Food Matters – Tree Island Gourmet Yogurt

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Don Genova

Bringing a new food product to market is always a road filled with detours, delays and sometimes the inevitable pothole. But when the dreams of another artisan producer on Vancouver Island come to fruition, I like to be there for the first taste, and such was the case on this week’s edition of Food Matters.

Tree Island Yogurt Tree Island Yogurt

I have been waiting to tell this story for a long time…it was way back in August when I visited with Scott DiGuistini and Merissa Myles in their brand new milk processing plant in Royston, just south of Courtenay. They were all but ready to start making a product that has only two ingredients, milk and a bacterial culture, which combined in the right proportions at the right temperature in the perfect conditions, makes yogurt.

Scott Merissa and boysScott, Merissa and boys

They decided to make yogurt as part of a whole lifestyle choice they made when they started their family. They have two young boys and they found they didn’t want to stay in busy Vancouver, where they had been based. Then there was the yogurt epiphany experienced on a trip to France, tasting yogurt that they had never tasted before…because it was plain and simple and not industrialized like most of our yogurt is in Canada. Scott says that got their business minds going:

“And we saw that despite there being a large variety of yogurts on the shelves, they are really made by just two or three companies, and they certainly aren’t made from around here with local milk, so we thought that kind of gave us an immediate in.”

The ‘in’ is that their company, Tree Island Gourmet Yogurt, uses milk from grass-fed cows from a single farm in the Comox Valley and they are using the whole milk, nothing taken out and nothing added in other than the bacterial cultures necessary for proper fermentation…and they are going to play with some seasonal flavours as well.

 It wasn’t easy to go from idea to a tub of yogurt. Once they got the original idea of making yogurt, they thought, hey, let’s make some food and sell it locally. Scott says they got a wake-up call early in:

“It turns out that idea wasn’t very realistic. So we wrote up this huge business plan and we took it to the accountants and they told us we were crazy, and we took it to the Milk Marketing Board and they told us we were crazy…so we adjusted our plan substantially.”

Part of Processing PlantPart of Processing Plant

Because it’s a milk product you can’t just make it in a regular industrial or commercial kitchen, there are lots of special rules and regulations for the handling of milk products. Now, it helps that Scott is a microbiologist, and Merissa has a background in marketing. They still had to jump through a lot of hoops, but they have built a state of the art processing plant in Royston and they are finally ready to be able to sell their yogurt to the public with all the proper licensing and certifications.

Part of the great flavour of this yogurt is the cream on top. Because they don’t skim off or separate the milk at all, when the yogurt is made a thin layer of cream rises to the top. You can scoop that off and use it however you would like for a lower-fat yogurt, or just stir it in. Then there are the additions, including local honey, as Merissa explains:

“The thing about what we’re doing is that we are using high-quality ingredients, no preservatives, no additives, and in our honey yogurt we are using Vancouver Island honey; when we start making our vanilla yogurt it will be with real vanilla beans so that you can see the little black flecks of the beans in the yogurt.”

And Scott points out that you don’t always get what you think you’re getting when purchasing an industrial style yogurt:

“There aren’t really that many honey yogurts on the market, but if you do find one and look at the ingredients, you’ll see that there isn’t actually any honey in the product. They tend to use burnt sugar to recreate a honey flavour, and using real honey presents some challenges in the production process.”

Competition is steep in the yogurt section so they are starting small…primarily serving the local market in the Comox Valley and they will retail at a select number of speciality grocery stores in Victoria, so you’ll be able to find Tree Island Yogurt at Lifestyles Markets and at Peppers and they will be doing some farmers’ markets in Victoria and the Comox Valley. Scott and Merissa realize that while you may find an industrial-style cheese counter as well as an artisan cheese shelf in most markets, in yogurt there is no such distinction. So they want to stay with the smaller grocers they know will be proud to have another local product. The price will be a little higher than your common industrial yogurts but they figure once you know how pure a product it is and you taste it you’ll be hooked.

If you want to listen to Jo-Ann Roberts and me tasting the yogurt, the audio should be posted on this All Points West webpage.

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Food Matters – Re-Purposing Pumpkin and Other Fall Veggies

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Don Genova

Halloween is just around the corner, and with that comes all kinds of pumpkins, mostly used for carving and propping up at your front door, and then discarded. Today on Food Matters on CBC Victoria’s All Points West program, I discussed ways to avoid wasting an edible food product, and some tips on saving money with other seasonal, local vegetables.

Pumpkin Patch Pumpkin Patch

I grew up in a pumpkin patch. Well, not right in the patch, but we had an acre of land and my dad grew pumpkins on about a third of that acre. In the fall I would load up our little trailer and drive it with our garden tractor to the end of our driveway and sell pumpkins to passing drivers on their way to or from work. 25 dents for a small one, 50 cents for a large one, and some of them were very large! The funny thing is that I grew up only liking pumpkin pie and hating any other kind of squash or pumpkin dishes.

Now I’m a huge fan of squash soups that are well-spiced, and when I was living in Italy one of the specialities of the region I lived in was something called tortelli di zucca, a ravioli-style pasta stuffed with cooked pumpkin and flavoured with amaretti cookies and drenched in a sage-butter sauce. Who wouldn’t like that? But are the Italian pumpkins the same as our big orange pumpkins here? No. Those Italian pumpkins taste better. And this is where I’m going to make a radical suggestion. If you want to get more food value out of your Halloween pumpkin, look for something a little different. Farmers are growing all kinds of different pumpkins now, and many of them are tastier to eat than a Halloween pumpkin. Ask them which ones they think are better for cooking. Then don’t carve them. Make a display out of a bunch of them, or just decorate them on the outside. Then they are still perfectly good for eating, you don’t have to scrape out the old candle wax and burnt parts. And save those seeds! Today I roasted some with just a little bit of grapeseed oil and a sprinkle of lime chili salt from Organic Fair.

A Few Years LaterA Few Years Later

I also brought Jo-Ann some butternut squash soup, flavoured with garam masala, a single tiny hot pepper and finished with coconut milk. Some of these pumpkins or squashes are quite large and thick-skinned, sometimes hard to cut them apart without losing a finger! But I just picked up this tip from chef Brock Windsor at the Stone Soup Inn. Take your squash or pumpkin outside and just drop it on the sidewalk or driveway. It will crack open and make it easier for you to cut into smaller pieces. And instead of taking a lot of time to peel the hard skin off, just put those pieces skin on in your oven and roast the pumpkin instead of boiling it. You can add some olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 400 degrees F. until it is nice and fork tender. Then it comes off the skin so much more easily and you’ve added more flavour to it. For more on pumpkin varieties and which ones are good to eat, check out this post on the (ex)Expatriate’s Kitchen blog.

Also on my mind this week: results are coming in from the 26 Dollar Challenge, as BC politicians and other notable citizens were asked to feed themselves on just 26 dollars for a whole week. The challenge was issued by Raise the Rates, a poverty advocacy group based in Vancouver that figures once people on welfare pay for everything else they need from their 610 dollars a month, they are left with just 26 dollars a week for food. I didn’t do the challenge myself, but I gave it some thought and a visit to a local supermarket the other day gave me some ideas. The store had big bags of BC carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beets, onions and cabbage on for some really good prices and I stocked up…since these can be the basics of either great side dishes or the star of a meal themselves.

Todays RecipesToday’s Recipes

Such as: – Parsnips (and a few carrots) braised in orange juice and caramelized with some butter, sugar and cumin.
– Cabbage and onions cooked with just half a bottle of beer (you could use just water or chicken stock) flavoured with some Tannadice Farms pork sausage and caraway seed.
– Potato salad with onion and a little bacon for flavouring.
– Carrot halvah. This is a dessert.

RootsRoots

I got a great new cookbook recently called Roots, 225 recipes from Diane Morgan of Portland, Oregon, that’s where the parsnip and potato salad recipe came from.
So there are just a few ways to cook cheaply, still using local ingredients and in a good variety of flavours.

Here’s my recipe for the braised cabbage that everyone at the CBC office seemed to like today!

BRAISED CABBAGE WITH BEER, SAUSAGE AND CARAWAY

Ingredients:

1 tsp butter

1 tsp olive oil

1 onion, peeled and sliced

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

1/2 pound precooked sausage, Polish kielbasa for example, cut into 1/2 inch rounds

1 small head of green cabbage halved, cored and sliced

1/2 bottle of your favourite beer (drink the other half!) or chicken stock or even water

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp caraway seeds

salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter and olive oil together in a large fry pan over moderate heat. Add the onion, stir and fry until it turns translucent, and then add the garlic cloves, stir for 1-2 minutes. Add the sausage, stir and then the cabbage. Toss it all around so the cabbage starts to wilt a bit and gets covered with the butter/oil combination. Add the sugar and the beer or stock, along with the salt and pepper to taste. Cover and simmer until the cabbage is just tender. Add the caraway seeds at the end of cooking and check your seasoning. Enjoy!

And here is the Carrot Halva recipe, it’s a little time consuming to make, but I think it’s worth it!

Madhur JaffreyMadhur Jaffrey

Carrot Halva – From “A Taste of India” by Madhur Jaffrey

6 medium carrots
3 cups milk
8 whole cardamom pods
6 TBS vegetable oil or Ghee (clarified butter)
6 TBS sugar
1-2 TBS golden raisins
1 TBS shelled unsalted pistachios, lightly crushed
1 1/4 cups heay cream, lightly whipped (optional)

Peel and grate the carrots. Put the grated carrots, milk and cardmom pods in
a heavy bottomed pot, and bring to a boil. Turn heat to medium and cook,
stirring now and then, until there is no liquid left. Adjust the heat if you
need to.
Heat the oil/ghee in a nonstick frying pan over a medium-low flame. When
hot, put in the carrot mixture. Stir and fry until the carrots no longer
have a wet, milky look. They should turn a rich reddish color. This can
take 10 – 15 minutes.
Add the sugar, raisins and pistachios. Stir and fry for another 2 minutes.
This halva may be served warm or at room temperature. Serve cream on the
side.

 

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Food Matters – Tofino Gold Medal Chef

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Don Genova

Nicholas Nutting 1Chef Nicholas Nutting

While the scenery is beautiful and his restaurant is in one of the top resorts on the West Coast, sometimes Tofino can seem a little bit isolated for an exuberant chef. That’s why he’s honing his knives for a challenging competition coming up next month in Vancouver. This week on Food Matters I told listeners about Nicholas Nutting, the executive chef of the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, a resort that has always prided itself on the quality of the cuisine available at its signature restaurant, The Pointe. Back when the Wick first opened in 1996, they set the mark by hiring Rod Butters as the executive chef, and he is the kind of chef that has inspired a whole generation of younger chefs who have followed him with his use of local, regional cuisine, and Nick Nutting is no exception.

Dinner on the BeachDinner on the Beach

The first time I ate his food was at a Quail’s Gate winemaker’s dinner at the Wick earlier this year, part of the Feast Tofino celebrations, and he really showed me how he could pull off a whole tasting menu that was very balanced, full of fresh flavours, properly portioned and cooked, and exquisite flavours drawn out of local meats, seafoods and vegetables. Then I was invited to take part in a dinner being filmed for a TV show called Chef’s Domain. Nick spent a whole week foraging in and around Tofino for the ingredients…he picked the wild berries, harvested the seaweed, caught the greenling and salmon for our main courses. Then he cooked and served it all from a very rustic kitchen with minimal assistance right on the beach beside the Inn. THAT was impressive.

Spot Prawns Seafood and Seaweed BrothSpot Prawns, Seafood, and Seaweed Broth

I think he’s been able to take that first impression of isolation being a disadvantage and turned it into an advantage as he goes into next month’s competition in Vancouver. 

“It’s always fun to compete against your peers, even though we’re sort of disconnected with what’s going on in the city, but at the same time it means we are not influenced by it, either, so what we produce in the kitchen here is pretty much a reflection of the kind of ingredients we have at our doorstep, and it’s always fun to take it somewhere else to showcase it.”
 

Beach MenuBeach Menu (click to enlarge)

The competition Nick is entered in is called Gold Medal Plates, and it is a fundraiser for the Canadian Olympic Foundation, which supports our athletes and their efforts to excel at the Olympic Games. Over six years these events have raised over six million dollars for the Foundation. There are ten events across the country to determine the finalists, and then a grand finale, this year in Kelowna. But first Nicholas has to win in Vancouver on November 16th. Each chef has to make one appetizer-sized dish for about 600 people. They also choose a Canadian wine or beverage to pair with the dish and they all have to use the same kind of plates provided by the host venue….so no fancy plates to influence the judges. Nick has entered this competition once before, didn’t win, but has learned from the experience:

“Well, we really used quite high-end ingredients last time and this time around we really want to use less expensive ingredients and really showcase our cooking and technique, make them sync up with the wine. We want to do something for the judges, who are all chefs and food writers and know what’s going on, that after they have our dish, the rest of the dishes will seem boring, you know?”

Pastry Chef Matt WilsonPastry Chef Matt Wilson

You notice he is always saying ‘we’ and not ‘I’.  A good kitchen is always a good team of people, and probably more so in a small town because you are much more likely to see each other outside of work as well…especially people who work restaurant hours. Just in the weekend I spent there recently I could really see a close relationship between Nick and his pastry chef Matt Wilson…who even had a hand in the non-dessert course they did in the last competition, some chocolate to go along with the foie gras on the plate.

Nick couldn’t give me any hints about what they are planning for November, but he does know which wine he’s going to use, something from Sandhill Wines in the Okanagan, made by Master Winemaker Howard Soon. As for what’s going to be on the plate, Nick didn’t want to give away any secrets, although when I talked to him back in September he wasn’t sure of anything just yet:

“This year I think we are definitely going to go lighter than last time, probably going to do something from the sea, but every day of every week we get inspired by different things, so if something jumps out at us that we think is going to knock their socks off, we’re going to grab it, be it meat, poultry, shellfish, who knows.”

Prosciutto Wrapped Sea BassProsciutto Wrapped Sea Bass

Nick Nutting is the only chef from Vancouver Island competing, but there is some pretty stiff competition from the Okanagan with Mark Filatow, who worked with Rod Butters for years in Kelowna, and Jeff Van Geest from Miradoro, the restaurant at Tinhorn Creek Estates in Oliver. Even more tough competition will come from Vancouver chefs Lee Humphries from C Restaurant, Angus An from Mae Nam and Quang Dang from West Restaurant. So it’s not going to be easy. But I hope to make the trip to Vancouver for the competition and will report back following the event.

In the meantime, if you want to listen to my chat with Jo-Ann Roberts about Nicholas Nutting, the audio will be posted on this CBC Radio webpage.  If you want to listen to my entire interview with Nick, click here to listen to the mp3. It runs just over 8 minutes.

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Food Matters – Here’s the Beef!

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Don Genova

beef1Canada’s beef industry is taking another black eye these days as recalls spread from the XL Foods processing plant in Alberta and more people are reported sick from e coli contained in beef products processed at that plant. Thursday on Food Matters, I doled out  some tips on how to find beef on Vancouver Island that has a much lower risk of e coli contamination.

So far (Oct. 10th) we have just had the one illness reported here on Vancouver Island linked to products originating at XL Foods in Alberta, which is not surprising as the BC Centre for Disease Control estimates about one-third of all the beef sold in BC comes from that one plant. I’ve seen supermarket refrigerator units with less space devoted to beef as they just haven’t had the same supply as usual. On the other hand, interest in other types of beef products is on the rise.

People still seem to want to eat beef, but they may be shying away from beef that comes from cows slaughtered in the huge processing plants, as well as cattle that are fed anything other than grass or hay. Feeds such as soy and corn actually contribute to a greater amount of e coli bacteria growing in the guts of cattle. If those cattle are not processed carefully, the bacteria can be spread from their fecal matter to beef products.

What are the advantages of grass-fed beef?  Lower incidences of e coli. Fewer calories by weight. More good fat, less bad fat, more beneficial Omega 3’s and CLA’s. For more facts about grass-fed animals check out this fact sheet on grass-finished beef. Even more facts from a pro-grass point of view here on the EatWild website.

I talked to a couple of ranchers to find out about their operations.

Tim and Laurice Mock at Windhorse Farm in Glenora. They are very small operators, just a few cattle or sold each year, but they are in the process of growing their herd. They sold their entire stock of frozen beef to one customer last week who was looking to replace beef they were taking back to Costco. CHEK-TV did a news story featuring Windhorse Farm, you can watch the video here.

Doug Wright of Lone Pine Farm on Denman Island. This is a larger operation, 85 to 95 head. Doug has been on the farm since the 1950’s, it was originally his father’s.  He trucks the cattle when they are ready on the Denman Island ferry to Gunter Brothers Meats in the Comox Valley for processing and is part of the Island Pastures Beef co-op.

About 3 years ago a group of small producers on Vancouver Island approached the BC Ministry of Agriculture with this idea of a co-op that would supply retailers with Island-raised, grass-fed beef. The Ministry went to the Country Grocer chain to see if they would be interested in being that retailer. They said yes. Dave Hubscher, the meat and seafood operations manager at Country Grocer told me the program has been successful, stores regularly sell out of Island Pastures Beef. And he’s been getting more inquiries lately; they’re in the process of getting more product from the farmers on a regular basis. That means Gunter Brothers is going to have to expand. There are other places on the Island to have cattle slaughtered and processed. Westholme Farms in Duncan is connected to the Cowichan Valley Meat Market. Mark Cardin and Alfred Braun are both small processors in the Duncan area. But some places have closed. Tim Mock says there was a more widespread supply when there were more abbatoirs.

Others ways to find local beef? Get to know your local farmer. Some farmers take freezers full of beef to farmers markets and sell individual cuts, or you can make arrangements to order full sides or quarters of beef. Make sure you have enough room in your freezer!

Natural Pastures, well-known for its organic cheese, also raises and sells certified organic beef. There’s an Island Meat Co-op on Facebook. Tim Mock tells me Share Organics is another place to source beef from his farm and others around the province.

Is it safe to say that the availability of local beef is on the rise?
Yes and no. It takes a while to increase herd when you are relying on calves that are born on Vancouver Island. Grass-fed cattle take longer to get to slaughter as they don’t put on the pounds as quickly as they would when being fed corn or soy.  The recent drought isn’t helping either, as it means the quality and supply of good grass is diminished. It will be interesting to see how local beef supplies are affected by all of these factors, especially once the XL Foods plant gets up and running again.

But if you know of a good supply of local beef and want to share it, please tell me about it in the comments section below. And if you want to listen to my chat with Jo-Ann Roberts on All Points West just click here for the audio file.
 

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Food Matters – Tofino/Ucluelet Culinary Guild

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Don Genova

Many restaurant operators these days know that customers expect to see many more local ingredients on the menu. And if the restaurants are in a region relying on a tourism economy, the quality of the meals served has to be excellent. That’s why a special guild has been created to address the quality, local food issue and I told Jo-Ann Roberts about it today on CBC Radio’s Food Matters on All Points West. 

Out there on the Pacific Rim of Vancouver Island are the communities of Tofino and Ucluelet, which, over the years, have grown more and more dependent on the tourist trade, and many tourists are looking for high quality meals reflecting the bounty of the region. The only problem with being out there on the coast is that it is not exactly the most productive agricultural area, and even a lot of the seafood bounty caught in that area was being shipped away without ever being sampled in Tofino restaurants.

JayJay Guildenhuys

Costs were a lot higher because of so much of the food having to be trucked in, and for special orders from small farmers the restaurants were paying to have individual shipments couriered to them, and all that shipping wasn’t doing any good to some very fragile ingredients. The chefs were frustrated and they didn’t want to let down both the visiting tourists and their regular locals. That’s where the Tofino-Ucluelet Culinary Guild stepped in. On a recent visit there, I met Jay Guildenhuys of Shelter Restaurant in Tofino, who told me about the basic idea behind the Guild. “We thought if we got together and hired someone to do all the researching and sourcing and get it all to us at the same time we could save money and get better, local ingredients. All the chefs here are crazy about food and our local clientele is pretty demanding as well so that’s why we had to do something, and it’s working for everyone in the industry here.”

Bobby LaxBobby Lax

The person who does all the running around and researching is Bobby Lax. Jay told me they didn’t think they could get this kind of co-op going without a full-time employee,  so you will now find Bobby behind the wheel of his brightly painted red van. I met him just as he pulled up to Shelter, and he jumped out with a box of ever-bearing strawberries that were so good, and some freshly roasted hazelnuts that were just full of nutty goodness. Guess what? He loves his job: “So I have this great job of running around and meeting farmers and producers and finding out what they’re all about and if they’re running sustainable and clean operations and then getting all that connected to our member restaurants and grocery stores.”

When the guild was formed it was driven by restaurants and chefs. What they didn’t expect was the number of non-restaurant people that clamoured to join the guild and get in on what Bobby has put together:”We have about 50 or 60 individuals who have joined the Guild, and these are people who don’t mind buying 10 pounds of strawberries when they come in because they’ll freeze them, or jam them or just eat 1o pounds fresh at a time when they’re here because they know that soon they’ll be gone.”

HalibutHalibut

Shelter chef Matty Kane brought out a couple of dishes as we were talking. We had a little piece of pan-fried halibut on top of a few fingerling potatoes, topped with some of the first chanterelle mushrooms of the season, and Sweet and Tartthen some wonderful ripe red plums, Coronation grapes, with a tiny thin slice of marinated green tomato and micro-greens from a farm just down the road in Ucluelet and fresh arugula, it was an amazing combo of sweet and tart and salty all at the same time.

This idea of local is really catching on in Tofino. Shelter has a nice little herb and greens garden right behind the restaurant, and Jay has purchased his own small farm in the Cowichan Valley with the aim of supplying more ingredients to his restaurant. While I was there I went to a special dinner at the Wickaninnish Inn where chef Nicolas Nutting and his pastry chef spent a whole week doing their own fishing and foraging. I’ll tell you about that in a few weeks as Chef Nutting gets ready to represent Vancouver Island in the regional edition of Gold Medal Plates in Vancouver in November.

And now some unfinished business: In our contest to win tickets to Sunday’s (Oct. 7th) fundraising dinner at Providence Farm, we asked people to tweet us their favourite recipes to the All Points West twitter account (that’s @allpointsbc). And that meant you had to get creative, because your recipe could only be 140 characters!

And we received some great entries. This one comes to us from Peter Griffiths ?[@pggriff]. It’s his recipe for cured salmon. [and I’m expanding a bit on his tweet – so it’s not abbreviated].

1/2 c sea salt 3/4 c sugar, 3 grated beets
Chunk of gratd.horse radish
Sandwich 2 fillets with this cure mix
And wrap saran.
Stays in fridge 3-7 days.

And this is another great one from John Zimmerman [@johnazimmerman] for Guacamole. He tweeted:
3 avocados, 2 limes, 1 jalepeno pepper, cilantro and salt to taste. Blend or dice. Serve with chips.

And now our winning entry: It just sounded too yummy. This one is from Shamus Baier [@shamusbaier] and it’s for Citrus Carrot Salad.

Grate 6 garden carrots in a dish, dice 1 sprig cilantro, pinch of lime zest and squeeze 1/2 lime juice.

Congratulations to Shamus, who with a friend will enjoy the James Barber Fundraiser Dinner at Providence Farm on Sunday, October 7th. There are still tickets available, they are $100 each, with a tax receipt provided for $50. Visit this link for more details. I just heard about another dish on the grazing menu today from Ryan Zuvich of Hilltop Bistro in Nanaimo with his Rabbit Terrine with Big D Honey and Agrodolce Tomato. (agrodolce means sweet and sour in Italian. Sounds yummy, hope to see you there!

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Food Matters – Honey and James Barber

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Don Genova

Babes HoneyBabe’s Honey

It’s a harvest we don’t often get to see, but as nectar sources dry up in the late summer and early fall, beekeepers are bringing their hives home from their summer locations and extracting the honey the bees have been making over the past few months. In springtime beekeepers move their hives from where they have been stored for the winter to areas around the province where they think the bees will have good access to various kinds of flowers and the nectar they contain. They may also ‘contract out’ their bees to orchards and other fruit and vegetable farmers who need the bees to help ensure pollination. The bees don’t necessarily stay in one place over the summer; they may be moved as different kinds of flowers blossom or the weather changes. But in the fall, many of the bee colonies and their hives are brought in from the fields and the honey is extracted from the series of frames inside each hive. There is some filtering and blending and perhaps some pasteurization that takes place before the honey makes its way to consumers.

According to the BC Ministry of Agriculture there are more than 23 hundred beekeepers in the province with 47 thousand colonies of bees, and that includes everyone who is doing it as a commercial venture right down to the growing number of hobbyists who are keeping one or two hives in their back yards. It’s an industry with a history that goes back to 1858 when the first two hives of bees arrived via ship to the Victoria harbour. I was reminded last week at my talk at the Museum that there were no honey bees in North America before European settlement…now I know exactly when bees reached BC.

Many of our food products are made with sweeteners other than honey, and basically it comes down to cost. One of the cheapest sweeteners out there is high-fructose corn syrup, but we also use a lot of cane sugar and beet sugar. But if you are looking for a natural sweetener that involves a very low-level of processing then honey is one of purest substances you can get, and also a way to support your local economy if you start buying your honey from local honey producers, and I’ve found them at almost every Vancouver Island farmer’s market I’ve visited of late.

Honey is taking on a special significance at an upcoming event at Providence Farm. The Cowichan Chefs’ Table is putting on another fundraiser in the name of the late, great James Barber and this year’s theme is savoury, spicy and sweet dishes made with local honey. Providence Farm was one of his favourite charities and as you know a couple of thousand of his cookbooks were just sold off to raise money for the farm, and next Sunday, October 7th, the Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend, the Cowichan Chefs will be working away in a grazing event at the farm. Tickets are $100, with a $50 receipt issued for a charitable tax deduction.

Chef Bill Jones of Deerholme Farm is one of the chief organizers, and he made me some of the components approximating one of the dishes you might enjoy from the wood-fired oven at the farm that was dedicated to James Barber last year. They’ll be using pizza dough at the event, but Bill made up some grilled flatbread made with honey and sage, topped with Porcini and caramelized honey humus and Spicy honey-pickled mushrooms.

And listen to some of these other dishes you can taste while you’re there:
Marissa Goodwin from Organic Fair is preparing rosemary and fennel pollen honey caramel corn as well as roasted pumpkin honey ice cream with spiced pumpkin seed brittle
with a honey-sweetened chocolate truffle with gold and bee pollen. Frederic Desbiens of Saison is making a European honey nougatine, there will be honey cured sockeye salmon, a honey panna cotta topped with a chili-spice honeycomb. Pat Barber, James’ son, will be working the pizza oven with a sausage-topped pizza with sausages from the Whole Beast Salumeria and local apples with a honey drizzle, another chef is making coils of lamb and honey merguez sausage for the grill, and more and more.

All Points West has two tickets to give away!

James was a big fan of simple recipes. Just tweet them a simple recipe. That means a recipe of 140 characters or less. Deadline is next Tuesday. Here’s an example:
Beer bread: Mix 3c flour, 3t powder, 1½t salt, 3T sugar. Stir in 1 bottle beer at room temp. Bake 375F 1hr in oiled pan

In this recipe a small ‘t’ was used to denote teaspoon and a capital ‘T’ for tablespoon. Just make sure any abbreviations are easy to figure out! Tweet to @allpointswestbc.
 

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