PASTRY meets the “LOCAL FARMERS’ FIELDS”

Working closely with local farmers & artisanal producers, Chef Tim will source as many sweet, savoury & seasonal ingredients as possible for these three classes. You will create two plated recipes each class, featuring some of the best BC products available.

Examples of possible creations:

- BC Pear, Fig & Goat Cheese puff pastry tarte
- Heirloom Tomato Celebration Salad
- White Balsamic Bronze Fennel Seed Dressing
- Roast BC Peaches, Vanilla Bean Ice Cream & Lemon Chiffon Cake
- BC Apple Torte
- Gooseberry Red Currant Sherbet

Menus will be determined closer to the date of each class based upon what is at its peak of perfection that week. Trust us, it’s going to be fantastic!

I know it’s hard to think about Holiday Baking in the middle of summer, but we’re trying to help you plan ahead. Make this holiday a smooth one by starting your preparations early.

Dates: Local Farmers’ Fields: September 20, October 18, November 15
Holiday Baking: November 29 or December 6 (identical)

Times: 9:00am - 1:00pm (Baking classes: 9:00-2:00)

Cost: $98+GST per class, or register for 4 classes for $372+GST

Bring: chef & paring knives, 2 tea towels, pastry scraper, closed-toe/flat-heeled shoes & hair elastic

Only a few spots left!  These classes will sell out, so register early by calling us at 604.876.7653.

8-day SERIOUS FOODIE CULINARY BASICS

It’s that time again, and Chef Tony is ready to empower a whole new batch of home cooks.
Learn proper knife handling skills, stocks & sauces, moist & dry heat cooking methods, basic breads & desserts, international cuisine and more. You will prepare a 3-course meal most nights. For a detailed description of this delicious & empowering course, please visit this webpage: www.nwcav.com/ncav_othercourses_seriousfoodie.html.

Date: starting Tuesday, September 23, 2008 (Monday’s class sold out)

Time: 6:15-9:30pm each Tuesday evening

Cost: $695 + GST

Bring: chef & paring knives, 2 tea towels, pastry scraper, closed-toe/flat-heeled shoes & hair elastic

These classes will sell out, so register early by calling us at 604.876.7653.

All NWCAV classes are hands-on.

Holiday Baking?  In July?  Not exactly.  We’re thinking ahead.  The next event for kids & teens will be in December. 

If you’re looking to make some edible holiday gifts or a plate of sweets for the family, then join us for some festive fun.  Chef Barb will give you a dose of seasonal spirit .  A yummy lunch and heavenly hot chocolate will be served to keep the young pastry chefs energized. 

The cooking classes are action-packed, fun-filled days where kids and teens have the opportunity to learn about the culinary arts through demonstrations and hands-on cooking in small groups.

Chef Barb Finley has been teaching in the lower mainland for over 20 years, as an elementary teacher, instructor with the Faculty of Education at UBC and as a culinary and pastry instructor. 

Kids: Saturday, December 13 10 – 2:00 PM 7 – 11 years

Teens: Sunday, December 14 10 – 2:00 PM 12 – 17 years

Please bring: A container to take home the festive fare.

Price: $80 + GST

Register: by phone at 604.876.7653

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then a video should tell a whole story - of course they do. It takes quite a bit of energy and time for us to discuss the concept of gluten to our students, and gluten is a very important concept to grasp in understanding how to make good breads, doughs, cakes, pasta, cookies, etc.

At Rouxbe, we spent the better part of a week to boil down the essence of gluten to a three minute video. No way I can do better with a blackboard, powerpoint, or even props. This video does it beautifully.

Check this out. This is 21st century learning. Can’t wait to have more of these for our students.

Tony Minichiello
Culinary Instructor (learning new tricks)

More than $13,000 in Scholarships awarded
at Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver’s
2nd annual Jr. Black Box Competition

Sunday, July 6, 2008 saw nine of BC’s young aspiring chefs faced off in Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver’s (NWCAV) 2nd Annual Jr. Black Box Competition for a chance to earn a sizeable scholarship of $1500 to $3000. 

At NWCAV we feel it is important to encourage young people to pursue their interests & dreams, and this competition is one way we do that. The Jr. Black Box Competition is open to high school seniors or recent graduates from across BC. 

When they registered, competitors were given a list of some of the ingredients that would be available to them on the day of the event, and other “mystery ingredients” were revealed just before the clock started ticking.  This year’s protein was a chicken breast with wing attached, and the mystery ingredient was ginger.  Participants had access to a pantry that included new potatoes, Arborio rice, bell peppers, asparagus, green beans, stocks & dozens of other ingredients.

Outside chefs are invited in to act as judges for the competition, ensuring total impartiality.  This year we had Chef Paul, Instructor at Gladstone Secondary & Chef Chad, Instructor at Vancouver Technical (all competitors came from other schools).  Challenger’s were graded throughout the 1.5 hour event on fourteen different criteria in four categories: Execution (organization, food safety-sanitation, station maintenance, food usage/waste), Technical Aspects (logical steps, correct techniques, proper cooking/prepping), Plate Presentation (clean/hot plates, originality, timing) & Taste/Seasoning (seasoning, food temperature, flavour combinations, texture).  For the final plates, dishes were numbered & judged “blindly”, meaning they did not know who’s dish they were trying.

Family were invited to watch & cheer on their contender, and I know they were as impressed as we were to see the so much talent, creativity & passion in the kitchen, especially since only a few of the students have real industry experience.  All of them came well prepared, having put great thought & planning into their menus ahead of time, and worked in a focused & organized manner throughout.

At the end of the day, NWCAV awarded scholarships to these deserving young cooks:

Marco Webber, took top spot!  ($3000), gr 11 Maple Ridge Secondary
Amanda Veldman ($3000), graduated Hugh McRoberts Secondary
Christopher Sullivan ($3000), gr 12 Riverside Secondary
Ashlee Rossiter ($3000), graduated Hugh McRoberts Secondary
Jay Stambulic ($1500), gr 12 Hatzic Secondary

Congratulations everyone!  We look forward to watching  your careers as you continue to learn & hone your skills.

I received an e-mail yesterday that made my day, confirmed why I do what I do.  A student of NWCAV, an adult, bright, successful in her past work experiences in other fields, was beginning to doubt herself out of her dreams.  I’ve seen this happen before.  Students with little or no industry experience imagine that everyone in professional kitchens can do back flips and juggle 4 cleavers at the same time.  They fear they might not belong, can only imagine the worst, not the best of themselves.  The industry is not there to scare you, but to confirm what you do know and what you need to know further.  So I finally gave this student no choice – ” You’re doing a work observation. Period! It’s already been arranged for Saturday night.”  I’d like to share her reaction to her experience.

“Hey Chef Tony…just had to say I enjoyed every second at the Diva …absolutely LOVED it! The people I worked with were absolutely decent, friendly and helpful…I worked till after nine and it seemed as if no time had passed…so excited I left my tool kit behind…wherever I’m headed next I’m ready…where’s my next assignment?…I now realise that everything you all are teaching me is real…as I worked quietly at first and listened to the talk back and forth it was like emerging from language school and going to a foreign country and realising “I understand it all” - the language and what’s going on…I called my husband and celebrated even though its about 2 in the morning…he’s delighted… and I am absolutely on top of the world…I loved it…and I’m out of words…thanks…you were right!”

Sometimes having too many choices, especially the choice to doubt yourself, is a disadvantage compared to no choice whatsoever.  In the professional culinary world, 90% of the time we have no choices:  “just get it done” is our mantra.  There ARE choices in the industry, lots of them;  but the ultimate choice is to simply grab the bull by the horns and do it.

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor

The BC Chefs Table Society met for the last summer meeting Monday afternoon at the beautiful open dining room of NU Restaurant.  It was the best turnout we’ve had to date.  It was also a very fruitful meeting, lots on the agenda, with two guest speakers, and many pending issues to resolve for the summer.  But, this being a table of successful chefs, we accomplished the full agenda in a very short period of time – getting things done in limited time is one of our prime professional survival traits.  Plus, many crafty ideas were proposed and basically finalized that puts the society in very good standing indeed for the fall and down the road.  This society began with nothing, yet we walked away realizing much has been built and more is to come.  That’s another instinctual talent of ours:  give chefs little and we’ll turn it into a feast.

I cannot help but be impressed when I see a group of put-your-head-down practical chefs in one room.  Besides the brain power, there’s an intense energy to focus on information in its most boiled down practical terms. When our guest from the Pacific Prawn Fisherman’s Association spoke about their continuing relationship with the Society to inform and connect the consumer about our coastal fish, these chefs not only demonstrated a genuine interest to be a conduit for excellent, accurate, and vital information, they articulated their well-informed opinions most impressively.  Words like “commitment” and “mindset” were carefully chosen to represent the Society’s care for the products that sustain their profession.

For a person who started as an academic and entered the culinary profession with apprehension, I can now confidently say that cooks and chefs are indeed smart minds.  They’re smarter than 20 years ago.  They have to be.  Their “mindset” has shifted in a positive way, especially when it comes to ingredients.

Yet when it comes to the next generation of cooks, our mindset has not changed much.  The one word I wish one day I will never have to hear is “kids” when referring to culinary students.  All - and I mean all – of the industry, from chefs to media, still refer to my students as kids.  When I’m asked “How are the kids doing?” I never know if they are referring to my sons or my students.    I’ve always seen the word to spell bad news.  As a parent of 18 and 21 year old young men, calling them kids would spell disaster.  Not only would they not talk to me, but, much worse, they’ll never leave home.  It’s simply counter-productive.  The average age of students entering culinary schools these days is 24 years of age.  Perhaps today’s chefs are unaware of this.

I’ve been wanting to bring the “kids” thing up for some time now with my colleagues, but I really do not think the industry is yet ready for a new “mindset” when it comes to culinary students.  I know for sure it will change one day.  Fish was just fish a couple of decades ago, and now it’s a socio-political topic demanding mature dialogue and sophisticated terms like “sustainability”, “eco-management”, “endangered”, and so on.  It will make me happy, most happy I must say, when the day comes that my NWCAV students are referred to as adults, as fine men and women.  It will perhaps ensure that they are treated like adults, and the payoff might well be they will work like adults.  This field needs fine young men and women, not kids.  I wouldn’t want a generation of “kids” taking over for the fine work adults have already done.

Trying to eliminate the “K” word,

Tony Minichiello

Instructor to adults

The most difficult, challenging topic for me to teach is pasta.  Getting students to understand the essence of pasta is extremely difficult because most, the vast majority, have been lead astray.  Getting students to get off the dry vs fresh track is nearly impossible, taking much effort, a Joe Pesci attitude, and time.  Eventually the students get to experience authentic pasta and are forever changed when it comes to that particular food.

But I’m looking forward – very soon, in fact – to the day when I can simply direct the students to some homework, and not just reading, but video.  Not just any video, but a well crafted script, with detailed and meticulously shot techniques, all logically and wisely editing, all detailing the essence of pasta, where it comes from, how it’s made, how to dissect quality, how to make it at home, cook it properly, what to do, what not to do, why, what happens when you make a mistake, how to prevent it, fix it, etc.

The module on pasta filmed in the kitchen studio at Rouxbe took a whole week, with hours of narrowing down the writing to its essence, shooting the key critical points with the best angle, cleverly, creatively, and then hours of editing and in the sound room.  By the end, every one of the Rouxbe team, from camera, to sound people, to editors, were pros at pasta, elevated to an Italian understanding of pasta…FOREVER.

Though it still took the physical experience to be convinced of this, the video does my job in 20 minutes, rather than hours.  Video, if well scripted and performed, is the tool of the future for any culinary learner.  Watch for the Rouxbe culinary school. (http://blog.rouxbe.com/rouxbe-cooking-school-sneak-peek/) It will change the way you cook and eat.  Period!

Tony

The snow is still flying but many families are looking ahead and planning summer vacations.  To help you with your family plans we have set the dates for Summer Culinary Camps, 2008 with Chef Barb.  The week long camps are just too good to miss.  We’ve got a new line up of classes that will have the young culinarians in the family creating fresh, seasonal meals using B.C.’s bumper crop of summer fruits and veggies.  From breakfast treats to after dinner sweets, we’ve got meal planning covered.  Daily camp menus will be posted in the spring.

The Kids Culinary Camps are action-packed, fun-filled days where the children have the opportunity to learn about the culinary arts through demonstrations and hands-on cooking in small groups.  The children will cook each day’s menu from scratch then sit down to enjoy a lunch they created.  Menus are designed to be age appropriate, incorporate a variety of culinary techniques and skills, to appeal to and develop younger palates and to help children discover the process and pleasure of cooking and sharing food together.  At the end of each day a recipe book is theirs to take and at the end of the camp, they will take home their apron so they can get busy in the kitchen.

Chef Barbara Finley has been teaching in the lower mainland for over 20 years, as an elementary teacher, instructor with the Faculty of Education at UBC and as a professional culinary and pastry instructor.  Barbara’s hope is that exposure to cooking and a variety of foods will encourage nutritious, diverse food choices that the children can create at home.

August 11 – 15  (Ages 7 – 11)

A five-day camp that celebrates the flavours of the season.  We’ll be creating new recipes from around the globe and some from our own backyard.  Fresh. Flavourful.  Fun.

August 18 – 22  (Ages 12 - 17)

A five-day camp developed with teenaged taste buds in mind that focuses on developing a variety of cooking techniques and skills using B.C.’s bounty of seasonal produce. From snacks to fine dining entrees, we’ll stretch your culinary repertoire.

Times:  10:00am - 2:00pm

Cost: $425 + GST per camp

Register:  call 604.876.7653. Payment is due at registration & can be made over the phone by Visa or MasterCard.

The summer camp cooking classes are sold as a package and not on an individual basis.  Registration fees are non-refundable.  If you are unable to attend, you may send another person in your place.  With two week’s notice, you may transfer to another class, based on availability, or receive a class credit.

We are pleased to welcome back into our kitchens Jeff Van Geest, Owner & Chef of the award winning Aurora Bistro!

Chef Jeff will present to the Foodies a locally inspired menu featuring the best of BC’s bounty, including a selection of delicious BC wines. 

As always, our classes are hands-on, so you will not only benefit from Chef Jeff’s extensive culinary experience, you will also have the opportunity to prepare & savour these dishes:

• Spot prawns on asparagus wrapped in Oyama’s proscuitto with ginger sabayon
• Roasted Polderside Farm duck breast with rhubarb compote & aged cheddar-potato perogies
• Agassiz hazelnut tart with maple creme fraiche

I know, my mouth is watering too!

There are only a few spots left, so book your seat now! 

Time:  Wednesday, June 11, 2008 - 6:15pm - 9:30pm 

Register:  You can register by phone 604.876.7653 with Visa or MasterCard, or in person with cash, local cheque or debit. 

Cost:  $98 + GST

Please bring:  Chef’s knife, paring knife, 2 tea towels, a pen, closed-toe/flat-heeled shoes & an elastic to tie back long hair if you have it.

Note: Menu subject to change at chef’s discretion.

As the days get longer, our thoughts drift to Spring and warmer evenings spent around the BBQ with friends and family.  To give you some new inspiration in that department, we are very pleased to offer two BBQ classes hosted by Brian Misko of the award winning House of Q. You may have seen Brian and his partner Glenn Erho on Global TV BC providing the BBQ Tip of the Week.  House of Q has also recently launched its own line of award winning bbq sauces & rubs.  Here’s the scoop on the classes:

May 3, 2008

• pulled pork
• cedar plank fish
• planked cheese with chutney
• cheese stuffed jalapenos
• grilled asparagus with lime & olive oil
• grilled fruit

June 7, 2008

• braised short ribs
• flank steak
• quesadillas
• grilled corn & cilantro salad
• spicy yam fries
• grilled tomato salsa

times: classes will run each day from 11:00am - 2:30pm

cost: $98 each day, plus GST

register: by calling 604.876.7653  - payment is due at the time of registration

please bring: your NWCAV apron if you have one, chef’s knife, paring knife, 2 hand/tea towels

Menus subject to change based upon Chef’s discretion.

Chef Ian Lai, instructor for our Professional Culinary program, has been receiving a lot of press lately.  As founder of the Terra Nova Schoolyard Society (http://myterranova.ca/), Chef Ian is very active in the Richmond community teaching young people from K-12 about the joys of organic farming, and connecting them to the earth & their food.  At the farm they grow everything from flowers to oats, and the students participate in the entire life cycle from planting to harvest.  They even learn how to prepare the food they grow, including winnowing & milling the grains to make their own bread.  The benefits of the project don’t stop there because the bounty produced at Terra Nova is donated to the Richmond Food Bank.  Visit the Terra Nova website for more information.

On May 8th Chef Ian was recognized for his tireless dedication with  a much deserved U-Roc Award.  Congratulations!

In other news, he has agreed to act as the new resident “Chef in the Market” at the Steveston Farmers & Artisans Market for 10 Sundays this summer.  Check out this article by Arlene Kroeker:

http://www.bclocalnews.com/richmond_southdelta/richmondreview/entertainment/18744499.html

We are proud & honoured to have Chef Ian as part of our NWCAV family.

Kudos!

As many of you know, NWCAV is proud to support the Terra Nova Schoolyard Society farm project in Richmond, BC (www.myterranova.ca). Terra Nova was founded & is headed by Chef Ian Lai, one of the Professional Culinary instructors at the Academy.

Chef Ian is pleased to announce that Terra Nova now has it’s own custom tea blend, provided by renowned tea merchants “T”. It is an enlivening blend of Organic Rooibos with citrus notes of orange & lemon. The price is $15 per tin (yields 50 cups). All proceeds go toward the Terra Nova Schoolyard Project. I have tried this tea, and like it so much I ordered 6 boxes for myself & to give as gifts!

If you would like to order some of this delicious tea for yourself, please contact Ian at info@myterrnova.ca or 604-767-9264, or call the Academy at 604.876.7653. Payment by cash only at time of pickup.

Enjoy,

Marla (tea aficionado)