Click here to go look at their menu, they are open 11am-12am from Sunday to Tuesday, 11am.-1am. from Wednesday to Thursday, and 11am-2am from Friday to Saturday. Their phone number is (613) 731-5000.
I am currently taking a cooking class at my school. The usual schedule for each unit is get a worksheet, practice cooking the food, do a group project, do an individual project, then move on to the next unit. My favourite unit so far has been the cake unit, who doesn’t like cake? Well, there are actually some people that don’t like cake (the monsters), I am not one of those people. I really enjoyed all of the baking of the cakes, but the one I enjoyed the most is the practice cake baking. We weren’t making anything fancy, just a basic white cake, it was a practice cook after all. Even so, it was a delicious white cake. For this recipe, we used the traditional method of mixing the cake ingredients. Sift the baking powder and flour together, beat together the oil and sugar in a separate bowl, mix in the eggs one at a time, then add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients in a 4:3 ratio. I was getting the ingredients while my partner mixed everything. I was trying to get the cake in the oven quickly so that we had time to clean up, but my partner was going pretty slowly when mixing the flour into the wet ingredients, so I took over for the rest. I think that the cake was over-mixed since I saw some big air bubbles rising up, and when I took it out of the oven it was a lighter brown than everyone else’s, but I just assured myself it was fine and that I was being paranoid. The next day, it was time to decorate the cakes! I was thinking of trying to do fancy wedding cake designs on our cake, but it was very short so I doubted there would be enough room to do so. Then Chef told us that we could stack our cake with a cake that another pair made. The other pair at our table wanted to make a double layered cake as well, and so we combined our forces of cake to make the ultimate cake! We all had different ideas for how to decorate it, but eventually decided on making the cake look like a reversed Oreo. We did the crumb coat, then the pretty layer of icing, and then peppered the cake with black details, including piping OERO on the top (Oreo backwards). It was a delicious cake and a great lab.
I’ve loved food for as long as I can remember, That makes it hard to pinpoint one story from my past that involves my love for food. So instead, i’m going to recount multiple memories that all connect at the end. Our story begins with how my family loves to cook and eat Italian food, that is pizza, pasta, and the occasional chicken Parmesan. The chicken Parmesan was my favourite of them all, probably because it was so delicious and my mom couldn’t cook it that often, so when we did have it I was extremely excited. I remember that from when I was 5 years old to when I was 9 years old, I would stand on the back of the couch and watch my mom work her magic on the stove, frying that chicken until it was golden brown and perfect. It was only when I was a little older that I could help her measure ingredients for when she would bake various goods, I still had a ways to go until I could handle cooking. As time went on, I discovered that loved making food for my family to enjoy, mostly baked goods because that’s what I was good at. Once I realized that I could take a cooking course in high school so that I could overcome my fear of the oven, cook things for my family, and bring home delicious homemade food, I signed up right away. I learned so many things in that class like getting over my fear of the oven, how to make bread, planning and time management skills, and how much time, effort, and love goes into cooking. The summative for my grade 9 cooking class was to make a full meal for my family. This included a bread of some kind, a soup or salad, an entrée, and a dessert.
My Summative Meal
Thinking back to what made me fall in love with food, I decided very quickly that I wanted to make an Italian themed dinner, with the famous chicken Parmesan at the center of the table. That dinner was probably the best one that I’ve ever had, and it brought me back to those times when I was peering into the kitchen from the back of the couch, watching my mom cook on the stove. Now I’m in my grade 10 cooking class, perfecting my craft and giving my family delicious food and warm smiles.
Hello people of the Internet! On this blog you will find things a few things about my life, including an experience from my high school cooking class, what made me love food so much, and a review of a restaurant. All the other things will be centered around the Hokkaido region of Japan. Why Japan you ask? Well, I love Japan, they make great video games, I love listening to the language, and they make some really unique food. Their food is the thing I’m going to be focusing on, specifically the food from the Hokkaido region. But before I get into the recipes and the things you can do there, time to learn a bit about it.
The Hokkaido region is that big island that sits above the rest of Japan. It is the second largest island in Japan that gets winters with lots of snowfall, and warm summers that aren’t humid. The population density is very low, so the land is full of majestic mountains, valleys, forests, seas, and rivers, which give the island a nice mix of natural and urban surroundings. Hokkaido’s economy depends heavily on its agriculture, using the land to grow vegetables and wheat, and raising cows to produce high quality dairy and beef. The island is also surrounded by two seas, an ocean, and several rivers running through it, bringing fresh seafood and shellfish to the table. That’s why I chose this region of Japan to make a blog about, its food is some of the best in the country. But that’s enough of a history lesson, let’s get into the rest of this blog.
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Hokkaido, Japan - A Food Blog 