BLOGS

Green figs grow like mad in Vancouver, here’s a simple recipe for Persian style green fig preserves which are traditionally eaten for breakfast with bread, butter and nuts. When you cook figs the flavours really come out as the sugar caramelizes. I’m not one for eating them raw as they just taste like sugar at…

There are hundreds of species of bamboo, all of which are edible. Some are better than others, many species only grow tough, bitter shoots, which must be cooked for a long time to be edible. Black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) grows well in our lower mainland (BC) climate and is very tasty, just make sure you…

I’m be honest with you, I’m super picky about fish and chips. I only like thin batters and the best fish (not cod; halibut, john dory or snapper ONLY!). The chips must be fried in beef tallow or duck fat if you want to go really crazy, because I need them to have flavour. If…

Stinging nettles are a nutritious and tasty forest snack, easily found in the forests and by waterways like ditches in BC. They taste a bit like spinach and are packed with the vitamins and minerals that are so good for a body. They grow plentifully and must be harvested in spring with gloves to protect…

Learn how to safely forage for currants.  There are many types of currant plants that common to BC that were eaten traditionally by many First Nations peoples. Black, golden, wax, sticky, red swamp and even stink currant are a few of the varieties.  My favourite is Ribes sanguineum or red flowering currant. You don’t eat…

Fiddleheads are the tasty edible part of a young fern shoot. All curled up in a tight green ball, you pick these delicacies in springtime. In our area (Vancouver), bracken fern and lady fern are the two that are found (ostrich fern is the commercial variety, you can find in Northern BC). Lady Fern fiddlehead…

Here is a very simple recipe for how to make maple snow a true Canadian tradition of drizzling hot maple candy on snow to harden it. It’s really fun for the kidlets. Pat a layer of snow onto a baking sheet and leave it in the fridge or outside to keep it from melting. Place…

You might NOT want to make this recipe, because once you taste it, you’ll never be able to buy tomato paste in a tube again.  Every year in summer when the tomatoes are at their finest, juiciest and ripest, you’ll have to get out this recipe and spend all day making enough paste to last…

Just got back from Galiano Island doing some foraging for Pilgrimme restaurant, they made this fabulous salad of mizuni, wild mint, elderflower vinaigrette, and fir tips that myself and a few other people collected for the chef that day, best salad I’ve had all year.  They also play a lot with seaweeds and I thought…

Winter is truffle season in BC, and yes both white and black truffles do grow and are cultivated in BC.  A few notes on buying a good truffle oil and my favourite truffle inspired recipe is below. How to buy and use good truffle oil 1. Never buy products labeled truffle ‘essence’, ‘flavour’ or ‘aroma’…