Goodbye to summer

This really should be a blackberry and the background shouldn't be Parkdale but Metchosin but until I get the photos from my trip off my camera it will have to do...

I spent the last two weeks of August on Vancouver Island, a true "vacation" that climaxed with my brother's wedding on the first day of September (congrats to D & L!). Part of this trip, which will be detailed further this weekend, was devoted to discovering and enjoying local food and drink. This pursuit began nearly immediately when my dad insisted we stop to buy Silver Rill corn on the way home from the airport, then we stopped at a second farm market on Oldfield Road and I discovered that they grow figs in Victoria! And so kicked off an Island visit punctuated by delicious discoveries and tastings, including:

• mead (Sooke)
• blackberries (Galloping Goose Trail, Metchosin)
• corn (Saanich Peninsula)
• basil and yellow & green beans (backyard garden)
• apples (frontyard orchard)
• buffalo mozzarella (milk from Duncan, made in Courtenay)
• blueberries (between Duncan & Ladysmith)
• tomatillos (grown locally, bought at the Moss St. Market)
• golden beets (grown locally, Luxton Farmer's Market)
• garlic (Rocky Point Road, Metchosin)
• hard cow's milk cheese (Parksville)
• hard sheep's milk cheese (Cowichan Bay)
  

I also learned that you can invest in a cow at Little Qualicum Cheeseworks (Parksville), ate a very local-produce-friendly meal at The Superior (James Bay), and learned that my parents are planning an "100% Metchosin meal" (inspired by The 100-Mile Diet, whose authors they heard speak on Salt Spring Island). Needless to say, it was a wonderful visit.

Mozzarella di Bufala Campana

Fresh Mozzarella di Bufala Campana

A couple facts from Wikipedia about "Buffalo Mozzarella":

• The Italian city of Aversa in the Italian province of Caserta is recognized as the origin of this cheese.
• It really is made from buffalo milk, the milk of water buffaloes that is.
• Asian water buffaloes were brought to Italy by Goths (as in Wisigoths) during the migrations of the early medieval period. They were widely used in plowing compact and watery terrains, both because their strength and the size of their hooves, which do not sink too deeply into moist soil.

A Fairburn Farm Water Buffalo (Duncan, BC)

With this kind of history, it's not surprising that "Mozzarella di Bufala Campana" has a Protected Designation of Origin but there are also American and Canadian cheesemakers who rely on water buffalo herds to produce an authentic-as-you-can-get new-world version. Even though imported Italian stuff is available in North America, the cheese doesn't have a good shelf life (it's maybe only ideal for 12-24 hours after opening) and is best used the day of purchase so these local producers may have a bit of an edge (when I get out to Vancouver Island at the end of August, I will try to find out if that's true).

I mention this because this cheese is an essential ingredient in Caprese salad (above), which because fresh tomatoes finally taste good (and are in season!) two-thirds of the office in which I work is obsessed with. So buy yourself some good tomatoes and this cheese, or find a good Italian restaurant and spend the extra money to get Buffalo mozzarella instead of the ordinary stuff. It's worth it.

Long-weekend Agritourism

Because it's a long weekend, four of us decided to borrow an Autoshare car and spend a whole Saturday driving around Prince Edward County (a two-hour drive from Toronto) visiting cute small towns and other stops along the area's "Taste Trail." It ended up being a lot of time in the car but we did visit two wineries, a cidery, and a cheese factory.

Black River Cheese in Milford was our last stop and though the cheese "factory" wasn't open for tours, they did have lots of free samples (the Garlic mozzarella and Salsa cheddar were two of the more interesting ones available for tasting). I was excited to discover the ice-cream cooler of "cheese ends" and dug through it to find some small pieces of (yet another) extra old cheddar (Cheese No. 19) and some mozzarella (Cheese No. 20) because I want to make pizza. B. was more adventurous with her cheese purchases: she bought a piece of the garlic mozzarella and also purchased a twenty-dollar gift basket just so she could snag one of the last pieces of maple cheddar available for sale, which my co-worker C. had raved about to me and which it turns out they only make in March (they told us that usually they don't have any left by this time of year).

The Black River looks like a nice place for swimming

Nearly a cheese-free month (oops...)

First of all, apologies to those who keep checking back looking for updates only to find nothing new. I know it's been over a month but, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure what happened to March. I didn't eat a lot of cheese, that's for sure. In fact, all I can really remember consuming in the last month is:

• a decent block of President's Choice organic white cheddar, which reminded me how much I love cheddar
• molto mozzarella on a slice of veggie pizza from Pizza Gigi
• whatever cheese was in the veggie lasagna that B. made to share with everyone in celebration of her 30th birthday on Tuesday
• a good deal of chevre (I think) in the delicious purple cabbage(!) enchiladas (with tomatillo salsa!!) that T. made on Friday night
  
• (very slowly) half a wedge of Tre Stelle Asiago, which was best melted on top of a loaf of homemade foccaccia that I made using this recipe (photo of bread below, but not from the loaf with cheese—that one disappeared too quickly!)

Cheese No. 2

Not having had the chance to eat any of the Island Bries in Victoria, I carried this cheese with me to Vancouver and used it in a delicious salad. I wanted to make K. dinner as a thank-you for letting me stay with her the night before my flight back to Toronto and I remembered a salad recipe in the Rebar Cookbook that included both Brie and pears. Fortunately, K. had this cookbook and I tinkered with the recipe for the "Mesclun and Fresh Pear Salad, with Brie, hazelnuts and blackberry-thyme vinaigrette." My salad was regular red lettuce, pear slices, yellow pepper slivers, almonds, and, of course, Brie, the lettuce pre-tossed with the following vinaigrette (a variation on the Rebar recipe, halved):

1/2 cup thawed frozen strawberries, blenderized
2 tbsp raspberry vinegar
2 tbsp orange-grapefruit juice
2 tsp honey
2 tsp raw sugar
1 tsp dried thyme*
4 tbsp vegetable oil
salt and pepper to taste (i.e. lots)

* would be better with 1/2 tbsp fresh

The dressing turned out really well but the cheese was the highlight of the salad: it was sufficiently salty and creamy but not too mushy, and leaving the "rind" on didn't affect the flavour at all. When we'd had enough of the greens, K. and I started picking pieces of cheese and pear out of the bowl and eating them with bits of the foccacia that accompanied our meal.

As you can see in the photo at right, Island Bries is packaged in an interesting way: it comes with a wooden coaster stamped with the name of the cheesemaker. When I was looking for info on this cheese on the Little Qualicum Cheeseworks website, there was a note about the coaster included in the cheese description: "Our best seller. Its creamy texture, velvety white rind with mushroomy overtones goes beautifully with a crisp Chardonnay. The little wooden board rescued from the burn pile of a guitar body manufacturer can live again as a coaster."

Other cheese tasting: I also ate some delicious vegetarian lasagna that B. made to celebrate my return to Toronto and going back on cheese -- her recipe used cottage cheese and mozarella (I think). She also served some tomato and bocconcini salad, which is one of the things I'd missed most about not eating cheese after discovering how fabulous the simple combo of fresh, in-season tomatoes, basil, and good-quality mozzarella can be when S. took me to Feenie's in Vancouver.