Ebisu on Robson

I was in Vancouver this week, where there are delicious Japanese restaurants galore! A friend introduced me to a trendy Japanese place on Robson called Ebisu that is now on my "To Visit" list the next time I return to this fair city.

I loved it! Ebisu is among a growing number of restaurants that is infusing a new vibrancy into Japanese food. It's taking traditional dishes and marketing them as tapas plates with a twist. Hapa Izakaya, where S and I ate two years ago, is another good example of this new kind of Japanese restaurant that draws a younger crowd because of its unique interpretations.

Some of the dishes were a fusion of cuisines — we ordered salmon carpaccio (an Italian term for thin shavings of raw meat), which came drizzled in a citrus white-wine mayo. It was a fresh take on the traditional tataki (which longtime readers of beFOODled will know I also adore) that consists of thinly sliced raw or lightly cooked beef in a citrus vinaigrette.

We ordered five dishes — saba (mackerel) flame, saba inferno, salmon carpaccio and the B.C. and mega dynamite rolls — and a pitcher of delicious sangria to wash it all down. Five dishes might not seem like a lot for two people, but we were full!

My favourite was the saba flame. This dish is also a great example of what I mean by how these restaurants are funkifying the traditional. Saba flame is mackerel sashimi but the server lights it on fire with a hand-held blow torch at your table. She did the same thing with the saba inferno, searing the mackerel skin. It gave it a truly mouthwatering, coal-fired flavour.

The food is fresh and has so much flavour. I would recommend Ebisu if you happen to be on Robson Street looking for great Japanese food.

Ebisu on Robson
827 Bute Street
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada
604.689.8266 (reservations are recommended)


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The Inn in Prince Edward County

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My mom and S and I spent the day in Prince Edward County recently and had lunch at The Inn restaurant. It's located on the shore of the Lake on the Mountain and right beside another beautiful watery vista, the Bay of Quinte some 200 feet below, where you can watch the ferries go back and forth.

The Lake on the Mountain is exactly what it claims to be. It's something of a regional mystery that defies all geologic explanation because it's always full of fresh, clean water, but without an apparent source. The most accepted explanation is that it's a collapsed doline, a closed depression that's a rare feature associated with limestone rock.

The restaurant is an old stone farmhouse and has a small brewery onsite. We ate in the sunroom, a later addition with lots of extra tables. It's a beautiful space with a fireplace and lots of light.

I had a soup of the day with all kinds of rich and delicious things. One of the ingredients was andouille sausage, which I had never heard of before but is so good. I also ordered the charcuterie plate that came with cured meats, pâté, a stack of prettily balanced toasted baguette slices and all the trimmings (cornichons, pickled onions and homemade mustard).

S had the special, which was a Margherita pizza with fresh tomatoes, bocconcini cheese and basil and balsamic vinegar.


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My Mom had the smoked salmon and potato rosti appetizer with chive crème fraiche and capers. Rosti is so tasty!


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All of this plus a few glasses of wine came to $90, including tax and tip.

The restaurant recommends you make reservations. If you ever go, you will know why! It's a delicious experience, the food is beautifully presented and made from locally sourced ingredients, and you are treated very well.

The Inn restaurant
Lake on the Mountain Resort
268 County Road 7
Prince Edward County, ON
613.476.1321


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Farewell Gourmet

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Gourmet, the oldest food magazine in the U.S., is ceasing publication after nearly 70 years because of declining ad sales. The November issue will be its last.

I have never been a subscriber, but have bought the occasional issue off the newsstand. I'm a sucker for beautiful production values and in Gourmet there is no shortage of luscious photo essays and beautifully laid-out features.

The publisher Condé Nast said the brand will live on in a TV series and in cookbooks, but to me those are not acceptable substitutes for a glossy magazine. I already have lots of cookbooks and can't tuck a TV series in my purse!

Beau's Oktoberfest

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Beau’s brewery of Lugtread and NightMarzen fame hosted an Oktoberfest celebration near Ottawa this weekend. S and I caught the bus out with Squeaky and Calimocho and we all met up with Peanut Butter and Jelly later. It was a little reunion of our old food club, the Gastronati.

We all got a free green alpine hat (made in China and which didn’t fit any of our heads) and immediately bought litre steins for $8 that became our drinking vessels for the day. I really liked the branding for the whole event. Their graphic designer, who also did Beau’s’ little tractor logo, was recruited to hand out armbands at the shuttle bus pickup. It seems every Beau’s employee was given a job to do.


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The food was very gourmet considering that we were in the middle of a farmer’s field eating off of hay bales. Some of Ottawa’s best restaurants that have Beau’s on tap came out to feed the people with lots of hearty stew-type dishes, perfect for the cold, damp weather.

Against a backdrop of happy oompah music, we ate fancy spaetzle poutine (which was so popular it ran out at 11:30 a.m.) and elk goulash from Murray Street, and a free raw oyster on the half shell from the Whalesbone.


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We also had two very nice dishes from the Urban Pear, a potato pancake with sausage slices and apple sauce, and a yummy hot cassoulet with chicken sausage, duck confit, smoked bacon and white beans and cabbage, real stick-to-your-ribs goodness!


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The only dish that really resembled traditional German fare was the Piggy Market’s Beau’s wurst on a bun with homemade condiments — very juicy and tasty. Squeaky took a big bite and I’m told a plume of sausage juice squirted onto my jacket. (I must have been too busy eating my delicious smoked fish chowder from Domus to notice.)


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Unfortunately, all the food ran out at around dinnertime because they had only really planned for about 1,000 and some 5,000 people came. They wisely ordered a large quantity of pizzas to keep people fed until 9 p.m. so that the next three hours weren’t pure alcohol!


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Sushi rolls at Em's

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Last Thursday, Em hosted a girls night and we all helped her make sushi rolls. She bought fresh, sushi-grade fish from Pelican Grill, a fish market with a restaurant attached. She bought a pound and a half of salmon for $20, plus some tuna for $12 and smoked salmon chunks for $6. We mixed and matched the fish with some cooked shrimp cut in half, and cucumber and avocado. We also ate edamame (beautiful, boiled soybeans) and longan fruit, which I had never had before, but have a lychee-like flavour and texture. They are so yummy and juicy, and have a big, shiny, dark-purple pit inside.


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I brought instant miso soup, but forgot to make it in all of the excitement!


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Of course, girls nights are not complete without animal companions. I leave you tonight with a picture of the beautiful Hermes, an adorable Himalayan who had me at meow. Hermes is very old and likes to have his face smushed, but only by girls :) Good thing there were five of us on hand to oblige!


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Pelican Fishery and Grill
1500 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON
613.526.0995


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Remembering Pompeii with homemade tomato sauce

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I still had some mason jars left over after making jam with Squeaky, so I decided to try my hand at canning tomato sauce next. I adapted a delicious recipe given to me by Chef Hermann Jenny that uses canned tomatoes instead of fresh.

I used San Marzano tomatoes. You can get these at any Italian grocer (I got mine from La Bottega in Byward Market). They are grown and imported all the way from the fertile plains of Mount Vesuvius near Naples, shown in the map below. Pompeii, that famous ancient Roman city buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., is also nearby. It's just a little southwest of where they still grow the tomatoes in San Marzano sul Sarno.

It's strange to think that the same volcanic ash that makes San Marzano tomatoes so special today was also responsible for burying entire cities over 2,000 years ago. That said, San Marzano tomatoes are not native to the region. Coincidentally, just 22 years after archeologists uncovered the remains of Pompeii in 1748, the Kingdom of Peru gave the first San Marzano seeds to the Kingdom of Naples.


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Tomato sauce
makes about 6 and a half cups

drop of olive oil
1/2 cup diced pancetta or bacon
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
2 crushed dried cayenne peppers (or 1 tsp dried)
1 cup olive oil
5 Tbsp tomato paste
2 800-g cans of San Marzano tomatoes
a 1" by 3"piece of parmesan rind or other hard cheese
small hunk of salt pork rind
1/2 Tbsp herbes de Provence
a couple of beef bouillon cubes
1 Tbsp oregano
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the pancetta and the onions in the olive oil for about 10 minutes or until soft. Add the garlic and the dried cayenne pepper and saute another minute. Add the tomato paste and stir to make a paste with the other ingredients.

Then add the canned tomatoes and break them apart a bit with your wooden spoon. Add the rest of the ingredients and cover and cook in the oven for three hours at 125 C/250 F.

Discard the salt pork rind and bay leaves. The parmesan rind should easily break up and dissolve into the sauce.

Follow the canning directions that come with your preserving jars, and top each jar with a layer of hot olive oil, about 1/4 of an inch think to sterilize the top layer of sauce.

Alternatively, you can freeze the sauce if you'll be keeping it for more than a few weeks, but in that case, store it in a Tupperware instead of a glass jar.

This is lovely in pasta or pizza, and to spread on toast!

Tomato harvest roundup

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Ah, my little yellow cherry tomatoes, how much do I love thee? Let me count the ways: in salads, on pizza, with burgers and just plain popped into my mouth fresh off the vine.

Over the past few weeks, S and I have found many different ways to eat the cherry tomatoes off our balcony plant. We cut them in half and tossed them in a salad with arugula and toasted almonds. We put them in baguette sandwiches that we took on a road trip to Montreal, and another time to a picnic by the canal. S put them on his pita pizzas, and I tossed them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, as a side salad for my pork-and-beef hamburger patties on pita with raita (plain yogurt with ground cumin and grated cucumbers).


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The best way to eat them, though, is plain off the vine, maybe cut in half, with a little salt and pepper, if you want to maximize their flavour. Sometimes one side of the tomato splits in half and it bursts open a bit. They do that when they are too full of water, but I like to think it's part of their personality that they are literally bursting with sweetness, tempting me to eat them :)

So the tomato experiment was very successful — our one plant produced at least 90 tomatoes in my estimation. I can't wait until next summer, when I can up production with some more plants. Maybe hold some tomato parties ... ah, the possibilities!

What is your favourite way with cherry tomatoes?


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