GALLERY: Canoe Wild, a showcase of Société-Orignal’s weird and wonderful ingredients
GALLERY: Canoe Wild, a showcase of Société-Orignal’s weird and wonderful ingredients
Great food starts with great ingredients, and for the past year, many of the more unusual ones have reached Toronto kitchens by way of Société-Orignal, a Quebec business that specializes in turning the raw materials of the province’s boreal region—harvested by small family farms and foragers—into unusual culinary products. Canoe’s corporate executive chef Anthony Walsh and chef de cuisine John Horne have been great supporters (and patrons) of the company’s output, and on Saturday they hosted Canoe Wild, a one-off collaborative dinner to showcase some of their favourites. Société-Orignal founder and partner Alex Cruz and sales rep Vanessa Niewerth were on hand to decode the wide array of wild flavours represented in the tasting menu, which included everything from boar and hare to cow’s parsnip and the much-buzzed-about l’effet papillon (raw Laurentian honeydew). Check out our slideshow for a guide to some of these unusual pantry items as well as the dishes the Canoe team created to feature them »
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- The evening’s menu signed by Cruz, Horne, Walsh and sommelier Will Predhomme
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- Mignardise: a small choux puff filled with a loose goat’s milk dulce de leche closed the meal
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- Niagara apple mousse pie: roasted apple pecan hash, Balconville cider vinegar and cheddar ice cream over pie crumb<br /><br /> Wine pairing: De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon
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- Balconville: apple cider vinegar, a rich, syrupy vinegar reduced from late wild apples that have been barrel-fermented. There are three distinct tastes in this vinegar: sweet, tannic and acidic. Almost all the restaurants working with Société-Orignal (e.g. Acadia, Buca, Chantecler, Ortolan, Parts and Labour, Splendido and Yours Truly) employ this product<br />
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- Balconville: apple cider vinegar, a rich, syrupy vinegar reduced from late wild apples that have been barrel-fermented. There are three distinct tastes in this vinegar: sweet, tannic and acidic. Almost all the restaurants working with Société-Orignal (e.g. Acadia, Buca, Chantecler, Ortolan, Parts and Labour, Splendido and Yours Truly) employ this product
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- Canadian cheese and honey pairings with charred cattail-flour bannock, including a washed-rind, semi-soft Mont Jacob, a 10-year-aged cheddar and a pungent, non-pasteurized bleu d’Élizabeth<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Domaine de Juchepie Coteaux du Layon
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- Cruz explaining the “milking” courtship that happens between sugar-hungry ants and sap-filled aphids to produce the Laurentian honeydew
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- L’effet papillon is raw Laurentian honeydew made from tree sap that’s been gathered and transformed by aphids, milked by ants and then foraged by bees. This unique Société-Orignal product has won over many palates in Toronto’s kitchens with its clean, dark-butterscotch complexity<br />
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- Classe ouvrière: seashore honey is a thick-whipped, non-pasteurized, creamed white honey that has a marshmallow fluff-like texture. The honey is produced from the summer pollen of plants in the Gaspé region and has a sweet floral flavour
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- Classe ouvrière: seashore honey is a thick-whipped, non-pasteurized, creamed white honey that has a marshmallow fluff-like texture. The honey is produced from the summer pollen of plants in the Gaspé region and has a sweet floral flavour
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- Wild duck breast smoked with café de fleur, Société-Orignal’s mild scented wild herbal tea, and served with rustic autumn rye berries that have a benzaldehyde aroma (think fruit pits) and finished with seared foie gras and meaty sautéed northern woods mushrooms<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Pavelot Premier Cru Savigny-les-Beaune
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- Aulne crispé: green alder. The catkins (flowers) of these small trees are harvested for their mustard and conifer aromas. This was used to dust the venison course. It’s also used by Rob Gentile at Buca
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- Myrica gale–roasted bison with horseradish spaghetti squash, green tomato chutney and potato croquette with a shattering camelina crust and aromatic camelina oil finish<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Mas Foulaquier Pic Saint-Loup L’Orphée
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- Intermezzo: wintergreen and cedar granité. This simple palate cleanser was served on an iced doughnut
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- Balsam fir’s strong cotton-candy aroma mellows out with cooking. Cruz tells us that the cut cones from these trees make a great flavour for ice cream and also stain the base pink
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- A trio of intensely flavoured tortellini floating in a sweet onion-matsutake consommé with sweet fern (comptonie voyageuse) croutons. The filling was composed of hare folded into umami-rich whipped liver<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Señorio de P. Peciña Crianza
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- Al dente cauliflower risotto, topped with lobster and creamy sweetbread nuggets with a crisp camelina seed crust<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Domaine Jaeger-Defaix Premiere Cru Rully
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- Graines de cameline: camelina seeds, which are fine like cornmeal and provide a rich source of Omega-3 fatty acids<br />
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- Qualicum Beach scallop ceviche with sea urchin bottarga, apple cider seaweed and clay pepper dust. Deep and briny slices of sea urchin bottarga were shaved tableside over this course, which featured a light apple remoulade topped with dulse seaweed that had been compressed with apple cider (both Société-Orignal products) and cool and creamy scallops. The plate was finished with thinly sliced apples and a light foam made from the cider-seaweed soaking liquid <br /><br /> Wine pairing: Santiago Ruiz albariño
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- Piment d’argile: clay pepper (made from the tiny pinecone-like fruits in the jar on the left) is an air-dried product that’s smoky with a sweet finish
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- Mine de rien: North Coast sea urchin bottarga. A dried, cured stick of urchin gonads that have been inoculated with fermentation enzymes from sea lime grass that’s full of briny umami flavours
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- Wild boar charcuterie with pickled black field mustard seeds and preserved juniper berries. Ribbons of prosciutto cotto, maple-glazed jowl and terrine were paired with Société-Orignal’s wild field mustard seeds and chasse-gardée (immature juniper berries), a popular brined and vinegar-aged ingredient sourced by many of the city’s restaurants<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Leitz Rüdesheimer riesling
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- Moutardes de champs: wild field mustard seeds. These crunchy black seeds are hand-sorted according to their differing olfactory intensities. Rob Gentile at Buca also uses these<br />
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- Amuse bouche: Colville Bay oyster carpetbagger, a spin on a popular luxury dish from the ’50s and ’60s in which oysters are stuffed and cooked inside a piece of Scotch fillet steak<br /><br /> Wine pairing: Gaston Chiquet champagne<br />
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- Diners were served still water called De L’Aubier (translated: “from the sap ring”), a naturally filtered water that’s the by-product of maple syrup production after the sugars are extracted from the sap. The sugar-free, premium water recently won the Best Water title at the Global Bottled Water Congress
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- The meal started with a basket of O&B artisan red fife sourdough served with a spread made of puréed caramelized onion and chickpeas
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- Unassuming sea lovage seeds have pungent parsley flavours
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- Dried cow’s parsnip, which has a sweet anise-like flavour and is generally infused into foods, like the evening’s sheep’s milk mousse appetizer. Ted Corrado, formerly of C5, is said to be a fan of these
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- Remonte-Pente: maple syrup made with end-of-season sap from a small lot of maple trees in the Frost Village of the Estrie region. The golden product doesn’t contain any synthetic additives, and isn’t aged in oak barrels like many syrups. This was used to finish the torched ivory salmon course
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- The collaborative menu featuring Société-Orignal’s moose mascot
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- Canoe’s Anthony Walsh and John Horne with Société-Orignal’s Alex Cruz and Vanessa Niewerth<br />
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- Chef de cuisine John Horne inspects the first plates before they are sent out to the guests<br />
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- Seung Wook, a Canoe cook, takes a moment before service to smile for the camera
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- The line of Société-Orignal products featured on the Canoe Wild menu. While many of the city’s top restaurants—Acadia, Buca, Chantecler, Ortolan, Parts and Labour, Splendido, Yours Truly—use the small Quebec-based company’s products, Canoe sources the most
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- Rumour had it that Cruz was having a bad hair day, so he decided to distract everyone from that fact by donning a couple of wigs during the event
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- Alex Cruz, former managing partner and sommelier at the now-shuttered DNA Restaurant in Montreal, on how the Société-Orignal product line was developed: “It’s based out of curiosity; you talk with someone who talks about something his grandfather used to have. You just talk and exchange information. We work with a very dedicated forager, Gerard Mathar from Gaspésie Sauvage, who’s very knowledgeable. We start to work with one item and then once we know it well, we move on to the next. You start slowly and go forward”
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- The crew at Canoe’s kitchen pass before the launch of the event, which drew 120 guests
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- The display on Canoe’s hostess stand at the 54th floor was suitably wild
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- At the main floor of the TD Bank Tower
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![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/food/canoe-wild/&title=GALLERY: Canoe Wild, a showcase of Société-Orignal’s weird and wonderful ingredients&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/nov12-canoe-wild-intro-624x418.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_179146" align="aligncenter" width="656"] (Image: Renée Suen)[/caption]
Great food starts with great ingredients, and for the past year, many of the more unusual ones have reached Toronto kitchens by way of Société-Orignal, a Quebec business that specializes in turning the raw materials of the province’s boreal region—harvested by small family farms and foragers—into unusual culinary products. Canoe’s corporate executive chef Anthony Walsh and chef de cuisine John Horne have been great supporters (and patrons) of the company’s output, and on Saturday they hosted Canoe Wild, a one-off collaborative dinner to showcase some of their favourites. Société-Orignal founder and partner Alex Cruz and sales rep Vanessa Niewerth were on hand to decode the wide array of wild flavours represented in the tasting menu, which included everything from boar and hare to cow’s parsnip and the much-buzzed-about l’effet papillon (raw Laurentian honeydew). Check out our slideshow for a guide to some of these unusual pantry items as well as the dishes the Canoe team created to feature them »
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Editing on the sloppy side…company is called Société-Orignal, NOT Original….read the labels on the products…study some French, whatever it takes…wine names also not properly checked…
Nice pictures, however!