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Chef's Choice: Julian Owen-Mold

Mushroom hunting Hilton executive chef enjoying summer's end
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FUNGUS FINDER Julian Owen-Mold had a great summer and he's now excited about the fall season and the fresh mushrooms popping up all around us.

With the number of daylight hours waning, the average temperature falling and snow sliders looking longingly at their snowboards and skis, Whistler restaurants are making the shift to fall.

Julian Owen-Mold, Executive Chef at the Hilton Whistler Resort and Spa, is leading the charge and it means mushrooms are once again stars of the menu. Porcini mushrooms and elk meat debuted this week at the Cinnamon Bear Grille.

The dish is part of a special fall three-course dinner offering available at the Cinnamon Bear.

"This is the time of year when you see people head out into the woods with their buckets," says Owen-Mold over Sunday morning coffee. He smiles a big U.K. smile and in his bubbly English accent shares his vision of mushroom pickers from Vancouver pulled over at the side of the highway preparing to forage for fungus. "We're trying to bring in the autumn with the porcini mushrooms."

The porcini is described as a nutty flavoured mushroom loved by chefs the world around — its Italian name translates to "piglets." It is also known as king bolete and the Germans call this mushroom variety Steinpilz. The science world named the species by its Latin name, Boletus edulis. For our purposes we're going to stick with porcini.

Owen-Mold's new menu item is Alberta Elk and pappardelle pasta topped with creamy porcini mushroom sauce. Pappardelle is very-broad fettuccini pasta.

It is apparent the dish stirs up memories for Owen-Mold of past mushroom hunting expeditions in the Cheakamus Lake area.

"I know there are three spots up there," says the U.K. transplant. "It's amazing. You know, every time I go up there, you go to get the mushrooms and somebody's been there before you. This is the middle of nowhere, I've remembered where to get to and you get there, you've got the hoes out and they've gone already. Somebody's been there before you. That's part of the wonderful thing about Whistler. It's not snowboarding, it's not extreme mountain biking, this is truly nature at your doorstep."

As a chef, he says, the romance in the kitchen comes with using fresh ingredients grown nearby. Fresh, full of flavour and exploding with potential in the right hands.

Owen-Mold started his kitchen career in Europe while studying engineering. His practical kitchen experience through his engineering studies apparently proved more interesting than the engineering textbooks.

He took his cooking knowledge on the road and launched his own international apprenticeship with stops in Melbourne, New Zealand, Hong Kong, London, Vancouver and Whistler. For the last four years, Whistler has been his home and this is his second go around in the resort. His return to the resort was to run Jordan's Crossing. You might remember that as the original name of the restaurant at Nita Lake Lodge. Through successive ownership regimes Owen-Mold held on until the Hilton opportunity came up. Now he's overseeing the hotel kitchen and the banquet services at the Hilton with a team of people in the kitchen he describes as an international group. It is worth noting that a group of his kitchen staff is currently participating in Gilbert Noussitou's professional cook training program delivered online from Camosun College on Vancouver Island.

Two Rivers supplies the meat for the new mushroom and elk pasta dish. Owen-Mold describes elk as mild compared to more gamey animals like venison or bison for the meatballs that go with the pasta and the mushroom sauce. He says elk is a healthy option with less fat content compared to many of the other options. It is an interesting offering for people who, say, come from South America where there is no elk, but he notes that it is also meat Europeans like to try and compare to the elk from their part of the world.

"You get this multitude of tourists that wants to have an experience so that's why we try to bring these sorts of flavours and these sorts of things into the restaurant environment because it engages them and gives the waitress a story as well," says Owen-Mold.

This elk story also includes the porcini mushroom, a fungus trained mushroom pickers are finding right close to home and at Cheakamus Lake, if you get there first.

House Made Swedish Style Meatballs. Pappardelle pasta with a Creamy Porcini Mushroom Sauce

Serves 4-6

Meat Ball Ingredients

300 grams elk mince, all fat removed and ground together twice

200 grams pork mince, all fat removed and ground together twice

200 grams veal mince, all fat removed and ground together twice

2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

1/4 cup cream

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

1 teaspoon grated fresh lemon rind

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon thyme

2 eggs

Directions

First find a reputable butcher that may have hormone steroid free products. If possible have the beef, pork and veal ground together in front of you,

Prepare the meat balls at least an hour before you plan to cook them. Chill meatballs.

Soak the crumbs in the cream for five minutes, and then put them in a large mixing bowl with the ground meats.

Melt the two tablespoons butter in a small frying pan and in it cook the chopped onion, shallots and garlic over moderate heat for five minutes, or until softened and translucent. Add them to the mixing bowl and at the same time add the grated lemon rind, parsley, salt, pepper, and thyme.

Beat the two eggs lightly with a fork and pour them over the meat. With a large spoon, beat this mixture vigorously until the ingredients are thoroughly combined and the meat loses its granular texture.

Form into small balls, about an inch in diameter.

Place the meatballs, as you finish them, on a baking sheet and chill for at least an hour.

Sauce Ingredients

28 grams dried porcini mushroom

6 cups home made or good quality Chicken stock (broth)

1/3 cup cream

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped garlic

200 gram mix wild mushrooms

1/2 cup white wine

Directions

Soak the dried porcini mushroom overnight or a minimum of eight hours in the chicken stock refrigerated, place stock and mushroom in a sauce pan and bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes, let cool slightly and transfer to a food processer and blitz or hand blend in the pot, strain the purified liquid through a fine strainer into a different pot and reduce by half add the cream and reduce by another quarter.

To assemble dish

Sauté the meatballs in a pan then remove them from the pan. Add shallots, garlic and mushrooms to the pan and sauté lightly then add the meatballs, deglaze with white wine, let meatball warm slowly in white wine, add porcini sauce let simmer for a minimum of five minutes. Toss all ingredients together in the pan. Check seasoning and serve with pasta.