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Never seen something quite like this.

Now I’m all hungry.

All of a sudden, on Saturday evening, the kids were gone and my wife and I were at loose ends for dinner. Usually we have something on the go but this weekend was not like that. My wife suggested we go to Oca Pastificio, a local restaurant where they make fresh pasta, and only fresh pasta. Well, they have a few other bits, but it’s mostly a pasta place.

We had the tasting menu and a bottle of nice Italian wine. I do love throwing myself on the mercy of a chef and asking for some great food. It’s a lot easier than having to decide. And goodness knows there may well be something in the back that will absolutely blow me away, and who better to get that to me than the chef?

The above is one of the dishes we had. It’s a strip of fresh pasta with a line of ricotta and oregano down the middle. Then it’s folded in half and twisted up into a crown like this. I’m assuming it’s cooked in a shallow pan of water and then drained. It’s then finished with butter and lemon.

It was amazing. I bet, in total, there aren’t more than 10 ingredients in this dish, one of which is salt. And one of which is water. This dish is the epitome of what I love about Italian food. Simple. But at the same time, rather creative and really tasty.

My wife and I took a moment to be obnoxious and picked apart the dish (figuratively as well as literally) and sort of figured out how it was done.

I gotta try this one at home. My pizza kick might be coming to a close, to be replaced by a pasta kick. Not a bad nutritional segue, if I do say so, myself.

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You want me to what? Ok, if you insist.

Step one: Lots of heat

When my family and I visited London last year, a friend insisted that we go to Nopi. He told me that we could sit anywhere – even the basement was fine. And so we made reservations and went. We did end up downstairs, sitting at a massive marble table, surrounded by racks of storage for the kitchen.

Dinner was amazing. I remember being totally blown away and even the kids thought it was great.

We came back to Vancouver and at some point in the following months I ordered the restaurant cookbook.

I might have been in a bit of a funk, post-London. It might have been the grey fall weather. Maybe I needed some new eyeglasses. Possibly all three, but in any case I found the cookbook really unimpressive. I looked through the recipes and nothing jumped out at me at all. It felt like the entire volume was not to my palate.

But I decided I had better try something, so I settled on the ‘Burnt Green Onion Dip with Curly Kale’.

Holy cow. I was absolutely amazed. Other recipes have followed and they have been roundly incredible. The only drawback is that if you want to cook any of the meals you had best read the recipe really carefully several days in advance because some things take several days to create. The ‘Strained Ricotta with Blackcurrant Compote and Rhubarb’ takes a week to make, I swear. It’s worth it, but man, days pass.

But I’m writing about the burnt onions. The intro to the recipe states:

“One important point to remember: there’s no such thing as overcharring your onions, so hold your nerve at the grill… The more burnt they are, the better and more smoky they will taste.”

After charring my pizza, this was music to my ears. I love recipe instructions like that.

Getting there – need a bit more time

I love the idea of not being able to go too far when cooking something. I guess it’s like roasting eggplant. More is better.

Of course, I do wonder if maybe I should have kept them on the grill for longer? There always seems to be something to improve upon.

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Junk food. But a higher level of junk food.

Super tasty

I’m eating a really awful sour-cream glazed doughnut while I write this. Hm. Better have another to see if it’s any better…

Many years ago I was at the PNE (the local summer fair, here in Vancouver) and I was wandering around with my Hasselblad, taking photos of interesting things. It was a lot of fun. I went thinking I would maybe get a few good photos but I ended up with a bunch of images I was really proud of. Here is the roller coaster:

It’s way scarier than it looks – especially if you’re sitting next to your youngest child. And she isn’t particularly well strapped in.

And the swings. A ride that I last rode when I was in Grade 6. Didn’t end well for me. I’m not usually prone to motion sickness, but… Yeah.

Dangerous ride. That’s all I’ll say.

But back to the junk food and the Funnel Cakes.

I was wandering around a back area of the fair. It was right beside the chaos, but about 20 paces away – enough to be in a rather forlorn and somewhat less traveled area. I thought it looked fantastic and so I took a photo.

…and then I figured I had best pay for the privilege. I bought a funnel cake.

The booth was run by what I’m guessing is a husband-and-wife team. I expect they would go from fair to fair, peddling their funnel cakes. I vaguely remember being told it was an old family recipe. The fellow had a funnel full of batter and he picked it up and made a crisscross pattern in a deep fryer. In about a minute he flipped the lattice over and cooked the opposite side.

Then out on to a paper towel of some sort, a liberal dusting of powdered sugar and it was handed over.

It was heavenly. Better than any other doughnut I think I have ever had. Who knows why? It could be the family recipe, it could be the fact that I was really hungry. The cake was freshly made – still piping hot when it landed in my hands.

But I think, possibly, it was because it was made with a bit of love from someone who took his work very seriously; who had done it a zillion times before and who knew exactly how to produce the perfect piece of deep-fried battered goodness.

If you’re going to eat junk food, it better be good junk food.

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Special still water

ooooo. Frosty…

I’ll bite: How is it that water tastes better in a restaurant?

I went for lunch with an old friend today. We went to Chambar, a downtown restaurant. It was a little strange, with everyone in masks but the food was pretty darn good (more on that later).

To start the meal, our server asked if I wanted some water – still or sparkling. I asked for still and a bottle of this showed up. Check out that label! I’m assuming that in the cooler they have a multitude of bottles – some still, some sparkling and the labels are to tell the two apart when servers are grabbing them in a hurry.

Regardless, I think they’re snazzy.

And I think the water tastes better out of a bottle like this. Strange, but true. I had several glasses. They just kept on bringing more bottles of this wondrous stuff.

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