It was a classy scene — champagne, orchids, candles, guitar music — and 150 hungry people.
Not a potato was in sight at the June 19 food gala to launch Saskatchewan Bounty, a co-operative effort of 15 Saskatchewan groups including commodity groups for beef, sheep, pork, turkey, canola, flax, pulses and herbs and spices, plus tourism and government agriculture groups.
It was set up to promote the province’s culture and cuisine through free recipes on a website and at travel centres, a monthly newspaper column featuring dishes from rural restaurants, and the gala evening.
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The night featured a competition between five chefs who led teams of producers and media representatives that prepared provincial cuisine.
A professional panel awarded first place to the team led by Derek Cotton, chef at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan.
His meal started with an appetizer of pickerel fillet with wild rice mousse nestled on sweet potato frits with roasted yellow pepper and tarragon butter sauce and chive oil.
The main dish was flax crusted pork tenderloin accompanied by sage-infused saskatoon berry port reduction with wild mushroom barley ragout and summer vegetables.
Dessert was a spiced raspberry and rhubarb cobbler with pear sorbet and oatmeal crisp, mint, citrus salad and carmel, peach and white chocolate sauces.
Assisting the winning chef was The Western Producer’s Team columnist Betty Ann Deobald, who said she had “never made bread that way” — with the dough spiralled around rosemary sprigs.
Also on the team was Big Sky Farms pork producer Cliff Ehr of Humboldt. He said the cooking experience gave him an appreciation of what goes on in restaurant kitchens.
Ehr said pork is not usually a high-end type of meal, but that his is a growth industry as long as people understand the benefits of hog farms.
The peoples’ choice winner also came from the U of S — Shona Pearson of the faculty club.
Her appetizer was Saskatchewan breads, grilled asparagus and candied steelhead with creamy vinaigrette. Her main course was ribeye steak on purees of baby peas, lentils and chickpeas with heirloom tomatoes and red wine reduction. The dessert was a lemon thyme pavlova with raspberries, blueberries and saskatoon berries.
Bob Linnell, a flax grower from Weyburn who was on the team that cooked lamb, said they had fun and worked well together with “no food fights.” He did some of the meat preparation, peeled carrots, assisted with the white chocolate dessert and helped clean up.
His crop is one that people “haven’t had much experience with,” he said, but it has health benefits in terms of fibre and reducing cholesterol. Recent studies found that flax can help reduce shipping fever in feedlot cattle.
Guest speaker Judy Schultz, who writes for the Edmonton Journal newspaper, urged the audience to continue promoting prairie food. She said a Conference Board of Canada survey found that tourists want to shop and be entertained, but above all, they want to eat.
Schultz’s four commandments of prairie cuisine are: you must eat meat; on special occasions such as Christmas, weddings and fowl suppers, you can eat birds; you will eat pie; and you will clean up your plate because there are children starving in China who would eat up that pie.
In amusing additions to the rules, Schultz said there is always one rhubarb pie that has no sugar in it, and anything can be tossed into a green jellied salad.
