Eatdrink Waterloo & Wellington #2 August/September 2018
Local food and drink magazine serving Waterloo Region and Wellington County.
Local food and drink magazine serving Waterloo Region and Wellington County.
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42 |<strong>August</strong>/<strong>September</strong> <strong>2018</strong><br />
eatdrink.ca |@eatdrinkmag<br />
Recipes<br />
Firehouse Chef<br />
Recipes from Canada’s Firefighters<br />
By Patrick Mathieu<br />
Review and Recipe Selections by TRACY TURLIN<br />
Patrick Mathieu is a Quebec native who<br />
was influenced by his grandmother<br />
to learn to cook at the age of 16.<br />
A few years later he was inspired<br />
by his grandfather and uncles to become a<br />
firefighter. Sixteen years on, Mathieu now<br />
works for the <strong>Waterloo</strong> Fire Department.<br />
He and his wife Andrea Lauren own Station<br />
House Catering and Private Chef Services.<br />
He’s a food columnist for Firefighting in<br />
Canada magazine and was a contestant on<br />
Season 2 of Food Network Canada’s Chopped<br />
Canada. Somewhere in there he found time to<br />
write a cookbook: Firehouse Chef: Recipes from<br />
Canada’s Firefighters (Whitecap Books, 2016).<br />
According to the author, rookies are given<br />
the following choices in the firehouse kitchen:<br />
cook for a bunch of hungry firefighters, or<br />
clean up after them. For Mathieu the decision<br />
was easy. He developed his firefighting/<br />
life-saving skills, balanced that out with his<br />
culinary skills, and found he loved them both.<br />
Firehouse Chef was more than the meat and<br />
potatoes fare I was expecting. These men and<br />
women seem to love their food spicy. I was also<br />
surprised at the number of desserts on offer.<br />
Mathieu gives us 90 of his own recipes, ranging<br />
from classic French Canadian dishes to Italian<br />
and Mexican favourites. He and his wife honeymooned<br />
in Thailand, and their love for the<br />
beautiful flavours of that country<br />
are apparent in this book. Fifty<br />
further recipes are contributions<br />
from other firehouse cooks across<br />
Canada, including a number from<br />
Southwestern Ontario. If you<br />
know any firefighters, you’ll definitely<br />
want to check this out to<br />
see if they have a recipe included.<br />
I never really get tired of fresh<br />
Ontario corn with a simple butter/salt/pepper<br />
treatment, but<br />
Mexican Grilled Corn<br />
is a decadent alternative<br />
and sure to<br />
impress at your next<br />
cookout. A beautiful<br />
balance of sweet<br />
corn, salty cheese<br />
and tangy lime,<br />
these are only<br />
made better by<br />
being incredibly<br />
messy. The perfect<br />
summer food<br />
made for sharing with a crowd.<br />
If you like the camping vibe without the<br />
wood smoke and mosquitoes, try a slightly<br />
more upscale version of the campfire<br />
classic, S’mores Sundae. It’s a great way to<br />
enjoy the flavours of childhood memories<br />
without dropping marshmallows in the fire.<br />
(Does anyone else like them charred on the<br />
outside? Tasty, but difficult to find the sweet<br />
spot before they go nuclear.)<br />
For an easy and quick weeknight dinner<br />
in the summer, you can’t do much better<br />
than Grilled Ahi Tuna with Sicilian Salsa.<br />
The flavourful salsa can be made ahead of<br />
time and the tuna can be grilled in less than<br />
five minutes. It makes for a very light yet<br />
satisfying dinner. Salad or pasta could be<br />
served alongside, depending on<br />
your appetite.<br />
I could cook from this book<br />
all summer and never run out of<br />
recipes I want to try. I actually<br />
tried to find a recipe I didn’t like<br />
the look of and couldn’t find<br />
one. (Maybe the risotto. I don’t<br />
get risotto. Is it rice? Is it cream?<br />
Is it mushy, crunchy?) What was<br />
Author Patrick Mathieu