I’m very sorry that it has taken me so long to throw this video together. I had several gigs of footage and photos and no time to splice and dice this week, plus I didn’t want to have it up before my story about the Canadian Culinary Championships was published in the paper (yesterday). Alas, it is done now (albeit in a hurry), a referee/judge’s eye view of the proceedings from the very start to the very end. I hope you enjoy it and the many dozens of photos below. My friend and colleague James Chatto (head judge) has written a thorough synopsis, one which my skills could never match, so I’ve included it in its entirety after the pictures.

Canadian Culinary Challenge 2009 Report

By James Chatto (Gold Medal Plates National Culinary Advisor and Head Judge)

Participating chefs (in alphabetical order):

Chef Nathin Bye from Lazia in Edmonton
Chef Matthew Carmichael from 18 in Ottawa
Chef Mathieu Cloutier from Kitchen Galerie in Montreal
Chef Rob Feenie from Cactus Club Café in Vancouver
Chef Jan Hrabec from Crazyweed Kitchen in Canmore
Chef Ivan Kyutukchiev from Bianca’s in St. John’s
Chef David Lee from Nota Bene in Toronto

The Wine Pairing Challenge

The Canadian Culinary Championships began on Thursday night with a reception at Gotham steak house in Vancouver. Gold Medal Plates CEO, Stephen Leckie, quickly recapped the regional campaign that had brought the champion chefs from seven Canadian cities to Vancouver. James Chatto’s dream team of judges was introduced – the senior judge from each city (Karl Wells from St. John’s, Robert Beauchemin from Montreal, Anne DesBrisay from Ottawa, Sasha Chapman from Toronto, Clayton Folkers from Edmonton, John Gilchrist from Calgary and Sid Cross from Vancouver) plus culinary referee, Andrew Morrison. Each chef then stepped forward and introduced the crowd to his or her sous chefs. And we met some of the students from the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, two of whom would be assisting each chef.

An anonymous bottle of the mystery wine, chosen by GMP’s National Wine Advisor, David Lawrason, was given to each chef and the rules were reiterated. The chefs were given 24 hours to create a dish that would be a perfect match for the wine. They were told to make enough of the dish to feed 250 people and handed a meagre $400 to spend on ingredients. Furthermore, they had to buy all their ingredients at Granville Island Market, the most expensive grocery-shopping precinct in Vancouver. They had to prepare their dish in the friendly confines of the Dirty Apron cooking school and taxi the food to the venue, a hip nightclub on Granville called the Republic.

This was truly a challenge for our intrepid chefs – and, it turned out, for the judges. The wine itself was a fascinating test – Black Hills 2008 Alibi, an Okanagan blend of 80 percent Sauvignon Blanc with 20 percent Semillon; half the Semillon had seen some oak. It was a tight, acidic, Canadian Sauvignon but there were riches under the surface – herbal nuances, a gloss of ripe fruit hovering over the glass, plenty of citrus on the palate and a faint suggestion of spicy vanilla from the oak. Some chefs chose to challenge the wine’s acidity with a dish that had its own strong acidity; others flattered the wine with a more mellow flavour and fattier textures, coaxing the Alibi’s shy fruitiness and oaky spice into the open air.

Culinary Referee Andrew Morrison kept close tabs on the chefs and all of them came in just under budget (one chef spent $399.65). As the crowd gathered at the Republic, it was clear that the game was on. Two hours later, after the dust had settled, we had a leader in Mathieu Cloutier of Kitchen Galerie in Montreal but the other chefs were close on his heels and no one was lagging far behind. Many of the dishes were exceptionally skillful and delicious but not quite as good a match for the difficult wine.

Cloutier and his sous chef prepared a very pretty dish, a layered presentation of poached Dungeness crab, the juicy flesh tossed with mayonnaise, chives, yellow carrot and enhanced by a celeriac remoulade, held between two very crisp wontons for textural interest. One storey below, the judges found a julienne of braised veal tongue, its suave texture contrasted with a coarser moment of chorizo, its smoky edge just a whisper in the general splendour. On the plate, a basil and olive oil emulsion offered additional richness, with russet drops of the oil from the chorizo beading on the surface of the sauce. The topmost garnish reached out to the wine – a tiny jumble of confited lemon and orange zest, yellow beet and paper-thin dimes of pickled red carrot. On its own, the dish was spectacular but it also embraced the wine, the richer elements luring out flavours, though the basil emulsion and the pickled carrot came dangerously close to slapping the Sauvignon around.

Matthew Carmichael of Restaurant E18hteen in Ottawa took a different approach. He spent much of his allowance on gorgeous, creamy, meaty kushi oysters which he began to shuck as the competition began. Playing to the citrus face of the wine, he dressed the oysters plainly with a dot of the juice and flesh of yellow grapefruit and a trace of watercress. His second component was two small postage stamps of lightly seared tuna dressed with a loose salsa of raw corn kernels and cucumber brunoise in coconut milk spiked with cane sugar, rock salt and julienned kaffir lime leaf, topped with a couple of fingerling potato crisps. The tuna was a great match for the wine. But was the grapefruit on the oyster too bitter and pungent for the wine’s more delicate citric character? The judges were divided over that one.

Rob Feenie of Cactus Club Café in Vancouver detected nascent sweetness and creaminess in the wine and determined to bring those qualities out. He made a tartare of raw scallops, chopping up the shellfish and tossing them with lemon zest and juice, a hint of jalapeño, celery and olive oil. This he smothered with a lukewarm moussey sauce of caramelized onion and some grated pecorino cheese. Dotted around the plate were orange-coloured steelhead caviar, espalette pepper and a sharp lemon dressing. Two tiny perfect toasts provided scrunch. It was a rich dish, well seasoned and the salty elements on the plate proved a nice balance to the wine’s acidity.

David Lee of Nota Bene in Toronto presented his dainty dish in a small bowl. He paired a gorgeous sea scallop, lightly torched but still rare at heart, with a generous quantity of poached Dungeness crab. Acidity came from grapefruit, the flesh pulled apart into its tiny, juice-packed cells. A salad of crunchy fennel with coriander and dill added vegetal flavours that worked beautifully with the wine while miniature croutons gave unexpected crunch. The seafood bathed in a cold consommé made of Granville Island sake flavoured by the grapefruit and herbs.

Nathin Bye of Lazia in Edmonton was down at Granville Island Market before anyone else and managed to buy wild red snapper, which he cooked perfectly with a clover honey-infused mustard glaze. The small piece of fish was set atop a slice of fig and anise bread pudding and was topped with an autalfo mango and cippolini onion jam and prosciutto crisp. A dramatic green comma on the plate was a sweetly pungent coulis of basil and garlic. A second sauce used the snapper trimmings, halibut bones, Coronation grapes and half the bottle of mystery white wine. It was a wonderful dish though some judges felt its bouquet of flavours proved too much for such a subtle wine.

Ivan Kyutukchiev from Bianca’s in St. John’s decided to work with wild salmon, grilling a miniature fillet for each guest and setting it over young leeks softened in olive oil and roasted with garlic. He added a confit of shiitake mushrooms in olive oil, garlic and basil, and some big, juicy chunks of grilled zucchini. On top of the fish lay a garnish of fresh pear, pickled daikon and olive oil, and beneath it was a warm cucumber broth, its green cucumber aroma lifting right out of the bowl. The wine match earned much praise from the judges.

Jan Hrabec of Crazyweed Kitchen in Canmore chose a very different path, brining pork tenderloin, stuffing it with a mixture of goat cheese and orange zest and wrapping it in double-smoked bacon. She built a thick sweet sauce out of dates and orange and posed the meat on a bed of vanilla-scented celeriac purée. Did it work with the wine? Surprisingly well – indeed it was the only dish that seemed to seek out the hint of oak in the wine and encourage it to take a bow.

While the judges hugged their opinions and their marks to themselves, the guests at the event cast their own votes for a “people’s choice” winner. By a single vote over Rob Feenie, the popular champion was Mathieu Cloutier.

The Black Box Competition

Many thanks to the staff of the Sheraton Wall Centre, especially manager Daniel Tennant and Executive chef Javiar Alarco (himself a former GMP competitor) for welcoming us to the Grand Ballroom kitchen in the hotel for the Black Box competition. We had three working stations for the chefs, with identical equipment, and a general pantry close by. There was room for the enthusiastic crowd and for the judges table, tucked away beside the dish pit. Each chef was instructed to create two dishes, using all six mystery ingredients from the black box in one or the other dish, making eight plates for the each, for the judges.

As is customary with the CCC, the local judges chose the mystery ingredients. Sid Cross and Andrew Morrison set out to flummox the chefs with their choice of farm-raised arctic char fillets, quail, dragon fruit, fresh fennel, arborio rice and as an exotic, a quantity of a nicely hoppy local IPA beer called Hoppelganger. The chefs were brought down to the kitchen one at a time, each accompanied by a single sous chef. The chef had ten minutes to ponder the ingredients and devise his or her dishes, then 50 minutes to cook. Points would be deducted if an ingredient was not used or if the chef went over time.

Nathin Bye was the first competitor, but he had barely opened his knife kit when he gashed his hand badly. Undeterred, but now wearing a latex glove, he prepared a roulade of arctic char, stuffing the delicate, coral-coloured fillet with beautifully seasoned mousse made from the char. This he served with a salad of crunchy julienned fennel and diced dragon fruit with subtly sweet vinaigrette. Sharing the plate was a seafood risotto made with fish stock and fennel fronds and a hint of lemon.

Chef Bye’s second dish was bulgogi-style quail, marinated in soy, ginger, garlic and demerara sugar from the common pantry. The mahogany-coloured skin was soft but delicious, the flesh tender and moist and strongly flavoured with the marinade. Chef Bye used the beer to make a sauce based also on veal stock and Asian flavours and raided the pantry to make boulangère potatoes, stewed in stock with soft onion and fennel.

Matthew Carmichael was the second chef, taking the station beside Chef Bye. He opted to debone the quail, then threading each filleted bird on a stick of fresh thyme. He lacquered the skin with a mixture of soy, ginger, garlic and the beer reduced to a sticky glaze together with the quail bones then roasted the birds until they were perfectly cooked, their skin crisp. Beneath the quail, he made a risotto using wilted spinach and scattered crunchy fried garlic over the mixture.

Every chef, it turned out, chose to use his or her arborio to make a risotto and it was fascinating to compare the different textures and flavours of each. Interestingly, it became clear that many of the judges had their own opinions about what constituted a perfect risotto texture – some preferring slightly softer rice, others looking for the moment of resistence inside each garin of arborio.

Chef Carmichael’s second dish involved pan-frying the char, skin side down, and not turning the fillet, so that the skin was delightfully crisp and the flesh gradated from cooked-through opacity closest to the skin to a blushing pink rareness on the surface. He diced the dragon fruit – and for once the black dots of the seeds against the grey flesh of the fruit really did look like dice – and built a refreshing salad of raw shaved fennel with a ginger-scented vinaigrette. His sauce was a subtle lemon gastrique montéed with butter.

Jan Hrabec was our third competitor. She poached her char in a lemon-ginger broth giving the fish a gorgeously moist texture and changing the colour of the flesh to a creamy pink. She made a salad of crunchy fennel slaw and soft-diced dragonfruitdressed with olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest. Green spinach leaves lay below the fish and a chiffonade of basil was the garnish.

For her second dish, Chef Hrabec enriched her risotto with soft onions sweetly caramelized in beer. She chose to present each judge with a whole quail, first poaching the birds in stock flavoured with the beer, brown sugar, soy and cinnamon, then frying them in a wok. Juicy and tender, the quail’s own flavour rang true.

David Lee was our fourth contender. He chose to present the char raw as a very coarsely chopped tartare seasoned with coriander and surrounded by crunchy sliced fennel with the dragon fruit added for visual effect and its own vague sweetness. He used his vinaigrette of olive oil and white wine vinegar as a marinade for the tartare, timing it perfectly so that the rosey surface of the fish had just started to cloud, taking the first step on a long journey that might have ended as a ceviche.

Chef Lee’s risotto was the firmest of the morning’s, a perfect texture for me, creamy but with each grain of rice having its own distinct identity. Subtle onion and cream enhanced the risotto, which served as a bed for the portioned and roasted quail. Some judges found the meat a tad too rare; others of us loved it for the same reason. Chef Lee’s sauce was a buttery beer emulsion that allowed the hoppy bitterness of the ale to make its contribution.

Rob Feenie was up next. While his sous chef rapidly deboned the quail, he made a reduction of beer and chicken stock, using a little sugar to quell the beer’s bitterness and butter to enrich it. This ended up as the sauce for the quail which he set atop a delectable risotto made with reduced cream, shallots, thyme and garlic, the rice just a tiny bit softer than Chef Lee’s.

Chef Feenie pan-seared his char, cooking it through but leaving it perfectly moist and enhanced with butter, thyme and lemon juice. He used the root and the fronds of the fennel in his salad, piling them on top of a slice of dragon fruit with a tangy sauce involving vinegar, lemon, olive oil, soy, ginger and beef stock.

Ivan Kyutukchiev was our sixth competitor. He portioned his char into identical pieces and pan-seared the fish, timing it perfectly until each fillet was cooked through, the juices nicely seized. He made his risotto with fish fumet that allowed the flavour of the fish to shine and sauced the plate with a dragon fruit coulis and a delicate lemon beurre blanc. His second dish featured whole quail marinated in soy and pale ale and simply roasted, the flesh wonderfully tender and moist. He served the birds with lightly sautéed spinach and accidentally repeated his two sauces on this dish too. Fortunately, they worked equally well with the quail.

The last competitor was Mathieu Cloutier. While some of the chefs had been visions of intense concentration, he and his sous chef were ostentatiously relaxed, chatting and joking with the crowd, Cloutier whistling as he stirred the risotto. He began by enhancing the pantry veal stock using carrot, tomato and other vegetables, thyme, rosemary, garlic, butter and plenty of the beer. In this he braised the quail legs, using the reduction again as a sauce for the perfectly pan-seared breasts. He served the quail with a risotto flavoured with basil and lemon zest.

For his second dish, he pan-seared the char fillets, cooking them through but leaving them beautifully moist, the skin crisp. Beneath the fish he set a salad of fennel and dragon fruit dressed with zippy, lemony, peppery vinaigrette freshened with a brunoise of tomato and a hint of mint. A chiffonade of spinach finished the dish.

The judges retired to a deliberation room, hoping that no chef had opted to prepare quail and risotto for the grand finale that evening.

The Grand Finale

The third element of the Championships is a Grand Finale party that looks very like the first half of a Gold Medal Plates regional event. The chefs were each at their own station in a great ballroom where they served their signature dish to the hundreds of guests. The mood was merry, the excitement intense and the line-ups long, though not for the judges. We sat at a table while gallant food runners brought us each dish and the wine the chef had chosen to accompany it. We had worked out an order in which the dishes would show to best advantage, starting with the lightest.

The first dish came from Mathieu Cloutier, a reprise of his gold medal-winning dish from the Montreal GMP gala. It starred a tiny, delicate rack of rabbit; each wee bone frenched and cleaned, the tender meat wonderfully moist and flavourful from being slowly confited in duck fat. Beside this was a quenelle of super-rich foie gras parfait and some miniature pink cubes of lightly pickled beet. What looked at first glance like a Brussels sprout turned out to be rabbit rillettes and foie gras wrapped with soft spinach leaves. A dramatic stripe of red beet caramel painted the plate while a single tooney-sized crisp of fried bread added scrunch to the dish.

The accompanying wine was the Huff Estates 2007 South Bay Chardonnay from Prince Edward County in Ontario, its rich, oaky personality a great compliment to the dish.

Michael Carmichael’s dish was the second to be tasted. The first element was a large mussel shell filled with a piece of rich, creamy Qualicum Bay scallop, some sea urchin and salmon roe all bathing in a foamy coconut milk. It was a fabulously marine mouthful, the many sweet sea flavours splashing about on the tongue. The second element was a small slab of black cod lacquered with honey, lemon and ginger juice. The fillet parted into glossy petals at the touch of a fork. Beside it was a comma of carrot and coconut purée. The Closson Chase South Clos 2007 Chardonnay (a most delectable wine) picked up the scallop and coconut flavours beautifully.

Nathin Bye’s dish was next. He had prepared a written description of his intentions at the start of the competition and the complex relationships on the plate were exactly as he had described them. Three elements… The first was a slice of sablefish and fruits de mer roulade using king crab and lobster morsels in a matrix of scallop mousse. The little disc lay in a cream Thai green curry with a dot of mango and rice wine jelly and a quarter-teaspoon of a sweet redcurrant and pepper compote. It was a most invigorating mouthful. The second part was a demitasse of corn and butternut squash mulligatawny, spiked with garam masala spices, the rich broth topped with a creamy cardamom foam. Two shortdough pastry fingers lay across the cup, sandwiched together around a dab of apple and currant jam. Slow-braised Alberta bison shortrib was glazed with “French-Asian fusion” blend of veal/bison demiglace with cream and a different garam masala spice blend. A dab of cauliflower and celeriac purée anchored the meat which wore a toupée of microgreens. Chef Bye’s choice of wine was the excellent 2008 JoieFarm Rose from JoieFram Wines in B.C.’s Okanagan valley. David Lee also chose to reprise the dish he used to win the Toronto GMP event, though he added a number of different elements to the plate. Describing the dish to the judges, he brought over some wild ginger stems he had pickled in vinegar two years earlier and which he used to add flavour to a sour apple compote. A dab of this compote appeared on the long strip of very crispy chicken skin, served cold, that grounded his dish. On top of it was a two-inch piece of chicken breast cartilage, slow-cooked in a pressure cooker over 24 hours with ginger and coriander. Its texture was considerably softened but it still had the curious, alien soft-crunchiness of cartilage. Beside this, Chef Lee offered a couple of bites of confited chicken with creamy cauliflower purée and a silky ribbon of pancetta brought from his restaurant in Toronto, garnished with some colourful miniature flower petals and some marjoram leaves. It was a fascinating dish, beautifully paired with the off-dry 2007 June’s Vineyard Riesling from 13th Street Winery in Niagara, the wine’s honeyed, petrolly bouquet reaching out to the apple and ginger flavours in the dish.

Rob Feenie’s dish was next up. He offered a trio of elements. The first was a rectangular crouton of spiced brioche topped with a little honeycomb apple butter and finished with a piped mousse of foie gras scented with maple and vanilla salt. An extraordinarily fragile shard of caramel lay on the top. The second element was a single raviolo filled with butternut squash and mascarpone and strewn with black truffle. The perfectly tender pasta was sauced with a black truffle beurre blanc. The third component was Canadian prime beef short rib slow-braised for 36 hours and sauced with a seriously reduced Peking duck jus. Vancouver Island chanterelles shared the plate and the general richness was leavened by some pickled celery leaves. Chef Feenie’s chosen wine was Road 13’s “Fifth Element” 2006, a fabulous Bordeaux blend from the Okanagan that thrilled the judges.

Ivan Kyutukchiev’s dish starred pork belly brined for 24 hours and smoked over applewood. Fat and lean kept their distinct integrities and the subtle flavour was enhanced by a soft white bean purée. A spoonful of red pepper marmalade was marvellously supple, sleek and tasty, the natural sweetness of the peppers bringing out similar qualities in the pork. Alonside the meat Chef Kyutukchiev placed a red bell-pepper scented marshmallow that slowly melted, releasing its sweet fragrance into the sauce of smoked pork juices. The accompanying wine was Hillebrand Estates Trius red 2006, a traditional Bordeaux blend from Niagara.

Jan Hrabec’s dish was the last one the judges tasted. She presented a sphere of Thai-spiced minced chicken on a sweet, richly aromatic sauce of lime, cilantro and coconut with a good kick of chili heat. A hollow hen’s egg shell held a rich red coconut curry flan to be eaten with a tiny spoon, the mouthfilling flavours delighting the judges. Sesame crusted sticky rice held the egg shell in place and was quickly eaten together with the last element on the plate, a hot-and-sour chicken salad, the tangy meat sweetened by toasted coconut flakes. Row 13 2008 Riesling from the Okanagan was the chosen wine.

While the live auction began, the judges retired to their deliberation room to collate all the numbers from the three competitions. The final marks for the second, third and fourth-placed competitors were incredibly close – all within a single percentage point. David Lee came second, Matthew Carmichael third and Rob Feenie a heartbreakingly close-run fourth. The winner, by a margin of three percentage points was Mathieu Cloutier from Kitchen Galerie in Montreal. He had aced the Wine Pairing Challenge, had barely maintained a narrowing lead during the black box and won the Grand Finale with a clean decision. The judges returned to the party and the winners were announced. Chef Cloutier’s name was greeted with a great roar of approval from the crowd who had adored his rabbit rack as much as the judges did. A rousing rendition of Oh Canada followed as the victorious chefs waved from the podium in a truly Olympian moment.