By day, Elena
Faita-Venditelli runs one of the most original hardware stores you’re
likely to come across: the Quincaillerie Dante, a family-owned
Montreal institution that caters to gourmands on one side of the shop
and to tradition-minded hunters on the other. A place that harks back
to a time when people still made food from scratch.
By night, Elena runs
a traditional Italian cooking school. The formula is simple: “I
give you some recipes, I teach you my way of food — that’s all I
do.”
The Fraser Valley is a great place to lose yourself in a culinary adventure.
The Fort Wine Company is known for its premium fruit and berry wines. Their flagship red cranberry wine is divine, but true connoisseurs sing the praises of their white cranberry wine. Sip in the Fort’s old-fashioned saloon-style tasting bar and then mosey on over to the “Trappers Bistro.” (604) 857-1101 26151 84th Avenue, Fort Langley, BC
Krause Berry Farms is perfect for picking your own strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Afterwards, indulge in fresh baked farm pies or trademark berry shortcakes while you lounge on the farm’s “Porch.” You can even watch the farm’s bakers do their thing through a large viewing window. (604) 856-5757 6179 248th Street, Langley, BC
“A
Katyusha rocket will take out forty vines.” That is just one of the
hazards Avi Feldstein, winemaker for Israel’s Segal wines, has to
deal with — along with the deer, wild boar and grouse that devour
his grapes.
We are
standing in the Dovev vineyard, in the Upper Galilee, within sight of
a former Hezbollah outpost. To the north, the Lebanese border. Until
2006 Feldstein had to be accompanied by Israeli soldiers whenever he
went to tend to his mountaintop vineyard. Ten years ago, he carved
out twenty-four hectares of shallow terra rossa soil — the rockiest
vineyard in the north of the country — and planted it with Cabernet
Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Sangiovese, Ruby Cabernet, Chardonnay and
Muscat of Alexandria.
Some
are massive. Of biblical proportions. Others are almost flat — as
slim as a sheaf of parchment. Some offer an evening of endless
pleasure, while many can be glossed over in only a single glance. If
you’re lucky, you may find an example that borders on a work of
art, carefully tended to and masterfully sculpted. Mostly, however,
you’ll find yourself dealing with something rather ordinary:
serviceable, but hardly exciting. Yet you make do, because you really
don’t have much of a choice.
What’s your notion of the ideal comfort food? I asked a few friends
and answers were pretty much the same: warm, soothing, and, yes ...
comforting food. There seems to be a real hunger for comfort foods
and, for the most part, the basic list of familiar classics probably
has not changed in decades. Burgers, meatloaf, mac & cheese all
seem to have endured the test of time and continue to be favourite
sources of solace for even the most finicky appetites.
Many think of comfort foods as a way to warm up on a cold winter
night, but comfort food is really great at any time of year. So if
you’ve had a tough day, a long week or just need a little “ahhhh,”
look to one of the soothing dishes below. Some are familiar classics,
while others are the favourites of my youth and dishes I’ve enjoyed
at some of my favourite restaurants.
And what better
way to enjoy your favourite dish than by pairing it with a great
bottle of wine? Even better when that bottle is in a comfortable
price point — under $25.
For most foodies, a pilgrimage to experience the culinary mastery of
chef Thomas Keller at Napa’s French Laundry is an
at-least-once-in-a-lifetime necessity. But for many, at a minimum of
$300 per head, once is about all they can afford. But while the
French Laundry may be the penultimate in fine dining, not having the
opportunity to dine there doesn’t have to diminish your ability to
experience all that Napa’s culinary scene has to offer. In fact,
the region offers a multitude of flavours, cuisines and styles united
by a common theme of fresh ingredients.
On a recent expedition, I decided to focus on both
where the locals eat and where you can get a great meal without
having to take out a second mortgage on your home ... what better way
to get a true sense of a region’s food culture? I surveyed
winemakers, winery owners, tasting-room staff, vineyard workers,
restaurant and retail staff, as well as a few random pedestrians. The
resulting list would have taken the better part of several weeks of
uninterrupted eating (see “Eating Kansas City,” Tidings
May/June 2006) to get a taste of the restaurants, eateries, wine bars
and hole-in-the-wall joints recommended. But I randomly, in a
methodic sort of way, selected several venues that my unsuspecting
travel companions and I would check out. (They had no idea what they
were in for, nor were they aware of my consumption abilities — but
then, I am a professional).
It’s
easy to be dismayed by the stuff people are eating these days.
Junk-food consumption is reaching epidemic proportions, but folks who
eat their fruits and veggies are hearing lots of bad news about
what’s in (or on) the imported produce on the market. China and
California have recently been tarred with that brush, leaving diehard
herbivores to look for other secure sources for healthy foods.
Thanks
to NAFTA, the US and Mexico seem to get the lion’s share of imports
into Canada. It’s worked out well for us, providing reliable
goodies, for the most part, on the shelf. Who grows sweeter
watermelons than Mexico? And if you prefer your fruit seedless, no
problem. Those varieties are regularly supplied by producers in
Arizona and Texas.
I’m
new to wine and am still having trouble coming to grips with what
tannins are and where they come from. Can you help?
Though
I wasn’t much of a chemistry student (too much time spent with a
calculator and not enough with a Bunsen burner), tannins are pretty
straightforward. If you’ve ever taken a sip of over-steeped tea or
twisted the stem off an apple with your teeth and felt that
astringent, bitter impression on your palate, you’re already well
on your way to a doctorate in tannins.
Tannins
are natural chemical compounds found in the skins, seeds and, yes,
stems of fruit and in other organic materials like tree bark and tea
leaves. Though white wines rarely come into contact with
tannin-carrying compounds during their making, the juice for red
wines is exposed to the grape skins for extended periods of time
(that’s where the colour comes from, kids) and, during pressing, to
the seeds and stems.
The Fraser Valley is a great place to lose yourself in a culinary adventure.
