festival food

Montserrat celebrates St. Patrick with Caribbean verve

Posted on by Pat
I never found anyone serving green beer during the St. Patrick's Day Festival on the island of Montserrat. But local ginger beer, I quickly discovered, is a perfectly good substitute. One of 14 United Kingdom Overseas Territories, Montserrat is the only island nation (besides the Emerald Isle) where St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday. And I have to say that Caribbean style adds real flair to the celebration of Ireland's patron saint. The 5,000 or so Montserratians who inhabit this island in the British West Indies take their Irish roots seriously. Just ask any of the Allens, Sweeneys, Buntins, Farrells, O'Garrs and O'Briens who trace their roots back to the 17th century Irish indentured servants who made a new life here after putting in...Read More

Whimsical cake beets all

Posted on by Pat
Of all the culinary students assisting guest chefs at the Chopstix & Cocktails event of the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, those assigned to Bill Corbett certainly seemed to be having the most fun sampling dishes from the different tables (above). The whimsy wasn't lost on guest chef Corbett himself. Named one of the Top 10 Pastry Chefs in America by Dessert Professional Magazine in 2013, Corbett is currently executive pastry chef for the Absinthe Group of restaurants in San Francisco. He turned a savory dish into a sweet by creating a Beet Cake with Fromage Blanc Frosting. “It's kind of a joke,” he told me. “At one time everyone in the Bay Area had the same beet salad on the menu: beets, goat cheese,...Read More

Great tastes rule Hawaii Food & Wine Festival

Posted on by Pat
As the sun set over the water and the air began to cool, Mayor Kirk Caldwell toasted the fifth anniversary of the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival. “We started with spam and sausage and took it to a unique Pacific Hawaiian cuisine,” he told the crowd assembled on the outdoor decks of the Modern hotel in Honolulu (above). “We're chop suey,” the mayor said with a laugh. “We make great looking people and great food. We are proud of who we are as a people and we are proud of our food.” Started as a modest three-day event on Oahu, the festival (scheduled for October 14-30, 2016) now features events on the islands of Maui, Hawaii, and Oahu, with the bulk of activities in Honolulu....Read More

Winning shellfish dish in PEI chef cookoff

Posted on by David
Judging the final round of the Garland International Chef Challenge turned out to be a big deal. Instead of hiding in a back room while we tasted, Dominic Serio and I sat on the main stage while the two finalists cooked on the main floor of the hall in front of the stage. Chef Alain Bossé paced back and forth for an hour offering commentary and gently kidding both contestants. With $10,000 on the line, the two finalists gave us their hand-printed menus. Marc Lepine was preparing lobster poached in orange beurre blanc with crab meatballs, miso mayo, fennel sponge, wild rice crispies, and lobster jus. Ryan Morrison proposed “packed” lobster tail, oyster and crab hushpuppies, cauliflower purée, chanterelle and spearmint “salad,” and dill-pickled mustard...Read More

Trying to judge the best shellfish chefs in Canada

Posted on by David
I was honored to be asked to judge the Garland Canada International Chef Challenge, one of the highlights of the PEI International Shellfish Festival. Ten world-class chefs compete for a grand prize of $10,000, sponsored by Canada's lead producer of professional kitchen equipment. I joined chefs Alain Bossé from Nova Scotia (aka the Kilted Chef) and Dominic Serio, the vice president of the Atlantic division of the Canadian Culinary Federation. The challenge for the chefs was to cook a plate incorporating at least three of the following PEI shellfish: lobster, jonah crab meat, mussels, and soft-shell clams. The challenge for the judges was to choose the best dishes from a field of highly talented competitors. I don't know what what goes on back stage on...Read More

Making PEI mussels like the mussel master

Posted on by David
As a native Belgian and as the man who launched mussel aquaculture on Prince Edward Island (see post), Joel Van Den Bremt has eaten his share of mussels over the years. When I asked him how he preferred to cook them, he thought a bit and told me, “steamed, but with the vegetables soft enough to eat. I like the vegetables, too.” I agree with him. Some diners will pass the mussels to someone else at the table and just concentrate on the mussel-flavored broth. I prefer the three-bowl plan: one for the mussels, one of the spent shells, and a third for broth and vegetables. Although you can steam mussels in a dry pan, relying on their own juices, many people add raw vegetables...Read More

PEI folks give new meaning to foodies

Posted on by David
I can't say I've ever see an island where so many people make or gather or process wonderful food. Between judging duties at the International Shellfish Festival I had the chance yesterday to drive around the island a bit, heading up to the north shore to see a mussel processing operation (more on that later on), pay a visit to a potato farm, catch a picnic in the fields, and visit Raspberry Point oysters. That's Scott Linkletter at the top of this post, hauling a cage of oysters to show how they're grown using an Australian system of posts driven into the soft bottom of shallow waters. The cages are suspended on lines that hang on the posts. Every few days he and his staff...Read More

Fishermen feed the world (especially on PEI)

Posted on by David
I met one of my heroes yesterday at the PEI International Shellfish Festival. I say “hero” even though I had never known his name until I met him, but Jozef Van Den Bremt changed the way a lot of us eat. A Belgian immigrant who wanted to find a way to contribute to his adopted country and his new home province of Prince Edward Island, he set out in the 1970s to figure out how to grow blue mussels. It's not that mussels were uncommon. They cling to every rock and pier in the North Atlantic–and every one of those wild mussels is full of grit in its flesh. To get sweet, juicy and grit-free mussels, you need to cultivate them on a substrate where...Read More

Tasty start to PEI International Shellfish Festival

Posted on by David
Mussels, oysters, or lobster? It's hard to choose among them on Prince Edward Island, the small Canadian province with the massive shellfish harvest. This year I'm getting my fill of all of them as a judge of Garland Canada International Chef Challenge. But before the competitions got started on Friday the 13th, I joined 500 other diners for the Feast and Frolic kickoff dinner at the Charlottetown Festival Grounds. Food Network Canada star (and Islander) chef Michael Smith played emcee, and the students of the Culinary Institute of Canada did the cooking. It was an auspicious beginning. The moderately deconstructed lobster chowder (above) consisted of a celeriac broth with foraged sea asparagus and green swoops of pureed lovage. A butter-poached claw and half-tail of PEI...Read More

Peeling Louisiana crawfish

Posted on by David
Crawfish might look like little lobsters, but getting to the meat takes a whole different approach. For starters, a meal of lobster is one lobster. A meal of crawfish contains several dozen. Because they are smaller, the meat in the claws – let alone the legs – is of little consequence. The tail's the thing. But crawfish, unlike lobster, don't have a carapace anywhere near big enough to poke your finger through. When I attended Crawfish College and the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, the first thing I had to learn about crawfish was how to get at those tails so I didn't go hungry. Fortunately, there's a time-honored technique that also yields a nice clean tail without the animal's alimentary tract. Start by grasping the...Read More