The cooking adventure is now over. I'm pretty sure my friends liked it (no one going "argh!" and falling over while eating) but it was more convoluted than I thought.
Tuesday 30-Aug-2005The trip started poorly as I wound up having to pop the elevator doors after being stuck in the building elevator for the better part of 40 minutes. Cut my hand fairly badly so that was the end to anything fancy (and no knife tricks) since the bandages make movement limited.
After wrapping my hand, I packed the blades and started thinking about potential menus. Since I still didn't quite know what to expect at Granville island, I planned two potential menus: a scallop starter followed by magret, or prawns followed by a carpetbagger onglet. Dessert would be a pan-roasted pineapple.
The bandaged hand let me get on the plane as one of those people requiring "additional time to board" (I miss SuperElite status) and I arrived in YVR to rain(!). Left out the umbrella since Air Canada's cracking down on luggage weight restrictions but the blades made it through the checked luggage experience without incident. After AC's mystery sausage bit and mushroom omelette breakfast and having to drive behind a bus with Rob Feenie's face plastered on its rear, I decided that
Feenie's was an idea for dinner.
Loud, but no issues getting my table much to the chagrin of the hipster walkups. Decided on Rob's Iron Chef crab rolls and the magret, and went with a bottle of Kettle Valley Gewurtztraminer. The Gewurtz was pretty good - nice lychee and apple bouquet with a fairly long finish.
Crab rolls… apart from a nondescript taste, Feenie's kitchen brigade needs to work on its presentation (perhaps by reading
this thread): it's pretty hard to eat when the plate looks up at me.
The magret was topped with radish sprouts and served on a bed of overly-salty jicama and water chestnuts with a duck sauce reduction; the little bits in the sauce are chopped nuts and it was topped off with radish sprouts. Made me think of a fancified Chinatown roast duck and or the attempt at French cooking at one restaurant I ate at in Taipei. Miss #2.
Had the caramel ice cream with fleur de sel for dessert. Nice caramel flavor, but I would have liked a grainier salt to go with it: perhaps the pink Himalayan one or the black salt from Hawaii for a color contrast.
Wednesday 31-Aug-2005Cooking day didn't go. The person I was working insisted on a dinner meeting so I postponed my cooking plans and wound up at
Joe Fortes. Eh. Service by our waitress "Amy" was very good, as were the oysters but the room was loud, the wines overpriced, and my silverspring salmon significantly overcooked. I kept thinking I was in Vancouver's version of
La Queue de Cheval, only with manageable portions and West Coast types replacing the gangsters.
Thursday 01-Sep-2005Good thing! Got a chance to actually browse the truck farmers' market. Bad thing! The morning's activities didn't finish fast enough so I wound up arriving mid-afternoon when most farmers had already packed up.
Managed to snag some Walla Walla onions, heirloom tomatoes, yellow zucchini, cucumbers and a "tiger melon" (?) from a very pleasant woman (hers is the tent in the photo) before heading into the Public Market. Figured onions, tomato and zucchini for my mains, cucumbers and melon for a cold soup.
I had this eerie "Iron Chef" moment where I didn't know what my ingredient(s) would be once I entered the market: no fresh scallops (I could see the ice on what was available), no fresh colossal shrimp, no onglet, underripe pineapple. Took well over an hour of walk-through before I could settle on a new menu.
PurchasesArmando's: buffalo striploin
Lobster Man: cherrystone clams
Long Liner: halibut cheeks
Organic Connection: peppercress, shiitake and kale
Oyama: manchego
South China Seas: golden chanterellles and jicama
Stock Market: demi-glace
Unknown vendor: blackberries
[tirade]
The BC LCB should hang its corporate head in shame for its inability to carry more than a handful of BC wines.
[/tirade]
I was advised to go to Village VQA Wines, which is quite the find for me since it means less scouring on future trips. Settled on Gehringer Bros. 2002 Dry Riesling and 2003 Optimum Pinot Noir as my picks.
Kitchen environment. Had access to a 5-burner Jenn-Air cooktop and a Weber Genesis grill connected directly to a natural gas line. Pots, pans, their well-maintained knives etc. all available though my friends couldn't fine their lemon reamer or a sieve (go figure).
Unpacking: knives are at the ready. Shiitake in the bag on the right, zucchini on the left. For the life of me, I can't remember the name of the heirloom but they smelled great.
Starter: grilled clams with a jicama and tomato salsa.
I was underwhelmed with the effort. The salsa was okay (everything cut into brunoise and tossed with lime juice, lemon zest and pepper) but I had some difficulty with the clams and lost much of the clam liquor (that and having discovered a dead one after cooking -
).
Starter 2: sautéed halibut cheeks on a jicama and peppercress salad.
Nothing fancy: julienned jicama, slivered Walla Walla onions and julienned lemon zest were tossed with a vinaigrette made of sugar, salt, pepper, lemon juice and rice vinegar. Halibut cheeks were rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper before cooking.
Plat principal: grilled buffalo striploin sauced with a blackberry reduction served with sautéed chanterelle and shiitake, crisped kale. The Stock Market demi-glace was thinner than I expected but it tasted pretty good; I mixed this with an equivalent volume of Pinot Noir, a handful of blackberries, honey and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar to make my sauce. No sieve so there were still blackberry seeds in the sauce.
Dessert: nothing fancy - the melon, blackberries and the manchego. By this time, I ran out of white plates.
Question: what exactly is this melon? It has an intense melon smell, firm silky white flesh and tastes of apple and honeydew. The woman I bought it from said it was a "tiger melon" but this is the first time I've seen one.
