Students get cooking for Culinary Olympics
Charlottetown CIC pupils to defend Canada’s title at world championship
I am not a foodie, but I tolerate them.
Foodies are travel writers who specialize in writing about food and reviewing restaurants.
When I am travelling with foodies I don’t dare dig in when my plate of food arrives in front of me — somebody will first want to photograph it undisturbed.
So you can imagine the gnashing of teeth and groans of frustration when 10 travel writers recently sat down to a fabulous meal at the Culinary Institute of Canada (CIC) in Charlottetown and were told “no photos.”
The meal of which we were about to partake will be used to help 12 young students at the CIC defend their title as World Culinary Champions. They didn’t want to tip off their competitors at the world culinary championships in Luxemburg in November.
Students from across Canada and around the world come to the Culinary Institute of Canada at Holland College on Charlottowne’s waterfront to learn how to be a superstar in the kitchen.
Graduates are working at some of the finest restaurants and dining rooms across Canada and around the world.
In 2016 a student team from CIC won two gold medals and finished fourth among 57 nations competing at the Culinary Olympics in Erfurt, Germany. They were a regional student team that competed against professional chefs performing as national teams.
As a result student chefs at Holland College will in future represent Canada as a national team.
As well as students, they are also culinary teachers — to tourists from around the world. Charlottetown will host 94 cruise ships this season and many passengers from each ship will take a short walk from the cruise dock to Holland College to attend a culinary boot camp.
Advanced students and their instructors give the visiting passengers a four-hour crash course on the tricks and techniques that create magic in the kitchen. It has been a very popular excursion for passengers.
And those passengers will learn why Prince Edward Island is called the Garden of the Gulf — also sometimes called the million-acre farm.
The warm ocean currents that awash this island produce fertile farm fields and ideal growing conditions. And of course the surrounding waters are world-renowned for their lobster, mussels, oysters, clams, scallops and 1,600-pound Bluefin Tuna.
A quarter of all potatoes consumed in Canada are grown in PEI’s famous red soil. And its roadside markets are full of colourful island fruits and vegetables. CIC’s 8,500-square-foot kitchen underwent a $7.5-million expansion and modernization last year and is one of the most professional kitchens in Canada. The open kitchen can be seen from the large dining room and so can Charlottetown’s busy harbour. The visiting cruise ships make a lefthand turn (that’s port to sailor types) just outside the dining room’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
The public is welcome to dine at the college’s professional dining room. Students in the hospitality program operate the dining room and the culinary students prepare the meals under the watchful eye of their instructors.
Not all the food instructors wear double-breasted chef jackets. Some wear yellow rain slickers.
Joey Gautier is a veteran deepsea fisherman who welcomes both culinary students and the general public aboard his 45-foot-long lobster boat Julie Ann Jamie 1 (named after his kids) to learn all about the bountiful sea surrounding PEI.
Gautier recently invited the nine visiting food writers — and me — aboard the Julie Ann Jamie 1 to watch his crew catch lobster and describe how bountiful are the waters around the Garden of the Gulf.
One of the lobster traps pulled up from the bottom of the sea contained 10 cans of Beach Chair Lager, a craft beer brewed on PEI. Like a good mariner, Captain Gautier thinks ahead.
He and his fellow deep-sea fishermen go to work in some very harrowing weather, but there’s only on sea creature they fear — the Right Whale.
They’re 100 feet long and weigh 60 tons, but it’s not their size they fear. It’s spotting them.
When an endangered Right Whale is spotted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence all fishing activity 16 km in all directions from the whale must halt for 15 days.