Inspired by the 100-Mile Diet series published in TheTyee.ca, the National Post asked writers in four Canadian cities to cook dinner for friends using nothing but ingredients produced within 100 miles of their homes. To their cries of 'Can't we do this in summer?' the newspaper said 'Hell, no. That would be too easy.' Here's what happened.
LOCATION: Vancouver
HOST: Kate ZImmerman
Vancouver menu
House-smoked oysters with balsamic hollandaise sauce
***
Spinach salad with roasted beets, sprouts and goat's cheese
B.C. alder-smoked Fraser Valley lamb with a hazelnut and fresh herb crust in a Lotusland Merlot reduction
Roasted sunchokes and sweet pepeprs
Roasted garlic mashed potatoes
***
Fraser Valley blueberries layered with mint, honey, balsamic vinegar and organic whipped cream
By Kate Zimmerman
The real challenge of staging a 100 mile dinner at my house in North Vancouver lay in designing a meal that illustrates the west coast's bounty without making readers from elsewhere in Canada so envious they would send me stink bombs made from their fermented turnips.
There's plenty here. Even in April, too early and too rainy for the outdoor farmers' markets, places like the Granville Island Market carry everything from Fraser Valley chicken to Dungeness crabs. It was easy to find sensational organic garlic from Langley's Oddball Organics, fresh organic spinach and beets from the Fraser Valley, chevre from Abbotsford and terrifically nutty-tasting sprouts from Courtenay. The problem here wasn't unearthing the foodstuffs -- it was finding flavourings and lubricants that would truly make them shine.
Ingenuity was required. First problem: salt.
We didn't have time to boil down the ocean and wait for it to dry into crystals. Instead, I bought dried kelp from Bamfield, on Vancouver Island. (I later learned it's outside the 100-mile parameters by about 50 miles.) We toasted the seaweed in the oven; then my husband, barbecue cookbook author “Rockin' Ronnie” Shewchuk, ground it in our spice/coffee grinder. The result was a salty black dust that we used in nearly everything on the menu. It worked fairly well but left a slightly grey cast on various dishes. Its flavour was nevertheless essential, and reminded us all of how fundamental salt is to North American cuisine.
Another issue: oil. I didn't plan far enough ahead to get myself a bottle of hazelnut oil from the Fraser Valley's Agassiz, the only option I could find. (I did stumble on ground Agassiz hazelnuts in my freezer and we used them to coat the lamb.) Unsalted butter was our alternative, but what to use as the oil in the salad dressing? I wound up making a dressing based on organic whipping cream, featuring dill, honey, garlic and balsamic vinegar.
Problem number three was finding a source of tang, and therein lies a tale. Venturi-Schulze balsamic vinegar is a local foodie must-get. Exorbitantly expensive -- my bottle cost $70 for 250 mL. -- it's produced by Vancouver Island's Venturi-Schulze winery and is magnificent. I tried to imagine what else could give me this essential element of flavour. But, without access to lemons or limes, I assumed that vinegar was the only choice. I didn't manage to hunt down a more modestly priced local brand. We eventually used the pricy vinegar in every course, including dessert.
With salty and sour covered, the last elusive flavour was sweetness. I was delighted to find a small jar of Eden Bees Honey already on my pantry shelf, purchased at a craft sale last year. It was the most local of the meal's components, as it was made by West Vancouver bees, likely from the blossoms on some prime piece of real estate. It, too, appeared in various dishes, including the red wine reduction on our lamb. Naturally, it was crucial for dessert.
That course was the least daunting. Because the 100 Mile Diet series was written by people from Vancouver, I already knew that finding flour for baked goods was unlikely. I figured instead on a fruit fool, layering Fraser Valley blueberries (bought frozen) that had been simmered with fresh mint, honey and a bit of the balsamic for contrast, with organic whipped cream from Avalon dairies. My food writer friend Jane Mundy suggested I call it April Fool. It was delicious.
The final challenge was the wine. You'd think that with a thriving wine industry like B.C.'s, getting a bottle to match the already established lamb entrée would be easy-peasy. It would have been, if the Okanagan's wine country weren't more than 100 miles away. We learned that Vancouver Island wineries that make reds use Okanagan grapes, because conditions on the coast aren't ideal for the grapes required. In fact, when the local restaurant Raincity Grill decided to offer a 100-mile menu recently, chef Andrea Carlson had to dispense with the idea of serving lamb because the sommelier couldn't find an appropriate wine to go with it. She used pork instead.
After much hunting, we discovered a solitary red made from local fruit -- Abbotsford's Lotusland 2002 Merlot. Its handsome label, composed of black-and-white photographs of B.C. personalities (the late Rosemary Brown, Vicki Gabereau, James Barber, Kim Campbell), added visual regionality to the table. Mind you, it cost $30 a bottle. Eating and drinking only what's local, it turns out, is not particularly cheap, unless you grow it yourself. What a perverse situation that is.
Jane, who got so curious that she invited herself for dinner, brought a Saturna Island Pinot Gris to demolish along with our opener of Fanny Bay oysters, lightly smoked over charcoal and local applewood chunks by Rockin' Ronnie on the Cobb, a portable charcoal barbecue. Jane had unearthed the dinner's sunchokes from her garden, and brought along snippets of her mint, rosemary, and chives, too.
Just for fun, our other guests, United Way staffer and former pop music critic Michael Becker and his partner, graphic designer Tracy Forbes, said they'd bring music that was also from within 100 miles of here. I expected a few items from Diana Krall, maybe Sarah McLachlan, and all too many samples of Bryan Adams. Instead, Michael brought an apple box of CD options, including Colin James, Long John Baldry, Roy Forbes, and Metalwood, whose trumpet-player, Brad Turner, hails from North Vancouver.
Eventually, we hunkered down to:
°House-smoked oysters with balsamic hollandaise sauce
°spinach salad with sprouts, McLennan Creek Chevrotina goat's cheese, roasted orange and red Fraser Valley beets, and the afore-mentioned dressing
°B.C. alder-planked Fraser Valley lamb with a hazelnut and fresh herb crust in a Lotusland Merlot reduction, with roasted sunchokes and sweet yellow and orange peppers and roasted garlic mashed potatoes
°April Fool
The merlot was decent, pronounced by the group to be “chewy,” with notes of blackberry, plum, and pepper. “There's a high gluggability factor,” said Michael, who also noted that the lamb didn't taste too “lamb-y.”
“It was very tender and obviously fresher than lamb that comes from the other side of the world. It had subtlety.”
Jane said the big hurdle to get over in the meal was the absence of real salt. She and Tracy agreed that in North America, we are so bombarded with salt that appreciating more delicate flavours becomes a challenge.
“I think it would be better for us to train our tastebuds to not have that much salt, and appreciate food for what it is, than to have these dominant flavours that sort-of take over what the food really is about,” said Jane, who nevertheless described the meal as “wonderful.”
Ron got a lot out of the experiment. “When I taste the lamb that we ate and the wine that we're drinking with the lamb, I feel like the flavours interlock perfectly. The sweet peppers, and the balsamic vinegar -- everything seems to connect.”
“It connects by virtue of place,” said Michael.
“Even the kelp doesn't get in the way,” said Rockin' Ronnie -- although I notice that he hasn't used it since.
Grocery List
2 bottles Lotusland Merlot @ $29.85 each $59.70
Chevrotina log $11.20
Baby bell peppers $2.99
Mixed herbs $1.99
Dairyland unsalted butter (1/2 lb.) $2.99
Organic whipping cream, 2 bottles @ $3.79 each $7.58
B.C. Macrocystis Kelp $3.59
Frozen blueberries $7.97
Yellow-fleshed potatoes $5.99
Venturi-Schulze balsamic vinegar $69.50
Fanny Bay Oysters $16.95
Fraser Valley Lamb $48.40
Red and yellow beets $7.80
Spinach $5.98
Eatmore sprouts $1.99
Organic Garlic $3.00
Total: $257.62
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