6 November 2015 - The Filipino food movement in North America continues to snowball in Canada with the Philippines bagging two awards at the 2015 Embassy Chef Challenge in Ottawa on November 5.
Representing the Philippine Embassy, Filipino-Canadian chef Jil Aranas brought her A-game to the culinary competition where she entered her version of kinulob na itik, an epicurean delight of the province of Laguna where she was raised before migrating to Canada at the age of 15.
Chef Jil's pineapple duck confit, topped with chicken liver jus, sat on a bed of white rice infused with coconut milk. Enriching the dish's texture and flavors, Jil added chicken skin chicharon and smoked paprika kwek-kwek (deep fried quail eggs) on the side. Achara (pickled papaya slaw), minatamis na pinya (caramelized pineapple), kamote (sweet potato) chips and colorful edible flowers completed the culinary masterpiece.
Besides the Philippines, six other countries participated in the Embassy Chef Challenge, namely, Spain (Galician octopus and pickled chicken), the United Kingdom (roasted spicy maple pork belly), Moldova (stuffed vegetables with smoked spare ribs), Thailand (tom kha gai soup), Trinidad and Tobago (curried goat with roti, fresh cucumber chow and tamarind rum glaze), and Hungary (venison stuffed cabbage leaves).
Word of mouth quickly created a long queue "in front of the Embassy of the Philippines (which) grew to astounding proportions", as one participating country put it. Invariably, high praise came from guests who sampled the Philippine dish plated by Chef Jil's team with some help from Philippine Ambassador Petronila P. Garcia, Minister Flerida Ann Camille P. Mayo and Cultural Attaché Teresa Benitez-Bragais.
The Philippine entry garnered the People's Choice Award from a pool of 300 gourmands and philanthropists who voted for the evening's best dish. Chef Jil also got a nod from the panel of judges that placed her first runner up in the Judge's Choice category where Trinidad and Tobago's Chef Resa Solomon-St.Lewis earned the top prize. Thailand was the judges' choice for second runner up.
Chefs Matthew Carmichael, Cory Haskins and Kent Van Dyk as well as cookbook author and TV host Margaret Dickinson comprised the panel of judges.
In his event review, Ottawa Citizen's Peter Hum described Chef Jil's entry as "the most ambitious, multi-component plate of the night" and noted that the "Philippine station had the longest lineup throughout much of the night, and not surprisingly, chef Aranas' dish won the people's choice award as well as second place from the judges."
Ms. Aranas graduated from the Vancouver Community College with a diploma in culinary arts. In Ottawa, Jil worked with some of the capital's renowned chefs such as Marc Lepine of Atelier restaurant, John Morris of the National Arts Centre, Jud Simpson of the House of Commons and Duane Lepine of the exclusive Rideau Club.
No stranger to the pressure of competitions, Jil won her first gold medal at the Eat Vancouver Salon in 2009. She was also a member of Canada's Junior Olympic Team that placed second overall in Dublin, Ireland in 2011. For this feat, she was conferred the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award in the same year. In May 2013, she finished second at the Annual Maple Leaf Signature Dish contest.
"Jil Aranas is a jewel of the Filipino community. Driven by a quest for excellence in her field, she creates a positive impression of Filipino food culture among mainstream Canadians. Her pride in her cultural heritage pushes our native cuisine to emerge from under the radar in this culturally-diverse, cosmopolitan city of Ottawa," Ambassador Garcia observed.
The Embassy Chef Challenge is an annual fundraising event of the IBD Foundation to help fund state-of-the-art equipment for a specialized pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) procedure at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). END