Green Tea Shortbread Wedges

Prep: 20 Mins         Bake: 25-30 mins

Stand: 5 mins          Oven: 325 F

Makes: 8-12 Wedges

Today, We bake!

I think of shortbread as a hybrid mix of a cookie and bread. It takes longer to bake than a cookie but faster than bread. You can say it's the best crumbly version of both worlds. 

Recipe: 

I got the recipe from the Ultimate Cookie Book. Here's the slightly modified version of it:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

3 Tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons matcha (This is just a suggestion. It really depends on how you want it to taste.)

1/2 cup cold butter 

The Dirty Work:

1) Preheat oven to 325 F. In a medium bowl or stand in mixer, mix together flour, sugar, and matcha. Add in the butter and mix together until it looks like fine crumbs. If it is not clinging together, you can add in more butter OR a bit of water. Knead together into a ball until it's smooth.

2) On a cookie sheet, roll out the dough to desired shape and thickness. Crimp the edges to make scallops (either with your fingers or the edge a the cookie cutter). Using a knife, cut the circle into 8-12 wedges without separating them. To add a bit of decor, you can use the cookie cutter to make an imprint on each wedge. 

3) Bake for 25-30 minutes, or just until the bottom is brown. Remove from the oven and let it set for 5 minutes, and while warm, recut the wedges. 

Tips:

 

I couldn't find matcha in the one asian grocery store I checked at, so Johnny and I bought the next best think: The powdered drink version.

I was taking a risk with this one, but I figured the added sugar in this drink it will taste better. 

(Ehhh, what do you mean that's not how it works?)  

The recipe called for cold butter, but for once I only had room temperature butter. The reason they asked for cold butter is so the ingredients will stick together, but if they don't stick together you simply have to add more butter or a bit of water.

When using the mixer, set it to low.

After a few minutes, the mixture is suppose to look like fine crumbs.

Never trust the suggest bake time in the book. When baking shortbread, just check to see when it turns brown in the edges. that's when you know it's done.

And done! 

Question is, for something that only has four ingredients, why are there so many dishes in the sink? 

Kinton Ramen

Cuisine: Japanese

Price range: $10-$20

Location: Baldwin St.

Mango rating: 7

Kinton Ramen is a newly established Japanese ramen bar on Baldwin. I had visited it a few weeks ago but haven't had the chance to blog about it. Anyways, here's my take on the restaurant:

My friends and I had arrived at the restaurant at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon and the restaurant was packed so we were put on a waitlist. While waiting, we stood outside and checked out their menu. I am no ramen expert but their menu looks appetizing.

After one and a half hour of waiting, yes, it was a crazy long wait. We were seated for our party of 7. We were all starving at this point that anything should satisfy our hunger.

My friends and I ordered various bowls of ramen. Mainly miso ramen, shio ramen, shoyu ramen and spicy garlic ramen. I ordered the spicy garlic based on my friend's recommendation. 

Kinton Ramen, like most other ramen joints (I think), allows you to order varies add-ons to your ramen at a cost. Ie. Seasoned egg for an additional $1.50, Nori for $1, and many others. You can even request for more noodles.

In my case, I got a seasoned egg and extra noodles. 

The ramen was alright, I personally didn't like my spicy garlic soup base. I shouldn't have used up all the garlic that they added since I found my soup to be very garlicy for my taste.

Overall, I think it's a good and well-structured restaurant. The interior design is very modern and the servicing staff was quite helpful. My only complaint would be that I found the food to be a tad over-priced considering other ramen bars offers similarly or better tasting ramen at a competitive price. 

Commensal

Restaurant: Commensal

Cuisine: Vegetarian 

Price range: Depends on Portion

Location: Bay and Elm

Service: Below Average

Food: Good

Atmosphere: Average 

Suggested for: Casual Lunch, Vegetarians, and People on a Diet.  

Taro Rating: 5/10

My vegetarian friends and I wanted to check out Commensal since it is rated the best vegetarian restaurant in Toronto. Commensal is a type of vegetarian buffet where you can pick out what you want to eat from a buffet style table, but you pay by how much your plate weighs. 

Their food is fresh and natural, and most of their dishes are vegan. I wondered whether or not there was a market for a restaurants like these with the latest environmental shift and health craze going on.

They had a random tank of fish. They're lucky this is not a Chinese restaurant.

Their decor is very simple, with chalkboards to tell you where things are.

At Commensal, they charge you by how much you have on your plate. This can get pricey quickly, and if you're hungry, you better have a fat wallet.

They do have an interesting array of vegetarian food though.

Their salad bar.

Our plates came to a little bit below $12. If you wanted a second helping, you'd have to dish out more. The food was ok, there's nothing to complain or exclaim over. They have the usual array of vegetarian food, from chick peas, to vegetarian Indian cuisine, to vegetarian pasta. They also have several rice and potato dishes. I left feeling satisfatory.

Commensal left me unimpressed. The wait-staff were extremely unfriendly, as they did nothing to accommodate us. When you enter the restaurant, you pick your seat yourself and figure your way around, and it took us a while to figure out where to get our water. 

Although many people are choosing to go vegetarian, I'm not sure restaurants who run their business like Commensal will be able to thrive, especially because of their unfriendly manners. 

Cora

Restaurant: Cora

Cuisine: Brunch (Breakfast and Lunch)

Price range: $7-20 

Location: Various locations around Toronto 

Service: Excellent

Food: Good

Atmosphere: Good 

Suggested for: Friends, Families, Stressed Out People, and for People Who Love Eggs 

Taro Rating: 9/10

I have a personal love affair with brunch, which may make this post more than a little biased, but I did not develop this love affair out of nowhere: out of the depths of omelets and breakfast crepes, my love for Cora's blossomed. 

Miss Cora herself:

Mountains of fresh fruits, eggs, oatmeal, toast, and more fruits, all in one menu:
They have a wide range of selection and people often have a hard time choosing what they want.

(As you can tell, I am in love with their menu and have become a devoted fan of it.)

One of the best things about Cora's: unlimited coffee. Their coffee is nothing special, but it doesn't matter when the wait staff cheerfully refills it for you each time. I have never met a grumpy waitress who worked at Cora's.

Sometimes, they present you your jam in a wooden box case. (Not this time around though.)

Cora's special: Eggs, sausages, ham, crepe, potato, bacon, and fruits. What more could you want?
This dish never fails to disappoint me. ($10.95)

French toast: Beneath this pile of fruits are four slices of french toast. ($9.25)

Ode to Oatmeal: Oatmeal with fresh fruits and toast. ($7.25)

Vegetarian Omelet ($10.25)

10 Star Omelet ($11.25)

Cora's closes at 3pm, and their lunch menu consists of various sandwiches, although their emphasis is on breakfast food. Cora's is the perfect place for a wake up call, as you will always leave feeling full and ready to take on the day. I've personally celebrated my birthday, mother's day, and random get together with friends here. 

Princess Cafe

Restaurant: Princess Cafe

Cuisine: Korean style coffee shop

Price range: $5-20 

Location: Yonge and Finch 

Service: Ok

Food: Good

Atmosphere: Excellent 

Suggested for: Friends, dates, and middle aged women 

Taro Rating: 6/10

So perhaps Johnny's Chinatown has become 'Johnny's Slackville'  due our lack of posts. Truth is, we don't have a good excuse and our absence is because of sheer laziness. Luckily, we've gotten off that bandwagon and have revamped our system for your reading pleasure! 

To get on with our review: Princess Cafe has been around for a long time and I've never ventured inside due to the fact that I've always thought it was a hangout for girly girls. And I was right. 

Princess Cafe does not specialize in only one type of cuisine. It offers bubble tea, hot drinks, and different types of desserts such as cakes, waffles, fondue, and toast. Since it is Korean owned, they also offer Korean drinks.

One Korean drink they offered is the sweet potato latte. It is a very heavy drink that feels like a meal on its own. 

They offer a range of waffles for desserts, which can be combined into a combo. Our waiter suggested we share two plates between three people, but since we were starving, we each ordered our own. Even so, the waffles are very shareable.

Caramel latte slice.
Princess Cafe does not make their own cakes, but buys them from a bakery which is why I won't review them..

Red velvet, a new thing on their menu.

Chocolate-Chip Waffle.

You can ask them to give you variations different variations of ice cream. The waffles are made fresh.

Green Tea Waffle.

I'll always remember this particular waffle because it had a very distinct green tea taste to it.

Korean rice drink, one of the Korean drinks they offer. 

It's a very sweet drink and contains cooked grains of rice.

Original bubble tea.
My friend, who was visiting from a place where bubble tea is scarce, was very disappointed with this since it was very bland. Needless to say, Princess Cafe is not the place for good bubble tea.

Princess Cafe's atmosphere is very interesting. It's on the second floor and gets plenty of sunlight, but not so much in the back of the cafe. It has clusters of couches (embroidered in floral prints) and very princess like chairs. 

Teenagers, groups of middle aged women, and couples alike all come here.

Random teddy pears that littered the windowsills watching you eat (could get creepy).

Overall, Princess Cafe can be a hit and miss since I've had friends who have had a terrible experience here, but my experiences here have been good. It may depend on the staff at the time as well, as some are more fluent in English than others. If anything, I would say that their interesting atmosphere is their saving grace.