EXPLORING THE ISLAND’S BACK ROADS BOUNTY

By CINDA CHAVICH

(Duncan, B.C.) - These days it’s common to talk about “the food community” – that gang of hedonists almost anywhere devoted to the pursuit of fine food and wine.

But when it comes to real communities in Canada, where the ruling obsession is quality, artisan food, there aren’t many that come close to the Cowichan Valley, a strip of seriously productive rural B.C. farmland, just “up island” from Victoria.

It’s easy to miss the hidden network of small Cowichan farms as you wind along the forested Trans-Canada highway, climbing “The Malahat”, between the capital and the town of Duncan. But veer off onto the winding country back roads on either side of the highway, and you’ll enter the island’s market garden, a hidden gem of a place dotted with the kind of family dairies, boutique wineries, pastured poultry and organic vegetable farms that are making this corner of Vancouver Island a real destination for food lovers.

“I want to preserve the flavours and integrity of the true grain and the craft of baking,” he says, brushing the flour from his hands that he’s just ground in his own mill. At True Grain Bread, Knight grinds only organic Red Fife wheat, a rare heirloom variety that he ships direct from a farmer in Saskatchewan. Red Fife nearly disappeared, but is making a comeback thanks to devoted farmers and bakers like this.

Bread lovers from the city and countryside line up daily for Knight’s chewy handmade pretzels, flaky scones studded with dark chocolate, and crusty, hand-formed loaves, products that are often sold out by early afternoon.

Next door is the local cheese shop – a project of artisan cheesemaker Hilary Abbott and his wife Patty. Like Knight, the Abbotts do what they do from scratch, every day, entirely by hand.

“Cheese is our life but we’re tiny – ninety per cent of what we make, we sell ourselves, right here,” says Patty of their unique local cheeses, cradling one of the 10 wheels of creamy Buffalo Blue that her husband created from the milk of Canada’s only herd of water buffalo, raised on a nearby farm. “The St. Denis, we only make in the spring, and the Red Dawn is aged in cider from Merridale down the road.”

Cowichan Bay is the valley’s “foodie central”, and it’s here that I bump into James Barber. Canada’s iconic television food personality is truly living his eponymous Urban Peasant lifestyle in the Cowichan Valley, a place he’s dubbed “Canada’s Provence”. Barber’s syndicated cooking show wisdom is still beamed to television sets and iPods around the world, and he’s happy to share it, with the right people, in a private cooking class on his own farm.

“I would do it for six people I like – but I won’t do it for people I don’t like,” says the refreshingly opinionated octogenarian, whose website www.theurbanhub.com catalogues his ongoing culinary projects. “We all cook, and we have a bloody good dinner, and we learn something.”

“Eighty per cent of what we eat here is local,” he adds, listing the wild foods, from nettles and vetch to sorrel, miner’s lettuce and mushrooms that complement the local chicken, pork, lamb, beef and organically-grown vegetables in his pantry.

I’m reminded of forays along the back roads of Sonoma County, where winding routes intersect at small wineries or farm gates. This valley is like Sonoma’s was 25 years ago.

There are several wineries on the island, but most are small, born of the “garagiste” winemaking tradition. Arriving at Blue Grouse or Glenterra vineyards – both making excellent white wines like Pinot Gris and perfecting the island Pinot Noir – you may meet the owner coming out of the vineyard, pruning shears in hand, to see who has arrived.

He may do lunch, though. Glenterra’s new Thistles Café offers eclectic cuisine created by Kelly’s wife Ruth Luxton and served in their stylish little vineyard-side eatery.

Or you might have an elegant meal of duck breast on barley risotto in the airy dining room at Cherry Point Vineyards, the only fully First Nations-owned and operated vineyard in Canada, then pop by the Abbott’s farm just in time to watch Hilary ladle the goat cheese into conical French molds and cut the cheddar for his squeaky fresh curds.

At my evening destination, Fairburn Farm, I meet the woman who has likely done more for the “big picture” plan for the Cowichan Valley’s food community than anyone. Tireless, feisty, frank, Mara Jernigan has championed the Slow Food movement on the island, and she has some unwavering opinions about the war consumers should be waging against our modern industrial food complex, to preserve the kind of artisan food her friends here struggle to produce.

A chef and food advocate, Jernigan runs the historic farm as a culinary retreat and guesthouse, where visitors can learn to cook with local ingredients at one of her market-to-table classes, dig in for a week of foodie boot camp, or simply indulge in one of her multi-course weekend dinners or Sunday lunches on the farmhouse verandah.

An added treat is a chance to see the resident herd of water buffalo, their milk now being made into fresh buffalo mozzarella cheese at the island’s Natural Pastures cheese company and served with Jernigan’s simple flair – fried until crisp and perched atop fresh greens, or tucked into a breakfast frittata of just-gathered farm eggs.

Sitting around her table, with dinner guests like local poultry farmers Lyle and Fiona Young, there is a chance to learn about organic and artisan food production from those who are in the trenches, battling government regulations that seem to favour the largest food producers and processors, even as consumers clamor for fresh, local food.

“I often say, if we marked the money you would just see it go around and around,” she chuckles, as she chops the vegetables she collected a few hours earlier from a nearby grower, sets out a tray of fresh bread and local charcuterie, and prepares the Cowichan Bay Farm duck the Youngs have supplied for our meal.

The Cowichan food community has also expanded to include the many local chefs who have championed valley ingredients. Victoria’s Island Chef’s Collaborative meets regularly with farmers to forge supply connections, and you will find the results on menus at restaurants like Brasserie L’Ecole, Café Brio, Choux-Choux and Spinnaker’s in Victoria, or upscale resorts like The Aerie and Sooke Harbour House.

But like all food regions of the world, the most memorable meals for the traveler are always the most intimate – those chances to dine in someone’s home or learn just how a local dish is made. On one spring Saturday, that kind of gathering unfolds at Deerholme Farm near Duncan, where chef and cookbook author Bill Jones is hosting one of his monthly specialty dinners, this one revolving around morel mushrooms and other wild foods.

Hilary Abbott is here, as is Barber, along with a couple dozen locals and urbanites, out for a weekend getaway. While Jones cooks, and talks about the local bounty, diners sip island wines and feast on a morel-studded prawn bisque dolloped with seaweed-infused cream, a rustic rabbit and mushroom terrine with an oxeye daisy sauce, savory bread pudding layered with nettles and smoked salmon, and loin of venison, glazed with fir-infused honey and served rare over wild rice pancakes.

It’s a microcosm of the valley itself, small, compact and friendly. Perhaps it is the island’s physical confines that have corralled so much culinary energy into one small space. But the result has been a happy cross-pollination of food politics and culture, a veritable stew of passion where farmers and foodies, chefs, butchers and bakers truly share the same vision, and often the same table.

There are pockets of this kind of culinary passion in other places – in some isolated corner of rural Italy, or among the truffle and duck-obsessed villages of southern France. But real food communities are rare in this country. The Cowichan Valley is an authentic example.

IF YOU GO:

It only takes a day or two to complete the Cowichan Valley circuit – but it’s a day of intense culinary discovery as varied and delicious as any international food tour.

The back roads of the Cowichan Valley form a bit of a twisted maze on both sides of the Trans Canada highway, between Mill Bay and Duncan, so you’ll need to have a good map (like the Taste the Wine Islands touring map, www.wineislands.ca) if you plan to do your own exploring.

The fastest way to see the most stuff is to take a tour – Kathy McAree runs Travel with Taste Tours and she will take you into all the nooks and crannies of the Cowichan, to meet all of the interesting characters, and impart a lot of insider information herself (www.travelwithtaste.com)

For the hands-on cooking experience, join Mara Jernigan at Fairburn Farm for a Saturday cooking class throughout the summer. Meet her at the train station in Duncan on Saturday morning, and she’ll take you on a tour of the local farmer’s market, then back to her farm to create a local feast. (www.fairburnfarm.bc.ca)

Or plan your visit around one of chef Bill Jones’ farm dinners. Whether it’s local asparagus, working over a duck, or an Italian harvest celebration, a dinner in Jones’ cosy restored farm house may be the best place to rub shoulders with the locals while you learn about the farm-fresh food of the Cowichan ($85 pp, www.magnorth.bc.ca).

(This story first appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper)

©Cinda Chavich 2007

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