Colour Your Palate 2012 Award Winners: Colour - Green; Colour - Orange; Colour - Blue. See below for more detail. Photos by Gary Hynes

Last night eleven chefs competed in the Colour Your Palate competition held at the Hotel Grand Pacific and four awards were given out. Each chef had to prepare a colour-specific appetizer sized plate (either cold, hot or a dessert) to present to the three judges (Eric Akis, Gary Hynes and Denise Marchessault). Points were awarded for Overall Appeal, Presentation, Execution, Taste, Colour Expression and Degree of Difficulty. It was clear the competitors put a lot of creativity into their dishes as they vied to not only come up with a flavourful dish but to outdo each other in picking ingredients to best show off the colour they were working with.

After the judging, the chefs served their creations to ticket holders. Proceeds went to raise funds for the 
artsREACH Project

 2012 Award Winners:

Most Colourful Creation: 
Chef: Chef Kamal Silva, The Fairmont Empress

Assistant: Chef D’oyen Christie

Colour: Blue

Blueberry Cheescake with Blueberry Kirch Compote and Cardamom Shortbread

Best Tasting: 
Chef: Morgan Milward, Fireside Grill

Assistant: Jeff Gair

Colour: Orange

Deep Fried Maltaise, Flambeed Yuzu Prawns, Butternut Squash Pancetta & Almond Caponata with Carrot Crisp

People’s Choice Award: 
Fireside Grill

See above for description.

Judges Award:

Chef: Stephan Drolet, Camille’s Restaurant
 Colour: Green
Metchosin Pork Paté, Green Mango Powder cured Pork Shoulder, Green Apple “Skin”, Pistachio Cracker, Verjus Vinaigrette spheres, Crispy Burdock Root, Green Curry Oil Powder

Other 2012 Chefs’ creations:

Sauce Restaurant & Lounge/Chef Andrew Hrushowy  
Colour: Black
Dip on a Black Corn Tortilla topped with Spicy Blackened Tomato Relish

The O Bistro at the Oswego Hotel/Chef Colin Davidson
Colour: Blue
“Out Of The Bleu”
Blue buck braised beef short ribs, sour candy crème fraiche, blue potato blinis and blue cheese foam

The EdGe Restaurant /Chef Edward Tuson
Colour: Green
Snapper Ceviche

Beacon Landing Restaurant and Lounge/Chef Miguel Goncalves
Colour: Orange
Wild Sockeye Salmon with Candied Kumquat and Soybean Ragout

Hotel Grand Pacific – The Pacific Restaurant/Chef Brock Bowes
Colour: Purple
Sloping Hills Pork Belly, Qualicum Bay Scallop Ceviche, Preserved Stone Fruit Essence, Purple Cabbage & Black Sesame Seed Cracker

Flavour/Chef Rob Cassels 
Colour: Purple
Lobster Carpaccio

AJs Organic Café/Chef Cathryn Kissinger 
Colour: Yellow
Crispy Organic Quinoa “Empiler”

The Royal Victoria Yacht Club/Chef Andrew Dickinson
Colour: Yellow
Yellow Fin Tuna, Cheese Cracker, Young Pickled Beet, Cured Saffron Marbled Chevre

Part inspiration, part manifesto, and part reality check, All The Dirt goes beyond being a handbook of farming know how to passionately illustrate life on today’s next-gen farm. Essentially three long chapters—each chapter written by one of three co-authors, Rachel Fisher, Heather Stretch, and Robin Tunnicliffe—with two shorter, concluding, and collaborative chapters, All The Dirt mixes the romance of farming with the challenge of living off the land, so to speak. We hear how farming is a balancing act of technique and science, raising families, the need to earning a living, and about the pleasure of being plugged into a supportive farmer community and growing food movement.

But the book also digs deep into the practical knowledge required to grow food with a truckload of advice—including starting out, facts, planting and harvesting charts, tips, the best equipment, leasing land, financial spreadsheets—all the information you’d need if you decided to ditch that city job and took up feeding people for a living. Sprinkled throughout the chapters are neat little sidebars, such as On Being a Woman Farmer (Robin), How to Put Plastic on a Greenhouse (Rachel) and Farm Kids (Heather). The final two chapters discuss why they are organic farmers and describe their business collective, Saanich Organics. Informative, timely and well written, All The Dirt is a must-read insider’s account of farming today on Vancouver Island.

All The Dirt, published by TouchWood Editions, $29.95 ISBN 978-1-972129-12-8

Available at bookstores and online at www.touchwoodeditions.com

“An interview with farmer and All The Dirt co-author Heather Stretch

Your book, All The Dirt, has just been published. Is it different from what you had envisioned?

The book was originally Robin and Rachel’s idea, so I didn’t really have a vision at first. Then, we worked on the basic structure together and over the next six years wrote the book. At first we wrote in the slower times on the farms but once we signed on with Touchwood Editions, it became more intense. We can thank Touchwood for bringing the chapters with our personal stories to the front. I think it made the book more accessible to the general reader.

What’s your favourite part of your book?

I’m a story person so I love the first three chapters where each of us tells our story. I particularly love Rachel’s section on her apprenticeship. Oh, and her sidebar on slugs. Everyone can relate to that.

What happening on Northbrook Farm, your farm, right now?

This time of the year I’m out in the fields harvesting our winter crops: salad greens, pac choi, carrots, winter radishes, kales, cabbages, and beets. I’m also relocating the laying hens coop so I can plant a cover crop before rotating that land back into food production. I’m also pruning the blueberry bushes, weeding the greenhouse, and cleaning out the irrigation system, so lots I guess.

That’s an amazing variety of produce for the winter. How important is this crop to your farm?

Growing a winter crop is a bit like rolling the dice. You never know if it will be ruined by rot, freezing, or severe weather. But it’s important for two reasons: income, of course, but also because it is important that we maintain our connections and relationships with our restaurant customers.

The restaurant scene is watched very closely by EAT readers. How would you describe your relationship with the area’s chefs?

The restaurant scene is pretty amazing here. A majority of our clients are extremely supportive and go beyond just paying lip service to local with a garnish on the plate. We have great relationships with Spinnakers, Relish, and Café Brio, to name a few. They are reliable, year-round purchasers. Spinnakers even plans their menus around what we have available seasonally.

There’s a push on to create a year-round, public market in Victoria. From your perspective, would it be viable?

Absolutely. Do we have enough produce now to supply a farmers’ market in the winter? No. But I believe it’s a case of if you build it, they will come. Maybe not a seven day a week farmers’ market, but certainly one or two days a week depending on the season. If it’s planned carefully, it can succeed. Politicians and planners need to start incorporating food into their overall plans for the city.  I’d like to see a combination of permanent indoor vendors and farmers selling their own produce.

What’s the farming community like?

I tend to hang out with farmers working similar, small scale, organic farms but all the farmers around here support each other, help each other out, and share ideas. I know larger, multi-generational farmers and I know farmers who won’t go to organic certification but we all get along, talk, and visit each other. We’re in this together. There’s enough market share to go around so that we don’t need to compete. I am excited to see a big, old farm like Vantreight Farms transition from flowers to organic produce. That’s a good thing.

Some people say organic produce costs too much. Is that true? Are local food prices unfairly inflated?

Sometimes the media and foodies say we need more local farms so prices will come down. They think we’re gouging consumers. Prices can’t come down. The cost of production can’t come down. It’s what it costs to farm the land here. An agricultural consultant told me that in California they get 30 tons of strawberries to the acre (because of their climate) but here we can only hope for 2 -3 tons per acre. Not only is the climate better in places like California and Mexico but also farm worker wages are much, much lower.

Many people have a romantic notion of the life of a farmer. What would you say to them?

I would say there absolutely is romance in farming. There’s nothing more beautiful than harvesting kale in the morning when there’s fresh dew on the leaves, or more delicious than eating a carrot just pulled from the earth. It’s a hugely meaningful way of life. But there are also no shortages of challenges.

People reading your book and contemplating a change of career to farming, what should they know?

I went into farming in my mid-twenties. I didn’t apprentice on a farm. I was at that magical time in life when you have just enough life experience to maybe succeed and also tons of blind faith in your own abilities to forge ahead without knowing what is ahead. Today, I have a family, three kids, and responsibilities. I will say you need to go into farming with your eyes wide open. Spend a year as an apprentice on a farm and make sure you pay attention to what the farmer does when they’re not in the field. Is the farmer sitting in front of the fire or playing music with friends? Often as not, the farmer is attending to other chores like keeping the accounts, or packaging, or working on their marketing.

Also I would say look at your business plan. Take the word ‘farm’ out of your thinking.  It has all kinds of emotional attachments. Look at it as a business – like opening a café or a cleaning business. Maybe call it your Edible Root Production Company or something. Look at the economy of the business. On southern Vancouver Island, it is nearly impossible to own the land for farming. Renting is more affordable and sustainable economically. And then, finally, decide if this really is the life for you before taking that leap.

I hear people – especially policy makers – saying value-added farming is the solution to the economic viability of small farmers. Would you agree?

This question gets me going. It seems that every public policy conversation turns to value-added and politicians want to throw money at consultants. I say jam making, bottling tomato sauces, and pickling beets are all fine businesses but it’s separate from farming. It won’t change the basic economies of growing food. Saying farmers need to do these thing in order to be viable is a faulty solution. It’s an easy out for politicians. The question should be how do we make basic food production viable and sustainable. The more you process food – even the best jams, sauces, and pickles are less nutritionally good for you than fresh strawberries, tomatoes, and beets— the farther away it is from eating fresh food. That bunch of grapes is better for you than that glass of wine. The challenge for us globally is that there are not enough financially sustainable farms. That means, not only for the farmer but for farm workers too, who need to be making living wages.

Are you optimistic about the future of farming on Vancouver Island?

Yes. I think the next big thing is to be able to provide the bulk of the calories on our plate from local foods—not only local vegetables and fruits but also local grains and meats. The great thing is that the topography of our land is best suited to producing food that is roughly the same proportions to what we should be eating. Our land is not flat and will never be good for industrial agriculture. Growing a little grain and grass-fed meat along with a plentiful and varied crop of vegetables and fresh caught seafood is ideally suited to a Vancouver Island diet. We can’t grow cheap food but we can grow quality food.

Once Vancouver Island produced about 70% of all the food we needed. Now the number is less than 10%.  Can we get back to that 70% level?

Definitely. It will happen. The question is, will we choose the when and the how, or will it be forced on us out of necessity due to catastrophic changes in the world. Do we wait until we have no choice and do it the hard way, or we can do it the good way with fresh tasting food and a secure and sustainable agriculture? The choice is ours.

Skillet Fried “Two Rivers” Quail Spent beer grain spicy dry rub crust, peppered Saanich squash, roasted barley risotto, thyme jus lie

This year, beer seemed to push wine off the stage as the beer dinner took over. But Victoria has always been a beer town, you say. After all, Canada’s first brewpub was started on the shores of the Inner Harbour. And recent voting in EAT’s Exceptional Eats! Reader Awards show that beer comes in top with the majority of EAT readers when asked to pick their top local tipple.

But until recently, restaurants seemed to only focus on wine when creating pairings for their special dinners. Well, one stock market crash later and times have changed. That and the exploding creativity found on the Island in developing ever more intriguing craft brews has pushed interest in beer to the forefront. And local chefs are stepping it up and creating more menus that are being paired with beer.

Some recent examples: Veneto Tapa Lounge paired with California’s Lost Coast Brewing, Sips Artisan Bistro collaborated with New York’s Brooklyn Brewery, Ottavio set-up their cheeses at Phillips Brewery, and Canoe Brewpub’s Brewhouse Dinner saw their own stellar beers featured along with a unique beer cocktail. In the New Year, look for Driftwood Brewery to team up with Bistro 28 and, on Jan 11, Sips presents the Hoyne Brewery Beer Dinner.

Most recently, Swans presented their own Brewmaster Dinner, in part to celebrate the launch of their new Double Shot Porter. Luckily I snagged an invite and one nasty early winter evening, I headed to a sold-out Wild Saffron. Wine dinners always seem to start out quiet and end up with plenty of chatter and noise. But beers dinners are loud from the get- go, as conviviality and a good time is the name of the game. Wild Saffron was no exception. There were a number of large groups, out for a great time at an amazingly good value ($39 for six courses and seven beers).

Swans brewer Andrew Tessier acted as the evening’s MC, announcing each beer and each course with a little background information. Tessier has been the brewer at Swans since 2003. (Swans Buckerfields Brewery was started in 1989.) Clearly this is a man who has found the passion of his life.

We started with beer-whipped butter, bread, and refreshing Arctic Ale, then beer-brined Sooke Farms gravlax trout salad (the Goldfish crackers were a cute touch) and Pandora Pale Ale—light, aromatic and fruity. A sturdy, toasty Oatmeal Stout accompanied a slow-braised Kindwood Farm ox tail broth and potato dumpling soup, then a pause…of burn lemon sorbetto.

Dual main courses featured first, a stunning and ballsy (who serves quail to 80 people?) skillet-fried “Two Rivers” Quail that was crusted with spicy brewery grains and matched to Swans Extra Pale Ale. Executive Chef Keith LeFevre later confided that deboning one hundred and sixty tiny quail legs might have been a tad ambitious. But it was definitely worth it, as I found this dish to be the highlight of the night. A quick word on IPAs. IPAs are trending high this year and beer drinkers can’t seem to get enough hop flavour in their glass. Swan’s IPA fit the profile with a strong hoppy flavour and aroma.

This was followed by chargrilled beef tenderloin and Scotch ale-braised pork belly matched up with Scotch Ale. This ale is deep, complex, sweet, nutty and full of a maltiness that also was a good choice for braising the pork belly.

Dessert was a smorgasbord plate of whimsical and playful desserts (root beer ice, marshmallow, lychee, mini chocolate beer bottle). The newly launched Double Shot Porter announced itself with café press aroma and a hint of chocolate. Made me sit up and take notice and it was as good as finishing a meal with a coffee.

The night ended with good byes to newly made friends, a cab ride home and a vow to attend many more beer dinners.

Wild Saffron Bistro at Swans Suite Hotel


506 Pandora Avenue,
Victoria

250-361-3310

Website

Does your typical day start with you grinding beans from one of the local coffee roasters? After breakfast, do you go for walk through downtown stopping at a kitchen store, bakery or the butcher to see what’s new? For lunch do you pop into a deli for a falafel or a bite of sopressata and Le Migneron de Charlevoix? Perhaps you are planning to take  in a cooking class later that evening and finish off the night at a bar sipping a Vieux Carre or an Otago  pinot? Does this sound like you?

EAT Magazine is looking for a dedicated food writer for our website. Preference will be given to someone who writes well in the journalistic style, takes a decent photo, is familiar with WordPress and considers himself or herself to be in the know about what’s happening in the local Victoria food scene. (NOTE: you will not be doing restaurant reviews.)

You must be interested in all things food-related from chefs to recipes to sustainability to artisan food products and have a high degree of knowledge on the subject. You must also be willing to attend and cover local food & wine events.

This is a permanent part-time web writing position that could lead to web editing duties for the right person.

Please forward a brief letter along with your resume and a sample of your writing to The Editor
*Please note: only those applicants that are short-listed will receive a reply.

Email to eatmagazineonline@gmail.com

It takes strength to skin a dogfish. Chef Dan Hayes shows how it's done. Photo by P. Bagi

Chef Dan Hayes at The London Chef

Dan Hayes has fish cred. He earned that cred by working for some of the top seafood chefs (Rick Stein, Mitchell Tonks) in the UK— gutting, scaling, skinning and cooking every known and obscure fish that was served in their London restaurants. And now Hayes is campaigning to put all the wasted fish, unintentionally caught as bycatch in the BC commercial and sport fisheries, to better use. Specifically, he is talking about the unloved dogfish, a particularly nasty-looking, difficult-to-breakdown, small shark found in west coast waters.

“Until the methods of fishing are improved, dogfish will continue to be caught and discarded as trash. They can’t be thrown back. So I say, let’s use them.”

Says Hayes, “If you want to look at sustainability, people will look at dogfish and see it’s black-listed because it’s susceptible to over-fishing, but the fact is these fish are already being caught in the commercial fishery and are dead. Until the methods of fishing are improved, dogfish will continue to be caught and discarded as trash. They can’t be thrown back. So I say, let’s use them.”

“it’s really, really good. It’s an excellent fish.”

British Columbians aren’t eating all these dogfish and Hayes has an idea as to why. “It’s not an easy fish to deal with. Possibly, one of the main reasons that dogfish isn’t utilized is it’s not salmon, it’s not halibut—you can’t just slap it on a grill. It’s quite hard to prepare. You have to skin it and peel it, but once you get there, you’re fine.”

In the UK, dogfish is known as Huss or Rock Salmon. They are often used in fish ‘n’ chips. “It stays very moist,” says Hayes, “while halibut can dry out during frying.” I watch as Hayes demonstrates how to clean and prepare dogfish. Although tricky to work with (“you need to know its anatomy”), once the fillets are prepped you have a beautiful, fresh fish that resembles a long, white with an almost pinkish tinge, eel.

Hayes is cooking two of his favourite recipes using dogfish for me—the first is his take on a British-style fish fry; the other is an Italian-inspired, dogfish osso buco. When I taste the results, I’m impressed. The fish is delicious—soft, delicate and moist—and I’m amazed we don’t eat more of it.

“I think the important thing to remember about using dogfish is we aren’t cubing up rubbish and trying to make the most of it; it’s really, really good. It’s an excellent fish.”

• Buy it at Satellite Fish Co Ltd – 2550 Beacon Ave, Sidney, BC, 250-656-2642. Call ahead to find out when the boats are coming in. Or watch the London Chef website for upcoming classes.

Dogfish Osso Buco

First published in the July/August 2008 issue of EAT

With High Country Bison poised to make their excellent, free range bison available in BC, I felt this article is worth a revisit.

~

Rancher Tom Olson is a man with a mission: he wants to restore the prairie to its original state of wild, native grasses and roaming bison herds. Photo by Gary Hynes

I’m bumping along a wet grass track on the back of an old ATV in search of a herd of North America plains bison. I hang on tight as we thrash through rough, short grass, ford creeks and precariously climb steep embankments. Tom Olson, a top Canadian tax lawyer by profession, a bison evangelist by determination, is driving, and it’s his bison we’re off in hot pursuit of. Olson’s ranch, a four-square-mile patch of rolling Alberta high prairie south of Pincher Creek and just north of the Montana border, allows the bison to live a semi-wild existence. There are no power lines to be seen and few trees—just open range as it once was before the oil rigs, the wind farms, the beef feedlots and the Caucasian.

I have come to stark Alberta from the softer, lusher coast because I want to visit the capital of red meat. Most meat consumed in B.C. comes from Alberta ranches, and I want to find out, first-hand, if the movement to a more sustainable food life has infiltrated this dusty conservative pocket. Among all the grain-finished, well-marbled protein on the hoof, I have heard there is beef and bison being raised organically and humanely. I have also read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and know that livestock raised naturally on grass is not only healthier to eat, it is also a helleva lot better for the environment (see “Grass Is Greener,” Part One, May/June Issue).

I head first to rancher Tom Olson’s bison High Country Ranch.

I ask Olson if he has had many journalists come by. “We had a TV crew from the Discovery Channel back in 1995,” he says, “and the Calgary Sun once did a story on us, but you’re the first food journalist I’ve seen—most journalists have only been interested in the eco angle. We have had a few chefs come, though; they really wanted to see the bison up close.”

It is the ideal wintering area where warm chinooks melt the snow down to a level that the bison can get at the grass or fescue, as the local grasses are called.

Traditionally, this high plains area was the wintering ground for thousands upon thousands of bison. Come winter, Olson moves many of his 4,000 head from his other ranches (he owns three) to this high-altitude area up in the foothills of the Rockies. It is the ideal wintering area where warm chinooks melt the snow down to a level that the bison can get at the grass or fescue, as the local grasses are called. In summer, the bison migrate to lower levels and more abundant fresh-growing grass. The grasses are the key to raising bison.

Olson is fit and sun-weathered. He usually walks his ranch (about six miles) every day. (What better way to keep an eye on the grass?) Every once in a while, Olson spots a patch of grass and we stop to take a closer look. To me it looks like, well, just grass. But to Olson, it is a biosphere containing dozens of grass species that have been supporting life on the prairie for a very long time. Like a farmer surveying his land, Olson is attuned to the grass’s health, its nuances of green and beige, and all the insects and small wildlife (as well as the large – at one point we spot a grizzly on the other side of a small valley) that inhabit the grassland.

Olson explains, “I see myself as a grass farmer first. The bison don’t need brought-in food to survive. They can live wholly on the grass they find and guess what – it’s free – it only needs the sun to grow. There’s no call for expensive, oil-based fertilizers or corporate-controlled designer seeds. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The grass nourishes the bison while the bison carries the grass seed to other areas and replenishes the soils with its dung. Our native grass is fescue (Festuca saximon-Tana), and it is the foundation upon which the whole prairie ecosystem is built. Unfortunately, over the years invasive, non-native grasses have taken over. They’re not as nourishing, and they crowd out the good native species, turning the prairie into a monoculture. My goal is to return the land to its original state of native grasses.”

By now we’ve been out in the rain and cold searching for his elusive bison for more than two hours, and we’ve seen only one solitary old bull grazing off in the distance. Olson knows where they were yesterday, but because they move around so much they could be anywhere on the ranch today. We ford yet another creek while I hang on tight and try to listen to Olson rattle off facts and stories and debunk myths. “We call them bison, not buffalo, which refers to the Asian no hump,” says Olson. There are other myths, too. “Comparisons to cattle are quite incorrect. While cattle are essentially lazy and prefer not to move much, bison are quite the opposite. Unlike the sedentary cow, bison are fast, constantly on the move and cover big distances. Bison also have a strong social structure comprised of families.”

As we continue our exploration of the ranch, Olson points out areas where the native grasses have again taken hold. He’s proud that he’s been able to accomplish this. We head for higher ground to see if we can spot the herd from a knoll. Finally, we come up over a rise and there they are—a magnificent sight—reminiscent of an old Cowboy and Indian Hollywood film, but better. Bulls, cows and calves are strung out along the rise. As we pull close, they look at us, curious but unafraid. They’re huge; some weigh as much as 2,000 pounds. A couple of protective bulls start to meander toward us, and Olson says we’d better back off a bit. I take my pictures and we leave.

Later that evening we dine on bison tenderloin with a sauce of Auchentoshan single malt, chocolate and local saskatoon berries at the Lamp Post Dining Room in the historic Kilmorey Lodge in Waterton Lakes National Park. It is tender like beef but different—slightly sweet tasting, quite lean and mildly gamey yet with a clean flavour. I’d call it true. Eaten so close to the source it seems so right—in harmony with it surroundings.

Returning to the coast, I go over what I’ve seen and learned. Southern Alberta is a vast bioregion that has yet to be ruined and as Canadians we should demand that this precious land be kept as it is and protected. I’ve been impressed by Tom Olson’s determination to save the plains bison. Bison is the perfect meat animal: wild, sustainable and living off the sun and the grass, with incredibly strong immune systems. Unlike most cattle, bison stay outside all of their three-to-four year life, all the while living off the native grasses.

Olson’s High Country Bison  403.974.3425

Photo by Rebecca Wellman from the book Island Wineries of British Columbia by Gary Hynes. Published by Touchwood Editions

This chilled gazpacho from the Masthead Restaurant in Cowichan Bay harmonizes Spain with Vancouver Island time by using heirloom tomatoes, organic garlic, and fresh basil. Such a refreshing dish begs for Ortega. The wine’s suggested sweetness provides a suitable contrast to the tomato’s acids while partnering with the sweet, soft roasted garlic. Or say Olé with a rosado (rosé). Though rosé hasn’t quite the flavour interest, gazpacho and rosé are guaranteed to cool you down and perk you up on a hot August day. From the book “Island Wineries of British Columbia“.

Recommended wine: Ortega | Alternative: Rosé

 Serves 4 to 6

2 bulbs garlic

Olive oil, for rubbing on garlic

4 large ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 red pepper, seeded, white pith

removed, and coarsely chopped

1 medium-sized cucumber,

peeled, seeded, and diced

1 small red onion, coarsely chopped

11/2 tsp (7.5 mL) smoked paprika

1 small dried chipotle pepper,

softened in boiling water for

about 10 minutes and drained

11/2 tsp (7.5 mL) roasted cumin seeds

11/2 tsp (7.5 mL) salt

1 tsp (5 mL) black pepper

1 tsp (5 mL) fresh thyme

Small handful of fresh basil leaves

Juice of 1 lemon

Juice of 1 lime

1/4 cup (125 mL) dry white wine

⅓ cup (80 mL) olive oil

1 tsp (5 mL) Worcestershire sauce

24 oz (3 cups [750 mL]) tomato juice (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375F. Trim off the tops of the garlic bulbs. Rub lightly with oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Roast for 45 minutes, or until the cloves are soft when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife. Squeeze the garlic from the cloves. Place all the ingredients, except the tomato juice (if using), in a blender and pureÅLe until the texture is between chunky and smooth. Chill for 2 to 4 hours. Add tomato juice, if needed, to reach desired consistency. Adjust seasonings to taste.

To serve, pour soup into chilled bowls and top with your choice of chopped caper berries, island che`vre, roasted hazelnuts, or tortilla chips, and maybe a couple of grilled spot prawns or Qualicum Bay scallops.

 Editor’s Tip: Using juicy heirloom tomatoes may negate the need to add tomato juice. Yellow and orange tomatoes make a marvelous gazpacho but are lower in acid. A few additional squeezes of lime will add some zip. For a milder, hotter, or smokier gazpacho, adjust the seasonings accordingly.

The kitchen crew at Cibo. Massimo Bottura is 4th from the left and to his right is Neil Taylor. Photo courtesy of Cibo

Last weekend I was in Vancouver as an invited guest for a special dinner at Cibo Trattoria. I love the down-to-earth cooking at Cibo and Chef Neil Taylor never fails to impress. But this dinner was very different. For two nights, the Cibo kitchen was taken over by Italian Chef Massimo Bottura for a taste of Euro cooking as high culture.

Bottura is considered one of the world’s top 50 chefs and is known for his eccentric flavour combinations and scientific approach to cooking. By the end of the evening— seven courses later—I had tasted: shaved fresh truffles and an intense sea urchin concentrate with blueberries; a morel stuffed with headcheese floating in an acidified veal broth; a green mystery vegetable simply called Chlorophyll; and a Sicilian granita that pitted briny capers against bergamot and coffee jelly. Was it provocative? You bet your molecular gastronomy ass. Did it taste good? Good is subjective and harder to pin down.

There were no bones to gnaw on, spicy salsa to slather, or garlicky spaghetti to slurp. But there was plenty to think about, to talk about, and to simply gawk at and appreciate the inventiveness of his culinary design. This is cooking for the brain rather that the body. Intellectual rather than lusty.

A Reef on the Adriatic Sea - seaweed, mussels, clams and black squid ink

To help us better understand what we were about to eat, Bottura introduced each dish with a story. The truffle/sea urchin/blueberry dish was a tribute to southern Italy’s migrant workers who have to take a 1000-kilometer train ride north to find work. The single stuffed morel alone in a bowl of clear broth was Bottura’s untraditional take on the traditional cuisine of his home region, Emilia-Romagna (which typically features comforting stuffed pastas in meat broths).

The Emilian Barbecue was Bottura’s attempt to present a safer barbecue. He explained that grilling meat creates carcinogens and so he would cook veal tenderloin that would replicate the flavour of the grill but without the fire and char of the grill. To achieve this Bottura first made some ash* by baking vegetables down to a fine powder, which he then used to coat a piece of veal tenderloin to simulate the look of grilled meat. Then he sealed the veal in a plastic bag and immersed it in a temperature controlled water bath (sous vide technique). No fire, no foul. The resulting veal was extremely tender and interesting but I missed the visceral satisfaction of sizzled fat. (*Primarily used in cheese making, edible ash is one of the hot culinary trends this year.)

At times during the evening, in a few of his accompaniments we caught the occasional glimpse of an earthier version of Bottura. Everyone at our table fell in unconditional love with his creamed olive oil potatoes—smooth, light, rich, luxurious, potato-y. If you’re a food lover, you’ve probably swooned over, heard about, or tried to make, Joël Robuchon’s pommes purée—considered the ultimate mashed potatoes. Bottura did Robuchon one better – and that alone made the night completely worth it. I also loved Bottura’s homemade balsamic vinegar and his apple mostardo that went with the ash-coated veal tenderloin; his perfect risotto – all creamy and al dente that came with the truffle/sea urchin/blueberry; and his deconstructed Tiramisu which, with the help of foam, coffee gelatin and amaretto powder, turned a tired cliché into luscious dish of contrasting textures and flavours.

Trenitalia Milano-Bari: 1000 kilometer risotto - vialone nano rice, veal juice, beet concentrate, blueberries, shaved black truffle and West Coast sea urchins

Would I choose Bottura’s cooking for my last meal on earth? I don’t think so. But as tablemate Alexandra Gill speculated, it was a bit like eating haute couture. I agree. I love the spectacle of high fashion and seeing the parade of inspired ideas but it’s not going to be what I wear on a daily basis.

Still, one day Bottura’s cuisine might inspire chefs toiling in the trenches the way another European, Ferran Adrià, once did. Who knows, the next time you order a grilled T-bone it just might come covered in ash. All in all, an extraordinary evening.

A special note of thanks must go to Cibo general manager David Fert for not only making this astonishing dinner possible who, together with Cru Wine Selections, found and paired amazing wines for the dinner.

Cibo Trattoria, 900 Seymour St., Vancouver, BC

604.602.9570

Website

See below for the menu and wines.

The Menu

VIAGGIO in ITALIA (Journey to Italy)

A Reef on the Adriatic Sea

-seaweed, mussels, clams and black squid ink

Fiano di Avellino 2010 Terradora 

West to East: from Romagna to Emilia

-       local Pacific rim oysters, lemongrass, leeks and shallots

Gaia & Rey 2008

Trenitalia Milano-Bari: 1000 kilometer risotto

-       vialone nano rice, veal juice, beet concentrate, blueberries, shaved black truffle and West Coast sea urchins

Barrua 2008 Isola dei Nuraghi 

Il Ritorno: coming home again

-       Cibo’s copa di testa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_cheese) and morels in acidified veal broth

Vina Nobile di Montepulciana 2006 Grandi Annate Avignonesi

Emilian Barbecue

-       veal tenderloin in aromatic ashes with Villa Manodori traditional balsamic vinegar (http://ww10.katefind.info/villa-manodori-balsamic-vinegar), creamed olive oil potatoes, Campanine apple mostarda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostarda) and chlorophyll

Barbaresco 2006 Gaja

Sicilian Granite

-       almond milk, capers, candied bergamot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergamot_orange) and coffee jelly

A Very Messy Tiramisu

-       coffee meringue, yolk and mascarpone foam, mascarpone mousse, coffee gelato, amaretto powder and Modenese saba

Passito di Pantelleria Ben Rye 2008 Donnafugata

credit: Gary Hynes

Recipe and image by Gary Hynes

When I cook, it’s rarely precise. Each time I make a dish it comes out slightly different because I hate to measure ingredients. Even the method changes slightly depending on how I feel that day. This would be a disastrous approach in a restaurant, where consistency is of prime importance, but at home, cooking spontaneously with the ingredients on hand at the moment, it seems to work out just fine (most of the time). I have an idea of how I want the dish to turn out and taste and work towards that goal.

With this in-season soup, I started with fresh, English peas I found at one market and a small handful of last-of-the-season, wild, morel mushrooms I had found at another. These purchases happened to coincide with the sprouting of the tender scapes—those beautiful curls at the top of the tall stalks on the two rows of garlic I overwintered in my garden.

To me, a good soup is one of the greatest ways to extract and savour the flavours from delicate ingredients. Why not put these three, early summer tastes together in one bowl?

Here’s the recipe (such as it is):

Butter as needed

4 cups homemade chicken stock (from a good antibiotic-free chicken) defatted.

2 lbs fresh English peas in their pods, shelled

a good-sized handful of wild morel mushrooms, coarsely chopped

about a dozen garlic scapes, roughly chopped

1 small onion, minced (about a ¼ cup)

salt & pepper to taste

sour cream or crème fraiche (for the garnish)

chives, clipped with scissors over the bowls of soup

Put a couple of  small spoonfuls of butter in a pan over low heat, add the onion and sweat until soft. Heat the chicken stock in a medium soup pot and add the cooked onion, the peas and the scapes. Simmer until just barely cooked.

Put another couple of spoonfuls of butter in that first pan again and briefly cook the morels over low heat and set aside.

Purée the chicken stock mixture in a food processor until smooth. Do this in small batches so the hot liquid doesn’t overflow the machine (if you want a really silky texture, sieve the purée manually through a food mill). Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, reheat the soup gently and add the cooked mushrooms. Serve in bowls with dollops of sour cream and clippings of chives.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as an appetizer.

photo by Gary Hynes

Victoria, BC, May 5, 2011 — Moss Street Market is excited to announce the start of its 20th season offering local farmers, artisans, crafters, bakers, cooks, musicians, bodyworkers and more a place to exchange their goods and services in a friendly neighbourhood atmosphere. The Market supports a sustainable local economy and while providing opportunities for outdoor fun and connection with family, friends and neighbours.

The Moss Street Market began as a dream of a local farmer named Morris Lamrock when he attended a farmers market in Eugene, Oregon and hoped to create a similar market in Victoria. He joined other local farmers Mary Alice Johnson and Tina Fraser in brain storming and planning. Their idea was to bring community together in an atmosphere of fun where local farmers, foodies and arts and crafts people could sell their wares directly to the consumer. They felt the links in the community would grow stronger with the one on one contact between producer and consumer and educate all of us through communication and mutual support.

Still going strong and staying true to it’s roots, the Moss Street Market is proud of it’s “Make It, Bake It, Grow It” philosophy. All products at the market are made and sold directly by the producer. The Market maintains it’s community neighborhood flavour by keeping a careful balance of craft, food, farm and service vendors, complimented by folksy musicians, special event days and of course the annual Moss Street Paint-In. With a little something for everyone, Moss Street Market is a favourite of its Fairfield neighbors and the larger Victoria community. Many Victorians eagerly await the arrival of the Market each spring to have a chance to buy direct from producers, whether it’s farm produce, a tasty lunch or handmade handicrafts.

Here’s the details….

When? every Saturday from May to October from 10am to 2pm

Where? at the corner of Moss St and Fairfield Rd

What? Victoria’s favourite public market and a great place to meet local farmers,

buy local food and crafts, and connect with your community

See you at the Market!

www.mossstreetmarket.com