Occupation: Business Owner/Certified Financial Planner
Organic coffee, home-made organic stone-ground whole wheat bread, home-made apricot jam, goat cheese [Holly’s Valencay], vegetable soup [was harvesting veg from the back yard today – leek, beet, carrot, celery, kale, baby cabbage, swiss chard], pickled carrots [from my yard], a chocolate croissant from the Dutch Delicious Bakery, 2008 Chateau Pesquié Terasses.
What do you never eat?
I’d pass on Hakarl next time, but I still ate it, so doesn’t qualify as ‘never’. I may give it another go though over overcooked/burned/dried out processed foods from M&M Meat Shop. I remember going in there years ago thinking ‘cool, a meat shop!’. Not so much.
What is your personal specialty?
Game veal & yard food. I hunt moose and elk calves that are largely milk-fed and just starting to feed on grasses – much like Nature’s Green Acres’ Nouveau Beef which I’m a huge fan of. Yard food because I love to serve menus based on fruit, veg, wild mushrooms, and wines grown & made on my central/downtown city lot.
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you will always find:
Butter, rendered pork fat, home-made jams/syrups, eggs, organic cold-pressed canola oil, various yeasts [wine and bread], play dough. There’d also be a meat of some kind, and seasonal veg and fruit. Lately it also contains a diverse collection of artisan goat cheeses.
What is your weekday meal standby?
I don’t have one. Because I work from home, anything is fair game, any day of the week.
What is your favourite kitchen item?
A sharp knife. I avoid kitchen gadgets something fierce.
World ends tomorrow. Describe your last meal.
I’d start by doing a tasting of every bottle in my wine cellar, then base a menu around the wines. I’d also want to tie into the two large wheels of goat cheese in my cellar. With some good saucisson sec, rustic bread, fresh fruit and simply prepared veg – I’d be pretty happy. Until I got to the heavier reds – in which case I’d likely be motivated to do some herbed-up long-and-slow rotisserie meats over a wood fire. I’d pass on dessert and have more wine instead.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
For the once every month or two that we do, it would roughly be a tie: Leon’s Wonton & Noodle, and the Than Than [on 101st St]. I tend to value DIY, and eating out is rather DNY [Do Nothing Yourself], so eating out and I don’t get along very well most of the time.
Where’s the best place to eat in Edmonton?
In one’s kitchen.
If you weren’t limited by geography, where and what would you eat?
I used to think geography was a barrier to my culinary happiness – but don’t feel that way anymore. It took me 10 years of traveling and cooking in foreign countries to figure that out.
So I’m going to go with: at home, braised beef shoulder, mashed French fingerling potatoes w lots of chevre and butter, and a nice bottle of right-bank Bordeaux. Yum.
Check out Kevin’s blog here, but in particular, make sure to check out his fantastic From Local Farms series of videos.
Only Here for the Food 