Coffee Musings

 Food and Wine, General  No Responses »
Aug 082006
 

The Pacific North­w­est is meant to be an area full of cof­fee bars and people addicted to the bean, but in Van­couver it’s not the num­ber one addic­tion by any means, at least judging by the num­ber of estab­lish­ments you see. It’s far easi­er to find sushi than cof­fee! Some anec­dot­al evid­ence — we took our son to a birth­day party in Coquit­lam (one of the sub­urbs in Great­er Van­couver) and after drop­ping him off at the party, I decided I wanted some cof­fee. Driv­ing around the streets in search of a café we noticed every strip mall had a sushi bar (some of dubi­ous qual­ity), but we had to drive to a large mall to find a cof­fee bar. I had­n’t thought to look up cof­fee bars in Delo­c­at­or first, so we ended up with Star­bucks, but at least it was coffee.

And some­thing I only dis­covered last week which will be of interest to lan­guage ped­ants — in North Amer­ica, cof­fee cake is a type of cake with crumble or streusel on top that is served with cof­fee. Where I grew up (New Zea­l­and) and lived (Aus­tralia) and, I assume, in many oth­er parts of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, a cof­fee cake is a cake that has cof­fee as one of its main ingredi­ents. I have a recipe book from Great Bri­tain with a recipe for cof­fee car­rot cake, for example, which has cof­fee in it, and no streusel on top. I guess I don’t eat cake very often since it took 10 years to dis­cov­er this discrepancy…

Blau-Rote Grütze

 Food and Wine  7 Responses »
Jul 182006
 

Since a couple of mem­bers of the group I work in were in town for the Liberty meet­ing, I invited them to din­ner last night. For dessert, I decided to make Rote Grütze, which is pretty much the stand­ard dessert in Ber­lin at this time of year. It’s pop­u­lar through­out North­ern Ger­many, and I’m told also in Scand­inavia. I think it’s my new favour­ite dessert when rasp­ber­ries are in sea­son, it is easy to make, can be made a day in advance, and every­one liked it.

The stand­ard recipe has red­cur­rants in it which I could­n’t find at Gran­ville Island. So I used blue­ber­ries, which are loc­al and plen­ti­ful at this time of year, hence the “blue-red” in the title. For pos­ter­ity, here’s the ver­sion I ended up making.

One jar sour cher­ries in juice, approx 12 ounces (400g) cher­ries. Put half the cher­ries in a pot with the juice, add 200g blue­ber­ries, 200g rasp­ber­ries and 3/4 c sug­ar (could have been 1/2 c). Bring to the boil, cook a couple of minutes and then mash. Take some of the liquid out in a cup, mix in 2 heaped dessert­spoons of corn­starch in to a smooth mix, stir into the hot mix­ture. Stir until it boils again and thick­ens. Add the rest of the sour cher­ries, anoth­er 200g rasp­ber­ries and 200g blue­ber­ries, heat just to boil­ing point, then take it off the stove. Cool. Serve with cream.

More Coffee

 Food and Wine  No Responses »
Apr 272006
 

Not that I’m actu­ally addicted (in fact at the moment I’m not drink­ing much cof­fee at all, the occa­sion­al latte is about it for now), but I came across anoth­er cof­fee-related link for Van­couver. This one proves just what sort of cof­fee-lov­ing area I live in — accord­ing to Delo­c­at­or there are 69 “non-cor­por­ate” (their defin­i­tion) places to get cof­fee with­in 3 km of where I live, and 19 Star­bucks loc­a­tions. Some of the places are lis­ted more than once, but oth­ers aren’t lis­ted at all, so it’s prob­ably a reas­on­able estimate. 

Delo­c­at­or itself is an inter­est­ing web­site and inter­est­ing idea; worth pok­ing around the site a little. Delo­c­at­or link spot­ted at Met­rob­log­ging Van­couver.

Okanagan Wineries

 Food and Wine, Travel  5 Responses »
Sep 232005
 

We went up to the Okanagan wine dis­trict for the Canada Day week­end this year, and I think it’s about time I wrote down some of my impres­sions of the vine­yards and the wine. We took my friend Sally (she of G&T fame who knows a lot about wine), and had a great time. Tim mostly enter­tained the off­spring while Sally and I tasted the wine, which seemed like a good divi­sion of labour to all of us. I typ­ic­ally like wines with body and heft, such as shiraz, much of the caber­net fam­ily, and rieslings; my impres­sions of oth­er wines depend on what they evoke (sit­ting on the deck in sum­mer, or some food pair­ing). So here are some notes about the winer­ies and the wines, none of them are any­thing sci­entif­ic or indeed any­thing oth­er than my impres­sion of that day!

Hawthorne Moun­tain Vineyards
Great view, but a very com­mer­cial vine­yard with lots of schnick-schnack to buy. I’d bought some caber­net franc here in 1995–6 which was great after a few years cel­lar­ing, but the 2003 Caber­net Franc they had on offer this year was too light and did­n’t give me any con­fid­ence it would devel­op the way I like. The pinot gris was good so I got some of that. The gewürztram­iner was ok though we’d had bet­ter at oth­er winer­ies, so that did­n’t go home with us, and although I thought the See-ya-later pinot noir could devel­op, I did­n’t feel like tak­ing the risk.
Wild Goose Vine­yards & Winery
Very friendly people, good whites (some have won prizes) though not what I’d call earth-shat­ter­ingly great. I bought a mixed case of whites, includ­ing the 2004 Riesling, 2003 Stony Slope Riesling, and the 2004 Gewürztraminer.
Stag’s Hol­low Winery
Unfriendly serv­er but a good vid­al (2004 Tra­gic­ally Vid­al), which is an unusu­al grape, and the 2002 Renais­sance Mer­lot struck me as worth tak­ing home, so I bought a couple of bottles for the cel­lar. It should be really good in a couple of years.
Hainle Vine­yards Estate Winery
Nice people, organ­ic wines; they’ve learned a lot about mak­ing organ­ic wines pal­at­able since I last vis­ited in 1996 or so. Good bis­tro for lunch out­side on the deck as well. The 2002 Hainle Chardon­nay, 2002 Hainle Pinot Blanc, 2002 Deep Creek Pinot Meuni­er (nice rich taste, like the Hawthorne Moun­tain one from 1995 or so), and 2003 Deep Creek Z2 were all good, the 2003 Hainle Syrah ok. Bought a mixed bunch to cel­lar, mostly the Pinot Meuni­er and Chardon­nay as they’re in short sup­ply and I figured I prob­ably could­n’t find them in Vancouver. 
Arrowleaf
New winery and quite far north. Friendly people. Bought a couple of bottles of 2002 Zei­gelt for the cel­lar, and some 2004 Bac­chus (nice light grape) and 2004 Gewürztram­iner for drinking. 
St Hubertus Estate Winery
Much of the winery was des­troyed in the big fire of 2003, but they’ve rebuilt with a big­ger tast­ing room. The rub­ber stamps are now in the tast­ing room rather than in a sep­ar­ate build­ing; they add a touch of eclecticism to the place. Decent selec­tion of wines. We picked the 2004 Dry Riesling to take home (with Tim warn­ing by this stage that we did­n’t have much room left in the car!)
Raven Ridge Cidery
Not quite a winery, this one, but a cidery con­nec­ted to an orch­ard with a good res­taur­ant. I picked up their last two bottles of Spark­ling Cider as well as a bottle of Brae­burn iced cider (like ice wine, but tastes of apples), just for a change. 

Tour­ing Okanagan winer­ies is an excel­lent exper­i­ence, and hav­ing the kid around meant we also tried out some of the oth­er tour­ist things rather than just sit­ting in the car. So although we did­n’t see as many winer­ies as the 1996 trip, we still filled the car and have wine enough to last us for quite a while!

The Perfect G&T

 Food and Wine, General  19 Responses »
Jul 062005
 

My friend Sally vis­ited us from Mel­bourne for about 10 days. I’ve known Sally for half my life; we met when I was study­ing at Mel­bourne Uni­ver­sity. Sally received the Gin Award from Rolland House, the hostel where we lived, so she’s been study­ing the sub­ject for some years and has par­layed her know­ledge into a career organ­iz­ing ban­quets and func­tions for the Athen­aeum Club, a private gen­tle­men’s club (think P.G. Wode­house and Jeeves). I talked Sally into writ­ing down how to make the per­fect G&T for pos­ter­ity, and here it is.

At the end of a long hot day on the road every doc­tor should pre­scribe a G&T to restore one’s pos­it­ive out­look on life. The pre­par­a­tion of the per­fect G&T does how­ever take some effort and even more research. Like many things in life it is all a mat­ter of taste but to help in the research phase I will share some of my own per­son­al find­ings gained over some 23 years.

Select a high­ball glass made from a glass that is on the finer side as I think it improves the taste. It is pos­sible to mix a G&T in an old fash­ioned glass but this requires refills more often.

Add ice, which is import­ant to main­tain the tem­per­at­ure, to the bot­tom of the glass (prob­ably more import­ant on the 3rd or 4th glass as these tend to last longer).

Add the Gin. This is the ele­ment that requires extens­ive research. My per­son­al favour­ite is Bom­bay Sap­phire which has an herb­aceous and com­plex fla­vour but I would encour­age you to sample as many types as pos­sible. Just like a good scotch or wine there are many fla­vour com­bin­a­tions. Gor­dons is really light and crisp, it isn’t very com­plex or herb­aceous. Tan­queray is quite lem­ony and a bit sharp­er and more bitter.

The amount required tra­di­tion­ally is 30ml but I have found that it some­times depends on how much pos­it­ive out­look you require. Once again this also takes some research to get it right and will depend on the gin of choice.

The ton­ic is often much under-estim­ated and is worthy of the time and effort of get­ting a bet­ter qual­ity and hav­ing a few bottles in the fridge for those emer­gency situ­ations. I usu­ally sug­gest the small 300ml splits as they are one use and avoid the dis­ap­point­ment of a half-used flat bottle. I prefer Schweppes. Do your­self a favour and don’t get the diet style, after all this is for medi­cin­al pur­poses. Dur­ing my time in Canada I have found the Canada Dry style of ton­ic water is a very good substitute. 

The per­fect G&T should have a half slice of lem­on or lime to fin­ish it off, I prefer lime with my Bom­bay gin but if I can­’t get it then lem­on. I use lem­on with Tan­queray or Gordons. 

Take the per­fect G&T out onto the porch and con­sume till your pos­it­ive out­look on life has been restored.

This has been a life-long pro­ject and I have spent many hours of research to get to this point. I hope this has inspired you to start your own research project.

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