FEATURE STORY
Chef Instructor Karine Moulin presents a Lunch ’n’ Learn.
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Left: Prepared tables in the Calgary Learning Centre wait for Lunch ’n’ Learn participants.
What’s Cooking? Serving up new programs in the ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen By Kristen Wagner
TCO Blue Flame Kitchen (BFK) is changing the future of cooking in Alberta.
Albertans as possible. Judging by the busyness of the Learning Centre, that message is coming through loud and clear.
Last year, the ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Learning Centre opened its doors. With a slate of new programs and an excited new culinary team to match, the Learning Centre is set to change the way people think about cooking.
The Learning Centre is comprised of a retail centre, a classroom area with a small demo kitchen and a commercial kitchen for cooking large quantities of food. It’s located on the ground floor of ATCO Centre Calgary. Over the course of a typical day, a broad spectrum of people comes through their doors—school children, business professionals, families, seniors and other ATCO employees—and each leaves with an increased knowledge of food and cooking they may not find elsewhere.
The growing team has put together an array of new services to help them reach as many
Today, the team is busy preparing for a “Lunch ’n’ Learn” session. These Thursday and Friday noon-hour sessions include a cooking demonstration in the Learning Centre’s state-of-the-art demo kitchen and a balanced 30-minute meal. Guests leave with full stomachs and a packet of recipes so they can replicate the meal at home. At just $20, “the Lunch ’n’ Learn sessions may just be the best deal in town,” says Sandy Cutts, Supervisor, Events and Facility Services. To prepare for the session, the team puts together trays of ingredients for easy access during the demonstration. They put the final
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“We want to positively touch as many Albertan lives as we can, through our helpline, cookbooks, classes, and at trade shows... This is how we measure success.” - SARAH FRANCIS
Sandy Cutts, (left) Supervisor, Events and Facility Services, and Laura Kennedy, Culinary Programs Lead.
touches on the presentation, cook the food to be served, and prepare the dining room. Karine Moulin, Chef Instructor, begins the demonstration at 12 p.m. sharp. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is busy in the back kitchen, plating the food that will be served to participants. Each Learning Centre employee must be able to fill any role, from reception to serving, at the drop of a hat. On the menu today is leek and potato soup, strawberry and cantaloupe salad with goat cheese and candied pecans, and a main dish of pan-seared halibut over orzo with mushrooms, red peppers and rapini. Not only does Karine guide participants through each step of the process with the help of large overhead TV screens, she gives them new ways to experience the food. She passes
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around key ingredients like leeks and fresh basil for participants to feel and smell, and suggests ways to adapt recipes to personal taste and preference—for example, blending the soup into a creamy broth rather than leaving it chunky. This is what makes the ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Learning Centre unique. Not only are the instructors experienced chefs, but they possess the communication skills to excite and inspire participants with more than they can find in a cookbook. They focus on sharing their passion and knowledge, and this helps them to connect with the public—the most important part of their job. The Lunch ’n’ Learn session is the only event scheduled today, so after cleaning up the facility, the team takes a break. On most days, when
schools or corporate rentals are expected in the afternoon, the staff must quickly clean up from the first event and prepare for the second. But today they gather in the learning area with bowls of leftover halibut and orzo to discuss the session. Overall it received positive reviews from participants; one registered for 10 upcoming classes following the Lunch ’n’ Learn, her first Learning Centre experience. The remainder of the afternoon is spent preparing for upcoming sessions. The Learning Centre has an ever-expanding menu of classes and programs engineered to reach the widest possible audience. In addition to Lunch ’n’ Learns, the Centre offers corporate team-building activities, school programs, kids’ summer day camps, and evening and weekend classes.
Left: The retail centre provides a wide selection of colourful, professional-quality kitchen supplies. Right: Strawberry and cantaloupe salad with goat cheese and candied pecans, prepared by the Learning Centre staff.
Jen Anderson and Valli Arlette, also Chef Instructors, bring years of experience and education to their roles. All these programs mean a lot of planning for the team. Laura Kennedy, Culinary Programs Lead, designs each class, and the rest of the team works together to plan each menu and presentation. This gives them plenty of opportunities to get creative. For example, in May the Learning Centre hosted an “ultimate chocolate experience” class. Chocolaterie Bernard Callebaut supplied chocolates for tasting; Laura decided her team would put together savoury chocolate treats to offset the sweetness. “Savoury” and “chocolate” may not be words commonly heard in the same sentence, but the staff proved it was possible—and even desirable—with braised pork shoulder with chocolate and chipotle rub. The biannual ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen cookbooks give the chefs another outlet for their creativity. They develop the recipes with the home economists in the Edmonton Blue Flame Kitchen. Both groups test the recipes, and the successes are written and edited in Edmonton. Through all their programming, the ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen employees are ambassadors for ATCO Gas. Natural gas safety is an important part of their message, and they share it through advertising, classes, the toll-free advice helpline, and regular media appearances in newspapers, on radio and on local television. Each session has its own particular flavour, and the team’s diverse backgrounds lend themselves well to the variety of programming they offer. All the chef instructors are Red Seal certified chefs, but beyond that their experience is as unique as the programs they provide. Janice Docherty, Chef Instructor, spent several years volunteering for school cooking programs, making her a valuable resource for the ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Kids Can Cook school program, aimed at Grades 5 and 6. Karine has done televised cooking clips, honing her presentation skills.
“We want to positively touch as many Albertan lives as we can, through our customer advisory service, cookbooks, classes, and at trade shows,” says ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Manager Sarah Francis. “This is how we measure success.” And with even more programs on the horizon, the organization continues to find additional ways to connect with new generations of Albertans. Things are really starting to heat up.
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