annoyinglygranddestiny-blog

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Chef House

On April 3rd- 7th was my week at the chef house to show case the menu i created when i was in Italy. This menu was created with the thought of local and seasonal ingredients that i could use as much as i can. My menu was based on southern Sicilian cuisine at the same time keeping it local as much as possible. So i used late winter and early spring ingredients. My menu consist of: Antipasto: Pizzaoila: Seasonal Root Vegetable with spuma of potato. Primo: chitarra alla spaghetti with smoked cod amatriciana – chitarra alla spaghetti  con affumicato murluzzo amatriciana Secondi: Braised lamb shoulders with cauliflower caponata and cauliflower puree - Spalle di agnello brasato con cavolfiore caponata e purea di cavolfiore Dolce: seven veils cake– torts setteveli Chocolate sponge cake, praline crunch, hazelnut Bavarian cream, Pistachio moose.

This menu was a simple but was heavy on preparing the different components of each dish. The biggest challenge for me was the dessert because i had to find ways to make the dish look smaller at the same time having it the seven layers it suppose to have. In the final dish i added candied oranges, removed one layer of the pistachio moose and moved it to the top of the ganash and made a quinelle to make it more intricate but keeping it simple. The antipasto was very beautiful as the filling for the pizzaoila was any seasonal and any in house ingredients we had and it was a great way to keep food waste down. The pasta course had simple tomato sauce with smoked cod which highlight the cod in the pasta. Lastly the main couse was a braised ontario lamb with a cauliflower caponata. The puree was a way to reduce food wasted and use the rest of the cauliflower trims and it kept the dish nice and light for a lunch meal.

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Monforte Dairy

On April 3rd my class and i went to Monforte Dairy to learn about slow cheese and the process of making different cheese and how specific each process was to create these delicious ingredients. We first arrive at monforte at around 8:30 am and was greeted by the lovely owner Ruth. She was an amazing person who loves cheese. She is a straight foward person and will talk about everything that is almost going in her mind. She is very passionate about slow foods and also about sustainability. she was a great person to talk to about the global problems and about our water security. Of course in ontario we have one of the five largest lakes but lately water companies have been buying parts of the lake to bottle their water but also due to global warming. The lakes have been receding and shirking really fast.

But back to cheese, we were later split into different groups and we were given time to prepare our meal for lunch while making cheese. We make fresh water buffalo cheese and it was an amazing process. The amount precision required to make these cheese is due to a difference of 1-2 Celsius and it was take longer to curdle or if there wasn’t enough rennet in the milk to curdle the cheese. Every one of the equipment was sanitized in a bleach solution because the quartz solution reacts with the milk and creates a batch that doesn’t curdle. Once we had the cheese to curdle, There was the process to cut the curdes into pieces and it was using a tool that had wires to pass through the soft cheese. I had tried a piece of the curdle and it was silky like tofu but it had a sweet taste from the milk but also salty from the salt they put before curdling the milk. Then we portion them into plastic perforated containers. Once the cheese was portions we flipped the cheese over itself and place back into its container. This allow the cheese to have a defined round look instead of a pyramid look. It also allows the cheese to dry properly and draws out any remaining air pockets in the cheese.

later in the day we had a meal prepared for lunch and all the staff from the cheese facility and our class had. The meal included local ingredients and cheese from the dairy. We had slow braised chicken in whey, Glazed roast ham, ravioli with beet filling. This was a great day for us as we got to learn how cheese was made and how clean, fair and good monforte dairy was.

[annoyinglygranddestiny-blog]

WELCOME

Hello my name is Austin Luc. I am 20 years old from the 2016-2017 Italian program. I am currently working for the CN Tower and enjoying making different food everyday whenever it is for the guest or my colleagues. When i was staging in Italy i worked at a restaurant called La Madia in the city of Licata, Sicily. Licata is a city south west of Catania which is one of the two major cities of Sicily. The restaurant is run by Chef Pino Cuttaia who is always creating dishes based on his memory of food. I learned lots from him and also some of his ways of thinking about using memories of the past to recreate dishes for people to enjoy. Working in Italy was a big experience for me because it was my first time traveling alone and also first time traveling to the eastern side of the world. So it was super nerve wrecking but it was great eye opener. It was hard getting adjusted to their culture and also how the kitchen worked because it was really different from all my past jobs where plating and how the kitchen is run are totally different from North America.

The Idea of slow foods was really not that strongly noticeable for me at the restaurant as many things were from different parts of Italy. But most of our ingredients were from close to the city and the sea food was of course from the locals. Family of Chef Pino Cuttaia would bring different random fishes from tuna to fresh octopus (which still moves when you touch it.)

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Joshna Maharaj

On March 20th, 2017 we had Joshna Maharaj come to our slow foods class to talk about Terra Madre and about food waste. She is an activist chef who brings local, good and sustainable foods to facilities who should be having these foods. Places like elementary schools, colleges and universities as well as hospitals. This was about changing current old food programs into feeding children, patients and students with good clean food to help them in recovering or learning. To me good clean and fair is about having food that is locally sustainable, grown in bio-dynamic land which not only grows the vegetable but also have different organisms all living in that one area helping each other out. Also the ingredients have to be nutrient dense and good for helping developing the human body. lastly food has to be fair for both the consumers and the growers. A lot of consumers want cheap food but we have to know that people need to be paid in this era to survive. One topic that Joshna had talk about was food waste and i believe that we shouldn’t have this much food wastage. She talked about 40% of all foods grown was pretty much thrown back into the landfill just due to it not being perfect or it becomes rotten before it can even be sold to a consumer. This is very disturbing to me because food should never be wasted and also so many people are hungry on the streets while we are here throwing food away because it doesn’t get sold or it is just slightly rotten. 

To me in 5 years i hope to stay in my path as a chef and travel around the world and discover the difference between where i am now and how people are living in other regions of the world. i want to be able to teach and inspire people to eat clean , find good food and change their perspective of the value of food. Hopefully i will be able to change how schools feed their students.

I will improve my way of living. Finding new and interesting adventures and keep learning while living life the way i want it to be, while allowing the wind to move me down a happy and fun life.

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SouthBrook Vineyard

On Feburary 13, I visited the SouthBrook Vineyard where i learned about their organic and sustainable wine. I first tasted their organic red and white wines which has a bright a clean taste. They also had an orange wine where it had a very particular taste to the wine and had to take a little while to get use to.We had many guest speakers but one that gave me a good impact was Mario Pingue who was the owner of Niagara Food Specialties. He gave us a very wide varity of cheese and cured meats to taste. He talked about how the animals are treated and how they are raised before slaughter. This intrigue me very much because it is a practice that is starting to grow in number and it is great seeing the animals who are feeding us are treated with respect.

[annoyinglygranddestiny-blog]

WELCOME

Hello my name is Austin Luc. I am 20 years old from the 2016-2017 Italian program. I am currently working for the CN Tower and enjoying making different food everyday whenever it is for the guest or my colleagues. When i was staging in Italy i worked at a restaurant called La Madia in the city of Licata, Sicily. Licata is a city south west of Catania which is one of the two major cities of Sicily. The restaurant is run by Chef Pino Cuttaia who is always creating dishes based on his memory of food. I learned lots from him and also some of his ways of thinking about using memories of the past to recreate dishes for people to enjoy. Working in Italy was a big experience for me because it was my first time traveling alone and also first time traveling to the eastern side of the world. So it was super nerve wrecking but it was great eye opener. It was hard getting adjusted to their culture and also how the kitchen worked because it was really different from all my past jobs where plating and how the kitchen is run are totally different from North America.

The Idea of slow foods was really not that strongly noticeable for me at the restaurant as many things were from different parts of Italy. But most of our ingredients were from close to the city and the sea food was of course from the locals. Family of Chef Pino Cuttaia would bring different random fishes from tuna to fresh octopus (which still moves when you touch it.)