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Eastern Feasts — Page 2
Another Lumière protégé, Jeremie
Bastien, is now executive chef at Gastown’s Boneta.
Born in Quebec and trained in France, he recently celebrated
his 26th birthday. Where did he go with his staff? “Gyoza
King on Robson.” Bastien makes his own kimchi
(a Korean dish of spicy marinated cabbage); a lunch
in Chinatown inspired his delicate scallop wontons stuffed
with barbecue pork. (Sliced sashimi-thin, the scallop
acts as the wonton to hold in the stuffing.) His menu
changes weekly, but a favourite dish includes a seared
yellowfin tuna with foie-gras custard and a vinaigrette
of kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and Thai chilies.
“Take the traditional European use of salt and
pepper. You can achieve the same end using soy sauce
as your salt component and these”—he points
to the Thai chilies in his mise-en-place—“for
spice; still pleasing to the palate but in a unique
way.” Bastien also works with a Japanese knife—“I
learned watching sushi masters to keep my knife sharp
and my ingredients fresh”—and admires the
reverent way Japanese chefs approach seafood.
Behind the bar at Boneta, Mark Brand’s “liquid
chefs” also draw heavily on Asian influences to
craft the cocktail menu. “One of my favourite
cocktails combines sake, plum wine, cranberry, and Spanish
cava with lemon zest and a cinnamon rim,” says
a shaker-wielding Steve DaCruz. “The plum wine
brings tartness, and the sake has a drying effect; so
front to back it has a lot of savoury elements.”
Fellow bartender Justin Tisdale favours shochu (Japanese
vodka) for its low alcohol content (about 20 to 25 percent)
that makes for refreshing, easy-drinking cocktails.
“It’s quite dry, so we mix it with white
grape juice to bring some floral sweetness and a dash
of rosewater, then top it with soda and our homemade
raspberry grenadine.”
The more closely you look, the more evident the Asian
component of West Coast cuisine becomes. Our hotel dining
rooms pay tribute: Diva at the Metropolitan Hotel may
be a bastion of old-world elegance, but dishes like
black cod with shimiji mushroom, braised daikon, and
tempura’d enoki, and Peking duck with star anise
foam appear from its impressive kitchen. Chef Dino Renaerts
grew up here and has been exposed to Asian food all
his life; he recalls childhood weekends eating dim sum
with his parents and wandering through the Chinese markets.
As both a chef and a card-carrying sommelier, Renaerts
loves Asian cuisine partly because it pairs so well
with the cool-climate wines of the Okanagan. “Our
aromatic whites, like Ehrenfelser or Pinot Auxerrois,
are ideal companions to dishes with a spice component;
the fruitiness of a local Gewürztraminer will tame
an aggressive Thai curry like nobody’s business,”
he says with a laugh. “We’ve done braised
pork belly with Szechwan peppercorns and hoisin sauce
that stands up to our more fruit-forward Merlots and
Syrahs, while light Japanese foods pair perfectly with
local Pinot Noirs. Using Asian food as your vehicle
might be the best way to enjoy our local wines.”
At the Wedgewood Hotel on Hornby, British-born Lee Parsons
of Bacchus Restaurant has a Michelin-star-studded pedigree
from some of Europe’s finest restaurants; he,
too, is influenced by Asian cuisine. A signature dish
includes a foie gras and oxtail terrine encased in daikon
pickled with rice-wine vinegar and mirin. Parsons stresses
that these ingredients must be handled intelligently.
“It’s like when you approach any genre of
cuisine,” he says, folding meaty forearms across
a formidable chest. “You must study them fully
to pay them proper justice.”
The chef whose restaurant perhaps best exemplifies our
local cuisine has a pantry packed with Asian products.
“Using these ingredients is my way of paying tribute
to our greater culinary heritage here on the West Coast,”
says Jeff Van Geest of Aurora Bistro, winner in this
year’s Best Regional category and of our Green
Award. “I love the juxtaposition of ingredients
from different cultures. Truffles and ginger are a perfect
marriage. So are maple and soy. Achieving similar flavour
profiles using non-traditional ingredients is fascinating
to me. Italian bottarga [dried mullet roe] from Sardinia
is not far removed from bonito [Japanese tuna flakes],
so flip-flopping them can take a classic recipe to an
exciting new level.” The dish he’s most
excited about right now is a sakekasu-and-maple-marinated
sablefish with a Barkley Sound kelp-and-truffle broth
and pickled shiitake mushrooms. “Sakekasu is the
savoury rice mash left over from the sake fermentation,”
he explains. “I get that from Granville Island.”
Used like miso in broths, it has also found its way
onto the menu at Bishop’s, where chef Andrea Carlson
proclaims it to be “an absolutely irresistible
product.”
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