Chewing the Fat: A Foodie Interview with Owen Lightly
If you like reading about holiday ham, first hand accounts of cooking in a Vancouver restaurant kitchen, and current events with a smidgen of restaurant chit chat - all of which are accompanied by telling photographs - you will enjoy Owen Lightly’s blog Butter On The Endive. You’ll be able to catch him in action as well as some fabulous cheese, wine and home made terrine at the soon-to-open Au Petite Chavignol, second establishment from owners of Les Amis du Fromage. Owen kindly agreed to be interviewed here for our Chewing The Fat series, for which I definitely owe him a beer.
Jackie Connelly: Is there a certain dish that reminds you of home?
Owen Lightly: To me home is all about seafood. I grew up on a small Gulf Island and my dad always had a prawn trap soaking, or was out on the water trying to land a big salmon. One of the simplest and best dishes we would make was a spot prawn stir-fry. Take one hot wok, a little garlic, throw in a big pile of prawns (head and all), salt, pepper, stir, stir, stir and finish with lemon juice. Pour out onto a table lined with newspaper and dig in – no cutlery allowed.
JC: What is your ideal meal?
OL: Well, besides the dish in the preceding question, nothing satisfies me like a plate of the classic Italian pasta Bucatini all’Amatriciana. Check out my recipe for it on Butter On The Endive.
JC: What are you having for dinner tonight?
OL: I just returned from a five day eating spree in San Francisco, and I feel pretty grotesque (you can’t live on restaurant food alone), so I wanted to keep it simple tonight: roast loin of pork with roasted root vegetables and a sauce made with beer, apples and grainy mustard.
JC: Is there one food that gives you the heebie-jeebies?
OL: Well, besides all the processed garbage in the world, there aren’t a whole lot of things that I can’t stomach. I believe most ingredients have potential, it’s just how you handle them. Oh, I got it, cooked cucumbers. Those are nasty.
JC: Being a food blogger, I can imagine you have spent some time browsing the blogosphere. Can you recommend a few of your favourite food blogs for readers to check out?
OL: I really enjoy Mark Bittman’s blog on the New York Times website, as well as food writer Michael Ruhlman’s. I just found a new local one called Crust In The Kitchen. It is by a young cook named Christie, who has worked at Feenie’s, Chow and Gastropod. She has a really honest take on kitchen life, which makes for good reading.
* In hindsight, another question I should have asked Owen: Where did the name ‘Butter On The Endive’ come from? But maybe that’s being too cheeky.
Tags: Butter on the Endive, chewing the fat: foodie interviews, food blog, Owen Lightly
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
The name Butter on the Endive is restaurant slang from Hy’s and The Keg. My first chef Jeff Van Geest used to work at Hy’s and he let me in on the meaning. In the open kitchen (exposed to the restaurant), a code word was needed for when a beautiful lady walked into the restaurant - something vaguely sexual that would not tip off the customers that the cooks were being perverted. So Butter on the Endive was born.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I knew that answer…I was just being cheeky
Thanks Owen!
March 6th, 2009 at 1:34 am
Wow, thanks for the shout out Owen! It’s weird, at Feenie’s when I first started the code for a hot chick was “butter lettuce”. I was on garde-manger and we actually had a butter lettuce salad on the menu, when a hot girl walked by and they all started yelling “butter lettuce! butter lettuce!” I ran to the walkin and grabbed a bunch and came running online. It took a second for me to catch on and I tried to look like I was just re-stocking my station, but I saw Bryan laughing and shaking his head from the corner of my eye.