Flavour week

It's the Montreal High Lights Festival and with that comes Flavour Week. This year the theme is North Italy and for a whole week, chefs from there will be giving demos, and offering tasting opportunities in restaurants or at Place des Arts.

Yesterday I went to a demo by Chef Graziella Battista. She has a restaurant Il Sole on St-Laurent and yesterday she was sharing two simple recipes. She made gnocci, from 1 ricotta cheese, 1 cup of flour and half a cup of grated Parmeggiano Reggiano (that's Parmesan to us) plus grated nutmeg, salt and pepper. She made a dough from the mix, rolled it out, cut strips then thumb-sized pieces. Two minutes in boiling salted water and it was ready. Then she made a "fusion" with melted butter and sage and mixed that with the fresh gnocci. It looked surprisingly simple and good! We were seated too far back to taste though.

She next made a steak from beef sirloin (which I gather can be replaced by lamb). She made 4 slits into the thickness of the meat and inserted strips of Parmesan into those, then grilled the steak on both sides. Apparently Parmesan does not melt easily and so the whole thing remained in good shape. She then made it look pretty on a white plate with mini-beetroots and baby carrots and generous lashings of olive oil.

That's my sniff of flavour week so far. I might go back during the week :)

PS: I managed to get a Pakistani anglophone friend to come with me by conveniently forgetting that it would all be in French, and I hope I made it up to her by simultranslating throughout the show!