Iron chef serves up vegan treats 

Things get hot in the kitchen while Iron Chef Douglas McNish prepares his entry while CUTV’s Irfan Ahmed and Arien Haque record the proceedings. In the background, CSU president Amine Dabchy and President Judith Woodsworth look on. Magnifying glass

Things get hot in the kitchen while Iron Chef Douglas McNish prepares his entry while CUTV’s Irfan Ahmed and Arien Haque record the proceedings. In the background, CSU president Amine Dabchy and President Judith Woodsworth look on.

It was the TV networks that established an audience for real-time competitive cooking, not the most obvious spectator sport.

So when CSU Sustainability VP Alex Oster brought Iron Chef to campus he made sure that CUTV streamed the activity in the 7th floor kitchen live to an audience eager to watch how home team Cameron Fenton and Mathew Baron would fare against the Iron Chef Douglas McNish of Toronto’s Raw Aura Restaurant.

Some of the servings from the Vegan Iron Chef inaugural event. Magnifying glass

Some of the servings from the Vegan Iron Chef inaugural event.

“We wanted to showcase a culture of food that does not involve meat or animal products,” said Oster. The event reinforced the CSU’s recent adoption of a policy to make sure that all sponsored events offer animal-free dietary choices.

He also threw in a different twist, Oster used the event to cap Green Month and made it all vegan. In fact, the chefs making gold out of sweet potatoes were the (dairy-free) icing on the cake. Students were invited to meet with a number of representatives of vegan and raw-food student associations, restaurants and caterers in an information fair before the final judging took place.

Staff from Crudessence chat with guest judge Georges Laraque while the chefs prepare their meals. Magnifying glass

Staff from Crudessence chat with guest judge Georges Laraque while the chefs prepare their meals.

President Judith Woodsworth was among the dignitaries on-hand to judge the final dishes after things heated up for an hour in the kitchen. Also evaluating were raw food chef Marie-Genevičve Lamothe and outspoken vegan professional hockey player Georges Laraque.

In the end Iron Chef McNish took home the prize, but everyone left with some sweet options to answer the question: “what’s for dinner?”

 

Concordia University