Sheryl Kirby

Gathering to Taste the Pacific Rim

Chef Chris Mills stands in front of the assembled crowd, looking only slightly nervous. We’re here to taste the final run-through of his Gatherings From the Pacific Rim menu, the multi-course dinner he will be presenting at the James Beard House in New York on November 20th.

The James Beard House is the home base of the James Beard Foundation, which was founded to further the work of the late chef and food writer, and to promote culinary heritage and knowledge. The Foundation works to promote culinary education, emerging chefs and honour the best in the food industry. An invitation to cook at the James Beard House is the equivalent of a culinary Oscar, and dinners are capped at 74 guests to ensure the best service.

Mills is no stranger to the James Beard House; he presented a dinner there back in 2006. His other turns in the spotlight include an appearance on the original Japanese version of Iron Chef, a fifth place spot in the 2006 Bocuse d’Or, and an array of awards including the Canadian Federation of Chefs and Cooks, the International Wine & Food Society’s Apprentice of the Year and the Pierre Dubrulle Rising Star award.

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Stirring the Pot with Chef Martin Kouprie

Ask chef Martin Kouprie the secret of his culinary success and he’ll tell you that it’s a love of fresh food. This passion for freshness and an understanding of the science of cooking allow him to create menus and recipes that celebrate the magnificence of each season’s harvest. Although local ingredients hold centre stage in Kouprie’s cooking, he also views his pantry through the lens of the latest food trends. As a result, Kouprie’s fans come to Pangaea (1221 Bay Street), the restaurant he co-owns with business partner Peter Geary, to enjoy his ingredient-driven cooking which is simultaneously regional, modern and sophisticated.

Kouprie and his staff participate in numerous charitable events each year including large fundraisers such as Toronto Taste and Empty Bowls as well as smaller grass roots events. He has also been an active participant in programs such as Oceanwise, an initiative spear headed by the Vancouver Aquarium, which works with fish and seafood suppliers to ensure that chefs can access products that not only taste delicious but have a negligible impact on ocean ecosystems.

In his personal life Martin Kouprie is an accomplished carpenter and a speciality scuba diver. He is the father of a son, Oliver, and is married to cookbook author and food concept architect Dana McCauley. His first book, Pangaea. Why it Tastes So Good will be published this November.

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The End of the Dude

It was a regular Sunday. I was in the kitchen making lasagna. Greg took the dogs out for a walk around 4pm. Bowie got up, stood to have his haltie put on, and walked out the door, just like he has a thousand times before; nothing out of the ordinary.

At 4:15, Greg was back. “Something’s wrong with Bowie.” He explained that while walking along the hallway on the 1st floor to go to the lobby, Bowie’s bladder had let go, something that had never happened since he was a puppy, except for the one time when we had just brought him home from having knee surgery and he was stoned on painkillers. Greg got the dogs outside and Bowie wouldn’t move, just stood there looking freaked out.

So Greg brought the dogs back upstairs. He went back out with Tula, and Bowie went to lie down in the dining room in one of his usual spots. He refused treats which is really odd, but at that point, we just thought he had a stomach-ache. I looked up his symptoms online and in a couple of books we have, but couldn’t find anything that seemed to match. Greg returned and we brushed it off as him having eaten something weird. Tula once didn’t eat for two and a half days until she barfed up a big chunk of pineapple. It was one of those situations where if it was still bad in the morning, we’d call the vet.

At 5pm, I filled the dogs’ food bowls. Tula came running but Bowie didn’t and when I took the bowl of food to him, he refused it. He was still alert and responsive, though, and would shake a paw and respond to an ear scratch.

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Market Mondays – Pumpkin/Squash

It’s the week before Halloween, which means that many people will undoubtedly be carving up that Halloween Jack o’ lantern. But of course, in the food world, we’ve been eating pumpkins, and other types of hard winter squash, for weeks now. Indeed, if I see one more recipe for pumpkin cheese cake, I might… well, I’ve already screamed. That might just be because I’m more of a fan of pumpkin pie than cheesecake, but it seems to be ubiquitous this year.

In any case, pumpkins; members of the squash family. Related to softer summer squashes (zucchini), as well as gourds (the smaller inedible varieties of squash) and distantly related to melons. Squashes are native to North America, most likely Mexico, where they are traditionally grown alongside corn and beans in a symbiotic system known as The Three Sisters. Pumpkins and squash were introduced to Europeans by Christopher Columbus, and their cultivation was mostly due to Spanish and Portuguese explorers.

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Life Beyond the Kitchen – Chefs Build Their Brands with Chef Network Inc.

The food scene in Toronto is abuzz this week with distress over UK chef Marco Pierre White’s decision to become the face of Knorr bouillon cubes. Disregarding the fact that White has been the face of Knorr in the UK for a few years, food writers and chefs seem genuinely distressed that White has “sold out” for the corporate big bucks.

Known as one of the best chefs in the world, White’s decision to become the face of Knorr (and his insistence that all of his restaurants use the product in place of real stock) is confusing, amusing, and to his fans, especially other chefs, understandably upsetting.

The world may never know White’s real reasons for taking the endorsement, but in an era when even successful chefs don’t make a lot of money from cooking, branding yourself has taken on a much greater importance, especially for chefs coming to a point in their careers when it’s no longer enjoyable to work the line every night.

Chefs everywhere are in big demand – for cookbooks, personal appearances, television shows, and yes, endorsement deals. But it’s not as easy as one might think to hook up with the big players, and it’s not always a good idea for chefs to try and broker deals on their own.

That’s where Carmen Correia and Chef Network Inc. (CNI) come into play.

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Market Mondays – Brussels Sprouts

The poor, maligned, misunderstood Brussels sprout. Was there ever a vegetable so loathed?

It’s too bad really, because with astronomical amounts of vitamin K and vitamin C (273% and 161% respectively of the daily recommended intake) they’re a nutritional powerhouse. And that’s not counting the high levels of folate, Vitamin A, manganese and fibre. They count as those darky leafy greens that we’re all supposed to be eating more of, since they’re full of sulforaphane, a nutrient believed to have anti-cancer properties.

Brussels sprouts really did originate in Belgium, although a forerunner of the plant was known in Roman times. They made it to North America around 1800 when French settlers brought them to New Orleans.

When confronted with unharvested sprouts, most people don’t recognize them, assuming these “little cabbages” grow in the ground individually, when in fact they grow along a long thick stem with large cabbage-like leaves at the top. While they taste similar to cabbage, sprouts are, in fact, milder. They get their reputation of a bitter, sulphurous taste mostly from being overcooked. Steaming or boiling for 6-7 minutes is usually enough, and the standard of cooking them to mush has undoubtedly ruined an otherwise fabulous vegetable for a lot of people.

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Suck It Up Foodies, Wal-Mart Is In the House

Walmart announced last week that they were implementing new initiatives that would double the sale of fresh produce from local farms by 2015. For their purposes, Walmart defines “local” as being within the same state. There are also initiatives with regards to sustainability and supporting small farmers in India, China and Japan.

Full press release here.

You might think that this is a good thing. That Walmart is dedicated to being a positive influence on people’s eating habits and in supporting local farmers. Yet many people are eyeing it as a PR ploy, suggesting that Walmart has no intention of living up to its stated commitment, or that this policy may not actually be beneficial to local farmers, as Walmart has enough buying power to set the prices that they pay to producers, not the other way around.

Walmart has made huge efforts in the past few years to get on board the ethical food train. They are the largest retailer of organic produce in the US. In 2007, they pushed shrimp producers to become certified with the Marine Stewardship Council to farm shrimp sustainably. They created a sustainability index that will apply to every manufacturer of goods sold in Walmart stores, which will force manufacturers to be more eco-friendly in every step of the process, including final disposal of goods and packaging.

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From Away

You’ve gotta give Marco Pierre White credit – his whole career has been about stirring things up and being in the spotlight, even if it hasn’t been all positive. He was in town last month to promote Knorr stock cubes, a product that he’s shilled in the UK for a few years. When challenged on their use, he gets defensive, insisting that he uses the product in all of his restaurants. Okay, whatever.

The fuss this time around comes from a piece in The Atlantic that basically skewers a couple of Toronto food writers for gushing about White and his stock cubes when he was in town, making the writers (newspaper writers, mostly) out to be bumbling hicks. My opinion of newspaper food columns is not what I’m on about today, though. In defense of the individuals – it *was* Marco Pierre White. And whether you like stock cubes or not, there’s no arguing that he’s the original rock star chef. It would be like a bunch of music writers being invited to a private jam session with the Rolling Stones. Even if you hated their last album, you’re not going to pass up the experience to meet them. You might have less respect for them because of that last album, but you overlook it compared to their lifelong body of work.

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Stirring the Pot with Chef Adam Baxter

Adam Baxter was born in Montreal but grew up in Burlington, Ontario. Throughout high school and university he cooked to make ends meet with a career in the hospitality industry far from his mind. Upon graduation from university he couldn’t really land a satisfying job so he returned to the kitchen and has not been away from the stove since. He moved to Toronto in 2007 and has been the executive chef at Fire On the East Side (6 Gloucester Street) since 2009 where his love of southern-inspired Canadian and French comfort food plays out on his menu, focusing on seasonal, sustainable ingredients.

What inspired you to become a chef?

Growing up, our family dinners centred upon simple, straightforward food and working in restaurants allowed me to discover new ingredients, tastes, and flavours. I’m not going to lie, the pretty waitresses and free beer after work didn’t hurt.

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Market Mondays – Cranberries

I think cranberry sauce is one of my favourite things about Thanksgiving dinner. Bright red and sweet, it’s like a little treat with all that meat and veg.

Cranberries are native to North America and are related to the blueberry. Used by First Nations people as food, medicine and dye, they were likely introduced to settlers in New England to become part of the first Thanksgiving feast. While cranberries grow wild, the ones we get have been cultivated for easy harvesting. Grown either in wetlands or areas with a shallow water table, the area is flooded when the cranberries are ripe and the berries are removed by machine. Since the berries float, this creates the picturesque cranberry bog we see in photos or on television ads.

This wet method of harvesting is usually done for berries destined to be processed into juice or jelly. Some berries are still dry-harvested (picked by hand or with gentle machinery that doesn’t harm the vines), and these are more likely to be the ones sold to consumers whole.

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