Canadian Culinary Gold Championships pt1 - Gold Medal Plates Finale

Canadian Culinary Gold Championships - Gold Medal Plates Finale pt1

Top chefs from seven Canadian Cities were selected to compete for the honour of being the Gold Medal Plate champion in 2009. The winning chef from each city now convene to Vancouver, to compete at the Gold Medal Finale. The winner will be crowned the 2009 Canadian Culinary Gold Championship and the top chef in Canada.


The Finalist:


Vancouver: Rob Fennie, Cactus Club
The local boy is clearly the odds-on favourite this year. Not only does he have the home-stove advantage, but Chef Feenie absolutely revels in these sorts of competitions. (See Iron Chef America season 1: Battle Crab). He won the regional competition in Vancouver in October with 24-hour sous-vide-cooked Virginia Jacobs duck meat, a sausage of Polderside Farms chicken, and foie gras garnished with pureed figs and a slice of frozen truffle. The battle-hardened chef will be a tough competitor to beat.

Toronto: David Lee, Nota Bene
 The unpredictable, iconoclastic and immensely talented Chef Lee may be Chef Feenie's biggest threat. His winning dish in Toronto may have been the most surprising dish served at a Canadian competition this year: crisp chicken skin and chicken cartilage. It sounds bizarre, but it's pure critic bait. A crisp cracker of chicken skin was topped with a plum and hoisin sauce and a sour apple compote. The chicken breast cartilage sitting on top was rendered tender by 24 hours in a pressure cooker. This is the kind of deceptively simple cooking that judges respond to with high marks.
Calgary: Jan Hrabec, Crazyweed Kitchen
To win the Calgary competition, the only woman in the final this year braised a Noble Farm duck leg in an orange and ancho curry and served it with Indian-spiced sweet potatoes, braised chard, crispy shallots and a glazed poppadom (a spicy Indian cracker). Her globetrotting style of cooking – her menu at Crazyweed runs the gamut from pizza to kimchi – may prove too distracting for the judges, but then again her soulful, comforting cooking could also be an advantage against some of the more technical dishes.

Montreal: Matthieu Cloutier, Kitchen Galerie

The duo prepared a rack of Stanstead rabbit cooked confit-style and served it with a foie gras parfait, pink beets, potato chips and a trompe l'oeil “brussels sprout” that was actually a ball of spinach leaves stuffed with ground rabbit and foie gras. Confit as a technique and foie gras as an ingredient tend to do well at competitions.

Edmonton: Nathin Bye, Lazia Restaurant
Chef Bye won the regional competition with a dish of extreme complexity. His trio of bison (tenderloin, “maki roll” and shortrib) included no less than three types of curry (rendang, Thai red and Indian garam masala), numerous garnishes (pineapple-flavoured panko crumbs, cucumber “coulis” and huckleberry salsa, to name a few) and a written manifesto of his culinary principles. In a national competition, so much happening on the plate leaves too much room for error. Unless he can pare things way back, this kind of fussy, overwrought cooking may not have much of a chance in Vancouver.
Ottawa: Matthew Carmichael, Restaurant E18hteen and Social
 Chef Carmichael zigged when others zagged, with a seafood-based trio when his capital-city competitors were more focused on meat, particularly pork. His winning dish included a seared rectangle of sea bass, octopus on a slice of chorizo sausage and a rock shrimp shumai dumpling topped with salmon roe, all sitting on a puree of Romanesco cauliflower and golden turnips and a curry sauce. He could be the dark horse this weekend.
St. John's: Ivan Kyutukchiev, Bianca's
Trained in Bulgaria, Chef Kyutukchiev brings a straightforward, classical approach. His winning dish in St. John's consisted simply of a savoury coffee sponge cake, beet parfait and some Labrador caribou served with a port and blueberry reduction – a dish similar to one he serves on his restaurant menu. This could be too traditional for Vancouver's sophisticated palates, so he will have to push the boundaries – without falling over the edge.



While Chef Feenie and Chef Lee are the two bigger names in this competition in terms of experience and recognition, expect Chef Cloutier, Chef Carmichael and Chef Hrabec to provide ample competition for the National title. This gruelling competition will come down to how well each chef score in all 3 events. Excelling in one event will not win you the title. As in previous years the winners are often decided by and seperated by less than a couple of point. It will be a fierce battle to the end.

The competition is broken into three challenges (each worth 1/3 of the total score):

Mystery Wine Pairing - Friday, November 27 (6:00 pm) at The Republic Nightclub

Chefs are given a mystery bottle of wine and must create a dish with local ingredients from Vancouver that best matches the wine in a set amount of time and with a set budget.

A bottle of mystery wine was given to the chef the night before the event. They were given an opportunity to taste the wine and plan on what they were to cook th next day. The wine was later revealed as Black Hill's Alibi from Oliver, BC. Alibi is a great summer wine, with a Sauvignon/Semillion blends. It is around the $20-30 price range. It is a clean crisp, citrus wine.
http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=703713
Each Chef was given $400 dollars and told to prepare for 250 people. Which works out to $1.60 per person. And they were told to shop in Granville Island for all their needs. The could negotiate, deal, barter, beg and steal what they needed but could not go over the budget. Ok maybe not steal, cause that would be cheating. But certainly with a limited budget and only allowing to shop at the cities most expensive market certainly makes the challenge harder. The competition basically begins at the market. As the earliest arriving chef would have the best chance of procurring the freshesh produce and finest ingredient they needed.

The Black Box - Saturday, November 28 (9:30 am - 1:00 pm) at Sheraton Wall Centre

Chefs are given one hour to plan and create two dishes with no prior knowledge of the ingredients.

The chef's had to used ALL ingredients in the 'black box'. The 'Black Box' contained large quail, artic char, aborio rice, india pale ale, fennel and dragon fruit. Chefs going over the 1 hour time limit were deducted points.

The Grand Finale - Saturday, November 28 (6:30 pm) at Sheraton Wall Centre

On the final night of competition, anything goes. Chefs create their best dish for guests to sample.
The finale is the pièce de résistance. Where each chef's can truly shine and demonstrate their individual strenghts and innovation. This is a no-hold's barred, no restictions cooking demonstration. Chefs can use whatever ingredient's and technique to create their winning plate to be paired with a Canadian wine. By evening's end, Canada's greatest Chef of 2010 will be crowned.



continued Part 2----->