Vancouver

Peach and raspberry streusel cake

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

The reality of how little time we have left is starting to hit us now that Month 7 is upon us.

I have not been making much food at home because suddenly there is urgency to experiencing every patio and new restaurant, or to savouring the experience of doing absolutely nothing which mostly involves take-out or huge containers of fresh berries and ice cream and marathon sessions of 30 Rock. The laundry piles up and the bathtub stays grubby. But that seems to be the case regardless of the distraction.

There have been bursts of productivity in spite of us both, and everything seems to be coming up Emily. We were despairing the lack of reasonably priced but not disgusting two-bedroom apartments in the city while the walls in our current apartment began to close in on us when a spacious, many-windowed two-bedroom opened up in our own building, just across the hall. We move in October 1, so for the first time we don’t have to rush to pack, and we even have time to paint the new place to our liking.

At long last, we’re having ourselves a summer, but not a painfully hot one – outside the temperature has seldom exceeded 27 degrees (Celsius). Which has meant long afternoons in the sun, eating cherries and watching the barges in Burrard Inlet or feeding the birds tasty bites of fresh doughnut on the boardwalk at Granville Island, or cool evenings picnicking on Jericho Beach or walking to Cambie Street for the good tacos (and some lecherous staring at the beautiful blue-eyed taco man).

The sun is bright but the breeze is comfortable, and this does not feel like the same city I dream about running away from in the winter after 40 consecutive days of rain.

And, most importantly, still no stretch marks. I am so slick with lotion and cocoa butter that I’d be lethal on a Slip ‘n Slide. You keep your fingers crossed good and tight for me.

All this going and doing and lotion application has kept me out of the kitchen most of the time, and I can’t say that I mind. We eat a lot of 10-minutes-or-less dinners, a lot of berries in cream, and a refreshing number of salads. I like to think that summer’s slacking is an excuse to go out and make the stories we tell all winter, that somewhere in the season’s casual outdoor feasts there is something important, or, at the very least, something to dream on.

Like pink wine and sunshine in Grace’s wine glasses: important.

The aroma of a trout Paul that caught as it cooks with lemon and dill on the barbecue: important.

The chewy texture of oatmeal sourdough made by Grace from a starter with natural yeast: important.

A simple meal shared on a blanket on the beach: important.

People you are fond of in good moods and summer clothes: important.

Eating dessert outside at sunset: important.

Cake and peaches and raspberries and brown sugar topping: important.

You can make this now, and eat it on the beach as the sweet finale to a picnic, or you can use whatever fruit you’ve frozen and make in the winter when you’re cold and missing the smell of the ocean and that flattering summer evening light. I made this with peaches and raspberries, but it’s based on a recipe that calls for blueberries. It would be beautiful with blackberries.

Peach and raspberry streusel cake

(Adapted from the Fannie Farmer Baking Book)

Cake

  • 1/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 lemon, zest and juice (this is wonderful with Meyer lemon if you can get one)
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 1 cup diced peaches
  • 1 cup raspberries

Topping:

  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4 cup butter, cold
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 1 1/2-quart baking dish.

Beat butter and sugar until thoroughly combined, then add egg, vanilla, lemon zest and juice. Mix.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture with milk, and beat until smooth. Spread evenly in baking dish.

Top batter with fruit.

In another bowl (so many dishes! Fun!), mix sugar and flour. Add butter and vanilla, and squish between your fingers until a dry, crumbly crumb has formed. Sprinkle over fruit.

Bake for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Serve warm.

 

Strawberries.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

In France when Grace and I were there, it was strawberry season. At the market in Lyon, I could barely choose from three or four different kinds, and eventually settled on a container of tiny fraise du bois, which smell like those sparkly red strawberry marshmallows from the penny candy bin and taste like the concentrated musk of spring, like dew and flower petals and the nectar sucked off clover tips, and like deep, dirty red – if a colour can have a taste, those thumbnail-sized ruddy berries were vermillion.

Before we left, Grace plotted out the best places for us to eat, and I nodded happily along as she prattled off the names of places we would go to in the France that belongs to David Lebovitz, Dorie Greenspan, and Clotilde Dusoulier. We followed them all over Paris and Lyon to markets and bistros and crêperies, devouring as much as we could.

In many of those places, there were strawberries, and wherever there were strawberries a meal felt French, like a postcard picture of how France has always been in some memory you may or may not have but know just the same. I wish my story could begin with some treacly revelation about how “I found myself in Paris,” but myself and I have been familiar far longer than is noteworthy; you might not be impressed, but I’ve been this way all along. It’s truer and far more romantic to say that “I found strawberries in Paris.”

The best place for strawberries was a restaurant called Spring. It’s an expensive little restaurant, and Grace made a reservation online before we left and then never heard back from them, and she worried that we would not have a table for lunch. She attempted to confirm the reservation, in French, which proved inconclusive. We decided to meet there at the scheduled hour after wandering separately in the morning as we had disparate destinations (mine involved the purchase of seeds to one day grow fraise du bois of my own), and though my inability to read a map pulled me the opposite direction a long way down Rue de Rivoli, we were both able to make it in time.

At Spring we had a perfect meal – cool tuna belly with chilled asparagus, sorrel, and tonnato sauce; cold white wine; crisp fried anchovies; masterfully seared filet of acorn-fed, bushy-banged black pork with grilled wild fennel; five cheeses, tiny bites but more than enough to know everything important about – or at least to imagine in detail – five different terroirs; chocolate sorbet with cocoa nibs and white pepper; pistachio cream stuffed between two homemade chocolate wafers. And strawberries, orangey red and topped with a dome of sweetened crème fraîche and dusted with ground pistachios and sugar. They could have served it in a bucket and I still wouldn’t have had enough, and I’ve been dreaming of those berries ever since.

When we returned to Vancouver, almost nothing was in season yet. I’d have to wait a month, at least, for the first berries of summer. More than six weeks have passed since we’ve been back, and finally this past weekend I got my fix. Tracy and I made a date and drove to Westham Island, to Bissett Farms, and picked as many strawberries we could in one afternoon.

It’s been chilly for an unseasonably long time on the coast, so the berries are more tart than I was expecting. This year you may want to sweeten your crème fraîche more than you might otherwise. To recreate my dish, select as many small strawberries as you can fit into four handfuls. Wash and hull the berries, and put them into four ramekins or parfait cups. Stack them jauntily. This is important.

Sweeten one cup of crème fraîche with one to two tablespoons of honey and a drop of orange flower water, if you’ve got it. Grind freshly roasted pistachios, about 1/3 cup, with a heaping tablespoon of sugar in a food processor. Spoon crème fraîche over strawberries, then sprinkle each serving with as much pistachio sugar as you feel like. Imagine Paris.

 

 

Avocado waffles.

~ wellfedemily ~ 14 Comments

Breakfast is a challenge around here. We have never been very good at morning meals, or at getting up on time, or at being nice to each other before 10:00 a.m. It’s no longer possible to just skip breakfast in favour of a latte on the way to work or whatever we’re doing, because Nick needs to eat right after his morning insulin shot. I’m not a morning person, and most mornings it’s a challenge to come up with something more interesting than oatmeal, and if I have to eat another bowl of mush I am going to ugly-cry until someone else volunteers to do the morning feeding around here.

The weekends offer a bit of relief, because he can eat at any point within about a 90-minute period and no one has to leave for work at 8:00 a.m. A weekend breakfast must make up for the previous five days’ worth of hot glop. Since I’m the one making breakfast, that means waffles, which everyone knows are the greatest of all the breakfast foods. These ones have avocado in them – the taste of avocado in the finished product is very light, with a buttery sweetness, and goes magnificently with maple syrup.

This recipe is based on one I like for plain old buttermilk waffles from the Saveur Cooks Authentic American cookbook (which is completely worth its purchase price if you only make the fried chicken).

Avocado waffles

(Serves four)

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 tbsp. cornmeal
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 3 eggs, separated
  • 1/2 cup mashed avocado (about one small avocado)
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tbsp. honey

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.

Combine egg yolks, avocado, buttermilk, and honey in a blender, and puree until smooth. Set aside.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Combine avocado mixture with dry ingredients, mixing until just combined, then add one-quarter of the egg whites to the mix. Fold batter into remaining egg whites until what results is a fluffy pale green batter cloud.

Cook in waffle maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Serve with maple syrup and fresh fruit.

Salmon ‘n Bannock.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Salmon ‘n Bannock is a restaurant on Broadway between Granville and Oak (a longish stretch, but I can never remember the smaller streets in between), and it’s been there about a year and the whole time I have wanted to go, but for whatever reason had not. Salmon ‘n Bannock promised wild local salmon and game, and bannock, which is something I have loved since I was a kid.

My parents had friends, one of whom was aboriginal, who introduced us to bannock, that gloriously fried bread spread with jam or golden syrup. I was hooked. But when they moved away, so did my bannock connection. I tried making it a few times, but as the years passed, I forgot what it tasted like and it never turned out good enough to trigger any sort of nostalgia. The bannock at Salmon ‘n Bannock was a little more refined than I remember, but tasted just about the same.

We finally went because there was chatter about the place on the Twitters last week, and suddenly I remembered how badly I wanted to go.

We went with Paul, which worked out excellently, as we were able to try a good selection of things from the menu.

The first thing we tried after the bannock was the arctic prosciutto roll, which came stuffed with asparagus and Oka cheese. If I had one complaint about the place, it’s that the food wasn’t entirely seasonal, but generally that’s only of concern to me. We were delighted these. The prosciutto was made from muskox, and the Oka was creamy. It was a salty little bite, but a good one.

We tried the clam fritters and sockeye lox with cream cheese next, and both were delicious. I didn’t expect the clam fritters to look the way they did, but was pleased because one fritter offered four bites. They were soft, gently fried, and served with a caper-filled tartar sauce. Always a good thing. And the lox was so good I forsook my original entree, which would have been the bison tenderloin, in favour of a club sandwich with more smokey salmon.

Paul had the seafood stew, which was filled with clams, scallops, and salmon, and Nick had the seared duck breast, because Nick always has the seared duck breast.

The food was simple, but expertly crafted. There were a few items on the menu that I’d like to go back to try – the deer stew was one, and I’d love to see how they prepare their salmon fillets. In the spring, they offer fiddleheads for a price that makes me wonder why I would ever buy them and make them at home.

I was thoroughly pleased with this place, from the menu, which was small but full of good stuff, to the prices, which were more than reasonable. The service was helpful and friendly, but not intrusive. And they serve Lucky Lager, which tickled the two-thirds of our party that dined in plaid flannel and baseball caps. All in all, a delightful dinner, and a place we’d all go back to. If you’re in Vancouver, give it a try.

Salmon ‘n Bannock
#7 – 1128 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC
604.568.8971

Today I went downtown to try and get a spot on a new Food Network show.

~ wellfedemily ~ 8 Comments

For the past few weeks on Food Network Canada, they’ve been advertising a new show called Recipe to Riches. There was an open casting call, but you could apply ahead of time for a spot, and I got one. They liked my recipe for tamale pie, and I was invited to come in for 7:30 a.m. I picked an outfit and made the dish twice, once for practice and the second time for the show. I brought Nick, and my parents came too.

I spent most of the morning in two waiting rooms, the first for pre-registered applicants, and the second for plating, mic-fitting, and the final queue. There I got to chat with a lot of really interesting people, some who’d flown from the Island or from other western provinces just for the audition. Their dishes ranged from brownies to tomato tarts to chicken pot pie, and each was nervous and excited and just really glad to be there. Always a lady, I forgot I was wearing a dress and mooned them all twice when I bent over. Thankfully, it was a full-bum-underwear kind of day.

After three and a half hours, my dish was heated and I got to plate. It smelled good, but I was nervous about the spiciness of the dish; I began to worry that there was something wrong with my tongue, because I like everything with so much zing. It was too late to fret heavily over it, and I was asked to talk about my dish on camera. I assembled my dish and was given directions, and then waited a little bit more. It was my first time auditioning for something, and I wasn’t sure what to do. People kept saying “just be yourself,” probably because they don’t know how annoying I can be.

I talked to someone in the hallway before the set, and she told me they were only going to see 80 people that day, despite the large number of applicants and walk-ins. I felt special.

I helped wheel the cart carrying my dish down to the set and was shown where to stand. I was given my cue, and when they called me I presented my dish to the three judges, one of whom was Laura Calder who’s cooking show I like. She said she liked my shoes. I felt special. She liked my dish, and the other judges liked it as well, but it was too spicy and they thought it would be more marketable as a vegetarian dish. “Refine the spice and try again next year,” they told me, and I was disappointed (oh, delusions of grandeur – why always so seductive?!) but their feedback was useful and I will come back next year, wiser and with an even better recipe. I am grateful that they called me to try out this year, and had fun just being there.

So, there you go. I tried something new today, and if nothing but a new dish comes out of it I still think it was worthwhile. So, stay tuned. I’m going to get right to work on a less fiery, more vegetably tamale pie, and then I’m going to tell you all about it. And, of course, I’ll try again for a spot next year. In the meantime, if you’ve got suggestions for the new version of the dish, let me know. And good luck to you if you’re planning to attend the Toronto or Montreal auditions! I want to know if you go, and how it went!

And for now, don’t worry. I’m not sulking or crying or being unpleasant except for the comfort eating. If you need me, I’ll be sitting around in my footie pajamas watching cooking shows with the cat.

Winter in the garden.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

We’ve neglected our garden over the past couple of months, as snow fell in November and it rains a lot here and it’s dark when we get home from work so there’s never an opportune time to check in with it and see how things are going, and if anything there is still growing. We planted some turnips and kholrabi just as summer was ending, which according to the seed packets ought to have been ready for harvest three months ago, but our chances to go back were few and far between.

Also, I wanted to plant garlic, which takes nine months to grow.

Odd to see it now, after so many months, looking so spindly and decayed. Approaching our little plot, I was certain that everything would be dead by now.

For the most part, our plot is full of weeds and rot. But on closer inspection, that wasn’t all there was.

Our little turnips, which we’d given up on, had grown to the size of golf balls, pink and purple and white. We thought we hadn’t planted them deep enough – we hadn’t – and assumed when we last visited that they probably wouldn’t grow. Because we took a whole lot of chard out of there at the same time, we elected to leave them in place on the off chance that they’d survive a little longer – I planned to go back for them and harvest the greens.

A few carrots survived the cold and the snow and the rain and the rot – I pulled them out from beside the kholrabi, which didn’t make it.

I thought about turning them into something on the stove or in the oven, but the joy of eating something so red and earthy practically fresh from the ground (I brought them home and washed them first) in January was too good to pass up. I ate a few of them whole, still wet from the tap. It was like Christmas, but without the bloat.

We pulled some weeds and cleared a spot for the garlic, and we might have actually dug deep enough for it to grow properly.

Then we planted a row of individual cloves of the stuff. A worm showed up to say hello.

And then Nick buried them all, and we skipped home gleefully. Well, at least I did.

So there you go. The soil is soft, and the garden is still alive, and there are happy little worms there prepping the ground for us for spring. And in the meantime? This.

I’ve had enough winter now.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

This morning when I woke up the cat was on edge and chattering and chirping at the window because OHMYGOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!, which is what she must have meant. Large white chunks were falling where birds usually fly, and she was not prepared. And then I had to tell Nick about the mess, and soon the two of them were at it, chittering away about the whiteness and the terrible, slippery bleakness of it all.

I checked my email four times, but work wasn’t cancelled.

I dressed accordingly.

And there was a line at Starbucks, which I go to because there isn’t anything better around. At least there wasn’t, and thank goodness for stupid busy Starbucks because I finally went into this other coffee place that’s a few steps past my bus stop, and holy crap, they had Nutella hot chocolate.

Sprinkled with 70% dark Callebaut chocolate, which is hand-shaved daily.

And served by the friendliest coffee shop employee I’ve ever encountered at 8:10 in the morning.

I took a picture, but there was another person in the place so I felt like I had to rush, so it’s blurry.

The place is called Dose Espresso Bar, and it’s on Broadway and Granville, and if you’re in the neighbourhood, please go. Independent coffee shops are a rarity this end of Broadway and based on the hot chocolate alone I insist you frequent this one. Frequently.

When I got to work, the place was covered in snow, and quiet. It’s a pretty place when snow falls, before a day’s footprints turn the fluffy white stuff into sloppy brown slush.

My face is still heavy with a cold I can’t stop complaining about, so my friend Dan and I went for pho for lunch.

Dan was kind enough to not say anything about my runny nose and my inability to eat long noodles like a lady. The soup was hot and soothing, and with a few squirts of sriracha was just spicy enough. I practically inhaled the whole bowl, and we gossiped and Dan told me what real winters are like in other parts of Canada.

Intolerable, from the sounds of it.

The day never got much brighter than it was when I rode the bus to work this morning, but in small doses, perhaps this winter business isn’t so bad. I’m done with it, but if I have to endure it longer, which Environment Canada says is pretty much a guarantee, good hot chocolate and spicy soup will make it somewhat more bearable.

Catching up, the 3-Day Novel, and Sushi Shelter 101.

~ wellfedemily ~ 5 Comments

You know how sometimes a week or more goes by and then you start to get these friendly reminders about that blog of yours that you enjoy writing that you’ve been neglecting because you’re busy lately and you’ve not just been neglecting the Internet but also your whole life? This week we actually ate a meal of bacon and deep-fried cheese bread. I’ve been totally wrapped up in work fatigue – the two weeks before school starts at a university are busy and insane and frustrating and holy hell why didn’t I plan my time around going to bed early and getting up on time?! – and my own whiny brand of anxiety over a little contest I’m participating in this weekend.

What contest, you might ask?

For some reason I thought it would be fun to participate in the 3-Day Novel Contest, in which I spend the Labour Day weekend on lock down, pounding out a novel in 72 hours. Not only that, but I paid $50 to do it, so, given my temperament and inability to function after a certain hour in the evening, I’m either an idiot or a masochist but it’s too early to tell which. I’m thinking of taking the Hunter S. Thompson approach to writing this thing, so if you find me bug-eyed and jabbering incoherently, clutching a quart of cheap dark rum and nine tubes of pickle-flavoured Pringles in the garishly lit aisles of Shoppers Drug Mart at 3:00 in the morning on Sunday, just hand me a sack of grapefruits and a hunting knife and point me in the direction of home. I’ll draw a map on my arm, just in case.

These long, meandering, seemingly pointless paragraphs do not bode well for success in this competition, and if this was to be practice, I’d have failed. The point of this blog post is a weird little restaurant called Sushi Shelter 101.

Last night we met up with a friend of Nick’s from work, Aaron, and went 90 minutes away from home to Port Coquitlam and this Sushi Shelter 101 place. Odd name, and I got the sense that the decor was themed along the lines of a luxury fall-out shelter. In the nuclear/zombie apocalypse, a hideaway like Sushi Shelter 101 is where I want to be. Even better if they bring me a steady supply of Ocean Delight, which is a deep-fried crab cheese thing that I am devastated I don’t have right now.

They have different things here, and Aaron classified it as non-traditional, modern Japanese. The Red Bamboo and White Bamboo were two things I can no longer live without – tender, beautiful cuts of salmon and tuna wrapped in nori, tempura-battered, and then quickly deep-fried, rarely have I had such a succulent bite of fish, so perfectly barely cooked.

I wish every single picture I took wasn’t a horrendous mess of blur, but the lighting was dim, and for it we were all infinitely more attractive. The beer also helped.

OH! And it would qualify as neglect if I didn’t tell you about the oyster, which isn’t on the menu, but which you can ask for with a wink and they’ll know what you mean.

The oyster comes on a tin-foil pedestal, cut into bite-size chunks and gently fried, then reassembled and topped with Japanese mayo, shredded seaweed, and something else which I couldn’t put my finger on, but which I need you to go and taste in case you can solve the mystery. There were also California rolls covered in peanut sauce, which was odd but good and I don’t know what to make of it yet. There were these vegetable croquettes, and this chicken yakitori … there was so much. And it wasn’t expensive.

The service is unparalleled – the nice waitress would ask if she could remove every single scraped-clean plate, and she would bring special treats if for some reason the chef thought we were waiting too long. We were gifted a plate of vegetarian spring rolls, a small bottle of warm sake, a plate of lamb maki, and a dish of mango ice cream that had the purest mango taste I’ve had in a dessert ever. If you are in Port Coquitlam for any reason at all, make a trip and go to this place. I am sure that you will come out of the whole experience equally as gut-busted full and delightfully perplexed as I did.

So, yeah. Sushi Shelter 101. Do it. And wish me luck in my contest. With any luck, I will win, become a famous author, achieve that rare combination of literary acclaim and obscene wealth, and then open my dream restaurant, the opening of which you are all invited to.