The thing about cooking is it’s so interesting to watch. I don’t know why, but if you go to somebody’s house and they’re making something, they usually say interesting things while they’re cooking.
- Christopher Walken
If Memory Serves Me Right : A Mad Ode To Iron Chef Japan
When I was at a college residence in Southeastern Ontario during the early ‘aughts, everyone’s room looked exactly the same: Same stack of already-obsolete CDs, same Princess Mononoke poster on the wall, same mountain of clothing on the bed and wasteland of drafting paper and half-eaten Rabba’s pizza slices on the floors. And on TV, one of three things could be counted on: Undergrads, Buffy the vampire Slayer, or Iron Chef.
For the most part, TV was just part of the constant, reassuring din of college life, often mixed with caffeine-induced stress babble and the occasional Rage Against The Machine Song. You would look up every so often from your work, check in with what was happening on-screen and check back out. But sometimes (usually due to severe sleep-deprivation) you looked up and got hooked for the whole episode, homework and future employability forgotten.
This happened to me a lot with Iron Chef (which would explain my poor grades) and began an interest/obsession with the show that would last more than a decade into my later life. If it wasn’t for this strange little show from Japan I may not have had enough of an interest in food to join my then girlfriend-later wife Crystal for that fateful night of Chinatown gluttony. And if that epiphany had never happened, maybe I never would have become a professional chef. Read More
Araxi (Whistler, BC)
A month ago – Back when blueberries were blooming on alpine meadows throughout the Strathcona Park range – My wife and I were pulling into a hotel on another mountaintop. Whistler was the final stop on our invigorating mountain bike tour of the Caribou Highways and Byways and despite my physical exhaustion I was spiritually elated!
Whistler is home to, among other things, the restaurant that I most wanted to cross off my local bucket list. I’d met the chef of Araxi at the BCSGA Shellfish Dinner months back and had decided that if we ever made an appearance on the mainland that was to be my Mecca. Read More
Tomato Gazpacho
Summer’s run aground and once again the cold winds whistle an autumn tune. It’s time for us West coasters to throw on long pants, switch over to red wines and make plans for the weekend’s mushroom hunt. But wait! Before all that fun stuff the garden needs to be cleaned up: Herbs trimmed, squash exhumed, Peas and tomatoes plucked.
This year’s tomato plants (once again courtesy of the “Tomato People” at the farmer’s market) equalled the mighty bushes of years past in height, but the amount of fruit they yielded doubled! I ‘dunno whether its global warming, different fertilizer, or the sacrifices we offered to Demeter but we’ve got barrel’s full of heirloom Roma and cherry tomatoes in every colour you can imagine. Even if I get around to canning and pickling and eating salad through to October we’ll still have leftovers.
And so. Gazpacho. Read More
Wild Raspberries
Nestled in the pine beetle-infested cockles of south-central BC, along the Cariboo Highway waaaaaay past the mountains is a sleepy little valley with a really strange name:
108 Mile House (along with a handful of other stops along this route) were once inns for American prospectors back in the 1850s providing a chance to rest and avoid bear attacks between civilization and the big Barkerville mines up North. Nowadays it’s a quiet little spot with a museum, clean public restrooms, poorly marked mountain biking trails, pissed-off looking cows and acres of wild raspberry bushes.
I’d never seen raspberries in the ‘ol wide open before! There my wife and I were, only a quarter mile from the highway, turning the map ‘round and ‘round in the dwindling light wondering if the local farmers would ever find our bodies when Crystal, surveying the endless meadow says, “Well, at least we won’t starve…” The bushes we’d been riding by for the last couple ‘o hours were all exploding with tiny red miracles of flavour. Read More