Oil | Sybaritica

I have been seeing coconut oil being mentioned and used and quite a lot recently, mostly by bloggers touting various health benefits, and when I saw some in our local store I decided to give it a try. I was curious to see what it was like but, given the price (around $12.00 for this little jar), I doubt I will be using it in large amounts… Read more

This is my first experiment with the Sichuan Pepper Oil I featured in a ‘Foodstuffs’ post a few days ago. I originally planned to do a cold salad with cucumber but I had some nice chicken breasts on hand and decided to do a ‘ma-la’ style dish which, readers of my Sichuan Peppercorn post will recall, uses a Sichuan recipe technique that combines the numbing ‘ma’ effect of Sichuan peppercorns with the ‘la’ spiciness of chili. There are countless ways one can throw together a mala chicken dish, of course, but I came up with what follows:  Read more

In a recent ‘Spice Pages’ post featuring Sichuan Peppercorns, I mentioned that the pepper is sometimes used in the form of an oil that can be either prepared at home or purchased as a commercial product. I picked up the bottle you see above on a recent trip to Montreal and it has been sitting on a shelf for the past two months. This is the first time I have ever bought Sichuan Pepper Oil, though I have made my own in the past, and this week I finally opened the bottle to investigate…  Read more

A while ago, my wife was visiting Paris for a conference and I insisted that she go to the famous Maxim’s restaurant. Indeed, I put some money in her account so that she would be sure to go… Anyway, while there she had a number of dishes, one of which was a salad of lobster and truffles. I was especially envious of this because I have still yet to experience the taste of actual truffles and, so far, have had to make do with its lesser cousin, truffle oil, which is traditionally made by steeping truffles in olive oil. Read more