blogthecat

Love in all the right places

If you're like me, you cringe at 95% of the Valentine's Day schlock we're subjected to. Ads and the like tend to be either corny, tacky, distasteful, repellent in their desperation to wring dollars from us ... or all of the above. But sometimes, I do come across the odd ode to love in February that hits me exactly the right way. Like this one.

Created by our friends James and Monique, this ad situates chocolate smack in the midst of the senses, its rightful place. Chocolate never had it so good as on, and nestled into, this gorgeous belly. The ad is fun, sexy, and effective—it strikes the right balance of risqué and restraint (note the spare but cute copy, too).

The ad was created on James's new web-based ad creation platform that's open to anyone: AdHack. On AdHack, ad creation escapes from the boundaries of the traditional model and allows people to play with their creativity. It also produces some damn good ads, which can be bought (e.g., M&Ms could buy this ad if they wanted to).

Check out AdHack ... and tell me if you don't think a couple of times today about M&Ms ...

Stimulating the senses

In my early twenties, I was a waitress at a fabulous bistro called Café Mika in Ottawa. I learned so many things at Mika: how to drag toothpicks through sugary glazes to make hearts; how to savour a bottle of high-end fumé blanc on which you’ve spent an entire night’s tips; how to harmonize Asian and western flavours into a fusion masterpiece; and how to make customers feel so special they won't only come back, they''ll tell a half-dozen other people about their experience.

Perhaps my favourite lesson at Mika was the art of writing food. Specifically, I was often charged with writing out the daily specials in cursive, as quickly as I could but not so fast that my script would lose form or elegance. Jude, Mika’s owner and chef extraordinaire, taught me how to compose mouth-watering menu descriptions. You knew you had hit it right when your stomach would grumble before you were finished writing.

There was no sitting around for the ingredients we listed: they had jobs to do, albeit pleasant ones. Tiger shrimp “nestled” into a heavenly sauce; filet mignon “basked” in an exotic reduction; and cilantro “mingled” with carrots and ginger. Just as important were adjectives: “crisped,” “smoked,” “seared,” ‘spiced,” “chipped,” “glazed” … The descriptions were specific and visual, with gorgeous syntax that foreshadowed how seriously the kitchen took the food they were about to prepare for you. At the same time, Jude taught me not to be pretentious—to let the words play with each other, just as the food would in the dishes she conjured up.

I’ve never come across a better menu writer than Jude, but the other night, I ate at a cute restaurant, Nyala (African), whose menu reminded me of how much fun I used to have writing food at Mika. Nyala’s menu—which is very silly—made me and my companions giggle, and had the effect of warming us up to the experience from the get-go. The staff kindly gave me a menu to take home when we left, so I’m going to excerpt a couple of the most charming entries.

Yeshimbera asa
Chickpea flour cakes awaken in a berbere sauce flavoured with onion, garlic and ginger leaving you breathless maybe, speechless possible, satisfied for certain.

Pinch me—PRAWNS?
Okay, you twisted our arms, let us now take this dish to the absolute limits of the universe bound only by the heavens and the size of your plate … piri-piri sauce will sing and tender prawns will dance to create this hypnotic moment in time.

Tofu stew
Tender morsels of tofu dress up in costumes of red pepper sauce, ginger, cardamom and garlic before coming to life on the stage we call your table.

You can't be in a bad mood after you've read Nyala's menu. By contrast, I'm often left unmoved and undecided when I read so many other restaurants' menus that rely to boring effect on the word “with” (e.g., salmon with red pepper vinaigrette, curry with lentils and cheese, etc., etc.). Why shortchange your kitchen with dreary writing? Menus can be powerful teasers that put your customers in the right frame of mind to enjoy your restaurant.

We had a wonderful time at Nyala: the food is great and our server was incredible … warm, attentive, happy to help us choose, and knowledgeable.

Nyala also provided me with memories of Mika, a place—or rather an experience—that will resonate with me my whole life. There’s just no telling where magic will turn up, but when it does, you know it’s there. Mika was magic.

Sandwiches to die for

Everyone has them. Three to five meals or dishes they remember as the best of their lives. Without doubt, I savoured my most memorable meal sitting on a sidewalk curb in Rome with my dad and brother when I was about eight years old. We had been touring the city for hours and were absolutely famished. A little deli provided our salvation: marinated artichoke and tuna panini sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. I'll never forget sitting on that curb, the sun beating down upon us, enjoying each bite as if it were our last.

I have never replicated that sandwich, despite many attempts. However, I have discovered two other store-bought sandwiches within the last little while that have rocked my world.

Sandwich #1: The humble vegetarian
Ingredients: Untoasted multigrain; a thin spread of dijon mixed with mayo; greens of some sort (I think butter lettuce); mild cheddar cheese; avocado; cucumber; red onion; and tomato sprinkled with salt and pepper.
Location: Finch's Tea and Coffee House (pictured at top)
Reason for love-on: Fresh, fresh ingredients; a sandwich maker who took care and time with the assembly (I watched); a clean-looking deli area; a cute, funky dining space; and fun friends who put up with my repeated exclamations of ecstasy.

Sandwich #2: The simplest tuna
Ingredients: Untoasted whole wheat; a thin layer of iceberg lettuce (one per side of bread); and a perfect mixture of what I think was just tuna and mayo.
Location: Phoscao Cafe
Reason for love-on: Best use of iceberg lettuce EVER; ample but not unwieldy amount of tuna filling; soft yet firm bread; lovely owners who put 110% into everything they do.

Now, I could try to make these sandwiches myself. I think I could come close, but not all the way there. So I won't do it. There is something magical about these sandwiches as they are made from these two shops, and I don't want to tinker.

Still, there are lessons I will steal from my two special sandwich experiences:

1. Truly amazing food is made with love. More on that in posts to come.
2. Iceberg lettuce is perfect sandwich liner, especially for sandwiches with moist filling (it keeps the bread tender rather than soggy).
3. If you have just-baked bread, don'™t toast it for sandwiches.
4. Sometimes moderation is a good motto for what goes between your two slices. I have had a few mouth-watering full-to-bursting sandwiches, but often times they're just intimidating and messy.
5. Fresh makes the difference, every time.

Does anyone have a sandwich secret to share? An amazing meal to recount? Would love to hear from you on these most important topics.

p.s. Thanks, Monique, for introducing me to Finch's (we have to go back soon!). Both Finch'™s and Phoscao are must-tries.

Fried ambitions

I can’t seem to get fries off my mind … french fries, those delicious symbols of American excess. Normally I find fries easy to avoid, and I will admit to a bit of smugness about my restraint. Now I am a grovelling fool for the fries.

Before I tucked into them Saturday (pub fries) and Sunday (made-from-frozen fries), I obsessed about fries for about an hour on Friday night before falling asleep. Eventually this produced a business idea (it usually does, which is why I’m so rich).

Here it is: The Fry Palace, a restaurant celebrating the glorious golden spear, where fries are the mains and protein or green things the sides. So there would be fries with steak, fries à la Provençal, fries with goat cheese salad. Fries of all kinds: Cajun, garlic-dusted, au naturel, skinny, thick, crimped, crispy … you name it, The Fry Palace would have it. And sauces galore: your basic ketchup, chive- or dill-laced mayo, barbeque, sweet chili, malt vinegar (my must-have condiment), hearty gravy, even the sickest and most mouth-watering mélange of all: Quebecois poutine.

Yum.

A ridiculously good halibut recipe

One of the best things about living in Vancouver is access to crazy-wonderful halibut from the Queen Charlotte Islands. Rich but not fatty, mild but not tasteless, halibut is my absolute favourite fish. Lucky for me, our landlord is a fervent halibut fisherman, and he regularly treats us to presents of his catches. It doesn’t get fresher than this.

Earlier this year, we got our hands on a brilliant cookbook by Karen Barnaby, entitled simply, Halibut. Though all the recipes we’ve tried from the book have been delicious, the one I’m about to share with you is extraordinary. I would imagine that if you can’t get fresh halibut, cod would be a fine substitute.

If you can speak to your dining companions while you’re tucking into this dish, you have an above-average sense of decorum. Our landlord, who avoids eating fish even though he loves to catch it, was converted when his wife cooked this for him. He spread the recipe far and wide among his friends, and thanked us for it every single time we saw him for a month.

Without further ado:

Karen Barnaby’s Halibut with Mustard Nut Crust

Ingredients

4 Tbsp butter, softened, divided
¼ cup whole grain mustard
½ cup hazelnuts, skinned and roughly ground
4 6-oz halibut fillets, 1 inch thick
to taste: kosher salt
to taste: cayenne pepper
3 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
1 ½ cups white wine
½ cup black olives, preferably niçoise
4 to 5 sprigs thyme

Method

Preheat the oven to 500º F (250º C). Prepare the crust mixture by combining 3 Tbsp of the softened butter with the mustard and hazelnuts. Season the halibut with salt and cayenne pepper. Spread the crust mixture evenly over the top of each piece of halibut.

Heat an ovenproof pan (large enough the hold the fish without crowding) and add the remaining 1 Tbsp butter. Place the fish in the pan. Sprinkle with the chopped thyme and pour enough wine around the fish to come half way up the fillets and not touch the crust. Spread the olives and the thyme sprigs around the fish.

Bring the pan to a boil on top of the stove, then place it in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes. Change the oven setting to broil and cook for another 2 minutes or until the crust is bubbly. Serve immediately.

Kiley Cooking Tip

This recipe reminds me of a key step in making the most of a recipe: read the method, or instructions, completely before getting going. It’s so easy to get impatient and not read through the process before jumping into ingredient assembly. This recipe in particular calls for some dexterous oventop-to-in-the-oven maneuvering, and it’s good to know that in advance.

Bon appetit!

To rinse or not to rinse

It might be said of me that I’m, um, a bit queasy about some food. I’d even guess that harsher language has been applied, perhaps even by my mother who, when I first stopped eating meat some 15 years ago, used to sneak in chicken consommé to whatever dish we would be eating, she was so annoyed. In many families, including mine, cooking for someone is closely tied to loving them, and my saying no to meat in some ways constituted an emotional rejection. We’re mostly over that now (I think!) but I do get how off-putting self-imposed dietary restrictions or fussiness can be.

I am trying to be less finicky with food. I ate a veggie dog just the other day that had both fraternized with chicken and tumbled onto the very-much-used-by-dogs grass along Kits beach during a fun barbeque. I had my priorities straight—don’t be a loser and spoil the great mood by thinking too much about what might or might not have attached itself to my dinner. I was very cool (relatively speaking), and it was good for me—I just wiped it off and devoured it.

But I'm not going to pretend that I'm not slightly neurotic about the circumstances that need to be in place for me to feel good about eating food.

For example, fish: if fish is to be cooked in our house, it must be thoroughly, blatantly (if done by Craig) rinsed and patted down before cooking. Not totally calm about eating fish, I need this ritual to set the stage for enjoying the meal. It's a clean thing, I guess. But today, I came upon news from the blogosphere that repudiates this process. Helen Rennie, scribe of the neat blog Beyond Salmon, writes in answer to a reader’s question about the merits of rinsing fish:

“You don't need to rinse fish, chicken, pork, or any other meat before cooking. Not only does it not get rid of bacteria, it spreads bacteria (if water splashes from the sink in the process of rinsing). What kills bacteria much more effectively is cooking.”

Thoughts? (Oh, and if they’re about some of my peccadillos about food/germs—I already know they’re annoying. I’m more interested in the no-rinse theory. Do you rinse your fish? If you do, would you stop because of the above information?)

Bitter green

What'€™s wrong with this picture? Oh, I know, it's what's in it. Frisée. Whenever I come across it, frisée never fails to sour my mood.

I come across it a lot, which might be the whole problem. I might be less incensed if it were treated it as it should be: GARNISH. It is not meant to be a full-fledged, deserving bite of salad. But this is exactly what happens when you buy the hideously environmentally damaging boxes of pre-made salad mixes I do too often. Frisée is the star component in such medleys, and if you don't use it you're left with a third of the lettuce you agreed to pay for.

Which leads me to my conspiracy theory. Frisée, because of its wild, craggy branches, takes up enough room in the salad box that it creates the illusion of fullness and value. Frisée is a big RIP-JOB.

Still, it continues to make its sinister way into my life since I am guiltily, but totally, addicted to my salad boxes. And so when preparing dinner, I have little option but to dump a frizzy mass of greens onto my plate, gritting my teeth as the frisée claims centre stage instead of retreating to the edge of the plate where it belongs. Given an inch, it'll take a mile.

As it does, it grabs every bit of dressing available. Dressing clusters in pearls along its spindly tentacles, leaving the other, decent lettuce in the mix dry and wilted—ignored. From that point on, it's disaster, unless you don't mind wanton branches of frisée delightedly penetrating your nostrils as you try to cram them into your gaping mouth, smearing your lipstick all over your face, spraying your clothes and any fellow diners unlucky enough to be present with flecks of oil.

Down with frisée, I say, DOWN with it!

A perfect trio

I am always impressed with simple elegance—especially when it comes to food. I experienced it last night, in the tasting plate I had at Soma (pictured).

   
It consists of three tastes arranged lengthwise on a platter: white bean and feta spread, marinated olives (including the delicious big, green, mild ones—Cerignola, I think), and fig tapenade. The arrangement allows the sampler to experience amazingly different bites and textures in succession: creamy/savory, salty/juicy, and sweet and seedy. It was so good I had to go tell the kitchen how blown away we were.

I would call Soma (located on 8th, just off Main) a bistro, since I agree with Wikipedia’s understanding of bistro as “a familiar name for a type of small restaurant serving moderately priced simple meals in an unpretentious setting.” Others might call it a café, but café doesn’t connote great wines and beers and evening atmosphere to me, which Soma delivers in spades. The warm, mellow light in Soma is fantastic, as is the vibe: relaxed, intimate, yet spacious. The clientele seems interesting, interested, unaffected, and uncontrivedly cool. The room feels like a cross between an artist’s studio and a small warehouse— spare, but not cold.

The tasting plate was by far the best of what I sampled, though the grilled asparagus in truffle oil came close. The tapas menu grounds itself in carefully selected meats and cheeses, which diners can choose by looking at the daily selection on the big blackboard and composing mixed plates. I don’t eat meat, but I definitely get the appeal of this idea.

As for service, things started well but ended indifferently, with our server going off shift without letting us know and perhaps forgetting to inform someone else to take over. I had to tap our new server on the shoulder to get a dessert order in, after waiting for about 15 minutes after our main course plates were cleared. But this may have been an exception; and it won’t put me off going back to Soma again, though perhaps more for a drink and nibble than with the expectation of a full meal.

At least one of Soma’s owners harks from the Bin restaurants, and the chef is Tyler Torrance, ex of Monsoon. Soma is at 151 E 8th Ave—it's definitely worth checking out if you're in town.