Michelin Star Chef from Italy comes to Toronto for Cent Italia

CENTItalia

Event:  CENTItalia Dinner

Location:  Nella Cucina on Bathurst

Chef:  Cristina Bowerman

Hosted by:  Italian Chamber of Commerce & Centennial College

Date:  November 16, 2017

#CENTItalia

My friend Natalie invited me to join her for what she called "some Italian event in the Annex".  All she told was that it was a dinner and since I had a long and busy day and knew I wasn't going to want to cook when I went home and love Italian food I said I would join her.  We met at a coffee shop in the Annex and the she told me it was at Nella Cucina and I wondered if it was a hands on thing because that space was usually used for interactive cooking demos but she said no it was sit down dinner.  And indeed it was a sit down dinner but it was with an Italian Michelin Star Chef who just that day announced that she received her 2nd Michelin Star.  Her name is Cristina Bowerman and she is the only female Michelin star chef in Italy.  Glass Hosteria is located in Rome, Italy where food is probably the number one reason for tourist to visit there besides the art and architecture. You know that most people dream of eating Italian food in Italy including me but we were lucky to have her cooking for us at Nella Cucina in Toronto for one of CentItlaia's various events brought to Toronto by the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Centennial College.  This was the only event I was able to attend out of a few during the week but probably the one that I would have wanted to attend the most anyway.  So you never know how events are going to be but I am glad I was able to attend this one because the food was amazing and so many different flavour combinations made it really interesting.  Check out the dishes we had:

 Jerusalem Artichokes and potato cream, creamed bacala and bread chips

The best part of this was the Artichoke cream.

Risotto with butter, anchovies, candied ginger, lemon and caper powder and demi glace.

This risotto was made with Italian Canaroli rice which is slightly larger than Arborio and the perfect rice for Risotto but a lot harder to find in Toronto.  The taste of this risotto was the best I have ever had and a surprising mix of flavours.  We all inhaled this little bowl of rice. 

Scallops, dashi pistachio, mushroom and kumquat and bonito flakes.

This dish has the most perfectly cooked scallops which were cross hatched to absorb the butter and the combination of the other ingredients on the plate were a mix of Italian with Asian touches.  

Ricotta cheese soup, candied fruit and zeppole.

We couldn't get enough of this dessert.  They made a lot of the Zeppole's which are light as air Italian donuts and because there were so many we ended up eating 3 each because they are so light you just want to keep eating them.

 Petits four chocolates

And we wrapped up our delicious Michelin Star meal with some fine chocolates but honestly we just wanted to eat more zeppoles.  

I hope that one day I can visit Italy and have Cristina's food in her element.

Rene Redzepi's Ants on a Shrimp

Denmarks' Rene Redzepi is considered to be one of the most influential Michelin Star Chef's in the world.  His Denmark restaurant NOMA was chosen as one of the 50 best Restaurants in the WORLD.  If you aren't a jet setting rich gourmand then you might not know who he is but a lot of people around the world do and they flock to eat things like his "Ants on a Shrimp". Ut is also the name of a new Documentary that is being screened at this year's Hot Docs Film Festival.  

Eatable Films is bringing this intense look into the inner workings of creating a NOMA restaurant in Japan after closing down his Denmark restaurant temporarily.  This film isn't for the Kraft dinner or takeout pizza  crowd.  It's for people who take their food seriously and want to know where it comes from and who's making it.  

Redzepi gained his reputation from foraging for his ingredients near his restaurant in Denmark and then transforming them using modern techniques while still keeping it simple and clean.  The film focuses on Redzepi and his team of Chef's who look to Japan's native foraged ingredients to create a new menu that has Japanese roots while using his technical spin. You can see the toll it takes on the lives of Redzepi's team as they put their whole life into the new Noma restaurant  It's focus is laser sharp.  Look at this photo of Ants on a Shrimp.  Placed there one by one and making sure that the shrimp are alive when presented to guests.  Are you a food risk taker or a food conservative?  

Redzepi is the ultimate risk taker who is always looking for the unknown to become known.  

ANTS ON A SHRIMP

Eatable Films dinner to celebrate Canadian premiere of Ants on a Shrimp.

Featuring ‘The Canadian Landscape in five courses’by Chef Justin Cournoyer of Actinolite.

On May 1, 2016, in celebration of Hot Docs’ Canadian premiere of Ants on a Shrimp, the hottest food documentary of 2016, Eatable Films, Toronto’s first food film festival, curates an exclusive dinner featuring one of Canada’s most celebrated restaurants, Actinolite. Inspired by the seasonality of the Canadian landscape, Chef Justin Cournoyer will present the essence of our Canadian spring. 

THE IMMERSIVE DINING EXPERIENCE: Enter the world of culinary creation inspired by the Canadian landscape. In celebration of the film Ants on a Shrimp, Chef Justin Cournoyer of Actinolite will tell the story of seasonality and the Canadian landscape. This unique 5 course dinner will include; wild foraged ingredients, locally grown vegetables, meats, fish and grains. The dinner is a combination of highs and lows, expected and unexpected, familiar and unfamiliar. The exclusive experience, limited to 160 guests, includes film tickets and dinner with wine/alcohol pairings, served steps from the Isabel Bader Theatre screening, in the hundred-year old, neo-gothic Burwash Hall. The film’s director, Maurice Dekkers, will be in attendance. Eatable Films invites you to Eat. Drink. Think.

DETAILS:

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Screening at 6:45pm Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street W., Toronto

Dinner at 8:45pm at Burwash Hall, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 73 Queens Park Crescent E., Toronto

Featuring Chef Justin Cournoyer, Actinolite

With special guests, including Maurice Dekkers, Ants on a Shrimp

Tickets $190pp, including screening, dinner and wine/alcohol pairings

Tickets now available at http://www.hotdocs.ca/p/ants-on-a-shrimp

THE CHEF:

Chef Justin Cournoyer is an advocate for the culture of food - the inherent wisdom of our ancestors in following the land to cook with what you have around you at the moment, within our Canadian Seasons. One of the most important connections is to the source of the food itself. Actinolite Restaurant works directly with farmers, fisheries, mills and vintners to pull together the best they have to offer and craft the journey of the meal. When you turn yourself over to the journey, the sum is so much more than the parts. Cournoyer’s meals are beautifully choreographed to be memorable and to make you want to come back and be taken by the hand once more. 

THE FILM: ANTS ON A SHRIMP | 88 MINUTES | 2016 | NETHERLANDS 

In January 2015, the food world holds its breath while renowned chef Rene Redzepi temporarily closes Noma, considered the world’s best restaurant, and transports his entire team from Copenhagen to Tokyo for a five-week pop-up. Known for translating the essence of Denmark's unique flavours into one-of-a-kind dishes, now neither Redzepi nor his staff know anything of the local food resources. With Redzepi’s international reputation hanging in the balance, filmmaker Maurice Dekkers delivers a once-in-a-lifetime behind-the-scenes peek inside the intense pressure, determined artistry and impossible challenge of life inside a kitchen of unparalleled ambition.

ABOUT HOT DOCS: Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market, will present its 23rd annual edition from April 28–May 8, 2016. An outstanding selection of 232 documentaries from Canada and around the world will be presented to Toronto audiences and international delegates. Hot Docs will also mount a full roster of conference sessions and market events and services for documentary practitioners, including the renowned Hot Docs Forum, Hot Docs Deal Maker and The Doc Shop. In partnership with Blue Ice Group, Hot Docs operates the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, a century-old landmark located in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood.

ABOUT EATABLE: An innovative and immersive experience, Eatable Films is the first film food festival in Toronto. Its mandate is to provide audiences with a new way to get excited about food. Eatable satiates the hungry viewer and inspires the food-obsessed mind.

Website and Social Media:

Hot Docs

www.hotdocs.ca

Eatable Films

www.eatablefilms.com

Actinolite Restaurant

www.actinoliterestaurant.com

*photos provided by Eatable Films

Iron Chef meets Michelin Star Chef

Last night in Toronto Iron Chef, Food Network personality and Montreal restauranteur Chef Chuck Hughes,  hosted a sit down interview with 3 Star Michelin Star French Chef Alain Ducasse at George Brown College in Downtown Toronto.

These two men couldn't be more different.  Chuck Hughes is a fun loving and friendly, laid back kind of guy who loves seafood, tattoos and the Montreal Canadians.  Chef Alain Ducasse likes "drinking water, eating small amounts of food and would be an architect or world traveller"  if he wasn't a chef.  He said he feels like he is doing all three with the design of his newest restaurant in England.

Chuck Hughes likes to have fun and is constantly cracking jokes and making silly mug faces for all the selfies people line up to take with him.

The polar opposite of Chef Ducasse who doesn't seem to get Chuck's jokes and doesn't seem very fond of the selfie.

 Most people in the audience who were comprised of George Brown Culinary students, media people and food industry types.  They laughed at Chuck's jokes and listened intently while Chef Ducasse answered Chuck's questions in French and then translated to English by an interpreter.



While they look different, eat different and have a different sense of humour, the one thing they have in common is the love of food and trying to cook local food as much as possible.

Chef Ducasse does not serve any meat in his restaurants, I don't think Chef Hughes will ever do that, but they both believe in serving sustainable fish.  Chuck loves all things seafood and won his Iron Chef title cooking up some Lobster Poutine.   When Chef Ducasse was asked what his last meal would be he responded by saying "a piece of Red Mullet fish cooked with little fat or salt" ' I would need a fisherman and not a chef".

The other culinary connection both chefs have in common are vegetables.  They both believe in cooking the best local, organic, sustainable vegetables simply.  While Chef Ducasse adds with little fat, sugar or salt.  Chef Hughes is all about flavour so I don't think he is there yet.

Chef Ducasse coined the term "GLOCAL"  Global and local food.  That is what he is trying to do in the restaurants he has in 9 different cities.  He works with the area that the restaurant is located to cater to a local food scene instead of trying to convert the locals to imported products.

When asked if Chef Ducasse would open a restaurant in Canada he replied "too much competition".

He also spoke about restaurants stating, "The restaurant is not an anonymous place. It is what it is http://www.chuckhughes.ca/because of the people that work there."

When asked about the future of food and restaurants he said "Nature will provide you with the ingredients and you need to use your expertise to prepare them simply".

That's a philosophy that will change the future of sustainability of food in the world.

After the sit down chat everyone moved into the atrium area where there was wine and cheese set up for attendees.  But this was no little cheese board set up.  It was the most elaborate cheese table I have ever seen in my life.

 If you were lactose intolerant this wasn't the place for you, but if you are like me and live for cheese then it was heaven on 2 rectangle catering tables.  I don't know where the cheese came from but it was hundreds of dollars worth of high quality cheese.  I piled my small plate high with cheese and grabbed a couple of slices of the delicious bread supplied by fellow French Chef bakery Petite Thuet.   A Whole table of assorted loaves of bread.  Probably the thing I eat the most is bread and cheese.  That stems from my mother's French heritage where it was an everyday food to have bread and cheese.  That cheese spread was my dinner.   My friend and I were so focused on trying all the amazing cheeses that by the time we got into the book signing lineup we were at the back of the line.  It ended up being not such a bad thing because we got photos of Chef Hughes, Chef Ducasse and George Brown College's own Chef Higgins after most of the people had already left.

I picked up a copy of Ducasse's book NATURE that I will peruse later today.

While I believe Chef Ducasse has the right idea about sustainability and eating less and eating less fat, sugar and salt, I think it's a hard sell for a lot of people.  For me the fat and sugar are the toughest ones.  I have already been reducing my salt intake for a while.  I am not ready to give up meat yet either but I know that it's not a sustainable product but I am enjoying it while I can because I know things will change in the future.