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PaoPao, glad to hear you also had a good meal. (Is your nickname supposed to mean grandmother in Chinese?) I think my husband also tried Bellevue Kreik last night. I really liked it because it was berry and sweet. My mussels didn't come with bread (I didn't miss it, was already full), did you ask for it?

Aha, breakthrough! Chambar's menu lists them as "Gaufre de Liege". Pump the phrase through Google and its translater and ta-da, it's a sweet yeasted and very buttery dough that's cooked in a waffle iron. I found a few recipes this way, and started flipping through my own cookbooks. Larousse also has a recipe, under "waffle". Gonna have to try making these at home, mmm.

My husband and I and two friends had a great DOV meal at Chambar last night. I hadn't been there for dinner before but did go for lunch a few months back. Between the four of us, we tried: Salade Folle (Belgium endive, watercress, pear, caramelized pecans & blue cheese with honey glazed walnuts served with toasted fig bread) Tourelle de Crevettes et Crabe (Tower of baby prawns, crab, candied ginger & avocado salsa on a bed of shaved fennel with pomegranate) Butternut squash and apple soup (different from the soup listed on Tourism Vancouver's website) Tajine d'Aziz a l'Agneau (Braised lamb with honey, figs, cinnamon & cilantro, served with cous cous and zalouk) Moules Congolaises (Mussels cooked with fresh tomato, smoked chilli and cilantro with a touch of coconut cream and lime) Gaufre de Liege (Belgian waffle with warm chocolate, raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream) The restaurant was very busy and the tables were packed. Looks like they're only offering the DOV menu and not the a la carte as well. Is this typical of DOV restaurants? My husband had specialty beer (can't remember the name), the rest of us had variations on their specialty cocktail. I wish they had their regular cocktail list available too, but I can understand why they would want to limit the menus during DOV. For the three appetizers, the soup and seafood tower were really good, the watercress salad was alright. The entrees were a big hit with everyone. I loved my Moules Congolaises and the frites were perfect. Dessert was excellent as well, I could have had another serving. The service was very good, our waiter did a great job and answered all our questions well. We will definitely go back.

Shortly after I received the book back in Dec, I decided to do a dinner and movie viewing party (ROTK EE) and made all the courses from the book. Thank god for weekends. - Roasted Beet Salad (pretty good) - Celeriac Remoulade (okay, didn't like the dressing very much) - Olivade (even people who didn't like olives liked this, in small doses) - Smoked and Steamed Salmon Rillettes (tasted great, texture was a little too firm for easy spreading) - Rabbit Rillettes with Prunes (substituted purchased duck confit, best spread of the three) - Boeuf Bourguignon (aged overnight as suggested), excellent. - Dark Chocolate Mouse Tart with Hazelnut Crust (simple and tasty) All of the recipes, except for the crust of the tart, worked out really well. The tart dough was hard to roll out and kept cracking, ultimately I ended up patching it together in the pan. And don't blind bake with aluminum foil, it really stuck to the dough when I lifted it out. The second attempt with parchment paper was perfect.

Hello, Does anyone know how they make the waffles at Patisserie LeBeau or Chambar? They are unlike other waffles that I've tried. Firm, kind of chewy and bready. I've asked the staff at places and neither will tell me what's in them or they don't know. My best guess is that they're yeasted, or they're just a really thick batter with an ingredient that's not normally in waffles (sour cream?). I really want to try making them at home, already got the waffle iron but I'm stumped on the batter. Help!

mmmFood, I've been to Tofino several times over the last few years and your best bet is to contact the Wick themselves. Their staff are very helpful and friendly and will be able to answer all your questions. When I stayed there, I made all my dinner reservations at the local restaurants through the front desk, they did a great job. As for dining at the Wick, I love going there for breakfast. Also, book your spa appointments now :) I recommend trying Raincoast for dinner. Casual, great food, lots of seafood. There are lots of great food shops in the area too. You're going to have a great time!

I82Much, your BWJ croissant experience sounds very similar to mine, which I posted about in this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=44195 I had the same butter leaking problems as you did, but damn did they taste good.

If you've never been to Granville Island and you're going to be driving, navigating and finding parking can be a bit confusing. Here's a decent map on Granville Island's website. http://www.granvilleisland.com/en/maps Friday is definitely a much better choice than Saturday. During the summer weekends, there's frequently a lineup of cars gets backed up all the way to W4th. If you have some time, walk around the Granville & W Broadway area. Lots of great restaurants. Vij's, Rangoli (Vij's casual version), West, En, Cru.

It seems that in Canada, we cannot import the high fat percentage European butters due to the dairy laws. How does using the lower percentage Canadian butters affect the end result of croissants (and puff pastry) when making them at home and how would one adjust or compensate the recipe or method?

To get more oven spring in my breads, I put a baking stone on the bottom rack of the oven plus a small 6" cast iron frying pan with several grill brikettes and preheat for about 45 mins to an hour. The shaped loaves are underproofed by about 25% and just before I put my loaves in, I boil about 1/2 cup of water in the microwave. The loaves get slashed and are slid onto the baking stone, then the water is very quickly poured into the cast iron pan and the oven door is immediately closed. Viola, a lot of instant steam and great oven spring. I got this tip from the King Arthur Flour message boards. The problem with this method is that if you use too much water, it can splash onto the baking stone and crack it. If you want to try this method, err on the side of less water, or use an old ceramic tile that you don't care about.

Hi Bernaise! Yes, I recently learned, after a very futile search, that butter cannot be imported into Canada! Have you been able to successfully import butter from the US? I'm thinking the risk of spoilage is too high for me, but I'm definitely going to bring a cooler with me on my next road trip down there. (Why oh why didn't I think of this when I went down a few months ago..) I think for my next attempt, I'm going to focus on not overworking the dough and trying to keep the dough and butter of similar texture, and to use a cooled marble board. It seems like the too-hard butter, the overly elastic dough and the warm ambient temperature caused most of my problems. Andiesenji, Lactantia cultured is what I use for all my baking and the type I used for the croissants. It's pretty easy to find over here in BC, at least in Vancouver. It's good to know that your baker friend approves of it. For those of us frusterated by our butter up here in the north, here's an interesting article: http://www.magma.ca/~ca/rawmilk/nationalpost.htm

Dejah, will you adopt me? All my life I've grown up eating the dim sum lotus kind, the homemade sweet or salty bamboo leaf kind and I never learned to make them. Some of my cookbooks have recipes for them but since it would just be me eating them (and I don't want a colossal failure on my hands), I just buy mine from the chinese markets or have them in restaurants. Not as good as homemade though.

Duh of course! The PBS video clips, I had totally forgotten about those. If you go to the Prime Video Cuts page for Julia's shows and search for "croissants" for the Baking with Julia show, it'll come back with two links for the croissants show. Part 1 is making and rolling the dough, Part 2 is shaping and baking. I'm having trouble with the site though, can't seem to get the download working but I will keep trying. Andiesenji, thanks for the book tip, my local library does have it. Do you remember what it was exactly that made you switch Nick's recipe over your previous ones? To add to my original post, I'm using a cultured unsalted butter. Not sure if it has a high enough fat percentage as the European butters but it's the closest thing I can find. About keeping things enough while rolling, should the butter not be so cold that it cracks while rolling? The recipe saod to put the dough in the refridgerator for two hours in between turns and the butter did crack within the dough as I rolled, until it got too warm and then it leaked out (argh). I think next time I will try to keep the butter more pliable and roll on a chilled marble board. For the baking, do I want a hotter oven? Say 400+ rather than 350? Thanks to everyone for all their feedback and help!

Last weekend I attempted to make homemade croissants and the recipe I used was from Baking With Julia. I found that the amount of liquid called for in the dough portion wasn't enough to moisten all of the flour so I had to add more. This may be an issue with my flour but regardless, I think the dough got kneaded too long in trying to incorporate more water. I had problems with the rolling and turning, just couldn't get the stuff to roll out as large as the recipe said because the dough was too elastic. I also had a few problems with the butter leaking out as I rolled. Ultimately, I proceeded all the way through with the recipe, did the forming, rising, and baking. Even before they went into the oven, I knew that they weren't going to turn out simply because of all the problems I already had but I wanted to carry it through anyways, to learn from my mistakes if nothing else. I wasn't at all surprised when a lot of the butter leaked out and pooled as they baked. The tops still came out crispy, there was some puffage, the insides kind of resemble the croissants from the French bakery down the street, and my husband thought they were great for a first attempt so it wasn't a total loss even though I was pretty disappointed. Afterwards, I went through all of my cookbooks and some websites that had croissant recipes. I was most interested in the dough ingredients and proportions in each recipe. There seems to be quite a variation. A lot of recipes seems to indicate that you want to work the dough as little as possible so that rolling will be easier, but some say to knead for a few minutes in a mixer. Shirley Corriher's book Cookwise says that you want the dough to be very soft, almost sticky, which also helps with the rolling but this seems to contradict most recipes that I've read which say to only add as much water as it takes for the dough to form a ball, like in a food processor. This is probably the sort of project that would be much easier if I can see someone else make it, so I can poke and prod for texture and feel. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips about what I should do the next time? Yes, crazy as it sounds, I want to try this again but maybe in six months when the weather is nice and cold rather than the start of summer..

Eatrustic, I'm going to be in Victoria next month and was planning to go to Wildfire. Do you know if they're open 7 days a week? I'm going to be there on a weekend. Do you have any other Victoria recommendations? I'm thinking of dinner at Cafe Brio.

I've went to Victoria for dim sum a few times last year. The food was good enough, but the service was consistently terrible and it always took much longer than at other dim sum places. Now I usually go to the Kirin at 12th and Cambie, in the City Square mall or the Sun Sui Wah on Cambie. My Lumiere experience (last week) was very similar to Jerry_A's and a definite contrast to my previous meals there. Had a few very good dishes but overall, it was too expensive for what I got. I would suggest the much more casual and fun Feenie's next door if you want to go the Rob Feenie route. But if you want a really great fine dining experience, book the chef's table at West and leave yourself in the chef's hands but do let them know if there are certain dishes you want to try. Definitely slot off a few hours for Granville Island, and go on an empty stomach.

It may not have changed that much HKDave. My husband and I recently had a chef's table dinner at West as well and our post tax, pre tip total came to about $320. That's for two eight course meals, my husband's wine flight, my cocktail, sparkling water and digestifs with dessert. It was an amazing meal, I wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

Thanks for the abebooks.com tip Foodie. I just ordered an out of print book from them that I wasn't able to get from amazon.com, it seems that some of the amazon.com resellers won't ship to Canada.

Another crispy polenta casualty here, can't seem to get that nice crispy crust either. I can get the polenta firm enough but the crust is never thick enough to be crispy for long. Argh..

Hmm, thanks for the heads up about the customs and brokerage fees. Other than amazon.ca and chapters.ca, are there any other good online Canadian stores for books, new or used?

Oh wow, I've got to try that! Not sure if I have the right grater hole shape though. Can the flakes be too thin? I have a grater that on cheddar and mozza cheese, makes shreds like you would put on pizza. I also have another grater that I use on parmesan, to make the thin shavings, the same thickness and shape as if you took a veggie peeler to the parmesan. Which would be better?

amazon.com doesn't explicitly say that anywhere but I order from online US stores every so often and I've never been charged for books. I think if the amount is low enough and for certain types of things, you don't have to pay extra charges. For example, today I got a package from amazon.com containing two books and two DVDs. Went down to the post office and just picked it up, no extra charges. The books were for my husband, the DVDs were for me (Tampopo and Big Night, which I could not find anywhere here).

I saw them at Urban Fare last weekend, never bought them there as they never smell as good as the ones at the Chinese supermarkets. Haven't been produce shopping recently but if they're at UF, they should be easy to find elsewhere in town.

I fake it the most in work related food situations, such as when someone brings in home baked goods or there's a free lunch or birthday cake. I eat and fake so as not to seem rude and anti-social but sometimes, I just can't swallow down that last piece of dry cake with thick slickish frosting.

At the insistence of two friends (definitely not the egullet type) from the island, I drove them out to the Chilliwack airport just for pies. We got there around dinnertime so we all had an entree and a slice of pie each. The consensus was that it was standard diner type fare, and the pies are definitely not as good as homemade.