Tidings Magazine

Executive Chef Jason Lloyd of the revitalized Terminal City Club in Vancouver served this dish at a recent winemakers’ dinner. It was delicious. Caramelized onions, with fresh thyme, butter and a touch of Noble Sour — a sippable vinegar of very low acidity — were layered on a puff-pastry shell with grilled pear slices. This was served with a small salad of baby greens tossed in a wild-mushroom vinaigrette, garnished with a quenelle of Devon cream and a drizzle of fresh chive oil, and paired well with Crowsnest Vineyard’s Chardonnay Stahltank 2004 Family Reserve.

This is a family recipe that has been passed down through the ages. This is not one of those crisp-tender veggie dishes — you cook the cauliflower until it’s soft and well-steeped with wine. If purple cauliflower isn’t your thing, try it with dry white wine. My older brother Allen prefers this dish made with red-wine vinegar and sugar rather than with regular vino. Try it all three ways and see what you think.

There’s a difference of opinion on this one: some of my tasters preferred a sharp wedge of Gorgonzola with the salad, others favoured the milder Brie. You decide what’s best for you. To make this a dinner salad, add grilled chicken and a baguette.

My friend John Ash, a great writer who founded his own restaurant twenty-four years ago in California’s Sonoma County, says that one of the simplest and best ways to cook asparagus is to give it a light coating of olive oil and grill it. Grilling, says John, brings out the sweetness and more of the “vegetal” notes. It may also diminish that other unmentionable asparagus attribute! Add some good olives, thinly sliced prosciutto and maybe a sprinkling of fried capers for a delicious antipasti course. Wine? I’m sure that John would suggest a Russian River Sauvignon Blanc.

So you didn’t need that mountain of rice. Suffice it to say that rice pudding is not only the perfect way to round off an Indian meal, it is also the quintessential comfort food. Though cooking it can be a tricky and often long process, this particular version is fairly quick and unintimidating. Regardless, rice pudding isn’t the sort of thing you can leave unattended. You must work the whole twenty minutes or so it’s going to take and for that I cannot apologize. I assure you the results are well worth it. Though I am, at times, loath to disrupt the beautiful blandness of rice pudding with spices, the addition of cardamom is truly only an enhancement. If you don’t have cardamom, however, you could always substitute with cinnamon. For a plainer, equally lovely pudding, just add a teaspoon of vanilla or rosewater. The crumbled nuts are a must. But almond slivers would do just as well as pistachio.

Vancouver food guru Lesley Stowe, who devotes much of her life these days to manufacturing and distributing her beyond-delicious Raincoast Crisps (www.lesleystowe.com ) shares a favourite recipe: It’s an “easy mid-week dinner, or leisurely weekend lunch that’s healthy, sexy and spicy.” Everything you want, says Lesley, in a quick-and-easy pasta dish. This dish screams for a Pinot Grigio from Alto Adige. Say that ten times fast.

I serve this at room temperature on an antipasto tray. You can also serve it as Eggplant Parmesan by adding a bit of sauce and a slice of mozzarella to the top of each and baking until the cheese melts. I skip frying this in oil to save a few calories and because I’m too lazy to stand over a hot stove frying eggplant. This is a real family recipe. There are no exact measurements. It all depends on the size of the eggplant and the size of the crowd you’re feeding. Even eggplant-haters will like eggplant prepared this way.

Figs are the most underrated fruit of all time, and I will continue to be their greatest fan. They are a good source of potassium, calcium, iron and dietary fibre. Reputed to be Cleopatra’s favourite fruit, figs were also enjoyed daily by the petulant Persian king Xerxes who ate the fruit to remind himself he no longer controlled Greece, the land where figs grew abundantly. The ancient Romans revered the fig tree as sacred and offered the first fruits of the season to the god Bacchus who is often depicted as wearing a crown of fig leaves. Somewhere in time, we lost our connection to this noble fruit. Forget the Newtons and all the other ways in which you’ve grown to hate figs. Try them in a dish with gorgonzola cheese and walnuts. Then fall on your knees: you’ve been converted.