ICC Victoria Food Festival – Defending Our Backyard

I spent the day at Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria yesterday, attending Defending Our Backyard:  the 3rd Annual Island Chefs’ Collaborative Local Food Festival and Farm Fund Raiser.

Big mouthful, eh?

Not as big as the one I had all afternoon – enjoying a feast of local, seasonal and sustainable food.  And drink.  Did I mention the drink?  There was a lot of drink.

Pender Island Cobb Salad

• Galloping Goose Bacon & Fennel Confit
• Cold BC Spot Prawns on blanched Washington Asparagus
• BC New Potato Salad with Yellow Pepper Romesco
• BC Tomato, Cucumber and Red Onion Salad with a Salted Meyer Lemon vinaigrette
• Hard-boiled Pender Island Eggs
• All on a bed of local lettuce, baby kale and dandelion greens.

Seasonal, sustainable, local, foraged, a fridge cleaner — and a freakin’ amazing dinner, if I do say so myself.

Ouzo Steamed BC Spot Prawns

Trap caught BC Spot Prawns have gained a lot of fame here at home in the past few years — they’re some of the biggest, juiciest sweetest shrimps in the world, AND they’re sustainable, local and (relatively) affordable.

I fear, however, that things may be about to change. 

Maple Blossom, Orange & Fennel Salad

Two out of four of the ingredients in this salad were foraged at Mile Zero — on the deck just outside our front door.  But we don`t grow a lot of citrus in the Pacific Northwest, and while I have grown fennel (on our deck even!), I haven`t done it in March.

Which leaves the sorrel (sorry) and the maple blossoms.

Thetis Queen Smoked Tuna – Product Focus

We opened a can of this luscious smoked tuna as part of the largest lunch know to man — we’ve tried it in tuna salad, we’ve tried it in a niçoise-salad-inspired pasta and on a seafood pizza — but really, the best way to eat Thetis Queen Smoked BC Albacore Tuna is straight from the can…

Try this once, or their non-smoked variety, and you won’t want to go back to the mushy mass-produced stuff.  I’ve started a tuna cache in our basement…