We Have a Winner! #AFChef #FoodObession Contest

The winner of my #AFChef Food Obsession contest is Alex!

Alex won a $150 Gift Certificate for Lee Restaurant courtesy of San Pellegrino and theSan Pellegrino Almost Famous Chef Competition!  Alex entered on Facebook (as did many of you) and said his current Food Obsession was:

Street Food and or small hole in the wall type restaurants that offer none of the modern North American white table cloth atmosphere. It is all about the food and you can often tell you are near the place because of the awesome smell or the long line up of chatty happy patrons waiting to order. Examples include roadside chip trucks with rockin’ condiments, small ethnic takeouts that give out a wall of awesome food smells when you open the door. Market stalls that offer cool cheap food and if you have less than a hour for lunch, you probably don’t have enough time to get your food because the line is too long. Unusual ethnic fare that you are not very familiar with that you find at a music or street festival. Yummm

We had some great entries with obsessions ranging from Pat’s mushroom obsession complete with a Flickr set, to Sandy’s Hot Meat obsession that stems from living with vegetarians. Thank you all for sharing… now I’m obsessing too!

Here’s the complete set since I know some of you facebookers don’t tweet; tweeters don’t visit blogs, and google+ers are too busy hanging out to go anywhere else.  Colleen: I am obsessed with Curry…Red Curry, Yellow Curry, Green Curry, Paste, Powder, Thai, British, Indian, I love it all!

• Pat: I’m obsessed with mushrooms. Truffles, of course, are over the top awesome. But I’ve also confitted mushrooms, sauteed, fried, eaten raw, pickled, or made soups with some very strange looking mushrooms (like lobster mushrooms). Obsessed enough with them that I threw all my pictures together in one set on Flickr, just for you: http://www.flickr.com/photos/digiteyes/sets/72157629004535027/
  [The photo to the right is one of Pat’s many mushroom shots.]
• Audrey: So. Many. Obsessions. Eggs Benedict and buttercream icing are at the top of the list (not together). The perfect either can makes my heart sing!
• Lauren: I am obsessed with lentils! Lentil soup, dal, lentil curry, lentil salad, all lentil everything!
• Vanessa: melon… i hold out for oranges, grapefruits, and pomelos until the winter but my heart belongs to melons all year round. crunchy, sweet and refreshing… they’re everything i want out of a great fruit. the hard part is having the patience for the little stem nub to turn soft so you know it’s ready to eat. even when it’s under ripe i manage to pack away half of one in a sitting.
• @margaretimecs: My #FoodObsession is Thai satay #AFChef
• @30Minutes4Me: I am obsessed. I will find the perfect recipe for the perfect homemade gnocchi. I will. #AFChef #FoodObsession
• @laurendorphin:  oh! my second is cinnamon! baked goods, sweets, breakfast, everything cinnamon! #AFchef #foodobsession
• @BeatriceBastedo: Food obsession – smoked oysters on melted brie on a crispy baguette = heaven #AFChef #FoodObsession
• @emilovadragneva My #FoodObsession is ANYTHING… and I mean ANYTHING with chocolate in it :p #AFChef
• @ameecq  My food obsession is curry chicken! my mom makes it best #AFChef #FoodObsession
• @duanebrown  #AFChef #FoodObsession There can only be one and we call that the hamburger!
• Bev: I’m currently obsessed with Korean taco.
• Pat: I’m obsessed with the idea of making a dish of my favorite foods. I want to make the pasta from scratch, and then stuff ravioli with chopped lobster, a few drops of white truffle oil, and a piece of foie gras. I want to serve it to my friends sauteed in butter, sage leaves, and lemon zest. I’ve been obsessing over this for a year now: gotta do it some time soon.
• Simon: My food obsession is Malaysian Laksa…. mmmm!!!
• Sandy:  Hot meat. Doesn’t really matter after that- I live with a bunch of vegeterries, so me and the dogs, every so often, we’ll get something special and make it hot. A simple quick fry steak, a porkchop with hungarian paprika, meatloaf from the corner dinner, the Roast Beef Dinner at the irving big stop on the highway. A home-made hamburger. It’s hot meat.
• vanessa: I’m a craver, so my obsessions change regularly… macarons, cupcakes, lahmajun, etc. But now I’m a bit stuck on finding bottarga – cured mullet roe. I’d heard about it from a food show and was curious what this shaved delight was like and then got a taste in a dish that has been discontinued. It’s an umami minefield.
• esther: While I have many food obsessions the one I keep coming back to are the Peanut Butter Killer Brownies from Longos. I discovered them by accident about 4 years ago and ever since then when I drive by a Longos, well frankly I long for them. Dense, chocolaty, caramel crunch and filled with peanut butter, not a smear of peanut butter but a huge scoop of peanut butter–has me pulling over to soothe my longing. I savor each bite as my longing for the next one, the next time already begins.
• Pouneh: My Food Obsession is a flavour. A combination of lemon juice and Soya sauce. (and the spicier the better)
• Terence: My current food obsession is kimchi. Love the spiciness and fermented taste of it. I can eat it by the jar.
• Summer: I am obsessed with pasta. Love it. 100 percent. I want to try every single pasta out there.
• Neil: I love olive oil. In fact, I love it a bit too much. We have a cupboard full of olive oils, from Italy, Spain, Greece and now California (bought my first bottle of Cali last week). We adopted an olive tree last year and enjoyed the oil from our tree all year long. So yeah. Obsessed.
• Betty: Foie Gras. My favourite version was a PB&J one at Black Hoof last year. Yum.
• Colleen: Oh boy, I am obsessed with Poutine….yup, basically fries and gravy. Goes back to high school. It was my culinary passion to seek out amazing fries and gravy…then I discovered Poutine. Right now the top two for me are the amazing Yukon Gold fries with Sweetbreads Poutine that I experienced at The Stop and the good old basic variety available from Sonny’s in Brampton!