Menus from an Orchard Table: Celebrating the Food and Wine of the Okanagan - Softcover

Heidi Noble

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1552858529 ISBN 13: 9781552858523

Publisher: Whitecap Books, 2007

Synopsis

Recipes to enjoy under an open sky.

Fresh from the Okanagan Valley comes Menus for an Orchard Table, a collection of outstanding seasonal recipes from Joie Wines and Farm Cooking School's renowned outdoor orchard dinners. The classes here are sell-outs, with people traveling great distances to sit at a table in Joie's orchard. Menus for an Orchard Table allows readers to re-create some of Joie's most extraordinary dishes, with essays on the Okanagan's wine country cuisine. The recipes are divided into the courses served at Joie's orchard dinners, which balance regional wines with the accompanying dishes.

Among the selections:

Chilled heirloom yellow tomato soup garnished with tomato confit and chive oil
Country lamb and olive terrine with Joie pear and shallot compote and brioche
Carmelis' goat yogurt cheese tart with dried cherries
Claybank Farm lavender ice cream
Similkameen Apiary honey Madeleines.

Menus for an Orchard Table will transport readers to Joie's magical outdoor dining table.

About this title

About the Author

Heidi Noble is a professionally trained chef and sommelier, food educator and winemaker. A proponent of seasonal, local food, she and her husband, Michael Dinn, own Joie Wines and Farm Cooking School in Naramata, British Columbia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

This hook is a book of menus. Menus can be journeys in time and season to places both near and far, and are sometimes the closest you can come to traveling without embarking on a culinary adventure yourself. The creation of Joie has been an adventure for my husband, Michael Dinn, and me, and our menus retrace our journey.

Some of my favorite cookbooks and books on food are actually books of menus, but they do more than simply list recipes, they also evoke a certain time and place. This is why I have chosen to tell the story of Joie and how it became our home, our farm, our cooking school, and our winery through a book of menus. Menus are a form of culinary escapism, but the re-telling of the creation of Joie is not escapism for me. Rather, it stirs up much emotion related to our four-year journey. For you, reading our story and reproducing some of our recipes may be an opportunity to savor the memories of a vacation in Naramata at Joie or imagining you did. People often say to us, you must be living your dream -- and yes, we are lucky to live among such beauty, busily engaged in our passions, but we didn't follow a direct route to arrive at where we are now. I will use the menus from our Orchard Dinners to recount the stories of the dedicated producers I met, the wonderful guests who visited, and the incredible chefs who came to our farm to stay awhile. Moreover, I want to use our menus as a vehicle to demonstrate the birth of a new wine country cuisine in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley and to show how it is becoming a culinary destination for visitors from around the world. This book, through its menus, will examine the potential for a unique Okanagan Wine Country cuisine, placed within the larger framework of cuisine found on the West Coast of North America.

Edition details

• Publisher: Whitecap Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1552858529
• ISBN 13: 9781552858523
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320