Food Matters – Top Chef Canada Preview

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Don Genova
Top Chef Canada

*update* My full 13-minute conversation with Top Chef Canada contestant Dan Hudson of Hudson’s on First in Duncan is now available for your listening pleasure. Click here to listen to the mp3 version.

The third season of Top Chef Canada begins next Monday night, and it will feature, for an unknown number of weeks, a chef from the Cowichan Valley. I profiled the chef on this week’s edition of Food Matters on All Points West. 

I love Top Chef Canada, but keep in mind that this is reality-based TV, so the production company records an awful lot of video and can then manipulate the video to create story lines and build, or destroy, the characters of the participants, which is probably why most people like to watch it. Now, I like to see some drama in the kitchen as much as anyone. But, I’m not much of a fan of other reality-based TV shows. What I really like about this one is that to a large extent you really have to know how to cook to win the title. I watched Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen for one season and if I were a restaurant owner I really wouldn’t have wanted any of those so-called chefs running my kitchen. But the chefs on Top Chef Canada actually have decent credentials and they really have to cook at the top of their game to win.

Courtesy Food Network CanadaCourtesy Food Network Canada

Representing the hopes of Vancouver Island this year is Dan Hudson. (I think on the show they are calling him ‘Daniel’.) His restaurant is Hudson’s on First, on First Street in downtown Duncan. It just opened last November, but I’ve known Dan for a few years. He’s 30 years old, from England, but he came to Canada to work in some top kitchens here. His wife is from the Cowichan Valley, so he moved to Duncan a few years ago and worked in various locations while they were planning to open their own restaurant. Dan anchors the kitchen while his wife Andrea runs the front of house. While many of us looking forward to the restaurant opening were reading Facebook updates about renovations, Dan was secretly off in Toronto filming Season 3 at the end of August. He had been all set to appear in Season 2 but just as filming was to start his mother passed away and he had to go back to England. But when Season 3 casting started, he entered again, with some help from his old boss, Dale McKay, who had won Top Chef Canada Season 1:

“I spoke with him and I think he put a good word in for me with the producers, and we talked quite a bit about what happens on the show, but even with hearing all of that it doesn’t compare to what actually happens.”

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Chef Daniel -rare day off

A lot of the advantages you get when it comes to being judged on Top Chef have to do with thinking on your feet. Dan says this was the hardest part, despite having worked in restaurants since his late teens:

“Working in a professional kitchen is strenuous at the best of times, but it is nothing like what you have to do in the TV show. They tell you what you have to do, and then…go. You have only a couple of minutes to figure out what you are going to do and then you just have to go with your gut and do it. There’s no time to second guess yourself, and even if you went there with some dishes in mind that you’d like to cook, that all goes out the window and it’s definitely a bit of a scramble at times, yeah.”

The chefs are contractually obligated to not say anything that will give away any of the results of the show before it airs, but he was able to give me a bit of  insight into the whole experience, especially when I asked him about Chef Mark McEwan. He owns an empire of restaurants and specialty shops in Toronto, and he is also the head judge on Top Chef Canada. I interviewed him a few years ago when the show was first airing, and he told me he didn’t care which chefs had the most endearing personality, or looked good, he wanted them to be able to cook. And he comes across as someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, so I asked Dan what it was like to be under his scrutiny:

“He doesn’t mess around…he doesn’t care if you are the most charismatic person around, if you are not cooking properly he will let you know. During the recording, a lot of chefs got sick, we were all living in the same house, but that didn’t matter to him. You had to work through it, he said it was just as if you came to work with a hangover, you just have to keep going, yeah, he was a badass, yeah.”

British Columbia is well-represented in Top Chef Canada Season 3. Clement Chan is from the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver and also runs a food truck on the side, Kayla Dhaliwal is originally from Victoria, but is now working in Steveston, Nicole Gomes is from Richmond, and now works in Calgary, Caitlin Hall is from Maple Ridge and is now the chef de cuisine at Pied-à-Terre restaurant in Vancouver. And Matthew Stowe grew up in Surrey and is now a product development chef for the Cactus Club Café chain. They are all quite young, but they also all have some impressive education and experience to their credit, so I’m really looking forward to see how they do.

One thing I worry about: They always have a guest line-up of celebrity judges to test the mettle of the contestants, and while the first season judges were mostly chefs and restaurateurs, this year they are really getting into people who don’t have a restaurant background, like professional wrestler Trish Stratus, comedian Russell Peters and the Real Housewives of Vancouver. To me that kind of takes away some of the credibility of the competition, but I mentioned that to Dan and he said, ‘you have to serve them and work just as hard to please them as you would any judge and anyone who walks into your restaurant.’

So there you go…I wish I could tell you more, but certainly Dan couldn’t tell me any more so we will just have to watch. The show premieres next Monday night at 6pm Pacific on Food Network Canada. If you don’t have it on cable you can watch full episodes on the Food Network website within the next day or two after each episode. 

You can also hear this column as it aired on All Points West when it is posted on this CBC Radio webpage.
 

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Food Matters – March is Nutrition Month

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Don Genova

March is Nutrition Month in Canada, and while I suppose we should be thinking about our nutrition every month, expect to be bombarded by some extra messenging as various agencies and companies use a good excuse this month to tell you what to eat.

Naming this month as Nutrition Month was an idea of the Dietitians of Canada. Now, I’m not here to knock the idea of paying attention to good nutrition, or nutritionists or dietitians, I have learned a lot from them over the years, but I’ve noticed that some of these ‘declared’ months like Colon Cancer Month or Nutrition Month can become thinly-disguised sales opportunities to sell products or books designed to fit in with whatever particular nutrition craze is out there right now.

You have to be careful to look at the source of the information. As we hit March I was sent an email from a publicity firm asking me if I wanted to talk to a popular naturopath who knew all about fibre. I was initially intrigued, but as I combed down through the email which asserted their spokesperson could tell me all about ways to get more fibre into my diet, I noticed this paragraph: Consuming a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, and whole grains is the best way to get adequate daily fibre but if adding fibre to your diet seems overwhelming, there are a number of fibre supplements available at your local health food store. Then this: Dr. Brenda Watson, is among the foremost authorities today on natural digestive care and nutrition. She is a New York Times best-selling author, celebrated PBS mainstay, and founder of ReNew Life Formulas, Inc. I’m sure if I did pick up the phone to interview Dr. Watson somehow the idea of supplements and ReNew Life Formulas would come up in the conversation.

I also worry about processed food products that play on current food fads. So right now, you will see packaging that promotes fibre content. When we found out that trans fats aren’t good for us we saw a plethora of packaging declaring ‘zero trans fats’ on the labels, even on foods that never contained trans fats to begin with. There is pomegranate in everything now, quinoa in everything now, even shampoo, various types of berries from blue to goji and remember back when the oat bran craze was on the go? So food processors seize on nutritional food studies and design ‘functional foods’ to capitalize on trends.

611vqOSLDpL Image
 

But is that a bad thing? Choosing foods that have ingredients that are supposed to be good for you to eat? Ah. Maybe those ingredients are good for you, but what about the rest of the ingredients, which may include too much sugar in various forms, highly processed wheat flour, and genetically modified ingredients like soy. I think we’re better off learning about how to get the kind of nutrients we need in their natural, unprocessed sources. I’ve been re-reading the excellent book Michael Pollan published in 2008, ‘In Defense of Food; An Eater’s Manifesto’. He reminds us that in America, the official government-sanctioned scientific advice to eat a diet lower in fat coincided with a dramatic increase in the incidence of obesity and diabetes in America. And the various food guides and food pyramids that have come out over the years have been influenced in some instances by powerful lobby groups like the beef and dairy industries. Some of the advice in Pollan’s book makes a lot of common sense. Like:

– Don’t Buy Any Food for which there is a TV commercial.

– If it has ingredients you can’t pronounce, don’t buy it. Avoid food products that make health claims.

– Shop the peripheries of the supermarket, not the middle. Although that is changing now. Traditionally all the processed foods in a supermarket were in the middle aisles, but I now notice that many renovated grocery stores are putting the produce section right by the entry doors so you can shop the good stuff first.

I do have to credit Health Canada for putting together a pretty good website called the Healthy Eating Toolbox. I have been surfing through it a bit and it has good tips on planning your grocery shopping, how to read labels, shopping with your kids and some cooking advice as well.

logo

*Update: At the beginning of this year I talked on the show about some apps that one could use to help you shop sustainably and maybe even help you lose weight. The app I chose to use to help me through some weight loss is called Lose It, it’s a free app, or you can run it on your computer and have it sync with your smart phone or tablet.  In nine weeks I’ve lost 10 pounds! The app helps me track calories with a wide database of ingredients, home cooked dishes and restaurant meals, has a scanner to scan in calories with almost anything that has a bar code, and you can enter the calories burned from exercise against your daily caloric intake. I still eat pretty much everything I like to eat; I just eat a lot less. I always knew portion control is key for me, as I don’t eat a lot of processed food, fast food or junk food.
  

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Food Matters – Dine Around Preview

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Don Genova
Locals Spinach SaladLocals Spinach Salad

Last Saturday I had the great opportunity courtesy of Discover Comox Valley to check out four different restaurants taking part in Dine Around the Comox Valley. To learn more about which restaurants are offering special menus and which hotels and B+B’s are offering accommodation specials, check out this website. Dine Around the Comox Valley runs from Feb. 20th to March 17th, 2013. If you want to know more about Dine Around Victoria you can click here. It runs Feb. 21st to March 10th. The audio version of this preview is available to listen to here.

DSC 1387Creamy Parsnip Apple Soup

We started at Avenue Bistro in Comox, with oysters, salad, and this parsnip soup. I hate parsnips. But I loved this soup. So much so I asked for the recipe. (recipe below) 

DSC 1393Locals Spinach Salad

After Avenue it was in to Courtenay, to Locals, one of my favourite restaurants in the city, not only because of their dedication to local ingredients, but the deft hand of Chef Ronald St. Pierre. Isn’t that spinach salad just beautiful? This is a great vegetable that can be grown here year-round, and Chef Ronald really knows how to use what he has to work with. Also on the Dine Around tasting menu, Dungeness crab, a true West Coast sustainable seafood resource, and we also enjoyed some salad rolls made with free-range chicken.

Photo1 1My Salad Rolls

I love making salad rolls so I took inspiration from Chef Ronald along with the list of ingredients he sent me and created the ones you see here on the left. (recipe below) 

DSC 1396 Sesame Tuna

Back over in Comox we visited a new restaurant for me, Martine’s Bistro. The owner decided he wanted us to try all of the entrees he would be offering for Dine Around and we submitted to his will…curried chicken fettucine, sesame-crusted tuna, a bacon-wrapped filet mignon and a cassoulet featuring slow-cooked duck leg and pork belly. (My favourite, although the white chocolate creme brule was damn good as well.)

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Dessert at Prime

With just one restaurant to go our bellies were swollen but we still managed to demolish another creme brule as well as an excellent vanilla custard bread pudding doused with a bourbon butterscotch sauce…which I washed down with a couple of shots of bourbon. Cheers to Prime Chophouse and Wine Bar for a fitting finish to a memorable evening!

Transportation that evening was made effortless by Jacob of Ambassador Shuttle Service and accommodations were provided at the beautiful Beach House Bed and Breakfast in Courtenay. When they say ‘beach’ they’re not kidding. The breakfast was good, too! Transportation to Vancouver Island was provided by BC Ferries. 

bnbView from our B and B

creamy parsnip and apple soup with crispy onions, chives and white truffle oil Recipe from Chef Aaron Rail, Avenue Bistro, Comox 

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cups chopped onions, about 2 medium yellow or white onions 2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups peeled and chopped parsnips
2 cups vegetable stock
2 cups fresh unfiltered apple juice
1 cup heavy cream
1⁄2 cup creme fraiche
1 cup finely sliced yellow onion
2 tablespoons minced chives
white truffle oil**

Procedure:
• sweat olive oil and chopped onions over high heat until onions wilt
• stir in minced garlic, turn heat as low as possible, cover with cartouche*
• slowly cook onions, stirring occasionally until very soft, about 30 – 40 minutes
• add parsnips, vegetable stock and apple juice, bring to a simmer, cover with
cartouche, and cook until the parsnips are very tender, about 45 minutes
• add heavy cream, turn heat to medium high, and bring to a boil
• remove from heat, add creme fraiche, blend with an immersion blender until smooth
• strain the soup through a fine mesh strainer and season to taste
• garnish soup with crispy fried onions(see note), chives and white truffle oil

For crispy fried onions:
• arrange finely sliced onion on a sheet pan lined with paper towel and season with salt and let onions sit for 10 minutes and then drain
• fry onions in 350 degree fahrenheit oil until golden brown
• drain onions and let dry on fresh paper towel

*a cartouche is a piece of wax paper cut to cover the top of the pan you are cooking in. It rests of top of the food and keeps in moisture.

**white truffle oil is available at specialty delis and grocery stores, black truffle oil is perfectly acceptable as well!

Salad Rolls, adapted from a recipe by Chef Ronald St. Pierre, Locals Restaurant, Courtenay (I’ve listed the ingredients Chef Ronald uses in his salad rolls, but you can be creative and use whatever veggies you have on hand that are easy to chew when raw. If you don’t want chicken, you could use cooked shrimp. Or keep them veggie. Or add in some cooked vermicelli noodles, or chopped peanuts. Whatever you like.

Ingredients:

• Rice paper wraps (available in Asian grocery stores and most Ethnic ingredient sections of supermarkets)
• Free Range Chicken – stewed and pulled off the bone, cut into narrow strips
• Green and red cabbage, shredded
• Daikon radish, julienned
• Cucumber, peeled, seeded and julienned
• Green Onion, julienned
• Sunflower Sprouts
• Carrots, julienned
• Chinese 5 Spice Powder

Soya Ginger Dipping Sauce
• Ginger, a thumb-sized chunk, minced
• Garlic, one clove, minced
• Soya Sauce, 2 tbsp
• Brown Sugar, 1 tbsp
• Sesame Oil, 1/2 tsp
• Cilantro, 2 tbsp chopped
• Sambal / Chili sauce, to taste
• Lime, juice of two

Method:

Dipping sauce: In a small bowl, stir together all ingredients, taste for heat and salt, set aside.

In bowl, soak rice vermicelli in hot water until tender, about 10 minutes; drain. Toss with 1 tbsp (15 mL) of the dipping sauce.

Cut cucumber, red pepper, carrot and mango into 3- x 1/8-inch (8 cm x 3 mm) strips. Set aside.

Fill shallow fry pan with water. Soak one rice paper wrapper at a time in the water until it just starts to soften. Drain and pat with a tea towel and transfer to large cutting board. 

Along the bottom edge of the wrapper and leaving one inch on each side, place a bit of each of the filling ingredients in a neat pile. Sprinkle with a bit of Chinese 5-spice. Fold sides over the pile and tightly roll up. Repeat with more rice paper wrappers, one by one, using up the remaining ingredients. Cut each roll in half with a diagonal cut. Serve with the dipping sauce. 

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Food Matters – Find a Good Local Butcher

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Don Genova
DSC 1419Hanging Beef

You don’t have to look very hard to find news about problems with meat products destined for our dinner tables. The big news over the past couple of weeks has been associated with horsemeat being found in food products that should have contained beef. That’s more of an international story, but here at home there have been more recalls of frozen hamburgers that may be contaminated with e coli bacteria. Some frozen burger patties sold by Canada Safeway with a best before date of August 14th have been recalled, and CBC News is reporting that two cases of e coli illness are connected to beef subject to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency alert. There have also been 5 other cases reported after a recall of beef products in December sold by the Loblaws chain of supermarkets. So it seems despite best efforts to make sure our beef processing system is clean, contamination is still happening.

DSC 1424Village Butcher Co-Owner Rebecca Teskey

There will always be a chance of getting some food-borne illness no matter how careful you are, and labels can always be a problem, but I believe if you buy your protein from a shorter food chain you have less of a chance of getting sick and a better chance of eating something that is really going to impress you with quality and flavour. On Saturday I paid a visit to the Village Butcher on Oak Bay Avenue here in Victoria. The place was hopping, but owners Michael Windle and Rebecca Teskey took some time out from behind the counter to talk to me about how they take a lot of care in selecting their beef and other proteins for their customers. First, though, I asked them about what they thought when they heard about the horsemeat controversy. They said they were disappointed, but not surprised. They appreciate that horsemeat is something people eat in some cultures (they’ve never had anyone ask for horsemeat at their butcher shop), but they are against the idea of people not knowing what they are eating. (the horse meat news has actually boosted consumption of that protein in Canada!) At the Village Butcher they are very careful about where their products come from. They only purchase whole carcasses, as often as possible from Vancouver Island farms. Most of their pork comes from one farmer in Metchosin. Michael does all the lamb slaughtering on south Vancouver Island. So they know the farmers, they know the people who work in the abattoirs, so they have a pretty solid traceability.

The federal government spends a lot of money on our food inspection system, and Michael is quick to point out that we do have good systems, but they are more reactionary. Once a food has been identified as having a problem, we know where it came from and where it’s been sent. The province of British Columbia is taking over meat inspection from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in 2014. But we still don’t really know what’s in it, especially when it comes to a product like a hamburger patty, the label says it contains beef, but that could be anything that came from the cow, including some parts you may not want to have in your burger; they only use muscle meats in their burgers. 

DSC 1426
 

I wondered whether Michael and Rebecca see a big uptick in sales whenever there is some sort of recall, but the answer is no, not really. They do notice that their customers always want to talk about the recalls, though, as it seems to reinforce their decision to patronize an independent butcher shop. And although Rebecca doesn’t expect people to start shopping at their shop in droves, she’s encouraged by the growth in the small butcher industry, but there’s still some education to be done: “I think it’s great that people are going to more places like ours because it means they care more about where their food comes from. But one thing I have noticed over the past few years is that people don’t know how to handle their meat and cook it, their knowledge of those skills has dramatically declined.”

If you find prices at a small butcher shop are a little higher, there’s no way they can compete with the volume purchases that the large retailers can make from those large meat processors. But the difference in quality and flavour can make up for the price…eat a little less, taste a little more. I asked Michael to identify which products he thinks really showcase the difference in their products, and he recommended some grass-finished beef. On the show this week I barbecued an incredibly juicy and flavourful Village Butcher sirloin hamburger (they added some bone marrow, too!) as well as a skirt steak they had marinated in a chimichurri sauce. The steak is best seared rare and sliced against the grain and it had a fantastic beefy taste as well as a kick from the marinade.

Rebecca told me that the growth at their shop means a chance at continued existence for the small farmers who supply them. Their pig farmer in Metchosin, for example, was able to go ahead and build new barns and add other infrastructure based on the weekly orders from the Village Butcher, and he and another farmer are using putting previously fallow Agricultural Land Reserve acreage back into production: “They’re using parcels of land that people own but don’t want to farm. They grow oats and barley to feed their pigs, and when we had that shortage of feed last year in the rest of the country, there was no effect here, our prices didn’t even have to change, because all the feed for the pigs we buy came from Vancouver Island.”

DSC 1428

Who is your favourite butcher on Vancouver Island? Who do you like for their selection, service and price? Let me know in the comments section…

To listen to this week’s radio column, visit this page on the All Points West website.

***update! Michael and Rebecca are planning a series of short classes covering everything from knife handling and sharpening to chicken disassembly and boning. Keep checking their Facebook page for updates and times.***

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Food Matters – Gluten-Free Blend

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Don Genova
Gluten Free BlendGluten Free Blend

People suffering from gluten intolerance or celiac disease are often forced to miss out on some of their favourite foods once they are diagnosed. Say goodbye to many types of bread and baked goods, not to mention all the processed food products out there that may contain gluten where it’s not expected. This week I met with one such sufferer who wasn’t content to miss out on some of her favourite food. I discussed her with guest host Khalil Aktar on Food Matters.

We certainly do hear much more about people having to, or choosing to go gluten-free these days. I think part of it probably comes from a greater awareness of what celiac disease is and quicker diagnoses, and another part of it may come from people trying gluten-free diets because they believe there is some sort of health benefit to it, especially in the case of people suffering from some forms of auto-immune disease, with Rheumatoid Arthritis, for example, there’s been one study showing a vegan, gluten-free, dairy free diet can help relieve the inflammation associated with RA. So when I heard that a nutritionist up island had developed a gluten-free baking blend for things like cakes, cookies and muffins, I thought that was a natural way to go with the trend.

Patricia ChueyPatricia Chuey

 But that turned out to not really be the case… The nutritionist  is Patricia Chuey, she lives just north of Nanaimo, but I knew her  from her days in Vancouver when she worked with Save-On Foods,  you may have seen her on billboards proffering a nice fresh apple to  the world, and she co-authored a great cookbook based on her 80-  20 concept, that is, eat right 80 percent of the time and not be so  careful with the other 20 percent. Anyway, when I talked to her this  week I found out she started developing this product mainly for herself. A few years ago she was finally diagnosed with celiac disease.Armed with that diagnosis she started trying the various gluten-free products that are out there and she just wasn’t happy with what she found. Low in nutrition, made mostly with white rice flour, crumbly and tasteless and expensive. So she decided to start baking her own gluten-free goodies. Not so easy: “I started looking through cookbooks for recipes and I had to gather together so many flours and things like xanthan gum and guar gum that it was really a chore. So my husband and I started grinding our own ingredients and coming up with a mix that we could use pretty much one for one to substitute all-purpose flour.”

Photo1

I had great success baking chocolate chip cookies and blueberry banana muffins with her blend at home. While at Patricia’s she served me equally delicious mini-banana muffins and a struesel cake from a recipe she found in Canadian Living magazine and substituted her blend one for one.Her blend is made of sorghum(a grain), white beans, tapioca and corn starch and xanthan gum, which is made from corn sugar and helps to make dough stickier and keep things together. The sorghum and beans are sourced in Canada from the Prairies, and Patricia can’t believe all the beans and legumes such as lentils that are grown in Canada and never consumed by Canadians…

Right now her production is fairly small. She’s doing mostly direct sales now, and some mail order, she will even be at the Lantzville Farmers Market when that starts up this spring. But so far so good: “Who knows where it will go, but everyone who has bought a bag so far has come back for more, and I’m trying to work on the packaging so I can offer it in a larger bag. Right now it costs $7 for a 454 gram bag, which will make you about two dozen muffins…quite a savings over paying 3 to 4 dollars per gluten-free muffin at a bakery.

Gluten Free Version
 

Patricia is quick to point out she doesn’t believe in people going on a gluten-free diet if they are not gluten-intolerant. But she does advocate being careful with gluten products that you do consume, more whole-grain foods, less processed flours are a much healthier choice. To try more recipes you can order Patricia’s cookbook that she has revamped for gluten-free diets. Eating for Energy Without Deprivation: The 80-20 Cookbook (Gluten-Free Edition) is now a Kindle edition e-book.

And if you don’t like to bake there are some better-tasting gluten free products out there, and I’d love to hear from people who have found those products so we can share them around. Chef Janice Mansfield supplies gluten-free goodies to these Victoria spots: Nourish, AJs Organics, Township, and will soon to be at the Tin Roof in Cook St. Village. She also does a fair bit of custom baking for people who contact her directly at Real Food Made Easy.

The audio versions of my Food Matters columns are available on this All Points West webpage.

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Food Matters – Family Day and Chinese New Year

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Don Genova
soupWonton Noodle Soup

Two holidays are on the horizon this weekend. Monday, February 11th, 2013 becomes a holiday with BC’s first Family Day statutory holiday, and on Sunday the 10th, Chinese Canadians will welcome the Year of the Snake. Both of these occasions will call for much good food to be consumed, although snake is NOT on the menu, even though it is the year of the snake… although I have tried Chinese snake wine in the past and have seen snakes being butchered for sale at a market in Hong Kong. After both of those experiences, I’m going in a different direction when it comes to tradition.Chinese food already has quite a long tradition here in Canada, of course. The first real waves of Chinese immigrants arrived in the mid to late 1800’s , they took part in the Fraser Canyon gold rush, and the Canadian Pacific Railway, and here on Vancouver Island in the coal industry, especially up island, where a small town like Cumberland once had the fifth largest Chinese settlement in BC. We still have a Chinatown in Victoria, but other towns like Nanaimo, Ladysmith, and Duncan all had sizeable Chinese settlements at one point. If you’re ever on your way to Duncan, just south of Duncan at Whippletree Junction you can see a collection of some of the once Chinese-owned buildings that were moved from Duncan in the 1960’s. Of course all these immigrants brought their style of cooking with them, mostly Cantonese, as that was the province most of the early Chinese immigrants came from.

That immigration ended up giving us some authentic dishes and others that were not actually from China to begin with. Some of these dishes are still with us today, but not necessarily associated with fine Chinese dining….so you have chop suey and chow mein, sweet and sour chicken balls, almond or lemon chicken, egg foo yung and so on. Of course now we have variations of Chinese cuisine from many different regions such as Szechuan and Hunan and Hakka.

wontons

I think the imprint of Chinese cuisine on our Canadian food culture has been massive. I’ve visited a lot of small towns across Canada, and invariably there is at least one or more Chinese restaurant in town, often they will have Chinese and Canadian food or Chinese and Western food under their names. When I lived in Prince Rupert there were no fewer than six Chinese restaurants in a city of about 15 thousand, and quite often the larger Chinese restaurants in a town are important sponsors of sports teams and other cultural activities. We now have many farms in BC which grow Chinese vegetables like bok choy, sui choy and cilantro, specialty farms raising Chinese style poultry like ginseng chickens and quail.

egg foo yung
Egg Foo Yung

And I think, when it comes to something like family day, the Chinese culture has given us traditions that have been adopted by many families, no matter their ethnicity. The Chinese buffet for lunch or dinner, or the dim sum brunch which has extended from strictly a Chinatown kind of thing to more widespread approval, even if some people still don’t like the idea of eating chicken feet. For guest host Khalil Akhtar I brought in a few things…homemade barbecue pork made in the oven. Egg foo yung with Chinese sausage, and my favourite, a pork and shrimp wonton noodle soup.

All of these were made at home by me without too much fuss, and stuffing the wontons is a great family activity. Some notes on the recipes if you want to try making these foods from scratch: The Chinese sausage I used in the egg foo yung recipe was very fatty, so you might want to cut down on the amount, or fry it on its own first and drain the excess oil. Have a large plate handy to that when the bottom side of the dish is done, you can slide it onto the plate, put your fry pan over top of the dish (careful, it’s hot!) and then invert so you get the uncooked side in the fry pan without too much of a spill. And make a double batch of the sauce in the recipe, you’ll need it.

For some great dumpling and potsticker recipes, check out this Vancouver Sun column by my good friend Nathan Fong. He has all kinds of ideas for dumplings you can make this weekend. The wonton wrappers I used for my recipe are available at most supermarkets and are separated easily. Moisten the edges when you put in the filling so they seal more easily.I want to especially mention a book that came out a few years ago called Chow: From China to Canada: Memories of Food and Family by Janice Wong, a Vancouver-based artist who produced an excellent blend of recipes and history based on her own family’s experience in Canada. This is where I got the recipe for the oven-roasted BBQ pork:

pork

Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup rice wine or dry sherry

1/4 tsp pepper

several slices of fresh ginger root

1 clove garlic, minced

6 tbsp hoisin sauce

4 tsp salt

6 strips boneless lean pork (I used about 2 pounds of centre loin)

6 standard metal paper clips

Combine the marinade ingredients and add them to the pork in a large ziploc bag. Marinate for at least four hours, but overnight is preferable. Remove your top oven rack, move the bottom one to its lowest setting and preheat the oven to 425F. Bend the paperclips into an S-shaped hooks. Remove the pork from the marinade and skewer one end of each piece of pork with a clip. Hook the opposite end of the clip onto the oven rack. Put a baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven and put the top rack back in so it is at its highest level and the strips of pork hang down from the rack and over the baking sheet.  Roast the pork for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325F and continue roasting for another hour or until nicely browned on the outside.

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