It's spot prawn season! The Spot Prawn Festival took place this past Sunday May 17th, 2015 at False Creek Fishermen’s Wharf. This annual festival put on by the Chef's Table Society of British Columbia is in its 9th year; it marks the start of the BC spot prawn season and promotes the local and sustainable seafood. The harvest season usually starts in May and lasts around 6 - 8 weeks during which we can get these delectable crustaceans live.



Demos were held hourly to show off different ways to prepare spot prawns. Chef Sean Blancard from The Beach House Restaurant made an Aburi sushi tower with live spot prawns.
Looks so delicious!











The main event of the festival was the Spot Prawn Boil, where for $17.50, we can enjoy a plate of 3 BC spot prawn, five sides (pickles cucumbers, remoulade, southwestern tomato & avocado salad, roasted vegetables & lentil salad, and herb grits), Terra bread, and sample pours from our sponsors: Salt Spring coffee, R&B brewery, and Summerhill Pyramid Winery.



Delicious!

People were also able to buy spot prawns fresh off the boat at $17 per pound. There were bags of prawns everywhere. Make sure to eat them as soon as possible! Nothing is worse than a dying spot prawn. They release an enzyme that makes their flesh all soft and mushy.

It's only the start of spot prawn season! Lot of restaurants will be serving up their own spot prawn creations and you'll also be able to buy them from the Fishermen's Wharf or your local markets to cook yourself. I'm a fan of just steaming them to enjoy the natural taste of the spot prawn. YUM!

The chef from Guu Izakaya and teacher at TKC Japanese Gourmet Kitchen was giving cooking lessons during the Sukura Days Japan Fair at VanDusen Garden.
Always up for a chance to learn how to cook, I sat down for the class. It was actually an hour long and we learned how to make 3 types of Japanese-style soup without powder soup stock. Quick and easy! Here is what I learned.
First we learned what the elements of tastes were and the most important element that gives you a very tasty soup - Umami.

Chef showed us how to make a Vegatable soup, Chicken and Anchovies Soup and Japanese DASHI soup. One common ingredient in them all is kelp (KOMBU).

Vegatable Soup
- chop up and mix in Water, Sake, kelp, mushroom, onion, carrots, burdock, chinese cabbage, ginger, salt, soy sauce and bring to boil
- top off with NORI (seaweed) and sesame seeds

Chicken and Anchovies Soup
- marinate 3 pieces of chicken thighs in 3 tblsp of sake, salt, sugar for a 5 min
- chop and mix in water, garlic, dried anchovies, kelp, tblsp of rice, onion, and chicken
- bring to boil

Japanese DASHI Soup
- mix in water, bonito flakes, Kelp, green onion, salt, soy sauce, tofu, yuzu
- bring to a soft boil and take out the kelp (don't want the kelp to overpower the taste of the bonito)



I went home armed with my newfound knowledge, I attempted to recreate one of the recipes. Except I didn't bring my ingredient list and missed some others. So I ended up mixing things - chicken bones, chinese cabbage, enoki mushrooms, king oyster mushroom, carrots, onions, ginger, garlic, rice, salt and sugar - it actually turned out pretty well! Success!


It was a fun cooking class and I enjoyed learning about Japanese style cooking. The rest of the Sukura Days Japan Fair was fun too. There were food stalls, performances, workshops and more!

There were still a couple of flowering cherry trees despite many of them flowering a couple of weeks early this year due to warm weather. They were beautiful!

"I WENT ALL HOT AND COLD"

The fifth Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival is winding down! You have until February 14th, 2015 to try hot chocolate drinks from 24 locations made specially for this festival. I've been to a few locations, the latest being Glenburn Soda Fountain & Confectionery, which is serving a rich, dark hot chocolate made with Avalon Dairy milk with a mini Birchwood Dairy vanilla ice cream cone (above). So cute and delicious!

"MAROCCHINO"

I also tried the "Marocchino" at Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France. It is like a mocha but with drinking chocolate instead of milk so is much more rich. It is half drinking chocolate and half espresso. It is also served with a meringue flavour of your choice. You can chose half size or full size but I recommend half size because it is so rich!

"MADAGASCAR"

The first hot chocolate I had when the festival first started was the Madagascar at Thierry. It was $9 because it is made from a rare small plantation Ampamakia chocolate by Valrhona. It was served with a chocolate caramel. Thierry no longer serves this but has moved on to the "Dominican", which is probably also made from another special cocoa bean.


If you want to try any of these and more you better do it soon! Here is the list of places you can get hot chocolate from:

49th PARALLEL COFFEE ROASTERS + LUCKY'S DOUGHNUTS - New! (2 locations)
BEL CAFE
BELLA GELATERIA + TO DIE FOR BANANA BREAD
BUTTER BAKED GOODS - New!
CHEZ CHRISTOPHE - New!
CHOCOLATE ARTS
CHOCOLATERIE DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE
DIVA AT THE MET - New! 
EAST VAN ROASTERS
FRENCH MADE BAKING 
GEM CHOCOLATES
GLENBURN SODA FOUNTAIN & CAFE - New!
KOKO MONK CHOCOLATES
LAST CRUMB CAFE
MINK CHOCOLATES & CAFE
SCHOKOLADE ARTISAN CHOCOLATE
SOIRETTE MACARONS & TEA
TERRA BREADS (3 locations)
THIERRY CHOCOLATERIE PATISSERIE CAFE
THOMAS HAAS (2 locations)
UVA WINE BAR + BITTERED SLING

I'm kind of interested in going to Mink Chocolates & Cafe. They are serving a hot chocolate topped with crickets! Yes, crickets! Weird, huh?

Cityfood Magazine is also hosting a contest where you can win a Grand Festival Prize consisting of gift certificates from all of our participating chocolate makers and cafes or a Festival Pass to the 2016 Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival! Get the details on their website! Good luck!

It's fall! And that means apples! The annual UBC Apple Festival was held on Sunday, October 19 at the UBC Botanical Garden. This was the first time I've attended; the heavy rain put me off from going the last few years but this year the weather was pretty nice!   


There was music, apple tastings, and apple related food to purchase.

Apple tastings were $5 but M, K and I opted to skip it. We weren't sure we could eat so many apples - we had our hearts set on pie.


There were three apples that we could taste for free. This golden one was called Aurora Gold. I liked it the most. It was very sweet.

This one was a new kind of apple; so new it doesn't have a name yet. It kind of reminded me of a Fuji apple but a little more tart.

We found the apple pie! There was regular apple pie and apple-raspberry pie available for $4 each. We were looking to buy a whole pie until we saw the $32 price. Yikes! I would have thought a whole pie would be cheaper than a slice.

 It was delicious but it would have been better if it had been warm...and maybe with some vanilla ice cream!

I also got some yummy Ginger Gold apple chips to go.

Some other foods for sale was caramel apple popcorn, candied apples, and apple cider.




An obscene amount of different varieties of apples to purchase as well!


Apples were also on display. They came in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. Some had insides that were unique as well!



After looking at the apples, we watched cider being made with a cider press.


Tried a little bit of it as well. It's apple juice. Haha.

The festival was fun! We wandered around all the different areas, like the scarecrow field and the kids corner where lots of kids were playing in a huge pile of leaves.