Feb 13th - Olympic Village Tako Yaki and Mandu w Almond Butter Sauce

Scrambled Eggs with Gravlax

Veggie Samosas and Curried Chick Peas

Tako Yaki

D made breakfast. Easy Scrambled eggs with some Onion and Gravlax, home cured, garnished with fresh dill.

We checked out the Pavillions near the Plaza of nations most of the day. We bought my favourite japanese street food, Tako Yaki. MMMMM. They're not that easy to find in town though a few places have started to sell them. They are batter puffs cooked in a circular pans. They pour the batter right across the whole pan, not just in the dips and move the batter around with skewers to form the balls.

The classic is Octopus. I'm fairly sure that's what Tako is. But many stalls sell shrimp, scallop and squid as well. Now, many of these asian street food fairs may have one or two of these stalls but have a walk around and pick a good one. The first one at the Plaza had these tiny ping pong ball sized ones. I walked on and found some that were about 50% bigger. I'm pretty sure that I've had these at the Richmond Night Market too. Look for the Blue banner. They'll serve you hot ones fresh out of the pan if you ask.... but watch out! they're insanely hot that way! They're topped with a brown teriyaki type sauce, mayo and bonito flakes (dried tuna) YUMMO! D also bought us some veggie samosas and curried chick peas. They were quite large and nice and fresh. The curried chick peas, I could have done with out. The sauce was watery and not very flavourful. I believe it was the Indian Buffet restaurant chain that hosted that stall. Get the samosas but the curries looked a bit 'watery'.

Dinner was at home after an exhausting, long day exploring the some rather disappointing pavillions. They were either too expensive or boring or had insane line ups. The best thing we saw was the Live City Yaletown. They had a Bollywood show and a few pavillions on the inside too. We were too late for the Coke house... booo. I really wanted one of those glowing bottles of cola. Anyhoo, we rushed home to watch some of the short-track finals. D wanted pasta but I really wasn't in the mood so in a very rare case, we made different dinners. He had Farfarette pasta with the veggie sauce we had made a couple of weeks ago. I had Korean Seafood Mandu with Almond Butter Sauce.

Mandu
Almond Butter Sauce

3 T almond butter (like peanut butter)
1 T low sodium soy sauce
2 t honey
1 t asian hot sauce or chopped chili
1/2 T rice wine vinegar

Whisk all the ingredients. Adjust the vinegar to your preference. You can use peanut butter if you prefer but D buys this unsalted unsugared stuff and it tastes like chewing on pillows. Plus, my sister O was telling me about a book she had read called "You are what you eat." And in it, O had read that Almond butter is a much healthier alternative to peanut butter. I know that Almonds are meant to be quite good for controlling cholesteral and saturated fats. My grandmother is always sending me big kilo bags of them.

It had a nice rounder flavour than peanut butter sauce though I like peanut butter sauce for dumplings too if you have regular smooth peanut butter in the house.