Last night I went to a Yumm! dinner, Salt Spring Island style in Bruce's Kitchen, an actual restaurant with an actual name so I suppose I should write "at" instead of "in" but given its homey compactness, either will work. You can see Bruce is a big man and his menu as well as his girth reflect his love of all things dairy and pig. His place seats 14 at two communal tables and he churns out lunch most days and once or twice a month he throws a pre-fixe fancy dinner in true farm to table style.

The meal was themed a Quebec Christmas Eve dinner and adhered closely to tradition, at least according to Louise the Quebecois who sat across from me.

We started with a pork cretons (think shredded pork pate in a pot) with house made plum chutney, mustard and brioche. Bruce offered us a little extra treat of a traditional Quebec triple cream cheese that was as rich as butter but with triple the flavor. I cleaned my plate. I am going to say that just once because other than the speck of starch left on my plate after the main course, I left not one bite of anything.

We had a glass of local hard cider with the course and it actually worked very well. Sadly, I forgot to take out the phone to snap this first picture until I was 5 bites in. While most of the evenings plates looked fine, I would love to give the boy a pointer or two on plating. There I said it.

Our second course was a tourtiere -- a small pie filled with ground beef and pork and flavored with onions and celery and warm spices like allspice, cinnamon and maybe some clove. There was a small puddle of homemade catsup and a side of pickled beets which tasted exactly like my beets. And I'll only say this one time also, this was a dinner I could have done, might have done, might just need to riff on.

Our main course was a ragout of shredded ham hock with tiny meatballs made from beef, pork and veal and flavored again with warm spices and parsley. The accompanying gravy was brown, rich and dreamy owing to a technique of dry roasting the flour in the oven until it browned before using it to make the roux. I love it when I learn new tricks!

The ragout was served over a white potato and rutabaga mash enriched with cream, just like my dad used to make when I was a kid. The whole thing felt like Scandanavia meets the Bayou. Bruce served it with this amazing spicy Pinot Noir that was the absolute perfect pairing for the luscious meat and sauce.


And because we needed something aside from cider or wine to cut all this richness, the table was adorned with spicy zuchinni pickles and green tomato chow. Bruce puts these up himself all summer and uses them at his special meals and to give as small sides with sandwiches at lunch. They were super sassy. One of the tomatoes squirted all over my sweater and didn't even blush.

Toward the end of the main course a lightly dressed bowl of local greens was brought to the table. I had two portions in the hope the roughage would actually chisel a path through my arteries. I can't remember having a meal this rich in a long time. I noticed some of the guests cried uncle.

Dessert was served with a small snifter of framboise from right across the water in the Okanagan region. It smelled like it was going to be way too sweet, but like many good distilled and fermented beverages, the nose and the taste take you down two different but adjoining paths. It was only a touch sweet and mostly tasted like raspberries evaporating off my tongue.

The framboise accompanied small slices of sugar pie and buche de noel. It was a buche I would have been proud to present and serve. Maybe I'll have to do another Yumm! dinner afterall, if only to make this beautiful log.

I found myself wishing we were not assigned seats -- I might have enjoyed myself more at the table of 4 rough and tumble lesbians in striking distance of my age than with the older straight couples from a time and mind set to which I had trouble relating. I did my best to stay engaged with the polite conversation about living abroad and large craft sailing and retirement bliss and grandchildren, but I was distracted by the laughing from the other table.

Bruce's kitchen is about the size of mine with a few more bells and whistles, but not many. Today I find myself day dreaming about having a place like his, somewhere, at a time when I don't have to make a lot of money, but need to make a lot of food related joy.

P.S. Out on a lamb hunt today I visited Sunset Farms, one of the large ranches found on the island, and as it turns out, owned and run by two of the lesbians at the other table. Seems they don't raise pigs and needed a fix.