The lodge’s credentials are impeccably green—solar power, natural construction materials, gray water irrigation, natural dyes in upholstery fabrics and carpeting. The place is furnished throughout with log and twig furniture and detailing that invokes distinctive Acadian motifs. Chef and owner Charles Leary and his partners, Daniel Abel and Vaughn Perret, are all Louisiana émigrés. They founded this resort-cum-culinary school to reconnect with their home state’s Cajun roots. Cajun (a corrupted pronunciation of “Acadian”) culture first reached this continent in Nova Scotia, and was all but obliterated by British edict in the 18th Century. It later resurfaced and thrived in the land of the bayous. Here in the Toby, the lodge’s Cajun revival theme infuses the cooking styles taught in Trout Point’s classroom kitchens.
Cajun and Creole cooking, says Leary, “represent the philosophy of simple techniques. They’re the ideal styles for introducing students to culinary arts.” Trout Point’s popular Seafood Cookery programs stress these techniques. One student, an experienced cook, recalled that one of the most useful skills she took away from Trout Point was, at long last, the proper technique for slicing an onion into many uniform pieces. She also took away a lot more: the skills to find and identify unique wild foods native to the adjacent forest, and to cook with them as well as vegetables and herbs gathered from gardens just outside Lodge’s kitchen door. The "seasonal wild delicacies,” as Leary calls them, are an abundant and eminently renewable woodland resource, perfect for recipes like Lime Grilled Cattail Root and Mussels Cooked in Pine Needles. Student chefs also learn to classify and work with the local wild mushrooms. One of the treasured ingredients of French-inspired cuisine is the Black Trumpet Mushroom, and Leary features it in one of the lodge’s classic soup recipes, “a treat,” he writes in his Trout Point Lodge Cookbook, “after coming in from a blustery fall day of picking wild edibles.”
Perhaps the school’s most profound teaching is the sustainable use of seafood. Fish and shellfish appear in profusion on this gusty stretch of Atlantic coastline, but, like everywhere, they are endangered by manmade stresses: climate change, pollution and overfishing. Looking for a culinary vacation to improve her “lame” skills in fish preparation, MacKinnon selected Trout Point on this basis alone. “I started to feel guilty about my shopping habits and wanted to learn more.” Trout Point’s seafood cookery classes target the techniques for locating farmed, responsibly caught seafood and handling and storing it in the kitchen. The chefs buy only from qualified local fishermen—those who offer harpooned swordfish rather than longline captured, and farmed mussels and oysters raised in unpolluted waters. “These guys really walk the talk,” praised a recent student, returning from a field trip to view oyster beds along the Tusket River. “And not only with the seafood. They make their own cheese, their landscaping is edible and renewable and they realize that a lot of us care about all this as deeply as they do.”
Want to Go?
Trout Point Lodge
www.troutpoint.com/FrameSet4.html
Kemptville, Nova Scotia
902-482-8360
Cost: Rates start at $700 per person, including two nights’ double occupancy.
Recommended: Popular weekend instructional packages include Seafood Cooking, Mediterranean Cuisine, or Cheeses and Cheesemaking, all with hands-on kitchen sessions, local fieldtrips and foraging.
Sustainable in San Francisco
In a luxury hotel at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, renowned chef and culinary educator Kelsie Kerr unites students with the fundamentals of sustainable cooking practices. The San Francisco Bay Area is dense with small organic farms, artisan producers and neighborhood farmers’ markets, all forming the basis of Kerr’s diverse hands-on teaching programs. In mostly three- and four-hour sessions in Cavallo Point's roomy, fully stocked classroom kitchen, students learn a gamut of skills from basic knife techniques to cheese making and fish cookery. The elegant but environmentally responsible lodge and restaurant--landmark buildings restored from a century-old army post--make the Cavallo Point Cooking School a stylish, top-shelf weekend get-away for sustainable gastronomy.
Cavallo Point Cooking School
Cavallo Point Lodge
Sausalito, CA
415-339-4799
www.cavallopoint.com/cooking_school.php
Subscription Center
See what we're tweeting about
5 Comments
Add CommentAnother local twist is mushroom foraging and cooking. Relish Culinary Adventures in Healdsburg, Calfornia, offers classes with mushroom experts and chefs thru the fall and winter. relishculinary.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI grow much of my own food, and my neighbors and I trade abundantly. But I think I have a problem with white urban tourists going to tropical forests and eating the natives' livelihood. Just another way for someone to make money. I think ecotourism sucks. Put a ton of CO2 in the air and eat some indigenous food. WOW!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCome to Panama, Madden Lake, next to the PARQUE NACIONAL CHAGRES, we can go fishing bass, go harvesting our platanos (planteen) and some oranges or coconut water...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisor you may choose check our shrimps traps, and them go to harvest your yuca root(mandioca relative) or maybe you will like some jungle survivor clases from our Embera native guide (same program as the early year of Apollo astronauts)
www.panamarealparadise.com mypanamatravel.com llizarraga@cableonda.net
Last March my children and I enjoyed the edible landscape tour at Playa Nicuesa, making cookies with some really odd ingredients. We fished several times with Tomas, bringing the catch back to the kitchen to be served during happy hour. My six year old son even spent time behind the bar to assist in making some really odd but amazing drinks. Just one of the many highlights from a wonderful trip. This lodge is a must!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey, just wanted to drop in a line or two to let u know that you guys can also experience something like this in a hotel nearby called Villas Corcovado. Villas Corcovado is located also in the Osa Peninsula and has beachfront villas and the most spectacular lodge environments. Check their website out at: http://www.villascorcovado.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this