FSVP coordinated this event at Edible Canada with Ripples Winery to share a 4 course meal, designed by Edible Canada’s own Director of Culinary, Tobias Grignon, and wine pairings chosen by Sommelier at Home’s, Ashley West. Chef Tobias put on a great demo before the meal started, and taught us the best way to make a quick and delicious chicken (250°C for about 20 to 25 minutes in the toaster oven!):
Prior to the demo and the introductory speeches about FSVP, they served a generous amount of crispy duck hearts…
…and duck liver pate on a bit of sourdough…
…which I was very grateful to for, having just rushed over from the office. The Radiance Blueberry Sparkling Refresher paired extremely well with both of these, and warmed everybody up for the dinner party. H was sitting across from me at one of the long community tables, and we both sat between complete strangers, which made for interesting dinner conversation throughout the meal.
Before the Fraser Valley Smoked Duck Salad, paired with the Cheam Gewurtztraminer Blend (photo above of the flavourful, juicy smoked duck breast slices on top of the endives), we learned a lot about the history of FSVP from their General Manager, Joe Falk himself. He talked about the history of the FSVP farm, which has been a local source of poultry since the 1970’s, and now provides duck, goose, specialty chicken, and squab to the Lower Mainland. They’ve been very resourceful with diversifying their products, and now, they even have their line of ready-to-eat products, including a duck sausage, and of course, the smoked Pekin duck breast, which was creatively paired in our salad with the huge duck egg.
The next course was the squab, which I did not get a good photo of due to the fact that it had been a long day already and the wine was very good. I’ve had squab before at many Chinese restaurants, and usually it is fully roasted. This time, it was a medium rare meat, with honey on top, served with a croquette on the side. INTERESTING…
The wonderful men and women around H and I all enjoyed the squab the most, because it had the most original flavour, and I cleared it off the plate too. However, for me, the best was the chicken breast dish after this one. Even though it looks like just a small piece of white meat, it wasn’t just boring old chicken! It was the juiciest, most perfectly poached free range chicken breast I had ever had the chance to taste.
My knife slid through it like it was butter, there was no resistance from the meat at all. Check out how tender it looked:
Wiped the plate clean, with only a small piece of greenery left behind as evidence that there used to be food here.
The squab and the chicken both went well with Intemperance, the blueberry table wine from Ripples.
To close the meal, they served a butter cake, topped with fresh Okanagan peaches and cream, garnished with basil:
The sweetness of the dessert was matched by Cupere, a dark blueberry dessert wine:
I know for sure I won’t be able to recreate the poached chicken breast without more work and practice on my end, but I was happy to find out that FSVP’s ready-to-eat smoked duck breast from the salad was available at Edible Canada’s market from Aug. 17th to Sept. 30th. Stocking up on these to throw in my salads for lunch (well probably not mine, because I get lunch from work, but H would love it):
One of the reasons I really enjoyed this dinner was that the sources were all local. It always eases my conscience to be able to contribute to the buying local movement. If you’re interested in learning more about buying local meats from the Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry group, check out their website and social medias.
It was also pleasantly surprising to be able to meet interesting new people at an event like this, and spend just that brief moment of my life with them, learning about their families and hobbies and jobs. I would definitely recommend this type of event, as a way to learn more about your food and meet new people around the city.
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