Prairie to Plate: Calgary chefs are going back to the land, finding and cooking with an abundant harvest of great Alberta foods by Melanie Jones
Where Magazine, Calgary, September/October 2003

The sun was already hot when we left the city. It had taken the better part of two weeks to contact the five farmers, ranchers and gardeners Chad and I would visit over two days. Chad had recently returned from a junket into rural Alberta, photographing ranchers and cowboys, but I hadn’t been on a farm since I was a child. Heading south on Highway 2, I had no idea what to expect. Approaching Canadian Rocky Mountain Ranch south of Highway 22X near Priddis, the first thing that struck us was the landscape—foothills rolling way into a rough valley, home to a herd of elk and reindeer.

We parked at the far end of the yard. A man on a quad followed by a small dog drove up and introduced himself. He wore rubber boots and a hat rimmed with porcupine quills. Doug McLash walked us between a pasture full of elk and surprisingly short reindeer. The animals only came up to my waist—very different from the animals I had imagined pulling Santa’s sleigh. The northern caribou (another word for reindeer) tend to be much taller, Doug tells me.
I meet Merlin—an old, bottle-fed caribou who lets me pat his snout before ambling over to the feeding trough as I chat with resident veterinarian Dr. Terry Church and Brad O’Connor, ranch manager.

Terry tells me about the history of the ranch and the Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts—the family-run company that owns three upscale Calgary restaurants, Cilantro, The Ranche and Divino along with Emerald Lake, Buffalo Mountain and Deer Lodges in the Rockies. CRMR chefs popularized Rocky Mountain Cuisine, which uses indigenous Western Canadian ingredients including game meats, wild berries, vegetables and grains.

In 1986, the O’Connor family started the Ranch to supply their restaurants with a consistent product. At that time, game was uncommon in restaurants, but by the mid-1990s, the rich flavours of elk, caribou and bison had come to define CRMR menus.

“I sell more elk than beef,” says The Ranche’s exec chef, Chris Grafton. The full flavour of game meats means they can be paired with bolder ingredients like dark berry sauces and strong cheeses. Ranch-raised game lacks the unappealing ‘gamey’ taste—an overpowering mineral flavour that characterizes wild game.

Leaving the Ranch, we cross the Highwood River and venture onto a gravel road, passing a Keep Out sign. Tony Marshall strolls up to the truck wearing a Highwood Crossing Farm T-shirt and jokes about the sign as he shakes my hand. The Farm has been in the Marshall family for 103 years. At the far end of the field, the grey ruins of some of the original buildings still stand, surrounded by wheat, barley, rye and flax crops. We walk past the beautiful ranch house to what appears to be the family garden.

“Taste this,” Penny Marshall says, handing me a wide, flat leaf. It has an intense pepper flavour, more intense than arugula. “I think we’ll tempura these”, says the other person in Penny’s garden. He’s Glen Manzer, exec chef at Calgary’s River Café, and the nasturtium leaves will be on his menu as early as tonight.

Penny’s had a garden for 22 years, and now grows plants that respond to the Alberta climate and growing season. She works with Glen when choosing seeds in late winter, growing things like nettle and purslane, used for greens and garnish, uniquely-shaped carrots to be picked after the frost so they’re sweeter, yellow beets, striped beans.

Her seeds come from catalogues that trace their history—where they were developed and when. The working relationship between Marshall and Manzer is part of a growing support by Calgary chefs and restaurateurs to support local growers. Chefs and growers alike experiment with ingredients, leading to creative and progressive local cuisine, a practice that’s been a part of European culinary tradition for generations.

Chefs and local farmers have also made closer connections through the creation last year of Slow Food Calgary, an international movement that began in Europe in the late 80s and celebrates the cultivation of local foods and a return to the joy and sense of community that comes from good food and cooking. The movement here helps to protect small growers by connecting them with the city’s top kitchens, and by hosting monthly tastings, dinners and events that reintroduce Calgarians to truly flavourful food. Slow Food’s big annual event, The Feast of Fields, takes place the afternoon of September 4 at Rouge restaurant in Inglewood. It’s a tented celebration of food and cooking with dozens of food, wine and beer samples.

Highwood Crossing Farm became certified organic in 1993, and now supplies flax and canola oils to some of the country’s best restaurants including River Café, Teatro and The Ranche in Calgary, Avalon in Toronto, Maple in Halifax and Hotel L’Eau a la Bouche in Ste. Adele, Quebec. Their canola oil is well-known for its unique colour (a rich yellow) and flavour, much like extra virgin olive oil. Their commercial kitchen also bakes cookies, cereal and pancake mixes sold at Farmers markets and natural foods stores—find it locally at Community Natural Foods.

Before we leave, Penny tells me to take advantage of chef’s specials and fresh sheets when I eat out. That’s most often where locally-grown ingredients are used. “It’s where chefs get creative,” she says.

Into the rolling ranchland again, we drive through a valley east of Nanton (south of Calgary off Hwy 2). The gravel road winds around the base of a hill where a huge, windowed house sits, looking abandoned. We drive towards the house, and a thin, blond woman waves and slowly walks towards us with a small border collie at her heels. Alexandra Luppold has a musical German accent and shining eyes.

Swarms of swallows circle their nests built under the house’s eaves. Below, the garden is in verdant chaos. Her patch of greens is spare, almost empty. She shares her garden with a killdeer, whose nest sits barely visible in the middle of a row of red lettuce.

I’ve been told several times about Alexandra’s salad greens by chefs like Glen Manzer and Chris Grafton. When I ask why they’re so good, the chefs say they’re simply the best. Now, as she walks us through her garden, absently picking a weed here and there, touching the soil, she tells us her secret, “It doesn’t matter what you do,” she says. “If you do it from your heart, it can only be good.” Luppold practices biodynamic growing, a method of agriculture developed in Austria in the 20s which works with basic principles of nature, including cosmic rhythms and a holistic approach to the sun, water, soil and the grower. “Giving the greatest salad is my gift to humanity,” she says.

We tour her circular garden (“There’s nothing square in nature,” she says.) and are visited by the twins—two white chickens she keeps as pets. Her greens mix is secret, but is a fresh and earthy blend of sweet, bitter and spicy flavours from lettuces, spinach, mustard and beet greens. The garden is small and she’s not interested in expanding. She can maintain the quality of her product, which she supplies to some of Calgary’s top restaurants—The Ranche, River Café, Teatro, Catch and Divino.

Luppold’s husband John Cross operates a7 Ranche, raising grass-fed cattle on land once owned by his grandfather, rancher AE Cross, who began the operation in 1886 and went on to become one of the region’s most prominent citizens and one of the “Big Four” founders of the Calgary Stampede. John Cross uses the same holistic, biodynamic concepts his wife does, and the couple seems more grounded and simple than the grandeur of Cross family’s history.

Our next trip takes us southwest of the city, first to Poplar Bluff Farm. It’s only 9:30 in the morning, but it’s already hot. We’re greeted by Dean Giberson—a large man in a Tilley hat and brown coveralls. The Gibersons bought Poplar Bluff in the mid-1980s. Using their grandfathers’ methods, the farm has been chemical-free since 1993 and certified organic since 1998. They use companion planting methods—peas are grown with barley so they can wind up the sturdy barley stalks. Clover is grown with asparagus and helps fertilize with its nitrogen-fixing properties.

Poplar Bluff is known for its potatoes, supplying restaurants as such River Café, Catch and Le Bistro Bení. We walk through the field of potatoes where huge sprinklers douse the 14-acre plot. “Potatoes are water hogs,” Giberson says. If he’d grown grain, he could have watered once this season. “I do think they’re worth it, though,” he says with a faraway look.

His wife Rosemary returns from town. She isn’t thrilled about having her photo taken, but Chad has an American Gothic-inspired idea. “Get your Wellies on woman,” Dean shouts. I get a chance to talk with Rosemary, who has a Masters degree in plant genetics.

About a third of the Giberson’s crop is made up of heritage varietals—their seeds have remained unchanged for many years, some since the mid-1800s. Anything called heritage, heirloom or old fashioned has been grown using old seeds. Most potatoes are hybrids, bred primarily for the processing industry, selected for shape and smooth skin to make for easier peeling or processing into chips or fries.

Heritage growing and heirloom seeds produce a larger variety of natural characteristics—deep eyes or purple skins. Rosemary tells me about the Purple Viking, a potato that maintains its shape and crispness after cooking, making it ideal for potato salad. It would be ignored by large commercial operations because it’s so crisp the potatoes crack during large-scale mechanical harvesting, but chefs swear by them.

The heat is almost unbearable by the time we pull into Garden Gate Farm east of Millarville. Rick and Connie Brown walk out to meet us and we’re led into the garage, which serves as lobby to their four hot houses. I recognize Rick from the Millarville Farmers’ Market, where I’ve bought tomatoes for the past three weekends. Connie has picked several flats of tomatoes and a variety of cucumbers to be taken later that day to Joseph Wiewer, exec chef at Wildwood. Their operation is hydroponic, using nutrient-enhanced water and beneficial insects to control pests.

The Browns started growing tomatoes for themselves, disappointed with the taste of grocery store produce. They’ve been growing full time since 1991 and until recently, Connie used to water every plant by hand. She still pollinates by hand at the hottest part of the day in stiflingly hot greenhouses. For consumers used to large, perfect, deep-red beefsteak and commercial-grown hothouse tomatoes, the Browns’ produce looks odd. Their heritage tomatoes are smaller, harder, with tougher skins and occasional streaks of green. But, one bite reminds us that supermarket shoppers have forgotten what a real tomato tastes like—Garden Gate tomatoes have a tangy, sweet fullness of fresh flavour that is best experienced unadorned. The Browns seem satisfied to grow something from a seed, and watch it bear fruit. “I love the interaction with our customers,” says Connie. “People light up when they taste our tomatoes.”

Several restaurants in the city are committed to supporting local growers and producers. Divino on Stephen Avenue uses Alexandra Luppold’s greens, Cranberry Creek organic beef and all three CRMR restaurants (Cilantro, The Ranche and Divino) use ranch-raised game. The River Café and Teatro are major supporters of local producers using vegetables and oils from Highwood Crossing, greens from Alexandra Luppold and potatoes from Poplar Bluff Farm. Murrieta’s uses cheeses from Alberta cheesemaker Sylvan Star, and The Living Room buys goat cheeses from Natricia Dairy (514 - 17 Avenue SW, 228-9830). Brava Bistro on 17 Avenue SW uses Hotchkiss Produce, known for using heritage tomatoes in their creative cuisine. Bonterra, Wildwood and Catch, all part of the Creative Restaurant Group use local producers including Garden Gate tomatoes, John Cross’ a7 Ranch and Ladybug Organic produce.