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In such a foodie city, it's not enough to know where to go to eat — Sometimes you gotta know how to make it yourself!Â
Chef Pamika Sukla offers some of her tips and advice to help you get started and make 2021 the tastiest yet.
Answers were edited and condensed for clarity.
Cooking can feel really daunting for those just starting out. What's the best place to start?
The thing that makes it overwhelming for most people is that they often try to take on too much at first.
Whether it's finding the best recipe, going to the grocery store wondering if this particular one has all the ingredients, buying the tools, preparing everything, balancing the flavours, making sure the elements are well cooked - all these tasks can make a person feel like cooking is an insurmountable, time-consuming problem.
But it doesn't have to be. Make it as simple as possible in the beginning. Start with meal kits, detailed online recipes and sauces that provide you with tried and true flavours. Consider these like "training wheels" for cooking. They take out the stress of having to balance the flavours on your own, knowing how much of this to put or how much of that to cook.
You can be confident that if you follow the guidelines, you'll get a decent result and that positive reinforcement of making something delicious will give you the motivation to cook more and more!Â
With enough repetition, things will start to click and you will get a sense of what a well-seasoned dish tastes like. A good meal kit or sauce with a specific step by step recipe provides you with a structure so that you can focus on mastering the basics first.
More importantly, it allows you to have fun in the process because that's what it's all about!
What is the biggest mistake that people make when they start out cooking?
Underestimating the base of your dish.
A good example in Asian cuisine is rice. It's quite common for people to brush off the importance of knowing how to properly cook their rice. There is an art to washing the rice, choosing the right grain for the dish and adding just the right amount of water so that the texture isn't too mushy or too dry. We tend to focus on the flavours, the seasoning, the fancy presentation, without first mastering the basic elements of the dish.
The basics can seem boring but they are most important! It's like building a house. You wouldn't start decorating a room before establishing the solid foundation first. The same goes for cooking!
Bonus one from Chef Pamika: a lot of people don't taste their dish as they cook it! You have to taste along the way. Every time you cook, you're using different elements.
Different pieces of meat or vegetables were grown in unique ways. They all have their intricacies that might affect the flavour and texture of your dish.
What is something that can seem really intimidating to people that are new to cooking that is not as scary as it looks?
Cooking an authentic Pad Thai! At our restaurants, Pamika and Mae Sri, people always ask me what the key to a delicious Pad Thai is.
The steps I do are hard to explain in words and as a picture is worth a thousand words, we recently made a recipe video that you can watch online to learn and cook my version of Pad Thai: In the video, I use our Pad Thai sauce prepared in-house at the restos. It's made in small batches to make sure the quality and taste are always up to the highest standards and true to Thai traditions.
Just recently, we made them available for everyone to buy! You can order them online and have them delivered to your place!
If you're feeling adventurous and want to explore different flavours, we've knocked out the hardest part, the sauce. By using the basic techniques shown in the video and our sauce you can recreate and enjoy an authentic Pad Thai in your very own home.
It's like having your taste buds travelling to a different continent minus the cost of the flight ticket!
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The Internet Is Obsessed With This Montreal Restaurant's Refreshingly Honest Menu
You might be a frequent eater of Cuisine AuntDai in Montreal. Or perhaps you just heard about the Chinese restaurant this week when its strikingly honest menu went viral.
But who is behind the hilarious descriptions and anecdotes that accompany each menu item? We spoke to owner Feigang Fei about his newfound fame and the decision to caption his orange beef with "This one is not THAT good. Anyway, I am not big fan of North American Chinese food and it's your call."
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What's the story behind the brutally honest comments on AuntDai's menu?
Fei told MTL Blog he began posting comments on the online menu four years ago, after noticing that some customers would order plates they didn't enjoy in the end.
"After so many of these cases, I started focusing on the weird menu items," said Fei, explaining he added comments to unusual dishes so customers would know what to expect before trying them.
The descriptions proved to be effective.
Fei said that when customers showed up to AuntDai, they raved about his advice and how helpful it was.
Fei went on to add descriptions to every one of AuntDai's menu items last year.
The comments are too good, each more comical than the last.
Here are some examples:
Peanut sauce (chicken, beef, shrimps or vegetables at choice): I don't know why but peanut sauce chicken is liked by a lot of customers at AuntDai. Â
House Salad:Â A lot of Chinese people know this dish but I don't, maybe I am not so Chinese.
Satay sauce beef: According to a lot of customers, this one is very popular, I still don't have chance to taste it. Looks like I should spend more time eating in my own restaurant.
Cumin beef: We used to have the beef pieces on small sticks but several customers cut their lips by it thinking it was some hard ingredient ... To avoid incidents like this, no more sticks.
Hot and sour soup: Spicy and tasty, no meat, drink slowly to avoid hiccups.Â
What is it like to 'go viral'?
The recent spike in AuntDai love started with a tweet from Montrealer Kim Belair who wrote, "Aunt Dai is my favourite Chinese restaurant in Montreal, but the REAL treat is the menu, featuring extremely honest commentary from the owner."Â
The tweet has since racked up over 66,000 "likes."Â
Fei called the experience of going viral "crazy."Â
When a German newspaper contacted him, he said he even asked for proof thinking it was spam.Â
"After checking, I saw it was one of the top papers in Germany," he said.Â
The story was also picked up by other international media outlets, such as The Guardian.Â
"It’s a first thing for me in my whole life," he said.Â
What's next for AuntDai?
Fei said he worried for his business near the start of the pandemic.Â
"The business went down a lot — maybe [by] 50, 60 percent," he said. "It was really bad, we had to let people go."
However, Fei said business slowly picked up when the restaurant joined Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, DoorDash and Foodora.
"They take really big portion [for] the commission. I don't think we can make money, but it helps," Fei told MTL Blog.
"Without them, we would have closed for sure."
Fei also thanked AuntDai's loyal customers, who he said have been integral in keeping the restaurant alive.
"I know families who come from the West Island and Brossard to come pick up — some of them live really far," he said.Â
"Those customers really helped us, otherwise I would probably have had to close in early February."
Prior to the pandemic, Fei said the restaurant regularly held "exchange groups" on its second floor in the evenings, facilitating English and French tutoring for Chinese immigrants while helping Montrealers learn Chinese.Â
The restaurant also offered information sessions to new immigrants with backgrounds in specialized professional fields, aiding them in learning how to regain careers in Quebec.
"We resume the club [after the pandemic] to help the immigrants, to improve each other," he said.
As for next steps for the AuntDai website and Fei's food commentary, he told MTL Blog his goal is to continue the restaurant's blog in his spare time.
"I always like to write real stories about the hardships of running a restaurant," he said.Â
"We try to be better for ourselves, we want to improve. I just want to make things right and make customers happy."