Scout Magazine » Owen Lightly

The Last Good Summer Night At Owen Lightly’s Sunwolf Supper

Scout Magazine — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:35:04 +0000

photo: Brenda Lowe

by Owen Lightly | My friends Jake, Jess, Slater and Tanya recently purchased the Sunwolf Outdoor Centre. The property, sitting right on the Cheakamus River in the Squamish Valley, includes ten cabins, a conference centre and a small licensed cafe with seating for 50. Not long after the purchase, I went over to check it out. The second I saw the cafe I was in love; it’s nestled under a massive walnut tree with the seating outside on beautifully weathered picnic tables. During the day they provide lunches for sunburned river-rafters and the occasional wandering local. At night the cafe sits empty. Hearing this I had a crazy idea: what if I rented out the space one lovely summer evening and held a dinner? Together with my lovely lady friend Naomi Horii, we would like to invite you to…

Queen Margherita Takes A Trip Down South And Discovers Pizza

Owen Lightly — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:16:10 +0000

by Owen Lightly – As long as people have been pounding and grinding wheat into flour, there has been bread – and as long as there has been bread, people have been rolling it out and putting things on top of it.

Pizza as we know it today came to be with the addition of tomatoes to a yeast-based flat bread – similar breads to this, minus the tomatoes, had been being made for centuries up and down the Mediterranean coast, usually with simple toppings of oil, herbs and garlic. Tomatoes, which were thought to be poisonous when first brought to Europe in the 16^th century, found their way onto pizza sometime in the late 1700’s in Naples. This flavourful, filling street-food was cooked on stones in wood-burning ovens and was sold from open-air stands in poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the dish’s obvious charms, it gained popularity and eventually caught the attention of a certain member of the Italian royal family on a visit to Naples.

On a visit from the North in 1889, Queen Margherita learned of this new street food and summoned respected pizzaiolo (pizza chef) Rafaelle Esposito of Pizzeria Pietro e Basta Cosi. Rafaelle obliged the Queen’s request and was shortly at the palace preparing an array of different pizzas. The one that caught the attention of the Queen was the one that contained all the colors of the Italian flag, tomatoes (red), buffalo mozzarella (white) and basil (green). The country, having been a jumbled mess of fractured states for centuries, had been recently unified, and this pizza must have set off her nationalistic pride, for she sent the pizzaiolo a letter shortly after singling it out as her favourite. Raffaele soon named this pizza the “Margherita” and it has since remained a mainstay in Naples and around the world.

Though I don’t have a wood-fired oven that reaches 800 degrees (something the pizza police in Naples say is essential), I do try to make pizza at home every once in a while. I won’t give you a recipe, but will say this. Find a good dough recipe (I trust this man) and make it the day before you plan to have the pizza – resting the dough in the fridge overnight promotes better flavour. Crank your oven with the stone in there, and let it get nice and hot. If you don’t have a stone, an inverted baking sheet will suffice.

Roll the dough very thin (try stretching it by hand for fun) and place it on something you can slide it off of into the oven – use some semolina flour or cornmeal on the surface so it doesn’t stick.

For a tomato sauce I just crush some San Marzano tomatoes by hand right onto the pizza (pureeing adds too much air, and changes the flavour).

Then tear a ball of buffalo mozzarella into pieces and scatter randomly on the pie. Sprinkle some Grana Padano or Parmesan over and bake until bubbly and brown.

Finish with torn basil and olive oil. There you have it, the Margherita pizza, my favourite!

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Owen Lightly is a boy from a small island in the Gulf of Georgia. After attending cooking school, he moved to Vancouver in 2002 to start a career in the restaurant “biz”. His website, Butter On the Endive, was created for sharing and caring.

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Lightly On The Elusiveness Of Aglio E Olio

Owen Lightly — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:12:18 +0000

Imagine this after a hard night of hitting the piss

I’ve always loved eating pasta, but only recently have I started to treat it with the reverence it deserves. Like a lot of people, I used to overcook it, and then pile on a shitload of whatever sauce might be accompanying it, leaving a soupy mess at the bottom of my dish long after all the pasta is gone. Now I buy a decent brand (most places stock de cecco or barilla), cook it about two minutes shy of the package instructions in heavily salted water and then finish the cooking while tossing it with the sauce, using some of the pasta water to bring everything together. The starch from the water, helps the sauce cling to the pasta, leaving none of that soupy mess I referred to before.

For whatever reason, whenever I see Andrew he always manages to bring up the dish spaghetti aglio e olio. Our conversation could be going in any direction, but somehow he always brings it back to this simple Roman pasta. “Yeah the food at such and such a place is good and all, but what I could really go for is a good aglio e olio”, he might say, as he stares off into space, mentally recalling all those perfect pastas of time gone by. He often laments the fact that he can’t find a good version of this minimalist dish in Vancouver, something I think he discussed in his review of Italian Kitchen [ed notes: actually, it was Mon Bella...CinCin's wasn't right either. If I recall correctly, Italian Kitchen's was pretty bang on. Alvin at Campagnolo can make a good one, too, but it isn't on the menu].

Don't burn the garlic...

Start your Spaghetti in plenty of heavily salted boiling water. While it cooks, chop some garlic (about a clove per person I’d say). Heat a pan with a generous amount of olive oil, and when you figure the pasta is about two minutes from being done, fry the garlic until it just starts to brown. Add a few pinches of chili flakes to the oil near the end. Drain the pasta and toss with the oil in the pan. At the last second, throw in a little chopped parsley and serve.

"Is that what you're talking about Andrew?" Yes, Owen...it's the requisite "puddle" - lovely stuff

A dish this simple, is filled with many pitfalls, so be careful. Like I said earlier, use a decent brand of Italian pasta – none of this Catelli shit. Good, freshly chopped garlic is crucial, as the second it is peeled, it is going downhill fast. The oil is the sauce in this dish, so don’t use the safeway dregs – a nice flavored, modestly priced extra virgin olive oil will do just fine. The most important step though, is the cooking of the garlic: too much and the dish will be bitter and acrid, too little and it will be pungent and overpowering. Just do it perfectly, as Hawksworth used to say to me.

Enjoy!

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Wearing Vans To The Top Of Whistler

Owen Lightly — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:59:47 +0000

Endive at 5000. Where's the butter though?

On New Years day, my girlfriend and I were joined by a couple of friends en route to Whistler to have an after-the-fact ringing in of the New Year. Originally, I was going to do a post entitled “Fondue at Five-Thousand”, but that never really panned out as the holiday hangover sapped all my motivation. I then toyed with the idea of making up a story about infiltrating an Australian snowboarding gang that terrorizes the hapless tourists of Whistler, but that was too far fetched (and a downright fabrication), so I’ve settled instead on a brief account of our trip. It was just nice to get out of the city for a couple of days.

Oh my god, it's gorgeous. The view from our room at the Adara Hotel.

We arrived in Whistler to crystal clear skies and some of the most beautiful scenery you might find in this fair province of ours. I’d never been up there in the winter, as I don’t partake in any winter sports and nor am I fabulously wealthy.

The lobby at the Adara Hotel.

We checked into our suite at the Adara Hotel – an unassuming boutique hotel right in the centre of Whistler Village – and proceeded to kick off our shoes and pop open a bottle of bubbly.

Wow! A present!

The fireplace was going, there was a Canucks game on TV (which we won!), and I felt relaxed for the first time in ages. Do you ever stop and realize that you have been grinding your teeth for weeks? I had one of those moments, and it felt good to unclench my jaw and take a load off.

Jumping right into the wine.

After a few bottles of wine, we ventured into the heart of the village for dinner at Araxi. They were loaded to the hilt, but within a few minutes we were able to snag four seats at the bar. My friend Victor, with whom I once worked at West, mans the raw bar there now, and he sent us out some sushi and sashimi to start. So good for a white boy!

At Araxi's bar.

We ordered a few things off the menu, all of which were great (chef James Walt’s food is always solid). I had the chance to work with him this past summer when he and the restaurant catered the VIP tent at the Pemberton Music Festival. A really nice guy, and a great chef. For the volume they do (300 plus covers that night), it makes what they do even more impressive.

Now, call me lame, but all I really wanted to do after was go back to my hotel room at the Adara, have a few nightcaps, and go to bed. But then Victor came over after his shift. We reminisced and bitched about things, as that’s what cooks do, and then it was off to sleep in a way-too-comfortable bed that made mine at home seem very inadequate.

Good morning

Upon waking up, we lingered over coffee (Adara provides JJ Bean beans and a French press), and waited until the last possible second to check out. We then headed out for a forgettable breakfast at a tourist trap in the village, kicking ourselves for not listening to Victor, who recommended the Sunshine diner.

Looking back as we venture over 3 kms of unsupported cables.

On the agenda for our final day was checking out the recently opened Peak to Peak gondola, which now links Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. The project took over a year and a half to complete, cost nearly $51 million dollars, and is the first of its kind in North America. The trip across takes 11 minutes and covers 4.4 kilometres, 3 of those kilometres being with no support from towers – just hanging cables. It is quite the trip, both literally and figuratively. Being the idiot that I am, I wore Vans up the mountain, and upon stepping outside I knew I’d made a mistake. My feet remained frozen for the next hour, and I was lucky to escape with all of my toes intact.

[imgset:72157612451640491,square,true]

We made it down the mountain safely and headed back to Vancouver, stopping only for the last period of the Canucks game at a White Spot in Squamish (does anybody know what is in Triple-O sauce? It’s pretty tasty, but man do they put a lot on their burgers!). I could feel myself getting fatter, and it didn’t help that I cashed in on their offer of bottomless fries. Will I ever learn? Just because the food is there, it doesn’t mean I have to eat it.

Oh well, Happy New Year.

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Field Trip: Owen Lightly Fishing For Dinosaurs

Owen Lightly — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:57:14 +0000

I recently visited Harrison Hot Springs, and among some other interesting activities, had the chance to fish for White Sturgeon – a pre-historic fish – on the mighty Fraser River.

A couple weeks prior, Andrew had called and asked if I wanted to go to Harrison Hot Springs as part of a media trip that would highlight things to do in and around this little village. He mentioned that Sturgeon fishing would be involved and my interest was piqued. I somehow wrangled two days off from work, and last Monday I hit the highway to Harrison.

Being a virgin to these sorts of press junkets, I was a little apprehensive. There would be real writers on this trip, and then there would be me: a dirty cook with a blogging hobby. Would they allow me to speak to them? Would they eat steak and lobster, while I ate bologna sandwiches alone in my hotel room? These are the sorts of things that run through my insecure mind. Of course all the worrying was for naught, as everyone was incredibly nice and a pleasure to hang out with.

The drive to Harrison takes about 90 minutes from Vancouver on Highway 1. If you have a little more time, and are a fan of winding, tree-lined roads, Highway 7 will also get you there. All nut-lovers must stop along the way in Agassiz at one of the many hazelnut orchards there.

The Kilby General Store

You had me at pie

Pig at Kilby

Upon arriving in Harrison, I headed to the Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa, where I would be staying, to rendezvous with the media group. After a brief meet and greet, we headed to the Kilby Historic Site in nearby Harrison Mills, where Jo-Anne Leon gave us a tour of this interactive museum. The centrepiece of the five-acre site is a hundred year old building, which was once owned by the Kilby family and operated as a general store from 1906-1977. The general store is filled with original packaging for products from the 1920′s and 30′s, and in the high season has interpretive actors playing out scenes from times gone by. The top floor, which was a hotel at one point, now has many exhibits on the history of the area. With a restaurant, heritage farm, camp site and boat launch on-site, it’s a nice place to spend some time.

Back at the resort, we checked into our rooms and then had some free time to explore the property. I soaked in one of the five hot springs they have on-site (two indoors, three outside), and then it was back to the room to iron my fancy clothes in anticipation for dinner at The Copper Room, the resort’s upscale restaurant. Prior to dinner we met up for drinks and canapés in the one of the suites with director of sales and marketing for the resort, Ian Maw (Jamie Maw’s brother!), who prior to moving to the valley seven years ago, worked for both the Pan Pacific and The Four Seasons in Vancouver.

Love is beautiful

Dinner at The Copper Room is a trip back in time. The restaurant doesn’t look like it has changed in thirty years, and I think our server Bart has probably been there since the last renovation. There is a house band which plays lounge favorites seven nights a week and a large dance floor to strut your stuff. Watching the old couples shuffle across the dance floor, holding each other closely, was almost enough to thaw my cold heart for a moment – but not quite. Food was standard hotel dining room fare, but I have to say the steak I had was cooked nicely, which counts for a lot in my books.

Then it was back to my room for a good nights sleep, for tomorrow was the activity that drew me to Harrison Hot Springs: Sturgeon fishing. But first I would have a relaxation massage in the Healing Springs Spa.

The White Sturgeon has been swimming around the river systems of the Pacific coast for over 175 million years, making it the oldest freshwater species of fish on earth. It can live to be over a hundred years old, with females first spawning between 24-35 years of age, and males anywhere from 11-24 years. They grow very slowly, but fish up to fourteen feet in length and weighing over 1500 pounds have been found. They differ from most fish in that they don’t have scales. Instead, they have bony plates called scutes along their sides and back, which protect them from predators.

From 1880-1916, commercial fishing took over a million pounds of Sturgeon a year out of the Fraser River, nearly wiping the species out entirely. From 1916-1994, sport fisherman were allowed to harvest Sturgeon for personal use, but a massive die-off in 1993 prompted a moratorium on all removal of the fish from the river. Since then, the fishery has been a hundred percent catch-and-release. With stocks as low as a few thousand in the early nineties, Fraser River Sturgeon are now on the mend, with anywhere from 45,000 to 70,000 now in the Fraser – a marked improvement since the moratorium.

Our fishing guide for the day was Tony Nootebos, owner of Harrison Bay Guided Services and its parent company the B.C. Sport Fishing Group. Tony has lived in Harrison Hot Springs for twelve years, originally owning a gas station and campsite before starting the charter business in 1996. The first year he only did 8 trips and nearly went bust, but the following year that number increased to 80, with the company growing steadily ever since. He offers seasonal salmon fishing, and trout and sturgeon fishing year round. He now has a 22 boat fleet, 24 full and part time fishing guides and takes out about 4500 guests per year.

We met Tony at the dock near the entrance to the resort. The first group of media had just returned from their morning trip and were just beaming, having reeled in a 300 pound fish that morning. Hearing their stories, I felt the excitement building up inside me. Having grown up around commercial fish boats (my cousin and dad were both commercial salmon fisherman), I have a connection to fish that I have never quite embraced fully, but am conscious of it all the same. Every time I’m near the water it reminds me of growing up.

Eagles wait to kill something

We set out across Lake Harrison, heading for the mouth of the Harrison River, which will take us to the Fraser. We stop briefly to do some bald eagle watching and fill out our one day fishing licenses.

Tony baits the hook with salmon eggs

Casting the line

We enter the Fraser and Tony takes us to the same spot where the first group made their catch earlier in the day. This time of the year it is harder to get the sturgeon to bite, as the colder water slows down their metabolism and makes them less active. The anchor goes down and the lines are baited and cast into the cold river. Different times of the year calls for different types of bait – right now salmon eggs are appropriate, as that is a large part of the diet of the Sturgeon this time of year.

The lines are set and the waiting begins

Now we wait, watching the lines from the comfort of the heated cabin. Tony tells us about the Sturgeon Conservation Society’s tagging study, of which he is an active participant. When a fish is caught for the first time, a microchip is inserted into the fish, which is used to monitor and assess these endangered fish.

I'd never battled a dinosaur before

A bite! There is a pull on the line and Tony jumps into action. He sets the hook and hands the reel off to me. I immediately realize how hard this is going to be. It is raining hard and my weak arms are burning within a few minutes. “Only another hour”, Tony says, laughing as I reel in, wince, reel in, wince. After watching me struggle for long enough, Tony gives me a couple of pointers. The first thing he says is to keep the arm you are holding the reel with straight, using the body for leverage rather than putting all the strain on your arms. Another is to not fight when the fish is swimming away from you; there is nothing you can do at this point. When the fish gets tired, pull up on the reel to create slack and then let the reel down, bringing in line as you go. This helps a lot and I start to make some definite progress. Half an hour or so later, the fish is within twenty feet of the boat, and does a little jump out of the water. “That’s got to be a six footer”, Tony says. Holy shit! A couple of minute later it is beside the boat. Tony sets up a hammock kind of setup to lay the fish in when he brings it into the boat to check for a microchip and measure the fish. In one quick movement, he pulls the fish into the boat and I get a look at the pre-historic creature that I have been battling for the last thirty minutes. Tony checks for the chip in it, and finds it has been caught before. It is 6.5 feet long and he estimates its weight at around 150 pounds.

That's what half an hour of hard work looks like.

After posing for my obligatory victory photos, we toss the fish back in and re-set the lines for another one in our group to have their turn.

Owen, Jayne Lloyd-Jones (Spectacular Ink owner), and fishing guide Tony Nootebos.

I returned home that evening one step closer to becoming a man, having fought a dinosaur and won.

Thanks to Spectacular Ink, Tourism Harrison, Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa and the B.C. Sport Fishing Group for everything!