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.
Joshna Maharaj is a chef and writer and who is passionately committed to good food and ideas of sustainability. A dedicated food activist, she works to promote the awareness of the power of food to nurture, build and strengthen communities. Joshna is a regular guest chef on CBC’s 
Brian Morin grew up in Toronto, where he studied at George Brown College, and then moved on to working in small restaurants like Napoleon and Truffles. In the 1980s, he moved on to work in hotel kitchens such as The Four Seasons, Sutton Place, and the Intercontinental. He then became the executive chef of Prime restaurants, and in 2003 opened his own restaurant, 
Tawfik Shehata was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Scarborough. He did his apprenticeship at 
I’m a little late to the game with spinach – it probably should have made my list earlier in the year, seeing as it’s considered a spring vegetable. But it’s definitely still going strong at the markets, so better late than never.
Poor old much maligned corn. It gets a bit of a bad rap these days, seeing as how it ends up in so many processed foods, and how it’s been genetically modified up the yin yang. And then there’s the whole ethanol issue. It’s too bad, because there’s nothing that says summer more than ears of sweet corn with the silks still wet, shucked, kissed with some boiling water and then slathered in butter. Made better only by the accompaniment of a lobster or two… but I digress.