It takes a whole school ...

(L to R) Chef Dan Notley (instructor), Nicole Mallette (administrator) and
Chef Daniel Slat (admissions counselor) working the Food & Drink Fest booth.
(photo by Terry Asma, 2020studios) 

We had a great time at the Food & Drink Fest in Hamilton April 12th, 13th and 14th at the Careport Centre. In the week leading up to the event, it was all hands on deck: chefs, students and staff helped to bake, roll, dip, decorate and wrap almost 700 cake pops to sell throughout the weekend. Check our Facebook page for more photos. You will find the recipe for these irresistible little treats on our Recipe page.

Chef Bill helps with Catelli Pasta food bank donations

Chef Bill starts cooking Catelli pasta while
Gary Yokoyama shoots photos for the Hamilton Spectator.

We had a Hamilton Spectator photographer in last week, taking photos while Chef Bill prepared the simplest of food: pasta. Why is The Spec interested in this incongruous match? Our chef was one of sixteen chefs across the country to contribute to an online cookbook from Catelli Pasta entitled Gourmet Family Meals for Under $10.

The cookbook is part of the company’s Feed the Hope initiative; Catelli is donating up to one million servings of pasta to Canadian food banks - one for each ‘like’ on their Facebook page, and one for each box of their pasta sold in Canada between April 1 and June 30. Chef Bill’s contribution was a recipe (‘Long noodles and Special Meatballs’) that has a bit of a twist, yet is simple to make with ingredients that are common household staples.

To learn more about Catelli’s campaign, visit their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/catelli. Once you hit the ‘Like’ button, you will be able to download the recipes and read about the chefs that contributed to the cookbook. Watch the Hamilton Spectator for their coverage of the Feed the Hope campaign too.

Can you guess what sauces are cooking?

Daniel is working on a Chausser sauce.

 Tantalizing aromas routinely drift through the foyer, classrooms and office while the ovens and the stovetops are crowded with meats, soups, breads and pastries. Sauces, though, are a face-to-face affair, their finest qualities only revealed close-up.  

Their appreciation lies in the subtlety of texture, the layering of flavours, their complement to the main attraction, and the colour they add to the plate.

  They are a big part of French Classic Cuisine, so the first full week of Advanced Class is dedicated solely to building a sauce repetoire. 

Students review the five mother sauces,  and learn at least forty more small sauces derived from these basic building blocks. 

Take a look at some of the ingredients that were prepped for the first sauce test last month. Can you guess what type of sauces were in the works, and with which kind of food they would be served?

Mike reaches for the salt
 to finish off his cream sauce.

Susan separates eggs to start a Hollandaise.