Food Like That: Recipes your mouth will like

So, I did a whole bunch of "experimental" baking today. Experimental mainly because a) I don't bake a lot and b) I tried tweaking a bunch of baking recipes. And by "tweaking" and "bunch", I mean not quite having all the ingredients for one recipe, so vaguely scavenging a few other recipes trying to see if I could come up with a Franken-recipe.

First up was corn bread for breakfast. Corn bread is, as far as baking goes, NOT HARD. However, I was faced with no flour, and the need for no dairy. The soy milk worked just fine. But spelt flour...

Thanks first of all to Anthony and Sarah of Farmstead Wines for putting together a wonderful day of cooking, food, fun, and friends.

Now, what was this American Thanksgiving all about? Well, Anthony had invited a select few to join him in an all day cook fest at his home in East Vancouver. Of course to celebrate Thanksgiving (Anthony is originally from the US), but also to enjoy cooking and drink some great Farmstead Wines.

10 years ago today, I ate food from McDonald's for the last time. That makes today my 10 year McDonald's free anniversary.

I was driving back across Canada from a co-op term in Ottawa. 3 long days of a variety of different road food. We stopped at Kamloops for a refuel and some food, on the final stretch of the drive home. McDonald's, McChicken meal.

10 minutes after the meal, I felt bad. Stomache in knots, pasty mouth, and generally bad feeling. I put two and two together (finally) -- whenever I ate at McDonald's, I felt bad afterwards. That was it, I decided -- no more! I wouldn't eat anything from there, ever again.

Now, 10 years later, I haven't broken that rule. I've still gone on road trips, but I've opted out of McDonald's. That's not to say that I haven't eaten other "fast food". I tend to pick something like Tim Horton's -- where you can soup, and chilli, and sandwiches, all of which don't seem to induce the bad feeling that I got at the big "M" in the past.

Thinking about this as my 10 year anniversary, I got to thinking about what might be an appropriate meal to eat -- and the appropriate meal to eat at each yearly anniversary. Of course, I recently posted about The Omnivore's Hundred, so that's a likely place to look for inspiration.

I had joked about doing some sort of live action food event -- like duplicating a McDonald's meal out of "real" ingredients. Instead I'm hanging out on Bowen eating fresh plums and beans from the garden. The McPheasant will have to wait for next year...

I saw this on Travis' blog, and since I can't resist lists involving food, here is my "Omnivore's Hundred" list of foods that I've eaten (originally from Very Good Taste). I actually seem to recall filling out a shorter list before, but I can't find it at the moment. Update: it's another BBC list -- 50 things to eat before you die, which I had already filled out on Lists of Bests here.

I bought some lupini beans a couple of weeks ago on a trip to Bosa (an Italian grocery store on Victoria just off of Kingsway -- and a second giant one on Boundary). I like beans in general and hadn't seen these before, especially in the well known Unico brand. Lots of the Unico beans have recipes on the inside, so I figured I could make that even if I didn't find other recipes.

Turns out, the main "recipe" for Lupini beans (also known as lupin beans (wikipedia)) is to salt them and eat them out of a bowl as a snack: you squeeze the outer shell and the bean pops out into your mouth. Well, that was rather unexciting, and the beans weren't really that great, either. From the wikipedia link, turns out that lupin beans are being cultured potentially as a replacement for soy beans, since they also grow in colder climates.

Strawberries! Before heading over to Bowen Island for the July 1st holiday, I convinced James to drive us out to Westham Island to go to Emma Lea Farms. Well, actually, it's James that knows the place -- I thought we should U Pick the berries, but Monique made a funny joke about the time and chiropractor bill vs. just picking them up. I ended up buying a flat for $27.50 along with some new potatoes to take over to Bowen.

By the way, James has an excellent series on his blog where he's making up menus for his imaginary restaurant, Purloined. Check out Purloined's July menu.

Bowen! A great time as always -- super hot, so we did some beach picnicking and lots of swimming. The strawberries were prepped, and ended up in strawberry rhubarb jam as well as a strawberry torte (not sure what this is called -- my mom takes a sponge cake like base and then puts cut strawberries on top and covers them with gelatin). The new potatoes ended up as potato salad, which I'll post the recipe for.

Another fun piece of cooking on Bowen was some simple chicken legs done in my grandmother's old cast iron pot. Slow cooked over low heat on the stove top after browning in left over bacon fat, with some onions, garlic, mushrooms, and zucchini added.

Oh yes -- I did do some pork back ribs boiled in wine and then marinated in a from scratch BBQ sauce that I made. Needs more tinkering before I can post the recipe.

Sablefish poached in coconut milk with green peppers, cilantro, and fresh ground pink peppercorns. Served over basmati rice with crushed almonds.

Dessert? A few spoonfuls of Liberté Mediterranée Lemon Yogourt. 8% milk fat, and you can taste it in every delicous spoonfuls. 

Penticton? That was a couple of weekends ago, the long weekend in May. Driving in the hills, we ended up stopping in at the Dirty Laundry winery. A great stop, very nice wines -- I was surprised by how good the whites were, and came back with a Riesling and a dry Gewürtztraminer. The other haul from Penticton was a large selection of used cookbooks.

I'm currently looking for two things when I'm looking for cookbooks. One is a focus on seasonal recipes. I got two great books in this category: Pleasures of the Good Earth, and Food in Good Season.

The second is picking various "local" cookbooks -- you know, the ones put together by the Ladies' Auxilary, the local church, or whatever. Not quite in this category (since it's an actual published book), is one of my favourite cookbooks of all time -- Nutbread and Nostalgia, by the Junior League of South Bend Indiana.

Anyway, I got a handful of these local cookbooks. Some coil bound, like Country Church Cooking, by Josephburg Men's Choral Society, which has a hilarious picture that I have to scan. Others are literally tied with some twine and mimeographed. Sure, you get a ton of macaroni salads and Joe's Quick Pasta Sauce, but there are often really unique recipes hidden here and there.

And that's it for tonight.

Wow, the last time I was here I was supposed to finish the story about Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco. Suffice it to say that the food there is excellent Italian, but probably the best thing about it is that you can order -- and get served -- a bottle of wine while you're standing in line waiting for a table to become available. Something we're unlikely to see in Canada for a while...

Since then, many meals have passed. This past weekend was the Spot Prawn Festival put on by the Chefs' Table Society. The picture was taken by Travis right down at Fishermen's Wharf by Granville Island. I paid $12 / lb, which seemed a decent enough price, but this thread on Chow Hound from last year seems to indicate that maybe you can get them much cheaper in Chinatown? I will have to investigate...the spot prawn season only lasts about 6 - 8 weeks: the boats come in between 4:30 and 5:30pm every evening, apparently. But on to what I constructed from the prawns...

I went to San Francisco on short notice last week, and ended up having some great meals. This is not hard in San Francisco: there are many great places to eat, everywhere from cheap and cheerful to some of the highest end restaurants in the world.

Two particular meals that stood out were Bar Tartine and Pizzeria Delfina. An interesting thing about these two restaurants is that they both have "sister" restaurants. Bar Tartine is partners with Bakery Tartine, and they get all their fresh bread from there. Pizzeria Delfina is the more casual companion to Delfina. I think these types of pairings allow restaurants to experiment and specialize at the same time. See how well the pastries are selling at the bakery, then bring it over to the restaurant. People are raving about a wild mushroom dish at the upscale Italian, bring it over to the pizzeria and throw it on a pizza so even more people can try it.

I've made mussels and clams dozens of times, and the base sauce with white wine, garlic, onions, and butter is always pretty much the same. Adding bacon and peppers makes for a heartier broth.

We had an appetizer sized portion of clams and mussels -- about 2 pounds for 4 people. For a full meal, you'll want at least 1 pound of shellfish per person, and probably more if you don't have much in the way of side dishes.

On arriving on Bowen, we dove right into prepping a lighter, seafood based meal after all the turkey and meats of Christmas.

A long time ago, I was looking for a boat to buy, so I was traveling around Vancouver Island a lot. One trip had me passing Fanny Bay, so I stopped in to buy some oysters. I was working at Doc Morgan's Restaurant on Bowen Island at the time, so I called the chef and asked if I should bring some back for the restaurant.

I ended up bringing back enough for a dozen appetizer servings or so, and learned how to make a white wine - lemon - something or other sauce. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to put it together any more, but the memory of the flavours has stuck with me. This was my attempt to recreate that.