Canada Cooks the Books - Student Culinary Competition

Every year Cuisine Canada, in conjunction with the University of Guelph, hosts the Culinary Book Awards at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.  To honour the authors, the awards organizers hold a student competition where student chefs are paired with culinary book authors and prepare a dish from the nominated book.  What a delicious combination:  student chef, culinary author, tested recipe and Voila!
This year on the weekend of November 4 - 6, 2011, student chef teams from culinary schools across Ontario competed.
We are so pleased to announce that a team from Liaison College placed third in the competition.
Bryan Kenny and Patricia Penkaukas represented Liaison College and cooked a dish from Sonia Day's nominated cookbook.  Well done!!  Bravo!!

The recipe they cooked follows:

Chard à la Aldona

From Incredible Edibles by Sonia Day

Sonia Day writes: This recipe comes from Aldona Satterwaite, former editor of Canadian Gardening. She loves to cook, but like me, never measures ingredients precisely.

Ingredients

•             3 to 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

•             2 Tbsp | 25 mL canola oil

•             Big bunch of Swiss chard

•             Blue cheese – as much as you dare

•             Grape tomatoes

•             Salt to taste

•             Freshly ground black pepper

•             Pasta of choice

Directions

Prepare pasta. While pasta is cooking prepare the chard.

Finely chop the garlic. Sauté in canola oil until just tender. Do not brown.

Cut a big bunch of Swiss chard, rinse well, but do not whirl in a salad spinner. Trim off coarse ends and chop leaves and tender stems into smallish pieces  (about ½ inch | 1.25 cm). Add the chard to the pan, sauté on gentle heat, covered, until leaves are tender, stirring occasionally. About 10 minutes.

The chard leaves will yield up water, which is good, because next you will whomp in as much blue cheese as you dare. Stir it in until a yummy sauce forms and coats the garlic and chard leaves. Taste for salt.

Serve on cooked pasta with a generous grinding of black pepper and a handful of grape tomatoes and parsley (optional).