Don Genova's Blog

When it comes to the world of food in British Columbia, there are certain times of year when foodies around the province get excited, very excited.  For some it’s the beginning of halibut season, for others it’s asparagus and strawberry season.  Yes, I get excited about all of those products, but right now I’m excited about the just-opened spot prawn season, and for good reason.

The season for BC Spot Prawns runs typically through May and June.  If you look on the shell of these beasties you will see two large white spots.  While they are called spot prawns, it is more scientifically accurate to call it a shrimp, but it is the largest commercially harvested shrimp on the West Coast, which is probably why it is called a prawn, since we typically associate larger size with the word prawn, don’t ask me why!

I really didn’t know much about spot prawns until a few years ago. It’s another one of those BC seafood species that for a long time hasn’t been appreciated by us, and to this day, 90 percent of the harvest is shipped to Japan.  But some industrious chefs and spot prawn fishers have set out to change that, and there are two very successful spot prawn festivals on the coast, one in Vancouver and one on Vancouver Island in Cowichan Bay.  I was in Cowichan Bay a couple of weeks ago for the festival, and it was quite the event, despite the poor weather. On hand were the Spot Prawn Festival Princess, an incredible Captain Jack Sparrow look-alike, I swear Johnny Depp had come to Cow Bay. 

The arrival of the prawns was welcomed by a pipe and drum band, and some of the first batches sold out very quickly.  In the middle of all the organized chaos was Gregg Best of Cowichan Bay Seafood, one of the organizers of the festival, and someone who has been fishing these spot prawns on the coast for years.  He was ecstatic that so many people turned up in the rain to line up for spot prawns.  He couldn’t see any reason why so many spot prawns were getting exported when we could be enjoying them here, and he thought a festival celebrating them would be a great way to increase interest, and he’s right. The third annual Cowichan Bay Spot Prawn Festival was another hit.

It’s great to be able to buy prawns right off the boat when we are used to getting mostly frozen shrimp or prawns, or previously frozen stuff.  But when you are buying fresh prawns at a fish shop or grocery store, you do have to be careful that you’re getting the best possible product.

In May 2011 in Cowichan Bay, fresh prawns, head on, were selling for $8.50 a pound.  In Vancouver, $12 a pound.  Find yourself a fish shop that you can trust, someone who has a supply of prawns coming in daily this time of year. Ideally the prawns are still wriggling when you buy them, but if they’re not, one of the most important things to watch for if the heads are turning black, right where the head stops and the tail starts. When a spot prawn dies, the guts, which are basically in its head, start producing an enzyme that turns them black, and also starts turning that juicy, sweet flesh into mush. So, no black heads! If you are buying them live with the heads on and don’t want to cook them right away, you should rip the heads off and then get them into the fridge with a damp cloth.  Don’t put them in water; that will also make them mushy.

Along with Gregg Best, the artisan prawner, a whole bunch of chefs, organized by Bill Jones of Deerholme Farm, were on hand at the festival doing cooking demonstrations.  Lucky onlookers enjoyed spot prawn gyoza, spot prawn and morel ravioli, terrine of spot prawn and goat cheese and more.  You can find all of those recipes as a pdf file right here.

If you are an avid garlic user, you are most likely quite disappointed with the quality of the garlic you can find in grocery stores right about now.  The bad news is that it’s not likely to get any better until later this summer when the new harvest comes in.  The good news is that there is a perfect substitute available, produced right here on Vancouver Island and available around the province in shops and via mail order from Gabriola Gourmet Garlic.

That little green sprout in the middle can be quite bitter, and it ruins the overall crispness and quality of the garlic. Can you answer yes to the following question?  Did you plant at least 50 or 60 cloves of garlic, in your garden, in mid-October of 2009, under the light of the full moon, buck naked?  No, I didn’t think so.  That’s why you’re stuck with supermarket garlic now.  You can’t even get properly preserved fresh garlic from the man I’m about to introduce you to, because he’s sold out.  Ken Stefanson is the guy who gave me the garlic planting advice. He’s otherwise known as the owner of Gabriola Gourmet Garlic, I buy my garlic seed stock from him, and I’ve had pretty good success growing my own following his advice, except maybe for the naked part.  That’s probably why my garlic is smaller than his.

Any garlic you get now that's sprouting means that it has been shipped to Canada in refrigerated containers, and that’s where the trouble starts, because it sends the garlic the wrong signals. Garlic gets planted into warm soil in the fall, and starts to develop its root system.  When it gets cold it goes dormant, a kind of plant hibernation. When the soil warms in the spring, the clove sends out a stem. So Ken says the garlic that is shipped here at 4 degrees Celcius suddenly is warmed up to 20 Celcius in the grocery store, and it thinks it's time to sprout.  Presto!  Ruined garlic….

Ken really knows his garlic, but before garlic came music, he was a key player in the Vancouver folk music scene before and after he moved to Gabriola Island in the late 90’s, but that was where he discovered garlic.  He bought a small garlic business from a woman on the island who wanted to retire.  That first year he did around $6000 worth of business. Now he probably does forty times that and harvests a quarter-million bulbs of garlic every summer.  Ken sells it as fresh garlic for your kitchen, seed stock for you to plant in the fall, four different kinds of pickled cloves, a cured clove with sherry and soy sauce, minced garlic, garlic chutney, powdered garlic and even a couple of different kinds of garlic chocolate bars, developed in conjunction with a chocolatier he met on one of his innumerable voyages on BC Ferries.
 
The love affair with garlic came at a great time for Ken, he had just suffered a series of four strokes and his blood pressure was sky-high. His doctor actually recommended that he eat some garlic every day to help control the blood pressure, and it really worked.

Ken doesn't advertise, and he doesn't have a website but if you want to find out where to buy or to mail order.  But you can email him at gabriolagourmetgarlic@shaw.ca or give him a call at 250-247-0132 or Toll-Free 1-866-427-5424.

I planted over 50 cloves of Ken’s seed stock, every single one sprouted, and it is now up about a foot and a half in my garden. Here's what my harvest from two years ago looked like….why don't you give it a try?

It’s no surprise that our grocery shopping habits have changed since we began the age of the suburban sprawl.  For anyone living in a modern suburb, driving the car to a big supermarket once a week and loading up your cart is part of everyday life, and even families in older parts of towns have become used to corner stores being nothing but a place to buy a coffee, junkie snacks and a lotto ticket on your way to or from work.  For my show today on Island Artisans, I visited a couple of neighbourhood grocery stores that are trying to put local flavour back onto the shopping list.

Farmers markets have become more of a go-to place to find local foods these days, but there are other options, especially right here in Victoria with the two-year old Niagara Grocery in James Bay and the brand-spanking new Fairfield Market in…yes, Fairfield.  They may be fairly new corner grocery stores, but the buildings themselves are full of history.  Niagara Grocery was discovered by Ken Winchester and Jennfier McKimmie, refugees from the corporate world looking for something different to do.  Ken discovered Niagara Grocery is Victoria’s oldest grocery store, it was founded in 1906, but had fallen on rough times as of late with the change in our shopping habits.

Winchester says, "Well, it was pretty grim in here, we basically worked for 40 days and 40 nights to clean it up and we were always discovering issues with the water and vents and so on.  The store had been pretty successful over the years, but after wartime it started going downhill and morphing into the 'corner smokes' store.  There used to be over two hundred corner grocery stores in Victoria and now there are maybe six or eight. Then this neighbourhood started to come back with more interest in local foods so that's why we're trying to save two of these old stores."

When you approach these stores you definitely get that old-time grocery feel from them, they are not all shiny and metal and antiseptic feeling and they really seem to fit in with the neighbourhood and in these buildings that have stood as part of the city for so many years. They’re notable for what they don’t have, no lotto tickets(at Fairfield), cigarettes, videos and porn magazines, but also very notable for what they do have….local and organic groceries whenever possible, starting with honey extracted from beehives just down the street and spreading out from there.

I brought in a few things that I found on the shelves this afternoon before I headed over to the CBC Radio Studios, including two different types of local kale, multigrain bread and granola clusters from Portofino Bakery and candied nuts from Butler Hazelnut Farm in Saanichton.

Why Fairfield so soon after starting in James Bay?  To start with they had lots of people who were traveling to Fairfield from James Bay to do their shopping…and when they found out that the bicycle shop in this old building was moving next door they thought it was too great an opportunity to pass up.  The grocery is right opposite to where the Moss Street Market takes place, and some people have asked Ken why he would locate right next to what could be seen as a competitor.  Turns out many of the farmers at that market are Ken and Jennifer’s suppliers, so if they have food left over from their Saturday market day they will just sell it to Ken, who is open every day to help them sell their produce.
The other reason to expand their reach is that there is a growing awareness and demand for local food.

Ken and Jennifer will probably not expand beyond the two locations, they have a young family and running two shops now is stretching them to the max, but Ken says what they might like to do is become consultants to help other people open up more stores just like this.  Think of all those little corner video stores that are probably closing up any time soon…they probably used to be some of those over 200 grocery stores that once served Victoria!