Cooking Chicken @ Quince

On Tuesday, I went to a food bloggers meetup put together by the Chicken Farmers of Canada at Quince in Kitsilano.

The evening wasn't all marketing, as I had feared. There were a couple of reps from the organization, Marty and Carol, who were available to answer questions and generally co-ordinating the evening, and one of the attendees was in fact a chicken farmer, so we had good representation from the chicken folks. The first part of the evening was wine and canapes while we introduced ourselves to each other, and got to meet some of Vancouver's other food bloggers.

The rest of the evening was in fact a cooking class, including a demo from Quince owner/chef (and former Dubrulle instructor) Andrea Jefferson, who had a terrific teaching style, by the way (and offers classes at Quince), and then we were broken up into small groups to practice the recipes we had just seen demonstrated.

In an extraordinary failure as a food blogger, I did not remember to bring my camera. D'oh! However, my excellent teammate Marianne, from French Fries to Flax Seeds has done a heroic job of documenting the evening, so I refer you to her photo-rich post here. This is an epic cheat for me, since we worked in the same group to make the mushroom risotto and pan-seared chicken breast. You can even see my hands in a couple of photos - salting/stirring the diced mushrooms, and slicing the chicken breast for the plating. Our other teammates were Tana from Cheap Appetite and Kevin from 604 Foodtography.

The veggies, oven-seared zucchini and red bell peppers, were supplied by Quince staff, working hard around us to keep everything moving smoothly, and the pomegranate-duck reduction was prepared in advance and dispensed carefully on each finished plate by the chef.

So, I met quite a few new people, who will hopefully be familiar faces at any future food blogger event, and some new blogs (including Buttercream Barbie, Van Foodies, and Real Food Made Easy) to check out. All this, and a belly full of chicken and risotto, all courtesy the Chicken Farmers of Canada and Quince. Thanks for the invite!