Trevor Bird, Top Chef Canada Season 2 contestant and owner and chef Fable Restaurant was at the BC Home + Garden show again Saturday last week and of course I had to go see his demo. Heehee all my friends know I like to stalk Trevor Bird. XD He taught us to make chicken stew.

He started with bacon, salt, olive oil, sweating out the bacon for about 25 mins. 


Then add in the chicken thighs seasoned with kosher salt. Add in onions, garlic, mushrooms, veal stock, which is also made at Fable. It takes two days on low heat to make the veal stock. The longer, the clearer the stock.


Add kale, sunchoke (root of a sunflower), potatoes (cooked before hand), chive and chervil (or any other herbs like basil) and flour to thicken. Other vegetables you can add in are carrots and celery.


"There is no such thing as bad food. Only food made badly". Trevor stressed the importance of three key components in any dish- salt, acid (like vinegar or lemon juice) and sweetness. In this stew - salt comes from the bacon, the acid came from some vinegar and the sweetness from the onions.



 Mmm looks delicious!

Four lucky people got to try the stew and Trevor made his way down to talk to the winners.


Then on Sunday, I made my way back to the Home + Garden Show and saw Curtis Luk's demo! He is Trevor's partner in crime and is known for his macaroons at Fable. He showed us how to make carrot cake, which they also serve at Fable!


 So the secret of his carrot cake are rum-soaked raisins! Soak raisins in rum, mixed with hot water.

Baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, brown sugar, white sugar, olive oil. Peel and grate the carrot, which can be substituted with other vegetables like zucchini.


Mix the wet and dry ingredients together, add carrots, raisins. Hand mix them all together. Fill up to 3/4th of the muffin tin.

For the frosting, mix together cream cheese (for flavour) and mascarpone cheese (Italian version of cream cheese), vanilla bean (scrape all the stuff from the inside), icing sugar (for sweetness), granulated sugar (for texture), whipping cream (for stiffness).







I got to meet Curtis Luk after the show! =D