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"Out & About"
Every year at the harvest I go pick what’s left in the fields of D-Trois Pierres and come back to Montreal to can part of the harvest left-overs with the Réseau d’entraide and the other half with my dinner club. This year D-Trois Pierres didn’t have any surplus in the fields, so my whole model was thrown off kilter a few weeks before the end of the growing season. I have also been working part-time at Chez Doris (a day centre for homeless women) and giving cooking workshops once a month with CFAD (Continuité famille auprès des détenues). That meant that I had more partners to make preserves with and less produce to make it with!
I started by sending an e-mail to Lufa and thanks to the wonderful Erica Dancose who contacted their partners we received: cucumbers, peppers, carrots, beets amongst other things!
The Goods- Thank you to the farms that donated!
Then I got in touch with my close friend and celebrity organic urban farmer Judith Colombo and she hooked me up with La Ferme Belle Roche and La ferme co-op des Champs qui chantent in Lachute. We drove out with my mom who was visiting and picked parsnips, carrots, kale, herbs, swiss chard, green tomatoes, sorrel and hot peppers! Heather from Le co-op des champs qui chantent even had a hot bowl of soup for us! I think it was colder at the beginning of November than it is now!
Here is Judith Colombo farmer extraordinaire, my Mom and Dina Honke blogger at http://oliveoilandlemons.com/montreal-going-green-melissa/ all on the Montreal Living Table: healthy and sustainable food tour (on the roof of Santropol Roulant)
This year was bigger and badder. Changing farms and enlarging the different benefitting organizations allowed me to involve more wonderful people in the activities!
Simon from La Ferme Belle Roche and fresh herbs and hot peppers!
Our first day of canning with fresh, local, organic produce took place at the Réseau d’entraide de Verdun. We did it with Gabriel’s collective kitchen group, plus some of the former participants in my workshops, Suzanne Bruneau and Maxime Gaboriault from the dinner club and the esteemed secret weapon Sébastien Bureau of Mannanova who is also the food scientist of RISE kombucha. People left with a super garlicky and spicy kale kimchi fermenting, a ruttabega, cabbage and carrot kraut fermenting, salted herbs and a green fruit relish. There was 15 of us and it was such a heart-warming and pantry-filling experience.
Sébastien Bureau- food scientist and fermentation guru…getting turned on by the turnip, carrot and cabbage kraut by the looks of it!
Gabriel- collective kitchen co-ordinator at the Réseau d’entraide who so kindly welcomed us in his fold to make preserves!
Heather: farmer and co-founder of Le Co-op des Champs qui chantent! Thanks for the beautiful vegetables!
Erica Dancose who managed to snag us a variety of veg to preserve from some of Lufa’s numerous partners!
The second preserve session was with ladies from CFAD and from Chez Doris at CFAD. We made chow chow and pickled carrots. We also had a nice time together and the staff from CFAD pitched in too.
Dinner Club represent!
Kale kimchi- spicy and garlicky being joyfully mixed!
Kale Kimchi ready to ferment
I’d like to sincerely thank Le Co-op des champs qui chantent, Lufa and La Ferme Belle Roche for contributing fresh local, organic, in-season vegetables towards those who have less instead of the usual processed non-perishables, and also contributing to an experience where people learn about canning, salting, pickling and fermenting. Preserving is a highly social activity and it was nice to see people from each organization rubbing shoulders with each other, with dinner club members and even with Sébastien the food scientist! Thank you also to the organizations that housed the activity and contributed to cover the cost of the other ingredients and the mason jars! See you next year!
Green tomato fruit relish- Catsup aux fruits de tomates vertes
Turnip, carrot and cabbage kraut ready to ferment for 6 weeks!
End of the season at le Co-op des champs qui chantent
Korean tapas! So exciting!
I am originally from B.C. and I love going home. I love seeing my friends and family and usually spend most of my time in Northern B.C. and on Vancouver Island. “(I usually pass through Vancouver on the way to other places. Besides its beauty, I think that Vacouver is the capital of Asian tapas!! Tapas has always been my favourite way to eat, and Asian food is usually the cuisine that most delights my palate…especially Japanese and Korean.
I have tried a few places already: Bao Bei, which is wonderful and serves Chinese tapas calling themselves a “Chinese brasserie”. Guu in its early days and Happa Izakaya for the Japanese-style tapas or Izakaya eating. On my last trip, though, I tried a new placed called Damso. It is tiny, the décor minimalist and welcoming and the food de-li-cious!! It has just the right mix of Korean and nouvelle cuisine that I like and the Chef makes some surprising combinations.
I also often mix Korean food with western food. In fact, I believe that the best condiment I made in my life was a mix of southern-style chow-chow in which I replaced the cabbage with homemade kimchi. (I also make kimchi with kale, as you can see in this youtube video that I made in the hopes of going to Korea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK5bj8oBGrY)
Mi familia!
I went to Damso with my cousin Sarah, her husband Danny, who is a chef, and my sister-friend Tisha who don’t eat-no-powk (swine). We had a nice little dinner and it was a great evening out. Tisha had never tried Korean food, and neither really had Danny and Sarah. Though this place is not at all traditional, it is great both for the uninitiated to Korean cuisine and for people like me who have a weakness for novelty.
Tisha was in from Montreal and lovin’ it…even the pork!
Here were the dishes:
Beautiful, but missing a bit of pizazz too traditional vinegared pickles
The pickled vegetables were beautifully presented, but they were too vinegary and traditional to me, and it would have been nice if each vegetable was pickled in a different way.
Green salad with homemade bacon. Delish!
This was a just a straight-up fresh salad with the usual suspects in Asian western fusion: sesame, daikon, onions and sprouts, but then there was a bit of sweetness and the homemade bacon that brought it all home: simple, but well executed.
Nice idea, but the tomatoes needed some softening and sweetening to compliment the foie gras
Here is toast with foie gras shavings and tomatoes confits. It was really intriguing, but overall, I felt the tomatoes confits were over-powering the foie gras shavings. It seemed like a dish that could work, but was unbalanced.
Classic Korean!
Tteokbokki is a very traditional dish with rice cakes in a spicy sauce– and he definitely got it right. Not only was it a hit with everyone, but it meant my friends also got to try some traditional stuff.
Definitely one of my favourites!
Here we have Korean-style chitterlings (fried intestines). My friend Tisha may not normally eat swine, but she’s got a soft spot for southern food and this was the best of both worlds.
This was wonderful and looked like the sunset on the sea and tasted like the sea! Excellent!
Squid stuffed with squid sausage served with its ink and caviar: REALLY wonderful! Beautifully presented with delicate layering of flavours.
People are usually iffy about offal, but Damso’s tongue dish brought home the prize as the favourite!
This was everyone’s favourite: the tongue. Simple and well-done. It had a gentle meat-glaze-esque sauce, velvety with collagen and flavour. J
This dish looked beautiful, but its execution was lacking. I feel the ears should be served with vegetables with more resistance in the mouth than lettuce and the ears should be least resistant to the bite by thinner slicing and the sauce would have been better as a thin vinaigrette or marinade than a thick sweet sauce.
The pig’s ear salad was the least favourite – I had pushed for it, but I was disappointed too. (I often eat pig’s ear salad, buying the ears already cooked and sliced, and there’s a reason for that; if they are over-cooked, the meat starts to peel off the cartilage and if they’re not sliced thin enough, they are too chewy and the experience of chewing through thick pieces of cartilage is unpleasant. Indeed, these were a bit too thick. The sauce was also a bit too sweet and I would have preferred julienned vegetables instead of the leafy greens. I did, however, like the ground black sesame. It was beautiful in the plate 🙂
I really loved the spirit of the place. Some of the dishes were extraordinary and some were missing a bit of finesse, but I could feel the dedication of the chef. I admired his willingness to take risks and even make mistakes, and the dishes that were super-dooper came out of his daring combinations of Korean cooking with for the most part French nouvelle cuisine. Koreans are fairly chauvinistic about food, they don’t usually want to pay much. In fact, this place remains very affordable but at the same time offers dishes that are definitely off the beaten track and beautifully presented and the tapas tasting style was refreshing. I would definitely go back to try some more :).
I forgot to take a photo of the Korean taco and the pancake, a traditional dish that they nicely re-invented as a waffle Sorry! I guess you’ll have to go and try it yourself!
Damso
867 Denman St, Vancouver, BC
V6G 2L9
(604) 632-0022
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Damso-Modern-Korean-Cuisine/210596938969979
On June 15th, 2013 for the Vegan Rumble & Shake ChuChai backed by: D-Trois Pierres, Les Douceurs du Marché, 4 Corners of the Table, Majiza Phillip Rhythm’n’Groove and Mélanie Dusseault Photographe; faced-off agains:
Green Panther backed by Carya and Zephyr farms, Truffe Import, Brutalimentation, GOA pilates and Jean-Phillippe Cousineau Illustrator; and against
Crudessence backed by […]
Chef Lily of ChuChai: Awaiting battle
On June 15th, 2013 for the Vegan Rumble & Shake ChuChai backed by: D-Trois Pierres, Les Douceurs du Marché, 4 Corners of the Table, Majiza Phillip Rhythm’n’Groove and Mélanie Dusseault Photographe; faced-off agains:
Chef Luis of Green Panther: Ready to Rumble (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Green Panther backed by Carya and Zephyr farms, Truffe Import, Brutalimentation, GOA pilates and Jean-Phillippe Cousineau Illustrator; and against
Stéphanie Audet of Crudessence battling in the Corners (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Crudessence backed by Lufa Farms, Prana, Sportera, Midnight Poutine and Rachel et Michel Video Productions. This was my experience of it as an organizer….
Haim Shoham and Catherine Riendeau on team Green Panther in a pilates struggle! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
The Vegan Rumble & Shake felt like having two brides and a groom (vegan ones, of course) and their respective and eclectic families under one roof. There was the food, dancing, confrontation, emotion, the ceremony that was a little drawn-out, couples were formed, people let loose and the guests from different spots in society coming together.
One of the Rumble & Shake Love Stories (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
For myself, I felt like the over-zealous mother-in-law in adrenaline-land worrying if everything was going to come together…. until the moment actually arrived and then it all whirled by. Like a wedding, you plan and plan for a day that goes by quickly and when it gets there, you try to just relax and hope nothing goes seriously wrong.
Yours Truly enjoying the wily festivities (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
When it went down, it was inspiring to see what comes out of combining so many talented people, their products and getting them to strut their stuff.
Chef Lily of ChuChai Recruiting soldiers (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Really, with all of these fine-tuned professionals, nothing could go wrong, they just had to do their thing.
Haim Shoham the owner of Green Panther with a fresh truffle from Truffe Import (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
The Weapons (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
From the wild mushrooms, that were supplied to the sprouts and unconventional herbs, like chocolate mint and anise hyssop, kale, fresh garlic scapes, rhubarb, arugula, maple syrup and strawberries from the farms,to the raw decadence of Crudessence Stéphanie Audet’s dessert,
Stéphanie Audet's "Perfect Plate"(Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Chef Lily of ChuChai’s tightly crafted rolls,and Chef Luis of Green Panther’s fun and festive felafels, the deliciousness and freshness was off the charts.
Catherine Riendeau from Truffe Import trying to get Chef Lily's salad roll in one bite! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Chef Lily eating Green Panther's felafel (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Crudessence took the trophy for bravado with Stéphanie Audet being hoisted like a championand David Côté’s Rocky-style boxing training,
Crudessence on top of the world! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
David Côté Crudessence's Founder and Champion (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Green Panther did their muscle flexing and red carpet cameos, but Chef Lily had the quiet assurance and grace of a ninja. The variety was the most resplendent aspect of the night to me, and I could have crowned different players for different things, but the combination of all of the creations seemed to over-shadow the unicity of a winner: each contender was a champion in their division.
Haim Shoham lovin' it! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
The old-school hip hop dancers,
Tisha Breaking it down for team ChuChai. Man, "That Girl is Poison!" (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
GOA’s pilates’ crew
Mariano and Véro from GOA: Making pilates a game! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
and Sportera rocked the house.
Gary Pillu and girlfriend Valérie of Sportera (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
It was nice to see good and healthy food linked to energy, participation and unconventionality. When I planned this aspect, I wanted it to be like a scene from Westside story where the crews face-off by dancing and singing.
Feet moving! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
I didn’t want passive observers waiting on the sidelines for what comes next, but to get in the Rumble and get their hands dirty with the chefs. This was the second biggest thrill to me.
Chef Lily and recruited soldiers in battle (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Tisha, Makeda and Suzanne really killed it, finishing their Bell Biv Devoe choreaography of “Poison” with an up-in-your-face ass smacking aimed at the competition.
You want some of this- Suzanne Rigden- representing team ChuChai, winner of $200 in organic vegetables from D-Trois Pierres (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
They called out “When I say Chu, you say Chi, Chu- Chai, Chu-Chai” They even said “Crudessence, Green Panther- pssshh, who are they?”
Bad Mamma Jamma- Suzanne Bruneau- body and soul united on the dance floor! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
They rocked the dis as it can only be done in the old school. Makeda even had the hot pants and halter-top- shazam!
Bring it on! Makeda hip hop dancer extraordinaire from team ChuChai (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
GOA’s Dana, Véro and Mariano surprised us, and showed the versatility of pilates; people were having fun and playing and I saw many legs shaking with effort for their teams.
Having fun with pilates (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
A soldier almost down! Pilates is tougher than it looks! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Sportera was the best match with Crudessence in sheer oomph and pep and the competitors moved around double-time with David Côté and Stéphanie Audet seriously scouting the most die-hard soldiers from up-above.
Never felt so alive! Sportera work-out (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Sportera Creative coacing: tight-fit with the creative Crudessence team (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
The food at 10:45pm was a welcome reward,
HMMMM! GOOOODD! Organic, fresh and spontaneous! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Erica Dancose manager of Les Douceurs du Marché team ChuChai enjoying the Crudessence creation (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
and the buzzing around the tables from station to station and chef to chef,
Proud helpers! Great creations! Sporting the Green panther hat! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Soldiers helping their chefs (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
tasting and chatting created a cloud of sighs, satiation and sheer pleasure.
All helpers, all winners! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Michael Mooney- Ecstatic winner of Lufa's $200 vegetable prize! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Many of the winners of the prizes came to me bubbling with joy and thank you’s. The mutual gratitude that flowed between the businesses and the participants was unbelievable. From bi-weekly CSA baskets over the season given by Carya to shocked helper Justine Ethier, to the $200 dinner at ChuChai to Mélodie, all-day workshops in Crudessence’s Living Foods academy to Élodie, Michael Mooney jumping around in celebration for his $200 Lufa prize and Romain Rougier that left with his fresh truffle from Truffe Import, there was much to celebrate.
English announcer Mathieu Bergeron and French announcer Laurie Paquet. ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE? (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Fraternizing with the enemy! Stéphanie Audet and Haim Shoham; Good friends, but mortal enemies! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
There were less people than we had hoped, just over one hundred, but it was the right number for the space. The bios were a little long and after the hype of presenting the contenders, the zealous exercise, and unbelievable food it concluded with those who had been recruited by the chefs being the real winners, instead of crowning a team. The shake didn’t go-down after the strenuous exercise and eating and the food wasn’t formally presented nor the ingredients from the farmers and the food suppliers, although, many got the details from the farmers, chefs and suppliers by getting to know them personally.
The imperfection aside, it was a beautiful sight to behold these three clans together and the public joining-in the out-pouring of energy and the culinary muscle flexing and to see people leave well-fed and many with hefty prizes.
Gettin' loose! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Rising to the challenge! (Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
Many people have already asked that the event be re-done. I am all for it and I know the spots that need to be buffered. I also hope all of the contenders can get divorced so we can get married again next year, with less ceremony, more reception, a little earlier and, of course, with a panel of judges and a champion belt to seal the deal! Be there or be square at the VVEEEGGAANNN RRRRRUMMMMBLE and SSSHHHHAAAKKKEE 2nd edition!
Thank you to Mélanie Dusseault Photographe for all of the wonderful photos and for going above and beyond the call of duty!
Special shout-out to Aisha Issa of Nutrisco Sensorial Marketing who promotes Drugstore and ChuChai and co-organized with me and who has opened-up the world of fantasy event-planning to me!
Check-out the articles of fellow blogger Amie Watson of Midnight Poutine (member of the Raw in Montreal group- like me!) and Rachel et Michel’s super-duper video
and Mariève Savaria of Brutalimentation and Jean-Phillippe Cousineau’s wonderful drawings
The Pensive Chef Lily: Quiet and Powerful- Ready to win next year. Chef of my team! I swear allegiance!(Photo by Mélanie Dusseault: http://melaniedusseault.com/fr/)
