Page 27 - GBC fall 2015

MEATS AND CHEESES
From BBQ sauce to vinaigrettes, our in-house recipes are created and tested by my team and I, with everything prepared in our kitchen. By doing in-house made products it helps us reduce costs on some items, but it is mainly so we can control what goes into our finished products. There are several allergies and dietary restrictions and this allows us to deal with that, and this also allows my staff to come up with creative ideas for flavour combinations. Our biggest cost savings are our cured meats and cheeses that we receive in a cheap basic product and turn it into a gourmet product.
We also dry age our own meats such as striploin and Montreal smoked meat. We take pride in using the whole product. For example, we will take an entire pig utilizing it from head to tail starting out by breaking it down to its primal cuts. From there we brainstorm together as a team, which starts through researching how to get the “biggest bang for our buck” from the product, beginning with their back legs, turning it into prosciutto.
PHOTO: Photos by MG
The next step in this breakdown would be the loins, which would be turned into lonzino. Once we have completed those stages, we then cure the bellies for pancetta. The next step in the process of breaking down the pig would be to debone their front shoulders in order to make a dry chorizo sausage while completing the curing process by using the head for head cheese. Once this has been completed, we smoke the hocks and trotters.
After all is said and done we are then left with fresh tenderloins, and ribs. As you can see, by utilizing the pig to its fullest; we often manage to turn a $200 pig into a thousand dollars worth of product with the addition of a little skilled labour and innovation.
Two of our popular items that we find our members enjoy are smoked rainbow trout, which we receive from a Komoka trout farm in its whole form where we break down, cure, and then smoke it turningasimplefishintoapremier product from its original form. Smoked Salmon (gravd lox) is the second favourite we find the members often enjoy. We receive this in fillet form which allows us to cure with multiple flavours such as beets, horseradish, teriyaki, then traditional vodka and dill which we find to be the most popular flavours.
FOOD FROM THE COURSE
We also take pride in foraging fresh produce from the golf course. We use ramps (wild leeks) in homemade pesto; pickle our own fiddlehead for charcuterie board, and mulberries in homemade chutney. We add dandelions to our honey for a dandelion honey and spruce tips to our in-house homemade ice cream.
We also harvest and use our own raspberries, rosehip, and wild mint from the golf course into our dishes. The best thing about foraging off of the golf course is that there is something ready to be picked or harvested during the different seasons. Ramps are normally the first thing we look to harvest in the early spring, then we start to look for fiddleheads (young fern plant), spruce tips, dandelions and our wild garlic.
As the summer goes on, the berries start to appear: mulberries, raspberries and, if we can get them before the animals, even some wild strawberries. As fall comes in, we get into the black walnuts, sugar maple leafs (which are dehydrated and used as garnish), puffballs (mushrooms) and finishing the season with our honey. By preserving these products throughout the season it helps us to be able to use local products all season long and for our members to enjoy.
We also experiment with molecular gastronomy, a more modern scientific approach of cooking, which is one of the methods we turn our brown butters in to a dust, which we most often use to top our Forager Salad. This process allows us to use our good quality fats from other proteins that are normally tossed away by
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