Blue & Green Soiree March 23.17 a Salt-free Success!

On March 23, 2017, Restaurant International hosted its annual Blue & Green Soiree event, featuring a salt-free dinner, live jazz music and a raffle. Algonquin College Chef-Professor Mario Ramsay and student Chef Cynthia Douglas chatted to CTV’s Leanne Cusack about salt-free cooking and the coming to Restaurant International this month. Watch the video here.
The soiree featured tasting stations of food devised and prepared without salt by Algonquin College Culinary students. The guests, celebrity judges and renal dietitians judge the competition. “The learning our students get out of that is just amazing,” said Ramsay. “We learn to cook from scratch but we’re also learning about reducing rather than adding salt.” The trio were also joined by Patricia Treusch, the event’s organizer, whose aim is to educate the people who cook in our restaurants about how salt can be reduced without compromising flavor and to support people with kidney disease and the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Eastern Ontario Chapter. The first Blue & Green soiree was held in 2013. “I’ve built the blue and green soiree with the support of Algonquin College and the Culinary program, which is amazing, to challenge them to do the salt-free challenge,” she told Cusack. The chefs brought along some samples from a menu cooked up by Douglas, that included Scotch eggs and quinoa pilaf with pan-fried pickerel. Douglas said the food of Cuba, where she’s from, is “soulful and salty,” and that she was happy to discover that food could be made full of flavour, but not full of salt.