Montreal Gazette - An urban harvest cook-off that's ripe with community spirit
It's a Thursday evening, and chefs from five local restaurants (Serafim, Lola Rosa, Crudessence, Fuchsia and Santropol Roulant) have one hour to harvest vegetables and cook a meal from the garden on McGill's downtown campus.
A panel of judges, including yours truly, will scrutinize the dishes for taste, presentation, creativity and quantity. (Too large a portion means wasted produce -a big no-no.) In addition to whatever produce the teams reap, they're allowed salt, pepper, cooking oil, one grain and one secret ingredient of their choosing.
As an added twist, specialty items like eggs, maple syrup, tahini or cheese can be won by playing Truth or Dare. The cook-off, organized by Santropol Roulant intern Maddie Ritts, is a fundraiser for the Edible Campus garden. A local non-profit, Santropol Roulant is best known for its intergenerational Meals on Wheels program.
In partnership with the social-justice organization Alternatives' Rooftop Garden Project and the McGill School of Architecture's Minimum Cost Housing Group, they've transformed this urban space into a productive garden lot through an innovative system of self-watering containers. In the summer, the garden supplies 50 per cent of the produce for Santropol Roulant's kitchen.
The previously bleak concrete around McGill's Burnside Hall now boasts a verdant quilt of beets, kale, carrots and more. Cherry tomatoes, rainbow chard and tiny purple peppers contribute bursts of colour. The garden is heavy with the scent of lemon verbena, rosemary, and pineapple sage. An archway of runner beans lends the space a fairy-tale air.
