Getting a taste of la dolce vita
Ross Midgley among a handful of Canadian chefs to participate in educational trip to Italy
There was a time when Ross Midgley wouldn’t have thought to put veal and tuna on the same plate.
There was also a time, though, when the executive chef at Ravine Vineyard thought Italian food was simply noodles with tomato sauce.
“I can say I love Italian food but I’m North American, so that’s pasta with red sauce,” Midgley said. “But it’s so much more than that. It’s so much more multi-faceted.”
It turns out, Italian food is also tuna and veal together in one dish — among other delicacies — which Midgley discovered during a recent chefs’ sojourn to the boot-shaped nation.
Midgley was among a handful of Canadian chefs — and the only cuisinier from Niagara — to participate in the educational trip hosted in March by the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario (ICCO) and supported by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development.
Together with Toronto and Prince Edward County chefs Matthew DeMille, Michael Wilson, and Roberto Fracchioni, who once helmed the kitchen at Jordan’s Inn on the Twenty, Midgley spent six days in Liguria, Piedmont and Valle d’Aosta learning about traditional cuisine like that veal and tuna combo, known as vitello tonnato.
He also found out how some of Italy’s most famous exports, including Fontina cheese and San Marzano tomatoes, are produced and why they bear the legal and coveted protected designation of origin (DOP) logo.
“As a chef experiencing it, that authenticity is a huge harbinger of quality,” Midgley said. “You see that (DOP) label and you know this is going to work.”
The point of such trips is to teach chefs, and ultimately consumers, how to recognize the best ingredients in the world, explained Corrado Paina, ICCO executive director.
Doing so fosters a strong economic relationship between Italy and Canada, which traded more than $10 billion in goods, including food and wine, in 2016.
But food focused on expressing terroir, that hard-to-explain taste of place, isn’t a foreign concept to Midgley, who’s cooked in Niagara for most of his career.
The way he works at Ravine, using authentic Niagara ingredients grown in the winery’s garden or on nearby farms, is philosophically the same approach that Italians take with their cuisine, Midgley explained.
“A Niagara peach is a Niagara peach and you’re not going to get that anywhere else, just like Fontina cheese is only going to be something you get from the (Italian) Alps,” he said. “It’s a very terroir-driven approach.”
Midgley also subscribes to the tenets of the Slow Food movement, which originated in the region he and his fellow chefs experienced la dolce vita a few weeks ago. Slow Food was founded during the advent of drivethroughs in the 1980s to preserve traditional regional cuisine and encourage farming that nurtures the local ecosystem.
The parallels between what he saw in Italy and what he does at Ravine were undeniable.
“It helped to really underline the importance of supporting local,” Midgley said. “Any person we met who was connected to any part of this trip was so proud to share what they do. I’d imagine it’s like anyone from Canada standing behind maple syrup or someone from Niagara standing behind a peach.”
His way in the kitchen along with his international experience staging at Chewton Glen in Hampshire England made Midgley the ideal candidate for such an excursion, Paina noted.
“That makes Ross a really fantastic warrior of the food scene,” he said.
But the knowledge Midgley gleaned during his Italian sabbatical isn’t his for the keeping. He and his co-travellers demonstrated all they learned about traditional cuisine and DOP products during a week-long festival called The Authentic Italian Table, which featured events at each chef’s restaurant.
The April 27 dinner at Ravine sold out before the chamber even announced it. Midgley will do a repeat performance of the six-course meal on Thursday, May 10, to give a taste of what he learned overseas to those who missed out last week.
And it will include his take on vitello tonnato, a cold dish of shaved veal marinated in tuna sauce.
“My biggest hope is to show a crowd, who might think they’re getting pasta in red sauce that they’re getting vitello tonnato,” Midgley said. “I hope guests walk away with a broader idea of what regional cuisine can be and is, and what true Italian flavours are because we don’t always get them."
As for himself, Midgley said the trip “invigorated all kinds of visions” that he’d like to bring to life at Ravine, including using a DOP chestnut puree in gnocchi served with venison on top. He also wants to ensure guests enjoy their time spent around the table at Ravine as much as the food.
“(Travel like this) is very important. It’s not just a trip that reinvigorates the love of my own metier… but also the importance of the table,” Midgley said. “It’s not working out for me if there’s no joviality, there’s no laughter for the guest. We’re pretty rat racy here in terms of the pleasures. Eating is necessity but it should also be pleasure.”
Tickets to The Authentic Italian Table at Ravine on May 10 are $100 plus HST and can be reserved by calling the winery at 905-262-8463.