CELEBRATE CUISINE
Public gets to taste winning dishes.
It’s time to celebrate the culinary talents of Regina chefs!
The Regina branch of the Canadian Culinary Federation is presenting A Gold Medal Celebration on Jan. 30 in the DoubleTree by Hilton Capital Ballroom.
It’s an opportunity for the public to savour the winning dishes from the prestigious Gold Medal Plates culinary competition held in the Queen City in November.
The 2014 winning chefs — Milton Rebello (gold medal), Leo Pantel (silver metal) and Geoffrey Caswell-Murphy (bronze medal) — will be on hand to recreate their award-winning dishes. And the previous year’s gold-medal winner, Jon Thauberger, will also prepare an appetizer for the evening.
At $90, tickets for the chefs celebration are a fraction of the price of attending the Gold Medal Plates event.
“Not everybody has the luxury of going to something that’s $350 a plate. So it’s a little more costeffective,” explained Trent Brears, president of the Canadian Culinary Federation, Regina Branch, and the person responsible for food services at the legislature for the provincial government.
“You’re getting the best of the best with this event.”
In addition to the four winning chefs’ tasting stations, three additional tasting stations will be set up, including a cold seafood bar, a potato bar “with all manner of fun and whimsical toppings,” and a third food station that’s still to be determined. Wine to pair with each dish will be served.
As the regional winner, Rebello, executive chef at Wascana Golf and Country Club (and formerly executive chef at the Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza) will represent Regina at the Canadian Culinary Federation’s national competition in Kelowna in February.
Rebello’s dish features pork belly inside out with chestnuts, cranberries and local apples.
The wine selected to go with it is Red Rooster Gewurztraminer 2013.
Pantel, executive chef at the Conexus Arts Centre, will recreate his braised beef cheek with panna cotta tile blue cheese and Saskatchewan chanterelle fall harvest vegetable purée with red current gelee. It will be paired with 2010 Quatrain Mission Hill.
Caswell-Murphy, executive chef at DoubleTree by Hilton, will prepare coffee and pepper bison tenderloin with veal reduction, celery root apple purée and oyster mushroom tomato ragout with wilted spinach and goat cheese. The wine selected to pair with the dish is Saint and Sinner Shiraz Cabernet.
“These dishes are fantastic!” said food writer CJ Katz, who was senior judge at the 2014 competition in Regina. “I loved them all.”
Rather than preparing his winning 2013 Gold Medal Plates dish, Thauberger, executive chef at Crave Kitchen + Wine Bar, will be preparing something unique for this event, along with a special paired wine.
The evening will feature “a standup, cocktail-type reception,” with live, jazzy music, Brears said. “It’s kind of the same format as the Gold Medal Plates — it’s all these different food stations you go to try a sample of this person’s dinner with his accompanying wine.”
Proceeds from the event — which Brears expects will to be minimal — will go into an education fund for culinary association members.
“We’re doing it to just kind of break even,” he said, noting that the focus of the event is “to raise the level of awareness of the quality of the people we have in the city.”
As president of the Regina branch of the Canadian Culinary Federation for the past three years, Brears’ goal has been to “really educate the people around us to what we have … A lot of times Regina is kind of looked past because we’re such a small city. But we have a lot of great people here and a lot of great talent.”
Between 200 and 250 guests can be accommodated at A Gold Medal Celebration.
Tickets are available online at http://ccfccregina.ca/live-event-form.