Tag Archives: Mission Hill Family Estate

La Cucina Italiana II ~ A Day in Italy

So, an American expat walks into a Canadian winery where a German chef is teaching Italian cooking …

That might sound like the setup for one of those dreadful “a guy walks into a bar” jokes but it’s actually a true story, and a delectable one at that.

Earlier this Spring I attended a culinary workshop at Mission Hill Family Estate led by the always affable Chef Jan Dobbener. From Tuna Carpaccio to Polenta Cherry Cake, Chef Jan led us through a spectacular five-course meal that showcased the very best of regional Italian cooking. I didn’t think it was possible for him to surpass the wonderful recipes he demonstrated in his first Italian-themed workshop from the Winter program, La Cucina Italiana, but I was wrong.

Our Day in Italy started off with an appetizing plate of Tuna Carpaccio done two ways. First, Chef Jan demonstrated how to make aioli from egg yolks, mustard, lemon juice, grape seed oil and a whole bulb of roasted garlic. He taught us to start with a cold bowl when making aioli since it will help with the emulsification process. Once he made the aioli, he used a brush to paint a slash of it across the plate then sliced Albacore tuna very thin and arranged it over the aioli. Although the recipe called for raw tuna, he chose to use slices of raw tuna on one side of the plate and smoked tuna on the other. He then garnished the dish with toasted pine nuts, capers, lemon, arugula, shaved parmesan, celery hearts, fennel fronds, and a light dusting of fennel pollen. I enjoyed the smoked tuna more than the raw but both were delicious. After tasting this dish, I had no trouble picturing myself enjoying a chilled plate of Tuna Carpaccio on a sunny terrace in the Mediterranean.

The second recipe Chef Jan demonstrated was a hearty White Bean Soup – a tasty combination of white beans, Italian sausage, onion, carrot, leek, fennel, garlic, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, and chicken stock. He also cracked open his precious supply of saffron and added just a few threads. By weight, saffron actually costs more than gold!

For me, one of the essential components of a successful culinary workshop (especially a demonstration style workshop) is the reproducibility of the recipes. It doesn’t do me much good to learn how to make a dish that requires professional equipment or uses ingredients that aren’t readily available to the home cook (like demi-glacé). I’m happy to say that this recipe definitely passed the test! I’ve made it at home twice now – once almost exactly as written (but omitting the saffron), and the second time with turkey sausage, diced zucchini and a can of crushed tomatoes. Both versions made for a delicious, healthy, satisfying meal.

The next recipe Chef Jan demonstrated was Truffled Potato Gnocchi. This was, hands-down, the best dish of the night; comfort food taken up a notch; way up. Chef instructed us to start by baking Yukon Gold potatoes on a baking sheet that’s been sprinkled with salt. To make the gnocchi, you need a dry, fluffy potato and the salt on the tray helps to draw out some of the moisture. Cook the potatoes until they are very soft then remove them from the oven, cut them in half and leave the skins on. While the potatoes are still hot, push them through a tamis (the skins will stay behind). Wear a rubber glove to make the hot potatoes easier to handle. You could also mash them using a ricer or food mill. Add egg yolks to the mashed potatoes, then add flour, corn starch, salt, and nutmeg. Be careful not to over-mix. Flour the board lightly (as if you were feeding chickens). Place the potato mixture on the board and roll it out into long snake-like portions. Start in the middle and roll outwards. Cut into pieces, about one inch in length. Blanch the gnocchi in boiling water until they start to float. Place on a well oiled tray, then put them in the fridge to cool down. Fry them in butter and oil until golden brown. Pour off any excess butter and oil, then add heavy cream. Serve with chopped chives, truffle oil, and if you can get your hands on one, fresh summer truffle.

Once we had finished swooning over the gnocchi, Chef Jan invited us into the kitchen to have a look around.

You too can have a stove like this beauty – for a mere $100,000!

Oh my. Did we really drink all that?

After the break, we learned how to make Chicken Puttanesca – tender chicken thighs smothered in a classic spicy, tangy sauce. Along with the chicken, Chef Jan demonstrated how to make olive tapenade and shaved fennel salad. Did you know that puttanesca comes from the phrase “like a prostitute”? Presumably because its quick and easy.

Last but not least, we learned how to make a Polenta Cherry Cake with Mascarpone frosting, toasted pistachios and Oculus cherries, served with a side of preserved lemon sorbet. I bet you’re wondering where the photo is. Well, I suppose I should apologize. In my haste to taste, I completely forgot to take a picture. My bad…

The Urban Dictionary defines My bad as:

“I did something bad, and I recognize that I did something bad, but there is nothing that can be done for it now, and there is technically no reason to apologize for that error, so let’s just assume that I won’t do it again, get over it, and move on with our lives.”

So yes, I forgot to take a picture of this divine dessert. And if you’re paying attention, you might have noticed that the same thing happened with the Tuna Carpaccio. My bad…

I hope Chef Jan is hard at work writing recipes for La Cucina Italiana III because this American expat just can’t seem to get enough of the tasty Italian cuisine this German chef delivers.

La Cucina Italiana

Mission Hill Family Estate
1730 Mission Hill Road
West Kelowna, Okanagan Valley
British Columbia, Canada  V4T 2E4

The Dynamics of Wine and Food
Culinary Classics - Spring Program ~ La Cucina Italiana II
Date:  March 15, 2012
Cost:  $79.00 CDN
Style:  Demonstration, Dinner with Wine Pairing
Duration:  3 hours
Chef Instructor:  Jan Dobbener
Highlights:  The Truffled Potato Gnocchi
Improvement Opportunities: A seating plan that is more friendly
to solo participants. If there are an odd number of people in the
class, the extra place is always set in the last row. Twice now
I've been asked to move to the back of the room so that couples
that arrived later could sit together.

A Tribute to Julia Child

21 Replies

During her lifetime, Julia Child starred in thirteen different television series, authored seventeen cookbooks and painstakingly developed thousands of recipes. In fact, in just a single cookbook (the hugely successful Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Vol.1), there are 524 recipes! What a daunting task it must have been then for Mission Hill Family Estate Executive Winery Chef Matthew Batey to select just five recipes to represent The Best of Julia Child but last month he did just that and, with some help from Terrace Restaurant Chef Chris Stewart, presented a wonderful tribute to one of the world’s most beloved chefs.

Chef Matthew Batey giving a cooking demonstration at Mission Hill Winery

Chef Matthew Batey giving a cooking demonstration at Mission Hill Family Estate in 2012.

Selecting just five of Julia’s recipes to present during the workshop wasn’t the only challenge Chef Batey faced. He also had the difficult task of staying true to the original recipe while still putting a bit of his own culinary magic on the plate.

The first dish Chef demonstrated was the classic fish soup Bouillabaisse. He started by preparing a traditional Provençal soup base but deviated just a bit by adding a healthy cupful of Mission Hill Family Estate Sauvignon Blanc (remember Mission Hill is a winery first). He also omitted the black pepper. Chef Batey explained that he doesn’t cook with black pepper very often since it tends to have a negative effect on the taste of the wines – especially the reds. Once the base was ready, he added clams and mussels to the pot to cook, then spooned raw tuna and scallops into each serving bowl. I admit this made me a little nervous but I need not have worried. The delicate seafood was actually cooked to perfection when Chef Batey ladled the boiling hot broth into the bowl. He finished the dish with croutons, chopped parsley and a generous drizzle of citrus olive oil. The flavour was very light, bright and, well, citrus-y.

The second dish Chef Batey demonstrated was a Mushroom Crêpe with Sauce Mornay, following Julia’s master crêpe recipe. He shared a few tips for making crêpes:

Always let the batter rest for about an hour in the refrigerator before cooking the crêpes.
The first few crêpes are for the garbage bin.
Flip the crêpes with your fingertips, gently and slowly, lifting them up bit by bit.

Once cooked, he filled the crêpes with a luscious mushroom duxelle, smothered them in a rich and creamy Mornay sauce and then put them in the oven to gratinée. This was my favourite dish of the evening. I wanted to pick up my plate and lick all that cheesy goodness off of it, but I managed to restrain myself.

Next up was a dish I’d been dreading – Timbale of Spinach and Chicken Liver, or as Chef Batey called it - Pâté 101. A timbale is a moulded custard. It’s also a shape, similar to a thimble or a shot glass. Chef Batey was true to Julia’s Chicken Liver Timbale recipe only altering it by adding some spinach, but his plating was a different story. By garnishing the timbale with paper-thin, Pinot noir-pickled beets, reducing the pickling liquid to create a thick glaze, and adding a quenelle of beet sorbet, he took an otherwise old-fashioned stodgy dish and turned it into a modern masterpiece.

I really didn’t expect to like the timbale, especially after seeing the chicken livers soaking in milk that had turned a very suspicious looking pink, but I kept an open mind. The pâté was creamy and rich and very tasty spread on the toasted brioche, and the beet sorbet was a culinary revelation.

The fourth dish that Chef Batey demonstrated was Roasted Goose with Apple Stuffing. Let me start by saying cooking a goose is no small task. First you need to make the prune and apple stuffing. Next, you peel and cut onion, celery, carrots and apples and layer them in the bottom of a roasting tray. Then wash, trim, season, stuff and truss the bird (and be sure to save the goose fat that you remove from inside the neck so you can use it to make delicious goose fat potatoes). Place the bird on top of the veggies in the roasting tray and put it in the oven. Cooking time for a 10 to 12 pound bird is about 4 ½ hours. During that time, you’ll need to adjust the cooking temperature several times and baste the goose with its own fat. In the meantime, you’ll need to make a stock for the gravy. Once the goose comes out of the oven, let it rest for half an hour while you use the stock to make the sauce. Remove the stuffing, carve the goose and serve.

Frankly, I didn’t enjoy this dish enough to make me want to try it at home. The crispy skin was delicious, as was the applesauce-thickened gravy, but the bird itself was just not that special. The beautiful pelican plates that Chef Batey chose to serve the goose, however, were absolutely gorgeous!

The last dish of the night was Cold Pumpkin Soufflé, a light fluffy cloud of a dessert flavoured with pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, dark rum, vanilla extract and ginger marmalade, and topped with a fan of preserved pear slices. Chef Batey shared some general pointers for making a great soufflé:

Butter and flour the ramekins then put them in the refrigerator for 10 minutes to let the butter firm up.
Fill the ramekins with the soufflé batter then run your thumb around the inside edge to help the soufflé rise.
For a cold soufflé, make a collar out of parchment paper then over-fill the ramekins to mimic the rise of a classic baked soufflé.

The pumpkin soufflé paired with a 2009 Reserve Vidal Icewine was the perfect end to an enchanting evening. Chef Batey struck just the right balance between Julia Child’s classic French cooking and his own fresh, modern cuisine. Throughout the night he displayed an obvious affection and respect for this magnificent woman as he educated, entertained, and fed some of her biggest fans.

“Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.” ~Julia Child

I couldn’t have said it better myself Julia.

Mission Hill Family Estate
1730 Mission Hill Road
West Kelowna, Okanagan Valley
British Columbia, Canada  V4T 2E4

The Dynamics of Wine and Food
Culinary Classics - Winter Program ~ The Best of Julia Child
Date: February 7, 2012
Cost: $79.00 CDN
Style: Demonstration, Dinner with Wine Pairing
Duration: 3 hours
Chef Instructor:  Matthew Batey (assisted by Chris Stewart)
Highlights: Seeing how skillfully Chef Batey combined classic 
technique with contemporary presentation.

†DISCLOSURE: This post includes Amazon affiliate links and I receive a tiny commission on any sales they may generate.

La Cucina Italiana

11 Replies

It’s not an easy task to teach yourself to be a great cook. You can follow a recipe, master a technique, and watch all the Food Network programming in the world, but if you’ve never tasted a perfectly cooked version of the dish you’re attempting to cook, you’ll never really know if you’ve got it right.

Developing your palate is such a vital part of culinary training that it’s built into the curriculum at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Students there attend demonstration classes in the morning where they watch the teaching chef’s techniques in detail. The demonstrations then end with a tasting. In the afternoon, the students must recreate the recipes from the morning’s demonstration, with only their notes and their palates to guide them. Culinary expert and cookbook author James Beard referred to this process as creating taste memory. According to Beard, you can commit a taste to memory by focusing on the flavour, seasonings and textures as a guide for how foods should taste.

Culinary workshops at Mission Hills Family Estate loosely follow this same premise. Home cooks and food enthusiasts watch while a skilled chef prepares gourmet cuisine in a beautiful theatre style kitchen. The chef prepares several different dishes, all the while sharing culinary tips and secrets. Each guest receives a recipe packet so they can follow along and make notes if they like. Each finished dish is expertly paired with an appropriate Mission Hill Wine and then served to the guests for tasting. At the end of the evening, guests have a recipe booklet, any notes they may have made, and their own taste memory to guide them if they choose to recreate any of the dishes at home.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the class La Cucina Italiana taught by Chef Jan Dobbener. This was my sixth workshop at Mission Hills and one of my favourites. Although the class was full, it still had a relaxed atmosphere – and AMAZING food. This was not Olive Garden Italian. In fact, there was not a single pasta dish on the menu.

The amuse-bouche, a crudo of raw tuna brined with citrus, pineapple, olive oil, and tiny pearls of agar agar and ginger, hinted at the light and flavourful food to come. (Amuse-bouche literally means an amusement for the mouth.)

For the starter, we learned how to make cornmeal crusted squid with an arugula, parmesan and pine nut salad. Once the squid were all cleaned and rinsed, Chef Jan cut them into thin strips, soaked the strips in buttermilk, breaded them in cornmeal, and then fried them in oil until golden brown. He gave us a great tip for testing the temperature of the oil in a shallow fry. Instead of using a thermometer, place a 1-inch potato cube in the centre of the pan. As soon as the potato starts to float and turn brown, you know the oil is the right temperature for frying the squid.

Next up was The Mother of all Pizza – Margherita. Although the only toppings were tomato sauce, bocconcini and fresh basil leaves, it was anything but minimalist when it came to flavour. The pizza skin had a wonderful char from being fired in the brick pizza oven and the tomato sauce was sweet with a hint of maple syrup.

Once we’d enjoyed the pizza, Chef Jan demonstrated a preserved lemon and artichoke risotto – an interesting flavour combination that I really enjoyed.

At this point we took a break and Chef Jan invited us into the kitchen to have a look around. What a dream it would be to cook in a kitchen like that!

After the break, Chef taught us how to make Vitello Tonnato with olive tapenade. When I looked over the recipe I didn’t think it sounded like a dish I was going to enjoy. I was even more skeptical when the server placed the plate in front of me. Chef Jan prepared the dish by searing the veal, then poaching it in olive oil. He plated it on top of a sauce made from poached tuna, aioli, lemon and cream, then garnished it with capers and shaved fennel. On the side, he plated a tapenade made from olives, garlic, anchovies, shallots, thyme, rosemary, more capers and more lemon. Much to my surprise, this was delicious! The veal was crushingly tender and perfectly rare, and the creamy tuna sauce tasted almost like hummus. While not the prettiest, it was definitely the tastiest dish of the night!

We finished the evening with a simple version of tiramisu topped with Okanagan cherries, and paired with what I like to think of as the nectar of the gods – Vidal Icewine.

On the drive home after class I thought about all the new taste memories the La Cucina Italiana workshop had helped me to create, including my very first tastes of raw tuna, agar agar, squid, preserved lemon and tuna tonnato. I also couldn’t help thinking about how much tighter my belt felt around my waist. Then another bit of wisdom from James Beard came to mind:

“A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.”

Mission Hill Family Estate
1730 Mission Hill Road
West Kelowna, Okanagan Valley
British Columbia, Canada  V4T 2E4

The Dynamics of Wine and Food
Culinary Classics - Fall Program ~ La Cucina Italiana
Date:  November 24, 2011
Cost:  $79.00 CDN
Style:  Demonstration, Dinner with Wine Pairing
Duration:  3 hours
Chef Instructor:  Jan Dobbener
Highlights:  Fabulous food and likeable, light-hearted chef