Comox Valley Pt.2

Ahh...something I forgot to mention. On our way INTO cumberland/comox/courtenay area (hereafter to be referred to as "the CCC"), we not only saw the outdoor shellfish warehouses for the largest producers of shellfish on this coast, but also bought some. 5lbs of fresh, unshucked scallops. So fresh they can almost bite you. We cooked those after the farmer's market and made scallops 2 ways, which was one of the more extravagant projects we've made thus far. We're getting more and more off the chain with this on the road cooking thing. Some real gourmet stuff been going on recently, keep checking back to see.(My first baited sentence!)
Anyways, scallop spaghettini, white wine cream sauce, au classique. Twas pretty good stuff. But before that we did scallop carpaccio with wasabi, toasted sesame, soy sauce, zests and green onion. It was amazing to eat scallops that had barely finished twitching, raw and silky.

My chronology for this area is all messy, because I just remembered we also went to Little Qualicum Cheese, which is a family friendly cheesemonger in Qualicum. They have a 3km farm loop you can walk and see all the animals, a goat petting zoo and also a fruit winery. We hung around for a bit, fed the goats some cedar(read crack cocaine) and decided we should hightail it. Qualicum was alright, by far the coolest part was the outdoor shellfish warehouses. Basically the three shellfish purveyors in the area lay out their catch on the beach when the tide is out, so that the mussels, clams and oysters can "have a drink" as they put it. It's a pretty ingenious system without using any complicated equipment or walls at all.


So I'm now jumping ahead past my last post into the day before the Comox shellfish festival. We decided to scope the area where the festival would be held. While we were down there, we asked directions to the brewery, turns out we asked the right person. He was born in Germany(the island is infested) and moved here when he was really young. Now he works on a nearby cattle farm. Needless to say we were going to visit him later the next day. For dinner we picked up some of the buffalo mozzarella from Natural pastures cheese, made from the milk of the buffalo I had been petting last week. We made a simple red pepper and mixed greens salad, a little green onion and thick slices of the buffalo mozz. It tasted a lot like buffalo milk, which seems logical, but most bufala mozz cheeses don't. Pretty nice little lunch meal. After that the farm working fella decided he would be the most helpful poster boy for comox possible and not only drove us to our car, but also had us follow him to the brewery before departing to finish his afternoon duties. Awesome guy and really helpful beyond the call of duty.


Now for the brewery. When we pulled up there was a bit of a scramble, as all the staff were lounging on the front lawn and just having a bit of relaxation. We talked to a lady there for a while, but there were no tours, because they generally do groups and booked in advance tours. Thankfully we got to chatting with the owner on the front lawn and he hooked us up a wicked private tour, full of all the beer you can drink and answers to all the questions you can ask. I was jealous of Fabian because I was driving and he got to get loaded for free with the owner of a kickass brewery. I'm not saying I didn't partake in beers at all, just that I had to monitor my consumption most carefully, while he just rang in beer after beer. Either way it was awesome, and Bob Surgenor is the man. He explained everything really well, made references to things we understand, and let us taste or see every step in the beer production. It was really educational and alcoholic, even if that sounds oxymoronic.
We probably should have retired for the day after that, but no such laziness is allowed for our ambitious voyage of food. Instead, we visited Mitch on his cattle ranch. His boss was hesitant at first, but after we discussed our aim and the fact that we weren't journalists, just people, he opened up great and was pretty welcoming. We got to see the milking parlour in action, and found out that cows produce waaaaay more milk than we thought. Its an issue how deluded even we are about food. Now think about yourself! After a quick visit to the baby cows and heifers, we said our goodbyes and took off. The next day was the shellfish festival, but somehow that didn't deter our idiocy and we decided to go have some pints again. Ended up at a house party deep in some random forest. Played a dirty dice game, did jello shooters, and took a cab back to our car at 5:30am. Awoke bright and early, went back to see if the showers at the farmer's market were open(they weren't) and then dragged ourselves to the shellfish festival.

The festival was bustling by the time we got there, and there were even people we knew there. Mike McDermitt from Oceanwise was holding down his booth, letting people know about the sustainability tip. If you don't know about it and you work in a restaurant, get into it, or I'll do my best to damage your business prospects. It's a really wicked program, and will only get more intense over time. Right now you don't even have to be 100% oceanwise to use it, but I'm hoping that'll change in the near future. It's expanded across Canada in 5 years, and hopefully will hit international shores soon. It also happens to have the restaurant I worked in as a founding partner. It was the reason I went to work at C, so I have a lot of respect for Mike and his team for preaching the message they do in the face of all the bad news about the ocean. Also there was Adera and the cameraman from west coast escapes, holding down yet another shoot on the shellfish. I got to meet the organizer of the festival and time the oyster shucking competition, which was great. I would have come third, in my approximation. The organizer, Matt, is also going to be out of the east coast for the PEI shellfish festivities, so we'll be crossing paths with him again in the near future.

Another cool thing we got educated about at the shellfish fest was that the vast majority of pacific oysters are only one species, and that it isn't a native species at all. Japanese oysters are what is predominantly farmed, because the local variety isn't as strong or variable. What was really interesting is when we were bestowed with the wisdom that all the different oysters, which look and taste vastly different, are all the same species. The variation comes from the "merroir"(play on terroir, a french word the basically amounts to 'regional traits bestowed upon product by the land') in which the oysters grow in. Deeper oysters have a sharper, flakier shell. Shallower, warmer water oysters can grow huge. Kusshi oysters (by far the best seller on the west coast) are actually produced by tumbling the oyster occasionally through it's lifetime, thus smoothing the surface and rounding out the edges. It was amazing to learn that so many different characteristics can sprout from the same organism.

On a recommendation from the oyster girls at Pacific Kiss oysters, we headed to Kye Bay to have dinner, get some sand dollars, and possibly sleep. We went out there, had dinner, drinks, sunset fire and good company, and then went to sleep. It's a really beautiful beach, has a crazy tide flat, and a nice picnic area. In the morning we hightailed it to all the way south the Victoria again for a day of fishing with my Father's cousin, the father of my 2nd cousin who I met again on Salt Spring Island.