Pacific Palate, Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands: Second Edition Now Available!

Finally, it’s here! The second edition of Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands is now available at most bookstores across British Columbia and you can also order it online here.

For this new edition we’ve added Pacific Palate to the title, as this book really brings you the best tastes available in this region. I introduce you to the many talented and passionate people and companies throughout the region―all working to promote a growing food culture. Meet the local food artisans and learn about their history, discover favourite offerings, and get a sense of how well you can eat if you buy local.

Organized into six regions―Comox Valley, Cowichan Valley, Mid-Island, Greater Victoria, Saanich Peninsula, and the Gulf Islands―the book provides complete sourcing information and the stories behind some of the best produce, dairy, chocolate, honey, sauces, meats, seafoods, baked goods, and beverages to be found on the islands.

The book also includes Saturday Sojourns―tips for spending a toothsome and memorable day in each region. Open the door to the islands’ food network and discover high-quality food products made with love and care right here. With over 160 profiles, an intro to the language and labelling around local food, and six detailed maps to set you on the path, Pacific Palate is your guide to the best of the islands’ edible abundance.

If you happen to be in Victoria on Tuesday, August 8th, please join me for the official book launch at Russell Books in downtown Victoria.

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Foodie Friday for February 4, 2022

I grew up in a family where my mother spent much of her day in the kitchen or in the garden (that’s her on the left with a 3.5 pound tomato from the garden).Spending the time harvesting vegetables like peas, corn, beans, lettuce, tomatoes and more in the garden meant lots of time spent processing them in the kitchen. And yet she always made the time to put a really decent meal on the table for our family of five. She knew how to cook, how to shop for what she didn’t have in the garden, and didn’t have a huge collection of cookbooks. She clipped recipes from newspapers and magazines and taped them into a big notebook. The ‘tips’ she gleaned from her readings were cut out and taped to the inside of the kitchen cabinet doors. I’m lucky that I frequently watched her cook and helped her with shopping and in the garden and picked up the basics of cooking almost by osmosis, because before I left home I never really cooked anything but still knew how most things worked in the kitchen.

These days newspaper food sections aren’t what they used to be, with fewer recipes published every week. And I think a lot of young people in the generations that followed my mother’s readily adapted to take-out meals, convenience foods, and dining out. Cook from scratch? Whazzat? But the advent of the pandemic drove people into their homes and seeking new ways to use those kitchens that maybe were gathering cobwebs. So where to find some good basic cookbooks to help you out? Russell Books in downtown Victoria, of course.

Russell Books is Canada’s largest used bookstore and many of the books available are considered ‘new remaindered’. That is, they have never been sold before and they are at a considerable discount. Most Fridays I have tested recipes from 3 or 4 different cookbooks and bring my results and recommendations to you via social media. Here’s this week’s You Tube.

You can find the books at Russell Books at 747 Fort St. in Victoria, BC, or order from them online.

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

The Blue Apron Cookbook

The Quick Family Cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen

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Foodie Friday for January 28, 2021

For readers who don’t know, I’ve been working with the people at Russell Books in Victoria, BC for the past year or so to provide them some social media for their cookbook section. Russell Books is Canada’s largest used bookstore. ‘Used’ is a relative term. Most of the cookbooks I feature every week are called ‘new remaindered’. This means they have never been sold before, and are like new, but at really great discounted prices, sometimes as much as 50 to 70 percent off the cover price.

My Foodie Friday features used to feature just one book a week. I would photograph and take short videos of three recipes I made from that single book but over the holidays I started doing a video feature in which I would feature a number of cookbooks, and photos from each recipe I tried out in my home ‘test kitchen’. Here’s the latest one for your enjoyment and edification. After you start the video you can hit the CC button to activate the captions.

You can find the books at Russell Books at 747 Fort St. in Victoria, BC, or order them online at www.russellbooks.com. Books mentioned this week:

  • Whole Protein Vegetarian by Rebecca Miller Ffrench (yes, two ‘f’s!)
  • Good for You by Akhtar Nawab
  • The Grain Bowl by Nik Williamson
  • 7 Ways by Jamie Oliver
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For The Love Of Cooking

I guess I have always been a teacher at heart. Right from my first jobs at radio stations I worked at across Canada, I was always showing people how to do things, be they technical or writing/editing, as I worked my way up from supervisor to associate news director to producer. When I chose food and travel to be my specialty as a freelancer, soon enough came along the opportunity to teach Food and Travel Writing and Blogging courses at UBC, at first in person, but now in a 100% online format.

As I progressed to being a ‘food celebrity’ of sorts, one who enjoyed bringing food I had cooked into radio studios for hosts to taste, there came invitations to do cooking ‘demos’ to showcase a certain product or just to be on stage to add into the merriment of a festival or some sort of special event. I even raced then-CBC Radio host Rick Cluff to see who could whisk up a silky sabayon the fastest at the Pan Pacific Hotel’s Opera Buffet.

Somewhere along the way I was asked to teach cooking classes, and I did so for quite a few years, at Cook Culture in Victoria, Kilrenny Farm in the Cowichan Valley, and various one-offs here and there, especially during promoting my book, Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.

But then life changed for a while. My food and travel journalism and cooking classes took back seat to my role as a union organizer and defender of freelancers’ rights at the Canadian Media Guild Freelance Branch.

I’ve really missed the food journalism and food educator part of my life. So…I’m leaping back in, just on a part-time basis at first. I’m very happy to have landed at The London Chef, a catering company and cooking school based in downtown Victoria. Starting this month, I’ll be teaching 1-2 classes a month in my favourite cuisines. Starting with some classic Sicilian dishes, a summery Italian menu, and moving on to teaching people about sustainable seafood. You can find the descriptions of all the menus on The London Chef website. These are really fun classes as they are all hands-on. You get your hands and aprons dirty as you learn how to make pasta from scratch and wrap pork chops in sage and prosciutto before cooking them with a Marsala/butter/sage sauce. I know, right?

So I hope you will join me for one of more of my courses. You will eat very well!

 

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Food Artisans – Dakini Tidal Wilds

The blog is back! As I prepare the second edition of my book, Food Artisans of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, I’m going to post about some of the new artisans who will be added. First up is Dakini Tidal Wilds.

Amanda Swinimer’s passion is kelp. Yes, that green stuff from the sea. Around 30 different kinds of kelp are found in the waters around Vancouver Island. It’s easy to get caught up in her passion if you listen to her talk about the medicinal and nutritional qualities of this seaweed she’s been harvesting on a commercial basis since the early 2000’s. Her sustainably-harvested products include dried winged kelp and bull kelp, rich in minerals and vitamins. Her dried product is available online and in many of the specialty shops described in this book.

 

 

Chefs also order seaweed from her to use on their menus. On an outing with Amanda to learn about seaweed off of Whiffin Spit near Sooke with chef Oliver Kienast of Wild Mountain Food & Drink, I was treated to seaweed tea, bread, spread, and even popcorn sprinkled with Dakini’s Kelp Flakes. Seaweed is loaded with umami, that mysterious fifth basic taste after sweet, salty, sour, and bitter that may be hard to describe other than saying, ‘tastes good’.

Amanda is a marine biologist and also a folk herbalist, which means she also makes medicinal salves out of seaweed. She told me she got turned onto seaweed while learning about wild crafting with herbs. “You should have seen my tiny one-bedroom apartment,” she laughs. “It was always laced wall-to-wall with long strings of seaweed hanging to dry.”

She says Dakini is a goddess found in Indian and Tibetan beliefs, among others. Her favourite definition fits her to a T, “The wild and free-dancing spirit of women.”

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Weekend Chef – The World’s Most Dangerous Flavour

bitterI was very excited to get a copy of Jennifer McLagan’s latest cookbook, Bitter, A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavor, in the mail this week. I’m a big fan of hers, and love cooking out of her three previous books, Bones, Fat, and The Odd Bits. She’s done a very good job of getting people to try new things with ingredients we just don’t use that much in our every day cooking.

Jennifer is traveling from Toronto to Vancouver and Victoria to promote her new book. On Friday the 23rd of January she’ll be doing a special event at The London Chef in Victoria. On Monday the 26th, her dinner event at Barbara-jo’s Books to Cooks in Vancouver is sold out, but you can still meet her before dinner for an ‘Apero’ at the store. Details are here.

Fennel, onion, chile, coriander and beer.

Fennel, onion, chile, coriander and beer.

I’m interviewing Jennifer on Friday for a special podcast I’m planning a little later on, but I couldn’t resist cracking open the book and trying a couple of recipes this weekend. I prepared Mussels in Beer from page 61, while Ramona took on a salad from page 12, Curly Endive with Miso and Chile Dressing. I cleaned the mussels of their beards while sautéing some chopped onion and fresh fennel together along with a hot chile pepper and a tbsp of coriander seeds, and then added a nice glass of Stella Artois beer before adding the mussels.

 

 

 

Curly endive and miso/chile dressing

Curly endive and miso/chile dressing

Ramona’s curly endive recipe looked a little strange at first because you end up cooking the endive, so I guess you could call it more of a side dish than a salad, but it served a great role as our vegetables for the evening, along with some home made frites! Garlic, ginger, a hot chile pepper and the miso were stirred in along with a chopped red bell pepper, which all developed a very tasty flavour profile.

 

Weekend Chef comes through again!

Weekend Chef comes through again!

So, curly endive, mussels, crusty baguette and frites fresh out of my little deep fryer made quite a great meal, and I’m not bitter about it at all! Watch this space in the days to come for the podcast with Jennifer as she reveals her passion for what she calls ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Flavour’.

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