It was all about seasonal veggies; making your own oils, sauces, spreads, creams, cheese (more about this later!!); how to use parts of one item in one thing and saving the rest for something else. Using every part of the vegetable, fruit, and/or flower while trying to keep waste at a minimum. Where to source locally grown food and using what we have here geographically to its full potential versus importing from other countries. How can you not love learning about different resources and vegetation that you never knew about before? Hop shoots and flowering currants? Had no clue what they were before class, only that the dishes listed in the course description sounded amazingly yummy and I wanted to see it in person! I’m pretty sure I ended up taking three pages worth of notes, trying to absorb everything. I know, I’m nerdy, and I love expanding my knowledge on what we have here locally in our province, a bit about foraging, pickling, which parts of the plants to use, and so much more tips from not only the instructors, but also loving to learn from a few of the participants whom were more than happy to share their knowledge with first-timers like myself.

Update: I have revisited my notes on my phone, and it’s SIX pages long instead of the aforementioned three pages. Carry on.

Main Course

Did I mention this class was worth every cent?? Because it was. It was a masterclass, a private dining and shopping experience, a mini wine tasting, and a mini group session all rolled into one. It was where you could ask the instructors anything about the topic at hand and even going off on mini tangents were allowed. My kind of people!

I think it’s safe to say that Shira, Brian, and Devon (thank you for joining us on your day off!) blew our minds with the creativity of all three dishes and how putting together different components once you have the base set up doesn’t compromise the quality or taste of the ingredients used. It merely enhances it …by a lot! Even though some of the prep work can be time consuming just to make one dish, the payout is well worth the effort! How can you not appreciate it when it’s jam-packed with amazing, contrasting, yet complementary flavours?? Spooning oil into a container of cream sauce before pouring it onto the dishware – sauce splitting. Learning which veggies can substitute for others if you can’t find the one listed in the recipe – super useful knowledge. And how about nettles? One wouldn’t think to use nettles as an oil for a hint of vanilla flavour. The bonus content of the night for me was making fresh ricotta cheese on the spot! This was the cheese moment from Chef Brian to us participants. How did you know that I love a good cheese moment?!?! I savoured every last subtle salty taste of the still warm ricotta that was spooned out for us to taste test! Thank you for the mini snack!