Effortless cuisine is never easy
Bird of Top Chef Canada fame says the simplest dishes can be deceptively difficult
Chef Trevor Bird made stops at Daniel Boulud’s Lumiere and Jean-Georges’s Market, but vaulted to culinary notoriety as the runner-up on Season 2 of Top Chef Canada. He returned to the small screen as a Top Chef Canada all-star last year. Vancouver’s Fable Kitchen — and now Fable Diner — are focused on his passion for local ingredients.
Q What motivates and inspires you as a chef?
A Ingredients that are good on their own, which ties into local and seasonal cooking. When farmers are passionate about growing they produce very unique products, like picking carrots in the winter. It sucks, but it will be the best carrot you will ever eat. Not many are up for the task.
How would you describe the type of food you like to cook?
I would describe the food I like to cook as seasonally driven, technically inspired. I like to cook deceivingly simple food. It doesn’t look like much but the thought that goes into it may not be at the forefront.
What might diners not know about you?
I am motivated by a healthy and active life. I run regularly, bike in summers and join multiple races a year. I like to cook and eat food that is in sync with these activities.
Describe a couple of your most recent creations.
One of my favourite sides for Trevor Bird Catering is crushed new potatoes: Macedonian feta, bacon, shallot sofrito and pistachios. It’s a riff on loaded baked potatoes. Using local potatoes, bacon and pistachio is an unreal combo. If you haven’t tried Macedonian feta, do it!
What’s your favourite local product and how do you use it?
My favourite local product is a condiment I just made available for retail, black pepper jam. I’m not just saying that because I made it.
It’s really, really good and it’s something I believe in and am very excited about. It goes amazingly well with meat, but is a condiment for everything: cheese plates, broccoli, mushrooms.
Do you have one piece of advice you might have for home cooks?
I have so much. Use salt — more than you’re comfortable with. Don’t be afraid to try new things and cook new ingredients.
Be easy on yourself: It takes years to be a good cook. Chefs have done repetitive mundane tasks thousands of times — I can say I have chopped over 1,000 pounds of chives in my career, shucked over 5,000 oysters, cleaned and cut in every way imaginable 10,000 pounds of onions, filet and cleaned schools of fish.
It literally takes so, so much practice.