EDMONTON – Cookbook author Giselle Courteau of Duchess Bake Shop has just been nominated for a Taste Canada award for her cookbook, Duchess Bake Shop.
For 18 years, Taste Canada has been the national award to recognize excellence in Canadian food writing. Courteau is nominated in the single subject cookbook category. Winners will be announced September 21 at the Taste Canada gala fundraiser in Toronto.
Taste Canada also nominated Edmonton’s Michelle Peters Jones for best blog in the country for her creation, The Tiffin Box, an imaginative ramble through her life as a foodie.
There will be a new driver at the truck stop when What the Truck?! visits Northlands Park (7515 118th Ave.) on Friday, July 10 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. It’s Meat Street Pies, a new venture by food industry veterans, Jonathan and Thea Avis. Check out their range of savoury pies, from traditional tourtière to more adventurous Jamaican pasties. meatstreetpies.com
The city’s McCauley Revitalization team has scored a win with its first Chinatown YEG Food Crawl, Stories Behind the Chopsticks, held in May and enthusiastically attended by a great swack of folks. Hoping to capitalize on the momentum, the team, lead by Freya Fu, is hosting another tour on Wednesday, July 15 at 6:30 p.m.
Tickets are available on Eventbrite and the tour sees food tourists visiting four Chinatown restaurants, spending about half an hour at each, for $35. This time around, King Noodle, one of the city’s best pho spots, is on the crawl, along with a number of other Chinatown gems as yet to be announced. Keep checking Facebook and Twitter for updates on the dishes and the restaurants involved. eventbrite.ca
After 10 years as executive chef, Paul Shufelt is leaving Century Hospitality Group to open his own restaurant in south Edmonton.
The Workshop Eatery is due to launch in late September at the Mosaic Centre for Conscious Community and Commerce, a new, net-zero building in Summerside at 2003 91st St. SW.
The chef, with a reputation for being both on-trend and creative, won’t be pinned down to creating a specific style of eatery. Italian? Farm-to-fork? Fusion?
“It’s going to be me, what I like to cook,” he says firmly, noting there will be a chef’s table for people who like to place themselves into the capable hands of the kitchen.
The Workshop Eatery will focus on fresh produce, some of it from a 650-square-foot garden Shufelt will plant at the front of the restaurant. Four beehives on the roof will yield fresh honey. Shufelt will concentrate on cooking from scratch, and will pickle, can, dry and cure produce and meats on-site. He’s already dreaming of a house pate complete with hand-crafted condiments.
“It won’t be a big menu, maybe 12 to 15 staples, done well,” says Shufelt, 37, noting the menu will change with the seasons and the produce available. “I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves.”
The Workshop Eatery will have 76 seats (including nine at the bar), plus a 20-seat patio. It will serve morning coffee and pastries (watch for Auntie Bonnie’s Banana Bread), as well as lunch and dinner. For updates, follow the restaurant at https://twitter.com/workshopeatery
Every year, you go to Taste of Edmonton to fill your stomach and empty your wallet. And every year, you wish you had remembered to buy food tickets in advance, thereby saving 20 per cent. Don’t make that mistake again this year. Tickets are available at a discount in advance of this wildly popular yearly festival until July 15 at Tix on the Square, TGP Goldbar, TGP Ottewell and TGP’s Warehouse Market on Yellowhead Trail, or at tasteofedm.ca.
Celiacs often find it hard to eat at public events; the risk of cross-contamination can be high. But rest assured that the fluffy pancakes, sausage patties and drinks are delicious and healthy for those with gluten allergies during the annual pancake breakfast sponsored by the Canadian Celiac Association on Saturday, July 18 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. The gathering is held outside of Kinnikinnick Foods (10940 120th St.) and costs $6 for adults and $4 for children eight and under. celiac.ca
Get Cooking’s Food Fight YEG is turning into one of the hottest tickets in town. Now, a quadruple header looms, as four of the city’s toughest chefs duke it out in the Sip ‘n Savour tent at Taste of Edmonton on Sunday, July 19. Three returning Food Fight veterans are on deck, plus there’s a wild card — the first female Food Fight YEG contestant, chef Christine Sandford.
The event is from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. but knives start flying at 8 p.m. All competing chefs get one hour to prepare three mystery ingredients. For more details, and to purchase tickets, go to http://tasteofedm.ca/sip-n-savour/edmonton-food-fight-july-19th.
NAIT summer cooking camps for adults and kids are a novel way to enjoy summer and learn some new kitchen skills. Classes for children eight to 16, called Mini Chefs, run for five days in packages available throughout July and August. Kids spend half the time in the NAIT kitchen, learning to make things they can easily replicate at home, and half the time in the institute’s recreational facilities.
For adults, the culinary boot camps at NAIT are intensely hands-on, and will leave participants feeling juiced about their work in the kitchen. This year, in addition to Pastry Boot Camp and Basic Culinary Camp, the teaching institute offers a Gourmet Boot Camp and a Cured Meats, Cheeses and Pickles Boot Camp. For details, go to nait.ca/program.
SalvagED — a pop-up lunch created from food that would otherwise be pitched — proved remarkably popular at Earth’s General Store in June. So a second outing is in the offing for Friday, July 24 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the popular organic shop at 10150 104th St. This one features Spencer Thompson of Toast Fine Catering, who will work with foods donated by local producers, turning them into something scrumptious to encourage all of us to think creatively before we pitch the contents of our fridge. egs.ca
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Servus Heritage Festival, which runs Aug. 1, 2, and 3 at Hawrelak Park. To celebrate, many of the 62 participating pavilions will offer 40-per-cent discounts on certain food items at certain times of the day. Five new countries are taking part this year — Lebanon, Haiti, Morocco, Rwanda and South Sudan. For a taste of what’s upcoming, catch CTV Morning News on Wednesdays throughout July, when countries from the festival will prepare signature dishes at about 8:15 a.m. Follow the festival on twitter.com/EdmHeritageFest, or visit the website at heritage-festival.com.
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