Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Pâtés and Duck Confit





Vancouver's public market on Granville Island is the city's equivalent of les halles. Like French indoor markets, it has its permanent people selling lettuces, squash, oranges, pork, mussels and Brie and its day tables where farmers bring their spanking fresh asparagus or cherries as red as arterial blood as they come into season. 

Oyama Sausage is one of the standouts here with its abundance of sausages, hams and pâtés. Stout pink hams hang above heaped counters of cheese, sausages and pâtés. You just want to buy and buy and buy--a hundred grams of this, a slice or two of that--till you slowly keel over from the weight of your shopping bags. Oyama is also the only city source that I know of for duck confit. 

The sausage selection is something I'd like to import to France. The folk here do an outstanding job of translating just about anything, even butter chicken (get your head around that, butter chicken) into saucisses. Galantines, terrines...they sell those too, and, be still my fluttering heart, the annual cassoulet festival is coming up at the end of the month.

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