Q&A with The Kilted Chef, Alain BosSE

Alain Bossé, the Kilted Chef, and I met at the Nova Scotia South Shore Lobster Crawl in January, where I was privileged to be of the judges in a Lobster Roll Challenge, and he was the emcee. I caught up with Chef Bossé to find out how he was doing since the pandemic hit, and share his story with you.

Your heritage is French. How did you become the Kilted Chef?

I’m New Brunswick French; however, I’ve spent most of my career in Nova Scotia. The small town that I reside in, called Pictou, is the birthplace of New Scotland. In 1773, the first wave of Scottish immigrants settled this area. When my daughter was in her early teens, she was part of an all-girls pipe and drum band.

At that time, I was managing a local resort and restaurant. They approached me about doing a fundraising auction. The girls thought it would be fun if I wore a kilt along with my chef tunic. Oh, and they would pipe me into the dining room. That is how The Kilted Chef came to be. It would still be several years before it became a company and a registered trademark.

You have a custom tartan. What do the colors represent, and how does your custom tartan represent you?

Originally, when I started working as Atlantic Canada’s culinary ambassador, I’d have to wear a different kilt when representing each region, so the idea to have a tartan that I could wear

By Amy Piper

everywhere was born. Going into it, we did not realize just how intensive the process is. Each color in the tartan must have a meaning. Once we established that, the idea went before a Scottish Board, and they decided whether the tartan could be approved and registered.

In our case, the colors have a lot of meaning for me. The red represents the lobster, a commodity that I work with a lot, and the black represents mussels. The white represents the chef’s tunic. The green has two meanings. It represents agriculture and the land, but it also represents the New Brunswick forest, the place where my father made his livelihood. The blue represents the ocean and its bounty. Finally, the yellow represents the star on the Acadian flag, an important part of my heritage.

When one thinks of a chef, a restaurant chef or a personal chef comes to mind. One of your roles is Atlantic Canada’s Culinary Ambassador. What does that entail?

As Atlantic Canada’s culinary ambassador, I have the privilege of representing local producers, processors, and food artisans from a region at various platforms around the world. If a company from Nova Scotia is presenting their product to the Chinese market, they may feel that it’s beneficial to bring a chef along so that prospective clients can see how to use the product and how versatile it can be.

Being Atlantic Canada’s culinary ambassador is also my mantra. For me, it means that no matter

where I travel, I will always use local ingredients whenever possible.

I understand you love to use local ingredients. If one lives in a warm-weather climate, it’s easy to understand. But how do those of us in cold weather climates manage to use local ingredients in the winter?

I think it’s become extremely trendy to eat local. People love the idea of going to the Farmers Market and filling hemp bags with fresh produce and taking it home. Don’t get me wrong, I support this movement wholeheartedly, and I’m incredibly grateful that it has gained the popularity that has. But if you live in rural Nova Scotia and it’s February, and there’s four feet of snow on the ground, there’s not much for sale at your farmers market, and one can get quickly get tired of carrots and turnips.

At this point, you need to expand your idea of local. Perhaps you don’t have lettuce in your “backyard,” but maybe there’s a farmer at the other end of the province with a greenhouse. He’s now your local. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is; no one in my hometown is ever going to grow lemons successfully. But I can get lemons that come from the other side of the country in Vancouver. So compared to California, Vancouver is my local. I hope people embrace the idea of starting in your backyard and then expanding outward. Find the location that is closest to you and make that your local.

What new ingredient are you using?

The province recently approached me to begin an experimental project that would find a way to market green crab. Green crab is not indigenous to Nova Scotia, but the population is growing at an alarming rate. Extremely prolific, it destroys vulnerable ocean habitats. Green crab eats the plankton and seaweed that’s home too many smaller creatures. Traveling on the hulls of ships coming into our waters, it found its way to the shores of Nova Scotia. The green crab can’t be allowed to multiply however, if we’re going to ask people to go out and harvest it. There needs to be an end goal, and an incentive to do so. If we could develop a market for the green crab, it could be part of our fisheries program.

Describe two or three of the exciting food trends.

I think one of the biggest food trends that we’re seeing right now is a return to comfort food. People are seeking simplicity; I believe that over-handled dishes are slowly phasing out. As I mentioned, eating local is also trendy. However, I see this moving from the trend category into “the way of life” category, which is exciting.

How are you incorporating these trends into your cooking?

When COVID hit, we suddenly found ourselves with an awful lot of time on our hands. Most of our business involves large numbers of people gathering in one spot, and that quickly phased out. To keep ourselves occupied, we decided to do a 3 p.m. live Facebook show called The COVID Kitchen. Part of our mandate was to teach people to cook with what they had in the fridge or the pantry, without running to the grocery store for specific ingredients. That was a significant part of the pandemic management in Nova Scotia. We were encouraged to make one trip a week to the grocers.

Many people are in the habit of stopping at the market on the way home from work and picking up ingredients for that night’s supper. It was important for us to present recipes that offered multiple substitutions so you could still make the dish if you didn’t have the exact ingredient. We started with basic recipes where chances were good that people had that ingredient in their pantry.

We thought the show might be entertaining to family and friends, but we were shocked to see the audience grow exponentially in a short time. We noticed early that keeping recipes quite simple and basic, choosing foods that comforted people during a difficult time, our audience base stayed high. When we tried to veer away from that, into what some would consider higher-end recipes, that audience base lessened—a good indicator that people are looking for simplicity.

RECIPES

Nova Scotia Naked Lobster with Potato Salad

Chef Bossé created the dish that follows to enjoy a typical Maritime lobster dinner in a single bite or two. In Nova Scotia, lobster is almost always boiled, but steamed lobster is becoming more popular. He prefers it boiled in heavily salted water to give it that fresh-from- the-water flavor. Once cooked, serve the lobster chilled with hot butter, quite often, but not necessarily clarified.

Typical accompaniments are potato salad and homemade rolls. It may all sound a bit old fashioned, but some things are not to be toyed with! This culinary delight is often served outside on a patio or picnic table because no selfrespecting maritimer serves their lobster preshucked. Kids learn how to get into a lobster at a young age. The tools provided are a lobster cracker for breaking the claws and a lobster pick for getting the meat out of those hard to reach places.

One of Chef Bossé’s favorite things to do is to travel all around the world, promoting Nova Scotia’s amazing seafood, and he wanted to give people a chance to experience what he described above, and this recipe does exactly that. The lobster is butter-poached, so it’s moist and succulent, and the potato salad includes a bit more of the meat, so you get to taste the decadence. It’s been an extremely popular dish at the cooking adventures he holds six times yearly on his farm in rural Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia Naked Lobster

Traditionally, in Nova Scotia, lobster is served cold, dipped in hot butter outside on a picnic table, and the potato salad is one of the most popular accompaniments. This is the best of both worlds.

Fresh Nova Scotia Lobster

1 lb Fresh Lobster Claws or Tail ¼ lb Melted Butter

Candied Bacon

½ lb Diced double-smoke Bacon 3 tbsp Maple Syrup

Sauté in a pan until nice and brown. Place the bacon bits on a paper towel and dispose of the bacon fat. Add bacon back to the frying pan for a few seconds and incorporate 3 tbsp maple syrup. Bring to a boil then remove from heat.

Potato Salad

4 Boiled Potatoes, drained, smashed ½ lb Chopped Lobster Meat 3 Kosher Dills, finely chopped 2 tbsp Dill Pickle Juice 1 Celery Stalk, finely diced 1 Shallot, finely diced ½ cup Red Peppers, finely diced ½ cup Yellow Peppers, finely diced ½ cup Mayonnaise 2 tbsp Chopped flat-leaf Parsley ¼ tsp Smoked Paprika Salt and Pepper to taste In a large bowl, toss all ingredients and let cool for about 1 hour. To assemble, place lobster potato salad on the base, then sprinkle with a few pieces of maple bacon and finish with a bit of cold lobster dipped in hot butter, garnish with microgreens.

Old-Fashioned Grilled Lobster Roll

6 Hot Dog buns 3 oz soft Butter 1 pound (500 g) Lobster Meat- chopped 2 tbsp Mayonnaise ¼ cup Diced Celery Pinch of Salt Pinch of Pepper 3 oz Spinach Butter hot dog bun on both sides, then grill on both sides. In a bowl, mix the lobster meat, mayonnaise, celery, and salt pepper to taste. Open your grilled bun and place ½ oz spinach per bun. Spoon the lobster mixture onto the center of the hot dog bun and serve— traditionally with potato chips.

Photos (left-to-right): Whole lobster; Cooked lobster; Cooked mussels