La Pentola della Quercia chef Lucais Syme makes soba noodles with mirin and ginger

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      Turns out, mothers do know best. When Lucais Syme was living at home in Edmonton after finishing a psychology degree, wondering if he should go to law school, it was his mother who suggested he consider a career in the culinary arts.

      “I was having dinner with my parents and my mom said, ‘You do a lot of cooking. Have you thought about cooking? There’s this fellow, [Alain] Ducasse. He makes $700,000 just consulting!’ I thought, ‘I could make $700,000,’ ” Syme tells the Georgia Straight. “It turns out I can’t, but anyways, that’s when I started thinking about cooking.”

      Syme is now the executive chef and owner of La Pentola della Quercia (350 Davie Street) at the OPUS Vancouver hotel. He began training at an Earls location in Alberta before moving to Vancouver to attend the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. After graduation, he worked at Blue Water Cafe, Adesso Bistro, and Cioppino’s, before doing a stage at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. In 2008, Syme opened La Quercia with partner Adam Pegg; he’s since sold his shares in that restaurant to focus his attention on La Pentola and the soon-to-open Cinara at 350 West Pender Street, which Syme will co-own with his wife, Gillian Book. The restaurant will serve modern, European-style dishes using local meat and produce.

      “I love cooking so much, and at La Pentola, there’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, room service, catering, all sorts of stuff that I’m organizing way more than I’m physically cooking every dish,” Syme says. “I just want to be able to touch the food a little more on a small scale. I still love the idea of working with La Pentola and making it as good as it can be, but the hands-on thing I miss. The future of being able to do both will be great.”

      At home, Syme rarely makes Italian food but he says that he applies the philosophy of Italian cooking, which celebrates fresh ingredients with simple preparations, to all his dishes. When he makes Japanese soba noodles—which he compares to bigoli, a buckwheat noodle used in cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper) pasta—Syme adds only a few toppings: beef slices, a hard-boiled egg, and fresh greens. The dipping sauce is a balance of sweet, salty, and acidic notes.

      “The noodle is the star of the show here,” Syme says.

      He says that pairing Asian ingredients with a white wine, such as Riesling, is obvious, but he suggests trying soba noodles with a glass of Allegrini Palazzo della Torre, a red wine that pairs well with cacio e pepe.

      He adds that like anything you cook at home, this is certainly a dish you could experiment with. “The more you experiment, the better it gets.”

      Lucais Syme’s soba noodles with mirin-ginger sauce

      Ingredients

      3 oz (85 g) soba noodles
      ¼ cup (60 mL) mirin
      ¼ cup (60 mL) soy sauce
      ¼ cup (60 mL) rice vinegar
      ½-inch knob of ginger, thinly sliced
      9 oz (255 g) beef tenderloin (or meat of choice), cooked and thinly sliced
      4 sheets nori seaweed, cut into thin strips
      1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
      2 stalks green onion, thinly sliced
      1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
      1 hard-boiled egg, peeled

      Method

      1. In a small bowl, combine mirin, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and ginger. Set aside as dipping sauce.
         
      2. Bring a medium pot of water to a rolling boil. Add soba noodles and about ¼ cup (60 mL) cold water to slow the cooking process. As water returns to a boil, add another ¼ cup (60 mL) cold water. Cook noodles for about 5 minutes. Drain noodles and rinse under cold water to remove excess starch. Divide between two bowls.
         
      3. In a cast-iron pan or nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, sear the beef quickly to brown. Remove beef and place on soba noodles. Add celery to the pan, turn off heat, and splash with 2 Tbsp (30 mL) of the dipping sauce. Remove celery mixture from pan and place on meat.
         
      4. Top bowls with green onion, cilantro, and seaweed. Slice egg in half lengthwise, and divide between bowls. Serve with dipping sauce on the side.

      Yield: 2 main-dish servings.

      Recipe has not been tested by the Georgia Straight.

      You can follow Michelle da Silva on Twitter at twitter.com/michdas.

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