A bite at the museum
Aga Khan’s Diwan chef offers recipe for fatteh baba ghanouj
If you’re looking for a kid-friendly refuge from the heat and the congested downtown core this summer, it’s worth a trip to the peaceful Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art with its quiet reflecting pools surrounded by greenery, and Diwan, a sit-down restaurant that just launched a new menu and is taking part in Summerlicious with a three-course, $33 lunch starting Friday.
The menu is designed by chef Shen Ousmand, who worked up the ranks under chef Mark McEwan’s restaurant group, which runs Diwan. You’d never know it tasting his succulent harissa chicken thigh and no-knife-needed braised lamb shank with coconut-kale sambol, but being a chef wasn’t Ousmand’s first career choice.
Prior to leaving his hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Ousmand worked in sales and marketing.
At 23, he fled the country to escape the civil war and eventually ended up in Toronto where his aunt lived. After learning that tradespeople such as electricians, plumbers and cooks were in demand, rather than salespeople, Ousmand, decided to enrol at George Brown College’s culinary school and work as a cook, though he intended to return to sales eventually.
“It was a lot of English, Italian and French words, which was difficult because English wasn’t my first language,” says Ousmand, now 39, who worked as a dishwasher to put himself through culinary school. “I’d draw out shapes of pastas and herbs to try to remember the English names. I perfected the accounting and math parts because of my sales experience, but I barely passed the first semester.”
In 2005, Ousmand got a job placement at Bymark, chef Mark McEwan’s restaurant in the financial district, and was hired soon after, securing a work permit to stay in Canada.
At that point, he enjoyed cooking professionally and hasn’t stopped, working his way up from a line cook to executive chef at McEwan, the upscale grocery store chain owned by chef McEwan. In 2016, he took on the menu at Diwan where he is tasked with shining a light on the diverse foods of the Islamic world while showcasing Ontario produce and while still finding inspiration from the food he ate growing up. “For example, the tomato salad we have shows off seasonal Ontario produce, and tomatoes are also often used in Middle Eastern cuisine,” he says. “It’s tossed with a simple honey-lime dressing, something my mom makes back home in Sri Lanka.”
If a long lunch at Diwan isn’t in the cards for you, you can recreate Ousmand’s fantastic appetizer that combines the Levantine dish of fatteh, flatbread served with toppings such as chickpeas and yogurt, with ba- ba ghanouj, roasted eggplant dip. Here, crispy fried pitas are drizzled with mint yogurt and baba ghanouj then topped with chickpeas tossed with a spicy pepper sauce and dukkah, an Egyptian blend of nuts and spices. It’s excellent for summer entertaining (Ousmand likens it to nachos).
To simplify it for home cooks Ousmand suggests using storebought harissa rather than making his preserved chili sauce, a weeks-long process at the restaurant. When testing out the recipe I also bumped up the portion size to make it fit for a small party, making it more worthwhile to make all the dish’s components. While this is not an exact replica of what you’d get at Diwan, this is a good way to get a taste of Ousmand’s creative cooking. All the better excuse to have lunch there to see how this compares to the real thing. (Diwan is only open for lunch.)
“I barely passed the first semester.” CHEF SHEN OUSMAND ON HIS FIRST YEAR AT GEORGE BROWN COLLEGE’S CULINARY SCHOOL