I went to visit Darby’s since it was one of the deals ($18) that stood out in the Vancouver Dine Out listing. Darby’s has always been the neighbourhood pub to go to to watch hockey games but I never heard anything about the food here. Darby’s has been undergoing major changes to their food menu, spear headed by Chef Alex Rotherham.
I met Chef Alex Rotherham and tried his Cottage Salad and Hangover Burger (both on the Dine Out menu!) and was thoroughly impressed by how all the sauces – vinaigrette, salsa, hot sauce – were made in house and how creative and passionate Chef Alex is about food!
The burgers have rectangular 100% beef chuck patties made in-house. Kudos to Chef Alex for coming up with the shape, both to fit in a ciabatta bun meant for sandwiches and to subtly show customers that the patty aren’t mass-produced. Stay tuned for how to make the Darby’s hangover burger in another post.
It was great to hear from Chef Alex about his experiences at Macaroni Grill, opening his own restaurant, and frequent travels to London. Alex is really bright and creative and is using his skills to enhance restaurant menus by keeping things simple and fresh. His word of advice for new home chefs is to keep it simple. Use no more than 4 or 5 ingredients and don’t try making complicated things like soufflés until you’re ready.
I know it’s a little odd to be coming to the bar and ordering the Cottage Salad, but you must try this one – broccoli, chickpeas, cottage cheese, cranberries, and salsa prove to be a healthy and tasty combination. It might balance out that beer you’re drinking. Don’t take my word for it – try it as part of Dine Out…or try making it at home first because we got the recipe for you below! Combining the salad is the easy part – making the individual ingredients might take some time. Chef Alex makes the cottage cheese, salsa and herb vinaigrette from scratch and has been kind enough to show us how. In case it’s too time consuming, you can always buy these things at the grocery store. Just keep in mind how much sodium and preservatives are in the store-bought version versus making it at home with fresh ingredients!
Here’s a video of Chef Alex making the Cottage Salad:
Summary
Preparation Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 5 mins (blanching)
The times are assuming that the chick peas are cooked, and salsa, cottage cheese and herb vinaigrette are already made. See the sub-recipes for how long those take.
Servings: 1 large salad entree
Meal type: Side or Entree
Recipe Rating: 
Ingredients for Salad
- 2 cups (~200g) broccoli
- 1/4 cup cooked chickpeas
- 1 Tbsp of sun dried cranberries
Chef’s tip: Sun dried and dried/dehydrated cranberries are not the same – get sun dried if you can. You can blanch cranberries before serving too. - 1/2 cup cottage cheese*
- 1 Tbsp of herb vinaigrette*
- 1/2 cup salsa*
Instructions for Salad
1. Bring a pot of water to boil.
2. Put broccoli florets into water for 15 seconds.
3. Remove and soak in cold water immediately.
This is how to blanch the broccoli so that it’s cooked but still crunchy.
4. Put all ingredients in a salad bowl and mix evenly. Try not to overcoat the salad with the dressing.
Results
We have yet to make this recipe at home and regret that we don’t have pictures of each of the ingredients in the salad but wanted to share the recipe with you for the start of Dine Out. We did get to try the cottage salad at Darby’s after Chef Alex demonstrated it and it was really good. The broccoli, chick peas, salsa, cottage cheese, and vinaigrette give the salad a lot of different textures and flavours that all work together. We could see this becoming part of our weekly meals!
Below are recipes for each of the home made ingredients to the salad provided by Chef Alex Rotherham.
Home made Cottage Cheese
I didn’t realize how simple it is to make cottage cheese at home. Chef Alex informed me how much preservatives and salt is added to the cottage cheese you buy in the grocery store. He wanted to experiment with making cheese last year and created this salad to go with the cheese – these instructions look so easy! Make sure you get skim milk, not whole milk – whole milk has chemicals that specifically don’t allow it to separate. I haven’t tried this yet, but will soon.
This cheese will last 2 weeks if kept refrigerated.
Ingredients for Cottage Cheese
- 4L of skimmed milk
Chef’s tip: ONLY use skim milk - 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1/2 cup vinegar
- 1 tsp of sea salt
Instructions for Cottage Cheese
1. Set up a mixing bowl over a pot of boiling water.
2. Put salt and milk into the mixing bowl.
3. Heat milk to 80°C. The milk must reach this temperature but be careful not to go any hotter than that because it will scorch.
4. When it reaches that temperature, slowly add lemon juice and vinegar.
5. Gently stir with a rubber spatula.
6. It will take a few seconds for the milk to separate and cheese to form a large mass, stop stirring and remove from heat.
Note: the liquid will all turn yellow. This is normal.
7. Allow curds to settle to the bottom of the pan (about 5 minutes)
8. Strain off the liquid. This can be used for cream soups and cream sauces.
9. Place curds into a fine strainer or several layers of cheese cloth.
10. Cool the cheese in the refrigerator for 25-30 minutes.
11. Once fully formed, turn out onto cutting board and cut into small cubes at 1oz per serving.
Fresh Herb Vinaigrette
Home-made vinaigrettes don’t last very long, but they are surely more flavourful, fresh and don’t have all the salt and preservatives like the ones that are store bought. If fresh herbs are in season, it is definitely cheaper to make this at home, not to mention more rewarding.
This makes a 500mL (16oz) bottle of dressing.
Ingredients for Vinaigrette
- 2 cups of canola oil
- 1 cup (40g) of basil
- 1/2 cup (20g) of arugula
- 1 1/2 cup (60g) of parsley
- 2 tsp of honey
- 1/6 tsp of cayenne pepper
- 1/4 tsp of sea salt
- 1/2 cup of vinegar
Instructions for Vinaigrette
1. Combine all ingredients, except for vinegar, in a blender.
2. Blend and slowly pour vinegar while blending.
3. Transfer into bottle and store in the fridge.
Fresh Salsa
This recipe from Darby’s also uses a home-made hot sauce recipe, which isn’t provided. I find that store bought salsa is either never hot enough or too hot for my taste so I do enjoy making my own salsa. You can also make it as chunky as you’d like.
This recipe will yield about 2.5 cups of salsa.
Ingredients for Salsa
- 1 can (2 cups, 14.5oz) Diced tomatoes
- 1 medium onion (1 cup) diced red onions
- 6 tbsp chopped parsley
- 2 tsp hot sauce
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions for Salsa
1. Combine all ingredients into a stainless steel mixing bowl.
2. Mix well and transfer into a container to refrigerate.
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Tags: Alex Rotherham, cheese, chickpeas, Cottage cheese, Darby's, make your own, Pub, salad, salsa, vinaigrette
