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Your scribe is a senior judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships which have been featured previously on this Blog last reported on February 4, 2019 from Kelowna BC. This year they moved everything to a brand new appropriate location of Ottawa Ontario the capital of Canada. Also this is the home forum of last year’s winner from Ottawa/Gatineau of Yannick Lasalle of Les Fougeres and the only two time winner creative Marc Lepine of Atelier. The competition brought together 12 talented chefs from across Canada who already had won their regional event of this Great Kitchen Party. This final held from January 30 to February 1 was very demanding with 3 main events. First starting with a Mystery Wine Pairing (very small budget to choose a menu to match 2017 Closson Chase Vineyard unfiltered Pinot Noir from Prince Edward County Ontario) that brought the use lots of earthy mushrooms, secondly a Black Box challenge using all 7 ingredients (Young elk “eye of the round”, dried plancton, oatmeal, fiddleheads, black kale, parsley root, and haskup berries) and their Grand Finale dish. The overall gold winner was Roger Ma of Boulevard in Vancouver, silver Marc-Andre Jette of Hoogan & Beaufort in Montreal, and Bronze Emily Butcher of Deer + Almond in Winnipeg. However all the chefs did a fantastic job under the pressure cooker conditons of the weekend and the Canadian culinary scene is in good shape. Consider looking up their restaurants on your next visit to their city. Also follow “Putting Canada on the Menu” with Food Day Canada celebrated this year on August 1, 2020. Here are some more details plus photos of the 12 feature final dishes presented by each chef:

Marc-Andre Jette of Hoogan et Beaufort representing Montreal: Blanc de Gris mushroom dish with burn pickle onion, Matsutake gel, smoked thin bread, and Louis d’or cheese

Ian Carswell of Black Tartan Kitchen in Carleton Place for Ottawa/Gatineau: Milkhouse Farm lamb with Neeps and Tatties

Kai Koroll of Block One at 50th Parallel Estate Winery for Kelowna BC: Peace Country Lamb saddle braised cheek chestnut black quince butternut squash bee pollen garum chermoula preserved meyer lemon yogurt

Kyle Puddester of Fork in Mobile Newfoundland: Tasting of wild Newfoundland air dried partridge, liver mousse, parsnip chips and blueberry

Darren Craddock of The Village Bistro on Saskatoon: Local wild boar mosiac sunchoke BC quince, preserved summer apricot gel, boar blood pudding, shaved foie, foraged chanterelle and tapioca crisp

JP Dublado of River Cree Resort & Casino in Edmonton: “Char siu Foie Gras” Ube dumpling cured duck egg yolk Burgundy truffles, pickled chanterelles, calamansi verjus pearls, green tea, and foie gras powder

Keith Pears of soon to open W in Toronto: “West Meets East” of miso rubbed BC Albacore tuna, Ontario sunchoke & apple, warm leek emulsion, pickled pearl onion & local honey plus yuzu oil coloured green with parsley chives

Matt Pennell of Legends in Moncton: Lamb with sous vide Loin from Nova Scotia & spiced slow roasted belly from New Brunswick (also sea buckthorn) plus cured air-dried & shaved Tuna from PEI and baby king mushrooms from Ontario

Emily Butcher of Deer + Almond in Winnipeg: Sablefish & Turnip Cake with Whitefish Roe and Turnip broth served at table

Roger Ma of Boulevard in Vancouver: BC Coastal Terroir of honey mussel “gratinee” foraged bull kelp, uni (freshest ever!), Yukon potato and scallion terrine and amazing Manila clam emulsion

Barry Mooney of Fresh Twenty One in Dartmouth Nova Scotia: St. John River Sturgeon with shoyu koji lacquer, sturgeon boudin blanc, smoked sturgeon, kombu poached daikon, apple parsley puree, sturgeon bone marrowcrisp, tonkotsu cider jus

Jenny Kang of Shokunin in Calgary: “Sea Garden Eden” of ahi tuna, side stripe prawn, cured New Zealand snapper, raw Hokkaido scallop, uni, yuzu kosho Vietnam nuoc cham, fried fennel apple juice

Roger Ma’s dish perfect use of Black Box ingredients

Ingredients of Black Box not disclosed until the box is opened and each chef has to figure what they are and how to use them to make a dish using all 7 of them within a very strict one hour time limit

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Question: In your view what was the worst wine trend of the 2010s?

Answer: Interesting question. Your scribe appreciates how much more information on wine is out there in the last 10 years – some inaccurate but most of it helpful indeed. However with that overload there are some pet peeves for me. Don’t like so many consumers holding themselves out as experts rating wines without adequate experience. Your personal opinion on whether you like a wine or not is fine. But long detailed analysis and particularly an inflated point score are not reliable guides for others unless you have had some background in at least tasting fairly often or preferably drinking on a regular basis the world’s best wines. This is becoming more and more difficult for everyone to accomplish with the current high prices of these many wine treasures from around the world that generally warrant those highest scores. Otherwise how do you compare and determine what is an accurate score for any wine? Instead what we see are increasing “wine score creep” lately on all wines (some which don’t deserve the score given) because this works to the advantage of both the reviewer getting noticed and the winery anxious to broadcast the high score for marketing purposes. Similarly there are so many more sommeliers that now are better trained than ever who usually provide amazing assistance but a few still show too much pretentiousness of their knowledge.

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Most of us thought the New Year started on January 1. However there is another one the lunar Chinese New Year that runs from Saturday January 25 and goes on until February 11, 2021. This is based on a 12 year cycle in the Chinese Zodiac that recognizes 12 different animals and 5 elements (earth, fire, metal, water and wood). This time it is the Rat (white rat) with Metal. Enjoy currently the Year of the Metal Rat! It all begins with a family celebratory dinner on commencement to bring good luck, good health, and wealth for all in the coming year. Lots of guidelines and superstitions of what to serve and what to avoid. Important to emphasize the right lucky numbers like 8 but not 4 (sounds like “death”) but if preceded by a 5 to make 54 means “no death” which portends good luck. Good things are thought to come in pairs and better to use even numbers rather than odd. No definite rules but honour the traditions in your own unique ways. Your scribe was fortunate to attend such a special event in Maui, Hawaii on Saturday January 25. The 8 lucky courses were spot on of gyoza dumplings (for wealth), vegetarian salad, chicken katsu, pairs of whole sides of fish (“togetherness”): citrus steelhead salmon and soy-ginger steelhead salmon (both for an increase in your prosperity during the year), pairs of different noodle dishes: soba & prawns and vegetarian chow mein (both for happiness & longevity), and finally dessert of oranges, tangerines, pomelos and apple-mango tart (all for good luck and fortune in the New Year). Some enjoyable drinkable wines fit in most appropriately as pairings. Fun experience! Hope you celebrated with a Chinese New Year dinner. Recommend it for next year.

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Question: Why are we seeing more wines in cans?

Answer: Modern marketing. Actually not a bad trend to position the increasing volume of cheap to moderately priced wine as more of just an easy useable beverage. Some like Sterling Vineyards in Napa are positioning themselves as using not cans but sleek lightweight aluminum bottles for the times. Like their use of unique colour coding both for resealable tops and bottom bar with yellow chardonnay, pink rose, and red cabernet sauvignon all easy to identify. Good branding. Better than more use of plastic. Those non sustainable expensive to transport extra heavy glass bottles also contributed to this and that packaging should stop. Like the convenience of cans and hope to see more of the already popular 375 ml. can size but also some 187 ml. with a non-plastic straw. However not ready yet for my premium wines for aging in aluminum bottles. What are your thoughts?

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A current buzz in the wine world is climate change and how is it affecting current vintages. It seems to be a reality that wines are becoming different from what those same properties used to produce. Perfect sites (like full south ones facing in Barbaresco) may be getting too much hot summer sun. Colder sites are now achieving better phenolic ripeness having turned into warmer sites than they ever used to. Brand new wine regions are appearing which previously were not ideal. The result is sort of like the old phylloxera epidemic where wines are once again undergoing major changes. This previous issue resulted in a demand for pre-phylloxera vines and wines. I suspect similiarly there will be a growing demand over the next few decades for well made balanced lower alcohol pre-climate change wines. Already there are so many old style treasures like 1945 Mouton, 1961 Palmer, and 1989 Haut-Brion from Bordeaux. Many red Burgundies from top vintages and producers like DRC and Rousseau are already increasing rapidly in value. Of course there are so many benchmark wines from nearly every wine producing country that are already in high demand. However, once consumers realize that the newer wines are excellent but are so very different from those older style ones which are diminishing in supply this will drive up the price of the latter as something unique. The key is to find wines from around the world that express this old style but are so well balanced to age and develop even further. Good project for the smart wine collector to seek these out while they are still reasonably priced! Let us know which wines you think qualify.

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