This week, the Meals Community’s cooking competitors present High Chef Canada aired its first vegan episode, which challenged the present’s competing cooks to push the boundaries of their creativity. “This season, our feast will concentrate on a meals philosophy on the forefront of a number of the greatest eating places on this planet,” present host Eden Grinshpan says within the episode. “That is the High Chef Canada Vegan Feast.”
The episode was a part of the present’s tenth season, a monumental season that options cooks from throughout the nation, together with the first-ever competitor hailing from the Yukon. Within the vegan episode, the cooks have been tasked with making as many dishes as potential in half-hour. And within the elimination problem, the rivals needed to impress the judges at a vegan feast.
The visitor decide for the vegan feast elimination problem was Amanda Cohen, proprietor of New York’s Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant Filth Sweet.
For this problem, the cooks got a possibility to showcase their expertise by making a vegan feast that includes plant-based merchandise from vegan cheese brand Violife and margarine model Becel—each owned by father or mother firm Upfield. The winner was Montreal-based chef Camilo Lapointe-Nascimento together with his cucumber granita with white chocolate ganache, white chocolate crumble, and grilled cucumber.
High Chef Canada
“The chef contestants for High Chef Canada are regularly pushing boundaries with inventive dishes, and it was a thrill to look at the judges’ reactions to all of the menu objects they got here up with for this first-ever vegan feast elimination problem,” Shoshana Worth, Head of Advertising and marketing, Upfield Canada, tells VegNews. “Camilo’s cucumber granita with white chocolate ganache was so creative, and we have been delighted to see the best way Violife Unique Creamy was an integral a part of that recipe, with Becel’s plant-based butter additionally included.”
Within the episode, Lapointe-Nascimento factors out how a lot he preferred utilizing vegan cream cheese for the primary time. “To my shock, it’s precisely the identical factor,” he mentioned in regards to the Violife Unique Creamy cream cheese. “I”m actually pleased with the end result. The feel is gorgeous.”
The winner was awarded a $5,000 prize courtesy of Becel and Violife.
High Chef Canada
“The expertise we’re seeing this season of High Chef Canada is really spectacular—a testomony to the unbelievable culinary scene in Canada,” Worth says. “General, the present is a implausible approach for Canadians to acknowledge simply how versatile dairy-free merchandise from Violife and Becel are for a variety of recipes, with top-caliber chef approval.”
Vegan cooking lastly will get on mainstream exhibits
In recent times, veganism has begun permeating mainstream tv, with quite a few common cooking competitors exhibits serving to to carve out area for this animal-friendly approach of cooking and consuming.
Earlier this yr, the Meals Community’s Beat Bobby Flay made historical past with its first vegan episode wherein Tamearra Dyson (chef-owner of soul meals restaurant Souley Vegan) and Adyre Mason (chef-owner of Alabama-based The Veggie) confronted off for an opportunity to proclaim, “I beat Bobby Flay.”
After successful over the judges together with her pink potato and coconut milk étouffée within the first spherical of the competitors in opposition to Mason, Dyson confronted off in opposition to Flay in spherical two, the place they every made a plant-based burger. Finally, Flay’s smokehouse vegan burgers (topped with dairy-free cheese and oatmilk onion rings) not solely fell wanting the win however very actually fell aside. It was Dyson’s seitan-based double decker burger, served with gooey cheese and recent pickles, that formally made her the primary vegan chef to win the present.
FOX
In July, celeb chef Gordon Ramsay hosted the primary vegan cooking problem on Master Chef. In the course of the present, Ramsay—who was beforehand a staunch critic of veganism and has been seen slowly warming as much as the thought of not consuming or cooking with animals—admitted that he secretly loves vegan meals.
“In any case these years, I can lastly admit that I truly love vegan meals,” Ramsay mentioned on the present. Earlier than the chef demonstrated his beet Wellington—a vegan twist on the standard meat dish—he drove residence his level yet one more time. “It’s taken me 20 years to get thus far,” he mentioned.
Whereas many contestants on the vegan episode executed high-concept dishes that you’d anticipate finding in a fine-dining restaurant similar to beet tartare, pumpkin arancini, and risotto with tofu scallops, it was Amanda Saab’s falafel recipe that took residence the win. She gained the problem by whipping up falafel served with handmade pita, watermelon radish, micro-cilantro, tomato, and pickled pink onions.
The Meals Community’s first vegan cooking present
The Meals Community has additionally lastly launched a completely vegan cooking present. Hosted by vegan celeb Tabitha Brown, It’s CompliPlated is constructed across the premise that cooking must be inclusive of everybody on the desk.
As such, every episode options 4 cooks who’re tasked with creating plant-based dishes for celeb chef Maneet Chauhan and rotating visitor judges who’ve numerous dietary restrictions. Some ideas featured on the sequence embody a feast with Southern hospitality, gluten-free noodles, and an Instagram-worthy fruit-and-vegetable feast.
“Turning into vegan modified my life and the best way I cook dinner—and I do know people can relate to the every day problem of constructing the entire household pleased with one meal, so we determined to make a recreation of it,” Brown mentioned in a press release. “These cooks cook dinner from the center and their meals is mind-blowing—viewers are certain to have a blast and be impressed for his or her subsequent household dinner.”
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Nicole Axworthy is the Information Editor at VegNews and writer of the cookbook DIY Vegan.
