Red Fish Blue Fish Seafood in Victoria B.C. Canada · Sunday May 18, 2008 by colin newell
Victoria B.C. Canada is ground zero for Fish and Chip shops.
And let me clarify that…
Fish and Chip shops that serve Halibut or Salmon or Cod.
We can dismiss pretty much any place in England because the fish they serve is awful .
Red Fish Blue Fish has an interesting concept: They are Ocean Wise
What is Ocean Wise?
Ocean Wise is a Vancouver Aquarium conservation program, created to help restaurants and their customers make environmentally friendly seafood choices.
The Ocean Wise label on a menu item assures you that item is a good choice for our oceans. British Columbia is known for its fresh, high quality seafood and Red fish Blue Fish is proud to be 100% Ocean Wise when it comes to the seafood they serve.
I used to think that I was Ocean wise living next to an ocean and all…
Maybe now I will just settle on Ocean savvy. Yea. I think that will do.
Check the menu. And then look at the competition over at Barb`s Place Yea. 24$ for 2 Pieces of Halibut and a drink at Barb’s – $17.50 at Red Fish Blue Fish.
That is a car payment! Red Fish Blue Fish is not only affordable – it also offers a killer view of our working harbor (Seaplanes and all…)
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Variations on Alton Brown's Pressure cooker chili · Sunday March 30, 2008 by colin newell
Here is a subtle variation on Alton Brown’s classic which we cook up once every couple of months – it freezes well and makes a super hot hot lunch entree! Recipe easily doubles for a larger group!
Primary variation – Use a stock or stewing pot – Pressure cooker not needed.
1 pounds Sirloin tip or lesser grade of beef (or pork… or Tofu)
2 tablespoons Canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 bottle of beer, medium pale ale
1 (16-ounce) container hot salsa
30 tortilla chips (really! 30… not 29 or 31!)
1/2 cup chipotle peppers canned in adobo sauce, chopped
1 tablespoon adobo sauce (from the chipotle peppers in adobo)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 medium onions – chopped
1 Yellow pepper chopped
1 Red pepper chopped
1 small Zucchini
1 large Pablano pepper chopped
2 Anaheim peppers chopped
1 chopped Habanero or Scotch bonnet peppers (be VERY, VERY careful with these peppers! There is a real risk of burning or blistering if your skin comes in direct contact with the seeds or chopped pepper flesh.)
OPTION A: 2 medium carrots shredded (adds sweetness!)
OPTION B: Add 1 or 2 tinned drained high quality chick peas and reduce or eliminate the red meat.
Place the meat in a large mixing bowl and toss with the Canola oil and salt. Set aside.
Heat a 4-quart steel pot over high heat until hot. Add the meat in 3 or 4 batches and brown on all sides, approximately 2 minutes per batch. Once each batch is browned, place the meat in a clean large bowl.
Once all of the meat is browned, add the beer to the pot to deglaze the pot.
Scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
Put in onions, yellow and red peppers, zucchini and carrots (or option of chick peas) to brown for around 5 to 7 minutes.
Add Pablano and Anaheim chopped peppers – cooking an additional 5 minutes
Add the meat back to the pot along with the salsa, tortilla chips, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder, and ground cumin and stir to combine. Bring to boil, cover and simmer for 1 hour. Serve immediately with cold beer and more corn chips on the side.
Depending upon how hot your salsa and chilis are will dictate how much of a sweat you will work up – add sour cream to serving for the more delicate among you!
Link to original Alton Brown recipe.
updated August 2014
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and roaming food and drink freelance journalist – has been writing online since 1994
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Your daily bread #1 - · Tuesday February 26, 2008 by colin newell
I would hazard a guess that if you took a snap-shot of what the average person is thinking about over an average hour of an average day…
Some of those thoughts would include elements of sex, food, work and basic survival.
And although some of us probably do not think about sex or survival every hour of the waking day, I am almost positive that snippets of food pass through our cerebral cortex very, very frequently.
And not just about food in general, but meal planning and food economics.
Hey. Everyone can be a food economist. And if they are not, they should be.
So, it was with this thought that I took the mobile coffeecrew blog roadshow to an Estevan Village Cafe to discuss food economics with someone who knows it way better than the average Joe – Bubby Roses bakery’s own Mark Engels.
I have been thinking about food a lot lately, especially about the increasing cost of staple items, like flour… and no one knows flour like Mark Engels.
Check this out: I probably use 10 pounds of Whole-wheat and Unbleached white flour in my baking adventures every 6 weeks or so.
Mark’s crew at Bubby Roses Bakery use upwards of 80 kg every day or so.
Uhm – that is my weight… give or take a few kilo.
And despite the fact that flour is on a steady up-tick, the prices at Bubby’s remain pretty static – but do not expect that to last… at Bubby’s or anywhere else.
And although I have never really paid much attention to the cost of a loaf of bread, I have started to in the last few months.
For instance, we like a good cheese bread, and at Thrifty’s, in Victoria, the price has jumped from about $3.19 to $4.19 in about 1 year – all the while Safeway’s has stayed pretty steady at $3.69 – not bad considering that there is less than 25 cents worth of flour in any of those loaves.
Naturally, I wonder what has been raising my bread!
So I asked master baker, Mark Engels, “What’s up in the bakery?”
Mark says that there are a wide variety of things going on in food World that most of us are blithely ignorant of – and that’s just the issues surrounding the humble grain supply.
“We are clearing fields of wheat to plant corn for ethanol…” “There is a trend away from the food supply to the fuel supply… and this is a global trend.”
“Factor in global warming, emerging markets, the roller-coaster ride that is coffee, chocolate, oil and yes, wheat on the trading floors of the stock exchange… and you have the recipe for a global food crisis..”
Ah. Thanks Mark. Something more for me to worry about.
I think I will take this moment and think about sex for a while.
Ok, so food issues are a big deal. In this, the beginning of a continuing series of short blogs on the food supply, I will do my level best to dig deep into the minds of the food masters to bring you, the readers, the straight goods… on food economics.
Victoria B.C. best French Toast · Sunday February 3, 2008 by colin newell
If you have not stopped by Bubby Roses Bakery Cafe on Cook Street, near Meares Avenue (Fort Street), you have to ask yourself one question…
“Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?”
Ok. Wrong breakfast place fantasy I guess.
Bubby Roses Bakery cafe makes the best French Challah Toast in the known Universe… or Victoria B.C. Canada. I tried yet another serving of this (dish) yesterday (Saturday) morning while contemplating the thickness of the Earth’s crust and talking story with Bubby Roses creator/enforcer Mark Engels.
Mark’s OCD attention to detail is startling to watch (and somehow satisfying) if you are a customer… or in my case a customer paying attention. Truth is, most people that hang out in Cafes and Bakeries are not paying near enough attention if you ask me.
Anyway.
Bubby Roses Challah French toast is so perfect and light that it is hard to tell whether it is French toast or a light soufflé. Two brick sized pieces of Challah bread are surrounded by small bowls of Organic Maple Syrup and Organic Yoghurt – and the bread is hemmed in by a phalanx of blueberries and bananas.
This stuff has been soaking all night in the egg wash – so it is absolutely saturated prior to being grilled.
It is absurdly tasty and satisfyingly filling. Eat this at 9AM and you should not have to eat again for 5 hours.
To quote Jack Bauer from 24:
Go to Bubby Roses! Go there NOW!
Eat the Challah French Toast! Eat it NOW!
Hey. if Jack says so.
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Victoria dining The Noodle Box Fisgard · Tuesday December 18, 2007 by colin newell
Like a scene right out of Blade Runner
Andrea and I peer over the counter as two chef’s work four shimmering woks.
“Now that is adequate heat…” I whisper to my wife, as the sounds of cooking fill the air.
4 steel woks sit on open gas jets that look like the tail end of an F-18 after-burner… without the ear splitting roar of course.
There is an almost non-stop hand conveyance of fresh vegetables, sauces, meats and seafood into the traditional Chinese cooking vessels. Every minute or so a chef pours something very liquid and decidedly fragrant into a wok and it belches fire – the chef’s head arching back as the wall of flame dissipates into the exhaust fan.
Victoria’s Noodle Box Restaurant on Fisgard is a surprising and refreshing delivery of Asian fusion; traditional Thai, Chinese and perhaps some Vietnamese elements.
In a way that is dynamic, fresh, exciting and very visual.
The Noodle Box had modest beginnings as a food kiosk on lower Fisgard, near Wharf (if memory serves me correctly). And now it has grown to 2 locations in Victoria and 1 in Vancouver.
For Andrea and I, this was visit number one of many visits to come.
I had a green Chicken curry — in a bowl (spiced hot on request) and Andrea had the Noodle Box Chili Plum with Prawns (spiced medium) – Andrea counted more than 12 prawns (and some bonus shrimp) in her bowl. If I had one beef it is that my bowl was very light on the proteins – there was probably 5 or 6 bite sized pieces of chicken – yea, a small complaint.
Overall, I freely give the Noodle Box a top rating and I would go back in a heartbeat. Who knows, maybe tomorrow!
