The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I’ve gone a little tomato crazy this year. I’m finding myself literally surrounded by tomatoes of all varieties and I only have myself to blame for it. As I may have mentioned before we receive more than we can eat in tomatoes each week from my mother-in-law and with many failed attempts at refusing her generous offers, because she really gives us way more than we could possibly eat, we gave up.

You would think that this constant supply of free tomatoes would extinguish any temptation to buy other available varieties in the market.

Nope, unlike most people who find themselves in an over abundance of any one thing, I don’t seem to know when to stop. You see, its tomato season in Vancouver and we have all kinds of amazing otherwise unavailable varieties like heirlooms and Okanagan Field tomatoes (still a few more weeks for these but I’m anticipating!). I wait all year for good Okanagan tomatoes I still think they’re the best in the world. How would it be possible for me to pass these up?

In a moment of panic, upon realization of my dilemma, I have come to the conclusion that we will be eating a lot of tomato based meals in the near future, at least until the Okanagan tomatoes are through. I’m OK with that for now. I promise I will exercise some restraint and not post exclusively tomato recipes for the rest of the summer.

I rarely write about Vancouver restaurants here on The Hunger Struck, so I thought it was time to make a quick list of my current favorites. We do eat out at least once a week and over the past few months have been going back to these places frequently. They are all in the moderate price range and I think all of them are pretty great.

1. Nuba – If you like Lebanese food you’ll love Nuba. Not exactly a new Vancouver staple but their newish Hastings location across from their previous location has me going there more often. I just love this place. I have a tendency to always order the same thing : the vegetarian platter for two.

Nuba Restaurant
207 Hastings Street West
Vancouver, BC
(604) 688-1655
http://nuba.ca/

2. Acme Cafe – This place is great for breakfast and lunch. We have a tendency to come here for lunch lately because they make a great tomato vegetable soup, which is probably the best side of soup I’ve had in a long time from a diner style restaurant. Also any place that offers mac and cheese as a side is alright by me.

Acme Café
51 Hastings Street West
Vancouver, BC
(604) 569-1022

http://www.acmecafe.ca/

Its almost like I have an unconscious wish to get really really fat. I’ll spend hours at the gym the weekend baking and eating and still find myself a bit confused when my jeans fit tight on Monday morning. The best part is that by some miracle I am able to ignore this and use absolutely no common sense when I see recipes like Brown Butter Ice Cream. Obviously ice cream base on its own isn’t rich enough so lets add a stick of butter to it. Sounds good to me!

In all seriousness, am I the only one that sees the genius of this? Brown butter on its own is magic and can add so much to a dish. I routinely use it when I make rice.

This is another recipe from Chez Pim and I have to say I was instantly attracted to it. It just made perfect sense to me. Brown butter, sugar, cream could there be a better combination out there? Seriously email me asap if you you know of one. This was one of the recipes that I knew would be amazing the second I laid eyes on it and I was right.

I love to bake and have always longed to be one of those bakers who can produce perfect aesthetically magnificent creations. This is a bit strange because in other ways I’m not exactly what you would call a perfectionist. This desire for baking perfection may stem from the fact that baking is something I was very comfortable with at a young age. I worked in a bakery for a while after high school and prior to that spend many days in the kitchen baking cookies, pies, tarts etc. Baking came to me easily, I only struggled with the aesthetic.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much time I spend calculating circumference or carefully cutting sides of puff pastry, somehow it always comes out looking a bit rough. I know there is appeal in a rustic looking free form tart, but sometimes, maybe even just once, I would like to make something that looks as amazing as it tastes, something refined.

I have been the laziest cook lately. For the last few weeks as this blog will attest I have had minimal time in the kitchen. Actually it hasn’t been intentional at all, I’ve just been so busy lately. We are desperately trying to find a house right now as we’ve out grown our one room apartment, so all of my free time has been spent doing this. Any of you Vancouverites who have been through this process recently will know how frustrating it is. I wont get started on the housing prices in Vancouver, they make me want to pull my hair out.

But hopefully we will find something soon because I’m sick of this and need more time to do the things I love again. AND my kitchen misses me. AND i just got a new set of amazing pots and pans. AND figs are in season!

I don’t know about you guys but I’m absolutely obsessed with figs. I wait not so patiently all year until its fig season. Once they start showing up we go absolutely fig crazy. Seriously we eat them on a daily basis. I thought I would share this extremely no brainer recipe quickly, its the first thing we do with figs each year and it may change the way you look at bruschetta forever.