Jun

Top Chef Canada: Taking The Challenge Home, Week Twelve

Dan

apple, bacon, baking, CHARCUT, Dan Clapson, Food Network Canada, recipes, Top Chef Canada, Trevor Bird

Well, it is almost time for this season of Top Chef Canada to come to a close. Tonight, we all will find out if Trevor, Jonathan, or Carl will take home the title of ‘Canada’s Top Chef’. It’s been great watching these three skilled gentlemen show off their chops throughout the past 13 weeks, so, regardless of who wins, it will be well-deserved.

Yet again, I’ve found myself out of town during one of my weekly Top Chef Canada dish recreation challenges. I was lucky enough to head back to Vancouver this week to attend Trevor Bird’s restaurant opening bash for Fable Kitchen. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because it was the name of his team’s one-day dining establishment during this season’s ‘Restaurant Wars’ episode.

When I popped by the event, I told Trevor I had to recreate his Apple Bacon Tart from the current episode. Not being much of a dessert-maker himself, he assured me that I would be fine baking his dish this week!

In addition to baking some apple bacon tarts this past weekend, I also signed on to cook a birthday dinner party for my friend Jillian. After coming up with a simple menu for her and some friends to enjoy, we decided that some Top Chef-inspired tarts would be the perfect way to end the evening, on a sweet note.

I’ve cooked many of my Top Chef Canada recreations for friends before, but making a dessert dish at a birthday dinner was definitely upping the ante. Jillian is not an easy lady to impress!

Now, I don’t usually cook for large groups of people and, truth be told, this group was not that large, about ten or so, so I decided to leave the dessert prep until after finishing all of the other dishes.

After three hours of cooking, some lovely conversation, and more than a few glasses of wine, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t started working on the tarts yet. It was time to pull myself together and get this job done!

Now, if we can quickly reference my macaroon disaster of week four, you’ll remember that I’m not much of a baker.

Luckily, pies and tarts are a tad more attainable, so I started off by frying the bacon until it was extra, extra crispy. Next, I sautéed the apple slices in the leftover bacon fat with some sugar, honey and a splash of juice. Threw in a few spices and, with that, the filling was done.

Easy as, well, ~~pie~~ tarts I guess…

To see the read the rest of this piece and to find out how much wine the birthday dinner guests drank, head over to FoodNetwork.ca here!