Don Genova's Blog

Last week I told you about how coffee roasting is an important step in the whole java experience. This week I’m back with more caffeine-laced stories, including how a village in Thailand made a switch from growing opium poppies to coffee beans.  Listen to the 6-minute documentary by clicking here.  To the right are some of the principal folks running the Doi Chaang Coffee company, based in Thailand, but with a roasting and distribution operation in Calgary.  You will find mail order and store info on their website.

You also heard about latte art from Sammy Piccolo, three-time Canadian Barista Champion and top three finisher three times at the World Barista Championships.  He practices his art and teaches other baristas at the Caffe Artigiano locations scattered around Vancouver.

Here’s some of the best art they do at the anchor location at 763 Hornby Street.   I also talked about Fair Trade coffee this week.  To learn more about what CERTIFIED Fair Trade coffee is, visit the website of the Transfair USA organization or this Wikipedia entry.  Not everyone likes the principles behind Fair Trade.  Check out this Google Search Page to find out what some of the critics are saying, including this article reprinted by the Organic Consumers Association.

You can also revisit my first take on Fair Trade coffee by visiting this Pacific Palate archive page.

This week on Food For Thought, why the roasting of green coffee beans is so important to making a great cuppa joe. To listen to the 6 minute documentary, click here to play the mp3 file.

I watched the coffee being roasted at 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters in Vancouver, owned by the Piccolo family, Vince, Michael and Sammy. This family has a pretty long pedigree in the food service industry, starting with Vancouver’s acclaimed fine dining restaurant, Villa Del Lupo.  Vince told me he got into the coffee roasting business when his son was born and he didn’t want the long, evening hours as a restaurateur any more.  He is now the General Manager of the company while Michael is the roastmaster and Sammy Piccolo is one of the best cappuccino artists in the world.

You can find great examples of this art by Sammy and the other baristas he’s trained at the various Cafe Artigiano outlets around Vancouver, which are all supplied with their beans from 49th Parallel. This includes the beans from Panama that were purchased by the roasters for $130 a pound.  That means at the cafes you need to part with $15 for one cup!

This week on Food For Thought meet Andrea Nguyen, author of Into The Vietnamese Kitchen.  She demystifies the home-cooking aspects of this fresh and vibrant cuisine. You can visit her website here. You can also listen to an mp3 of the 5-minute Food For Thought documentary by clicking here.

Andrea’s cookbook is a great place to get started on making your own Vietnamese cuisine at home.  If you follow this link to purchase the book through amazon.ca, you’ll save over $16.00 off the cover price.

Last night I made a couple of dishes from her book, and they both turned out in an amazing fashion.  I wanted to keep some for leftovers, and had to battle my wife Ramona to keep her from gobbling down the entire serving of this cucumber salad.  Here is the recipe , courtesy of Andrea Nguyen, which will open as a Word document.

The other recipe I made was for grilled boneless chicken thighs, which were delicious in their simplicity with a marinade consisting of oil, lime juice, fish sauce and lots and lots of black pepper.  You then make a fresh dipping sauce at the table in individual dishes using wedges of lime, salt, pepper and hot chili peppers.  Here’s the recipe.

This week on Food For Thought, I tell you about Red Fish, Blue Fish, a new take-out seafood restaurant perched near the floatplane dock on Victoria’s Inner Harbour.  This is a restaurant with a difference, with an important commitment to sustainability.  Even the restaurant itself is made from an ‘upcycled’ cargo container.

All the seafood used on the menu is sustainably caught, in accordance to the Oceanwise program.  And some of the most popular menu items besides the stellar fish and chips are the tacones, as you can see on the left.  A tacone is a jazzed-up fish taco stuffed with special coleslaw, perhaps a spot prawn mayonnaise, and your choice of cod braised in adobo sauce, oysters, halibut or barbecued wild salmon.  I would also recommend you try the Qualicum Bay scallop sandwich, which comes complete with a tempura dill pickle slice.  Bizarre, but amazing!

Here is Red Fish, Blue Fish partner Simon Sobelewski explaining to me that the restaurant is mere steps away from where the first British ships arrived and where the pathway to Fort Victoria, as it was then known, was built.

And the mastermind behind the menu, chef Kunal Ghose, who perfected his fish tacos and tacones in the years he spent at Go Fish, another take-out seafood restaurant on the public wharf at Granville Island.

It looks big in this photo, but the entire cooking operation is enclosed in a container that is about as big as a large car.  To listen to my 5-minute documentary in mp3 format, click here.