Don't do this with your kids... Deboning a Rabbit

I am currently on a mission to eat as many BC wild meats as many ways as possible. My task is simple; to develop an array of recipes for the wild meat lovers of the world, myself included. Starting with the cutest, apparently, and ending with the biggest... bear maybe?
I've never eaten a whole rabbit. They just aren't offered in non-terrine forms for some reason in Vancouver. So, I grabbed a British recipe and an Italian one (Sicilians love their rabbit, who knew?) and cooked one up at home. Last night, I started with the Brit version, cider braised rabbit with shallots, thyme and rosemary from my garden. Here it is...

The deboning took me 40 minutes and was tiring but interesting from a biological standpoint. Here's a good video if you've always wanted to learn to debone a bunny.

It was good, but not great. Rabbit tastes like a less flavourful pork it seems, boring. I am disappointed so far. Anyone with any ideas for spectacular rabbit dishes, please email me!!!

British Columbian Cuisine Unveiled

Cuisine \Cui`sine'\: defined as a characteristic manner of preparing food using to local ingredients; national food

You can get all foods in the port city of Vancouver. This is a restaurant culture. Everyone eats out. It’s affordable and some of the finest menus on the planet are just a step away. French, Italian and Asian (Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese) foods dominate, and who wouldn’t want to be dominated by these fabulous cuisines.

So what does this all mean for the persistent question of BC cuisine, do we have one? Is there a consistent style of cooking that would define BC on your plate? First, you have to consider the thousands of immigrants that make up our population. The British and Spanish landed here first, but Chinese, Japanese, Italian, German, Mexican, French, Korean, the list goes on and on, trickled in to form what is now an extremely diverse province. That is a too much ethnic influence to ignore, so a restaurant culture developed from a ‘melting pot’ of these peoples. Our style of cooking is exactly that, ‘a melting pot’, the borrowing of techniques and foods from many countries. I don’t believe you can define our cuisine through style of cooking, so the only other option, if you need a definition while eating some of the freshest most cunningly prepared foods that have graced your plate, is to define it through ingredients.

Locally sourced, fresh, seasonal, this is the palette chefs who wish to serve true BC foods will paint with. Two stand-out examples who have been cooking this way for years come to mind, Raincity Grill, Vancouver and Sooke Harbour House, Vancouver Island. Most other restaurants in Vancouver that serve nouvelle cuisine (a cooking style that seeks to emphasize the natural flavours of foods through application of light sauces etc.) have followed suit. And it’s sooo easy for local chefs with brilliant local seafood like oysters, mussels, scallops, salmon, black cod and Dungeness crab. Local meats range from spring lamb to bison and wild boar. Our growing season runs from spring to fall for fresh produce like sorrel, cherries, asparagus, sweet corn, garlic, chives, squash, apples, peaches, blueberries and hazelnuts. Wildflower honey, mustard, balsamic vinegar, fruit preserves and, of course, the wide range refreshing BC wines are some of the prepared foods to think about. Lots of local foragers help further define our distinctive BC flavours by harvesting wild foods like chantrelles, morels, porcini mushrooms, watercress, miner's lettuce, oregon grape, thimble berry, salmonberry and blackberry. Cheese makers like Moonstruck and Farmhouse Cheeses create mouth watering goat’s cheese and award winning brie. And with a producer penchant for full flavoured organic, sustainable foods, you’ll be laughing all the way to dinner.

If you are searching desperately for true BC cuisine, start by sitting down at Raincity Grill on Denman Street in Vancouver. Order the 100 mile tasting menu with the local BC wines. Close your eyes before each bite, wash down with wine, and then ponder the ingredients, so that you can spearhead the BC cuisine revolution by cooking this way at home.

Yes, there are Wine Regions in BC

British Columbia, Canada, is one of the world's newest and most explosive wine regions. In the 1980s, there was a scant 1000 acres in BC devoted to vitis vinifera, but today that number has blossomed to 9000 acres and over 100 wineries. This newly discovered wine territory is still very small in comparison to the wine giants of France or Austrailia, but everyone is taking notice. The Bordeaux producer Groupe Taillan and Vincor Canada joined together in 1999 to produce one of the best examples of BC fine wine that I've ever had the pleasure to sip. The winery was dubbed, Osoyoos Larose, and all their wines are made in true Bordeaux style with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominating with a dash of Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petite Verdot to add complexity. Being the new kid on the block in terms of wine production means that BC wineries take advantage of all the most progressive viticultural and vinification techniques available today. We hover around the 49th parallel, which is comparable to Champagne in France and Germany's famous Mosel and Rheingau regions. With better viticultural and vinification practices, vines are able to ripen in areas further and further north, especially when they take advantage of micro-climates that favour the sun.

The Vintners Quality Alliance is Canada's regulatory body, they have named four distinctive wine regions in BC. Our province has an extremely wide range of terrain from semi-desert country to Pacific islands which makes each of these areas very distinctive. The Okanagan Valley is by far the largest and most developed. I would further divide this area into North Okanagan and South Okanagan sub regions for clarity. Both regions' temperatures are moderated by a large lake body. The second region includes the southern Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. This area has only 10 wineries, but a lot of potential. Another up and coming wine region is the Similkameen Valley, located south-west of the Okanagan Valley in the mountains at Keremeos.

The southern Okanagan Valley is Canada's only true desert, its heat produces the bulk of BC's fine red wine. Cabernet, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah are in fine form taking advantage of the valley's varied and Bordeaux-esque soil types: gravel, sand and clay. If you are a fan of big, bold, rich, spicy, aged reds you cannot go wrong in this region. Wineries like Nk'mip, Osoyoos Larose and Black Hills produce consistent examples of the excellence that can be achieved on BC soil. These wineries bring forth the essence of southern Okanagan terroir. Many of the vineyards are planted on the Black Sage Bench where sandy, clay soil runs deep and sage grass spice wines are produced from the vines.

The Similkameen Valley is a very new wine region for BC. Its rocky, mountainous terrain is very arid and windy which is just the way we like them for wine production. There are wide variety of vines planted in this region with merlot, gamay noir, chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon predominating. This area has yet to leave its mark on my palette, but with time and viticultural experience it may just hit the mark.

Northern Okanagan wineries focus on cooler climate grapes taking their direction from northern France and Germany. There is also a central Okanagan wine region, in my mind, around Okanagan Falls that produces good quality Chardonnay, pinot blanc and pinot gris, but most people seem to bulk that into the north. Some of the finest boutique winery, dry riesling is produced in the northern Okanagan with good acidity, buckets of fruit and the stoney minerality you need to push riesling to greatness. Some excellent pinot noirs are vinified by small and large producers alike: Quails Gate Winery and Nichol Vineyard. Many other lesser known, interesting and frequently German varietals are planted in the north: Ortega, siegerrebe, sylvanner, chasselas, marechal foch, gewurtztraminer and optima. Lang Vineyards produces an award wining late harvest Optima bursting with honey and tropical fruit. Lang is located on the famous Naramata Bench, a wine area on the East side of Lake Okanagan near Penticton. Some of our most famous wine houses were started here from Joie Farms crisp whites to Nichol Vineyards gorgeous pinot noir.

The Island wine region, for me, includes Cowichan Bay on the east coast of Vancouver Island, Saturna Island and Salt Spring Island (both part of the southern Gulf Islands). This is a very small area of production, but do NOT dismiss them. They produce some of the most distinct BC wines at very high quality. Pinot Noir, a grape that when expertly crafted picks up the flavours of the specific terroir like no other grape, is in its finest form on island soil. In a recent blind tasting I attended, three Island pinot noirs stood out from the competition. Five Burgundy, two California, one New Zealand, and one Oregon were present, all vetted to be at the top of their class under $150. I will say that California won hands down, $56, Ojai from Santa Maria Valley. But BC beat out all the Burgundy, the region most famously noted for fine pinot noir production. The key for me wasn't in the winning, but in the complexity of the flavour profile that the Island wineries were able to convey. Basically, they were really yummy. Venturi-Schulze ($45) 2006, Salt Spring Island Reserve ($32) 2006 and Averill Creek ($26) 2006 showed extremely well. The Island sits in a vine friendly, warm micro-climate, they call it the mediterranean of Canada. And the soils of the islands that you may taste in their stunning pinot noirs are frequently marine fossil, gravel, limestone and clay. Many of their best whites; pinot gris, pinot blanc, ortega, siegerrebe and sylvanner pick up a refreshing minerality and have excellent acidity. A mountain rainshadow to the west and the temperature moderating influences of the ocean positively influences the growth of the Islands precious vines. Venturi-Schulze Brut, Salt Spring Island Rose and Averill Creek Pinot Gris are some of the Islands best products. Unfortunately, because of the small production, they are very hard to find.

The one BC issue that keeps me up at night is price. BC wines are generally overpriced. There are two reasons as I see it, the local market will pay more to buy local (good for us... and bad), and the provincial liquor taxes bleed us dry. Also, some of the best wines are very difficult to get your lips on. Luckily, the best place to taste a glass to see if it tickles your fancy is at one of Vancouver's many fine restaurants that are always stocked to the teeth with BC product. For some of the best examples of BC regional differences try Averill Creek, Pinot Noir, Black Hills, Note Bene or Carmenere (at Salt Tasting Room), Tantalus, Old Vine Riesling and Nk'mip, Meritage most of which you can find at Rain City Grill on Denman Street in Vancouver. I would highly recommend a visit to this legendary restaurant that focuses solely on BC food and wine. Taste for yourself and decide if BC cuts the mustard in wine country.

http://www.winebc.com/tourbcwineregions.php
http://www.northwest-wine.com/Osoyoos-Larose-Winery.html#T3
http://www.nkmipcellars.com/

The Secrets of Bread... shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Adapted from an article written by Julius Petz.

Truly delicious bread is a rare commodity. Getting the crust crisp and maintaining that soft and dainty center is a difficult artform. My company seeks out local BC sources like Limbert Farm in Agassiz and True Grain Breads on Vancouver Island that make outstanding bread. Bakers like these understand the history of this ancient food source.

Wheat has been part of our society for thousands of years, initially transforming our culture from one of the hunter/gatherer to farmer. Initially grains were eaten raw and although nutritious could not have been very enjoyable to eat. However the advent of weaving made the milling of wheat possible. Milling and baking, then as now, were ways to make the eating of grains a more enticing, tasty experience.
With the steel rolling process, grain is chopped up and the nutrient-rich bran and germ are discarded. When stone milling is used instead, it peels grains in a rolling motion and wraps everything up into the resulting flour. This not only results in healthier flour with a distinctly different taste, but has the added benefit for bakers of giving the dough more stretch due to the intact gluten. Several local BC bakers have embraced the process of stone milling in their pursuit of the highest quality organic and handcrafted bread, and these same bakers also pay careful attention to what goes into their finished product. This includes such measures as using certified organic ingredients, buying local, and finding the best wheat for flour. The most common types of wheat used for bread today are hard red winter wheat, hard spring red wheat, soft red winter wheat and hard white winter wheat. True Grain Bread on Vancouver Island dug deep and found another option: Red Fife wheat, heritage wheat with exceptional flavor and baking properties that was saved from extinction by a handful of dedicated growers.

Swallow Tail Tours, my tour business, does extensive research into finding bakeries that takes such measures and really care about the bread they kneed. The mouthwatering result is well worth the effort.

Links:
http://www.truegrain.ca/
http://www.limbertmountainfarm.com/

Ode to Love and Spitting

I volunteered for the International Wine Festival in Vancouver last week. Pinot(s) was the varietal theme and British Columbia was the regional focus. Truly amazing and soooo glamorous. After refilling ice for the tables, we got to empty spit buckets into a large trough of human fluid mixed with wine. Then we went into the alley and dumped it into the drain, ewwwwwwwwww. Disposing of noxious human waste was not exactly what I had in mind, but I did learn proper spitting technique. There are varying styles; lean in, cover your mouth delicately and pitou very politely or get your face right in the bucket and let 'er rip. Very useful when you are tasting 100 wines in a night, I kid you not. I know it seems like a waste of great wine, but if you want to be conscious enough to learn anything or remember which wines were actually good (not just good because you were so tanked you could have been drinking deer blood and it would be 'just a little gamey'), it's essential. So, later on Friday evening, I set out to enjoy the festival. I wasn't sure how much I really liked pinot noir. I've had my share of Williamette Valley and Burgundy of varying quality levels, but even from those great regions, I just wasn't sold. One, the variety tends to be expensive because the grape is so labour intensive to produce. Two, it's all over the map flavour-wise, I'm never sure what I'm going to get and three, I'm sick of hearing Sideways (the film) references about it being the darling of the wine world. This is where the spitting came in. I spat all night, don't cry for me, I found true love because of it. I focused the first half of the night on BC wines to buy for my business and the second half I opened myself up to pinot noir. And through opening up, my love affair has begun. A lot of amazing producers from the main regions world wide known for great pinot noir production; Burgundy(France), New Zealand(Marlborough), Williamette Valley(Oregon), Chile, Australia, BC and more. I tried them all from the more austere, earthy French to the bouncy, fruit forward New World styles. From $17-$150, price was no object in my mad search to find ma amore. In the course of my hunt, I got a few splash backs as I was spitting and sometimes, cheeks ballooning with wine, you just can't bustle past the crowd to get to a bucket in time. I was able to discern a few gems out of the bunch and find my one magestic beacon of bottley love. When you are drinking pinot noir, you have to give it center stage, this was my earlier mistake, it tends to get lost in heavy food and lack of focus, drink it first in the night.

Here are my gems:

Burrowing Owl, BC 2007, $30.
Gloria Ferrer, Carneros (Cali), 2005, $39 (can't buy here).
Rodney Stong, Russian River Estate (Cali), 2007, $28 (can't buy here).
Domaine de Vougeraie, France, Gevrey-Chambertain "Les Evocelles", 2006, $60.
Oyster Bay, Marlborough, New Zealand, 2007, $25.

The last one wasn't at the festival. It won our hearts in a pinot noir tasting that I attended with my wine club, and it's really affordable for a pinot. Nice acidity, medium body and characters of caramel, cassis, light spice vanilla, white pepper, red current and a light herbaceous quality to boot.

Now on to my shining star; Born in 2007, my love's name is Erath, he sounds like some fictional god, but he's far more subtle and complex, in a good way. He is from Williamette Valley, Oregon and smells of caramel and strawberries. His kisses are tart with hints of raspberry, vanilla and some other character that I just can't put my finger on, we'll call it a mystery. And, he is living in Vancouver, for $33 you can try him too:)

One big note: Vintage is very important with pinot noir, it grows best in cooler climates which means that each year temperatures will shift for better or for worse and you will get grapes that ripen and taste different. If you find one year you like, the next one may be good but not the same as your favourite. If you love a particular year, buy a few bottles and drink them on special occasions.

BC vs Washington Merlot Battle

I'm part of a wine club, I know that sounds super snobby. We meet once a month at a member's house to redden our teeth and liven our spirits. Last month's challenge was to find the best of BC and set them against the best of Washington, both areas reputed world wide to have respectable merlots. If you are ever looking for something to serve with a full flavoured merlot, I made a salmon wellington topped with a merlot reduction and they were consumed rapidly. Here was the line up:

Washington
1. The Hogue(2004) - Signature BCLC(41st Ave) - $14
2. Columbia Crest(2005) - Signature BCLC(41st Ave)- $22
3. Holy Cow(2006) - Brewery Creek Liquor Store - $30

BC
1. Therapy Vineyards(2006) - Firefly - $44
2. Nk Mip Vineyards(2006) - Signature BCLC(41st Ave) - $25
3. Cedar Creek(2006) - Signature BCLC(41st Ave) - $25

We tried two excellent Cab/Merlot blends as well;
1. Super Ego, Therapy Vineyards - BC - Firefly - $44
2. The Hogue(2004) - Washington - Signature BCLC(41st Ave) - $14

Every single one of these wines was really yummy. The interesting thing about Washington merlots is that they pack a surprising punch both in flavour profile and body, moving toward cabernet sauvignon territory. If you are ever in Columbia Valley, Yakima(WA), head for a winery called 2 Mountains and you will experience that bold merlot in spades. BC tends towards more finesse and displays the medium body that is typical of cooler climate viticulture. Therapy vineyards continues to make some of the best BC reds around despite their branding which drives me mad. The pricing on their wines is very prohibitive which is unfortunate. Their super ego, Bordeaux blend, is probably one of my favourite BC reds, buy it for a special occasion.

And now you want to know the winner, if I've kept you reading this long. Well, value for dollar went, hands down, to The Hogue with its chocolate, cherry overtones. It is a new world merlot fit to drink all by itself. But for the best food pairing, Cedar Creek wins the fight, cutting nicely through the rich pastry and buttery salmon with its spicy, cherry oak.

A Selection of Only the Best Cheese

Where do you go to find a mouth watering Canadian cheese? And when you find it, lucky day, what do you drink with it? This was the question I posed to myself a few months back, and in my wanderings I've found a few winners to share with you.
Here is the recipe for success if you live in Vancouver. First, step into the Mount Pleasant Cheese Company on Cambie Street. Second, select any of the following;

1. Mi Careme from Quebec – Bitter, creamy, soft, and nutty with medium saltiness - Drink with a Stout and a hearty laugh.

2. Sauvregine, again, from Quebec - Vancouver Magazine wrote that Hercule(also a cheese at MPC) was one of the top 100 things you must eat before you die. I vote for Sauvregine over Hercule hands down. Soft buttery, salty goodness that is amazing on a good baguette with cherry tomatoes, crushed walnuts, slices of endive and a good balsamic vinegar.

3. Tiger Blue from Poplar Grove Cheese, BC. - A full flavour blue, not sharp, nice and smooth – Pair with clover honey or fortified wine like a Port. If you have any Pipe(Sumac Ridge, Port style wine), please call me and I will happily bring the cheese.

4. Clothbound Cheddar from the tiny little island of Prince Edward off the Atlantic Coast of Canada - This cheese is really interesting as it crumbles into pea sized chunks, crumble it over a prosciutto sandwich with tomato, lettuce and balsamic. Or, it melts nicely into Welsh Rarebit for dipping bread or veggies into. Pair with St.Hubertus, Riesling, the best buy on any white wine in BC at $15.

All of the above are best served on Raincoast Crisps, the best cracker ever made(buy them at Capers). They are very expensive $6.99 a box, but I can find nothing to equal them for being the perfect cracker with any cheese. Another strong suggestion for full cheese enjoyment would be to take your selections to the beach and enjoy them with a hot friend.

http://www.mountpleasantcheese.com/

update: Sauvregine cheese isn't sold at Mount Plesant Cheese anymore, you can buy it at Whole Foods or Capers though.