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Slow Food

Slow Fishing at The Superior

Slow Food Fish Dinner menuLast Wednesday Slow Food Vancouver Island hosted a celebration of “merroir” as we supped on seafood at The Superior.

Events got off to a briny start with a good hour of oyster shucking by Slow Foodies Kyle Hunker and Cory Pelan. No oyster lingered on the plate for more thSlow Food Fish Dinner oyster-shuckingan a sea-second before being quaffed with or without the accompanying Gravenstein apple mignonette.

After this, we settled in for a preview of the pleasures to come by chef Oliver Kienast, who had organized a meal ample in local, seasonal, sustainable and Ark of Taste foods. First up were darling little fish-balls made from salt cured lingcod and served with a salad that included miner’s lettuce and other seasonal greens. Then there was halibut, garnished with crab and rhubarb and accompanied by an emmer and wild rice risotto-ish dish and oleracea (brassica) shoots. After a pause, a platter of Fry’s Red Fife wheat bread arrived with a dish of butter, swiftly followed by clams with Whole Beast chorizo and cranberry beans, fermented fennel, sea lettuce and a seafood broth. The sweet cicely biscuits were a suitable finish, after which the silent auction items – including such desirable items as Vancouver Island Salt, a signed copy of Seasonings: Flavours of the Southern Gulf Islands by Andrea & David Spalding, and a stay at Sooke Harbour House – were distributed and we dispersed, slowly and foodily.

Slow Food Fish Dinner: salt cured lingcodSlow Food Fish Dinner: halibutSlow Food Fish Dinner: Fry's BreadSlow Food Fish Dinner: clams & chorizoSlow Food Fish Dinner: sweet cicely biscuits

Save seeds, save the world

Last night’s talk by Vandana Shiva left a sold out auditorium at the University of Victoria humming with righteous energy.

She reported with eloquent passion on the state of food in the world today, leading with the unfortunate news of the “Monsanto protection act” which Obama signed only a couple of days ago, and which protects the biotech industry from any liability for the harm it may cause.

And biotech is causing great harm. It has not increased yields or fed more people or reduced the use of chemicals in agriculture. The yields are the same, for it is the nature of the seed, not the pesticide technology that governs yield; 90% of the GM soy and corn crops grown are not grown for human consumption, but for animal feed or fuel; and now that Roundup has created Roundup-resistant weeds, the biotech crops need to be doused in Agent Orange to keep the weeds down. The fact remains that the vast majority of people, globally, are being fed by small farms, and this remains the only hope for feeding the world in the future.

She acknowledged that we are living in tyrannical times, but said there was still much we can do. The small rebellions can be the most satisfying. When the British tried to place a monopoly on salt in India, Gandhi’s response was to wade into the ocean and show that nature provides what we need. Similarly, when multinationals inject genetic material into plants and claim ownership, they are playing god. Our individual response should be to save seeds, she says. Even something in a flowerpot on your balcony will do it.

And there was much more, of course. Watch for a video record of her talk which I’m told will be posted on UVic’s website next week.

 

 

 

 

Edible Gardens, Terra Madre Day & Digging the City on TV

I was over on the Mainland earlier this week and spent three days enjoying many things, including a tour of some urban agriculture in practice, Terra Madre Day celebrations Vancouver style, and a few minutes in the public eye to promote Digging the City.

On Monday afternoon I was delighted to be able to meet up with Emily Jubenvill, community liaison with the Edible Garden Project in North Vancouver. They use a mixture of community gardens and corporate partnerships to grow food, teach gardening skills and increase the amount of food growing going on in the community.

They’d planted an urban plot behind a skateboard shop which demonstrated a couple of the problems that can arise with urban growing. The shop’s ownership was about to change, and so the garden’s future is as uncertain as on any borrowed land. This is something that affects SPIN farmers and other farmers working under leases rather than secure tenure: it determines the kind of crops they can grow and the amount of long term planning they can do. And then there’s urban vandalism: a ripped polytunnel and a few torn plants here; earlier at the community garden we’d passed a sign asking people not to steal the vegetables.

 

 

 

 

 

One of EGP’s high profile projects, Loutet Farm, was built on the underused edge of a city park with considerable help from private and public funds. It’s a place for workshops and demonstrations, but mostly it’s land for growing food, which can be sold to raise money to fund green jobs in the community. Its success, Emily thinks, is due in large part to the fact they can pay a farmer to manage it: anyone who’s struggled with the ebb and flow of energy and funds around community garden management – or any other social enterprise run by volunteers – will understand what a big deal it is to be able to have someone in charge! On our visit the drainage was being revamped with the help of some grant money and a lot of free muscle. An apiary was under construction as well: this being North Vancouver, it has to be bear-proof: the sturdy mesh cages for the hives will be sunk into concrete before they’re stocked next spring.

 

 

 

 

Monday evening was of course Terra Madre Day everywhere, a global celebration of local eating. As I was missing the carnivore culinary book exchange that Slow Food Vancouver Island was hosting, I was grateful to catch wind of Slow Food Vancouver’s  celebration, which took place at Chill Winston in Gastown. Chef Derek Bothwell is a hand-crafter if ever there was, and brought many of his wares for us to sample. Ingredients included house smoked steelhead, bison (he’s an Alberta boy, originally), a pretty amazing lentil caviar, and local pork belly, with some salt caramel chocolates to finish. We ordered some nice limey crab cakes, smashed potatoes and wild mushrooms to tide us over in between.

Tuesday I made my television debut on CTV with a short spot on a noon show where I was grilled on food security in Canada. You can still catch my moments here.

A small culinary diversion

I was lucky to be able to attend a Slow Food dinner last night, when Chef Naotatsu Ito collaborated in the Sooke Harbour House kitchen with Chef Robin Jackson. They offered us a menu that celebrated and honoured vegetables and featured winter bounty from Umi Nami farm served with local fish, seaweed and foraged mushrooms. Each of the eight courses was paired with teas from Silk Road Tea, chosen by Japanese Tea Master Daniela Cubelic; others took advantage of the chance to try Osaka Artisan Sake from Granville Island in Vancouver –made with local rice!

First course was a winter vegetable terrine (kabu, chard, broccoli, daikon) held together with agar rather than gelatin, and served on a green sauce potato puree with Nootka rose vinegar. Next came some pretty little morsels of crab meat seated on a bit of broth-infused daikon wrapped in coppa.

 

 

 

 

And then came octopus – some lightly cooked and sliced, the rest simmered and mixed with kabocha and daikon and then garnished with shredded vegetables and a dribble of red wine sauce. Next we had marinated freshly-caught albacore tuna wrapped in daikon and served with pretty and crunchy watermelon radishes. The next course required some audience participation: we were brought bowls containing lingcod rolled around green onion, seated on a bed of fir and seaweed beneath which was a hot rock. The servers poured hot tea in and covered it, and after five minutes or so we uncovered and enjoyed.

 

 

 

After which arrived some sauteed lingcod, served on a delicious kabocha–miso puree with a green “barlotto” and green onions and nodding onion. More kabocha appeared in the next course, combined with fresh local mushrooms and some bacon. Slivers of kabocha peel had been fried and arranged around all. The finale was a trio of desserts: green tea & turnip ice cream terrine, black turtle-bean cake and an exceptionally good matcha tea cookie (what a custard cream cookie might dream of being in its next life), with tart and sweet Japanese plum cherry jelly and subtle little drops of minty syrup.

 

 

Slow Food Lamb Roast

Cory Pelan loves lamb, and he likes it best in a farmer’s field with lots of people bringing lots of lovely food to go with it. So yesterday afternoon he and the Slow Island convivium put on a summer party to raise funds for sending Vancouver Islanders to Terra Madre this October.

We sat on hay bales (invited to bring blankets to cover them) and watched the lamb turn on its spit until it was time to dine. Some idled away the time visiting the pig pens to see the heritage breed pigs that farmer Tom Henry raises there. Cory did the carving, assisted by Peter Zambri and watched by a host of hungry foodies.

 

 

 

 

 

By this time platter after platter of side dishes had arrived (I think it best to let the food speak for itself):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and there was a groaning board of desserts as well.

The pit

Spent last Sunday learning about pit cooking – and many other things – from the wondrously encyclopaedic Nancy Turner. It was a Slow Food Vancouver Island event, and about 20 of us made the schlep out to Sooke Harbour House where the sun shone while we shivered on the shore, grateful in the end for fire.

Although the pit had been dug for us (phew) by some Wwoofers, it was apparently too big, so had to be filled in a bit.

The next point of business was to find some smaller rocks for cooking: the large rocks were deemed suitable for lining the pit, but the food itself had to sit on smaller rocks, preferably lava, and without any cracks.

We lined the pit

and started the fire with some of Nancy’s fuzz sticks which made light work of kindling.

While the fire gathered heat and warmed up the rocks to cooking temperature, Nancy entertained us with some interesting foods. She brewed us a nice pot of Labrador tea, which also included other local delicacies like nootka rose, stinging nettle, yerba buena, subalpine fir, liquorice fern root (a powerful sweetener), dried saskatoons and dried yarrow.


Onto the fire it went.

And it simmered away while we had a nice snack of bannock, molded onto green sticks

and toasted over what was now getting to be a very hot fire.

Tea time.

Then there was a nice snack of porphyra, a near relative of nori, which had been harvested in the Broughton Archipelago and then dried

and was particularly tasty toasted on the bannock sticks.

Eventually all was ready,

the fire was hot enough,

and Nancy gave us a thorough briefing, as the pit and food have to be assembled quickly and in sequence.

With a pole to guide the laying of food, the rocks are covered with ferns and salal branches…

the salmon goes on…

add some shellfish, veg

and a bowl of water (the cooking method has more to do with steam than fire)


cover it all up with more ferns, more salal branches, and top with soaked burlap

then shovel dirt over all

until it’s completely covered.

At the end of the cooking time (in our case a somewhat excessive 4 hours or so, but in large traditional pits as much as 24 hours), uncover — carefully


and decant the food onto platters

and lay it out

to enjoy in a gorgeous al fresco dining area

and finish with some of Sooke Harbour House’s excellent desserts.