Test Kitchen
A Poacher’s Guide to Eating Like a King
By Lisa Richardson
A chef is only as good as their last menu. So, why in Hell’s Kitchen would James Walt reveal his trade secrets in a cookbook?
The anti-divaesque executive chef of Araxi recently whisked back the curtains of his secret lair when he allowed it to be taken over by Gordon Ramsay–wannabes for season six of the Hell’s Kitchen reality TV show. With his new cookbook, Araxi: Seasonal Recipes from the Celebrated Whistler Restaurant, Walt’s gone a step further by providing a step-by-step how-to manual for cooking Araxi’s best-loved dishes.
Given that 85 percent of Whistler’s seasonal workers earn less than the cost of living, watching reality TV or dish-pigging is the only way most locals get to spend time in Whistler’s top restaurants. But our beer budgets don’t inoculate us from having champagne tastes. Every now and then, we enjoy the occasional culinary upgrade, thanks to fall restaurant specials, or out of town guests who’ve paid attention to the annual “Best Place to Eat When Someone Else is Paying the Bill” awards.
Now, with four new local cookbooks hitting the shelves, DIY is another way to take a break from the KD/Egg’n’Ride/Scurvy Special routine. Having a five-star dining experience at home is now as easy as following a recipe…isn’t it? I picked up all the local books to find out.
The binding ingredient in Mangia with Quattro: Family-Style Italian from the Heart is abbondanza – abundance and passion for life. Translated: don’t hold back on olive oil or wine. The Corsi family shares recipes in a soft-cover book that begs to be splattered with homemade pasta sauce. As delectable as the dessert section is (biscotti, tiramisu, panacotta), I kick off the test kitchen with “an elegant vegetarian starter,” the Mushroom Carpaccio.
Araxi: Seasonal Recipes from the Celebrated Whistler Restaurant has a farm-to-table seasonal approach that quickly wins my hundred-mile-diet heart. Lacking a 12-hour ingredient preparation window to try my hand at making Fingerling Potato Chips with Pecorino Chive Cream with local spuds, I decide to keep things simple and try Araxi’s Fennel-infused Vegetable Stock.
It serves as the base for a Cream of Leek Soup from Players Chophouse, one of 19 local restaurants that shared house secrets in Savour Whistler, alongside the likes of Irish Pub Clam Chowder from Dubh Linh Gate, Crepes by Crepe Montagne, and Candied Wild Salmon from the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre. With writing contributed by Nicole Fitzgerald and Dee Raffo, Savour Whistler reads like a belly-based guidebook to Whistler, giving readers a chance to eat themselves local.
First published over 20 years ago, Deanna White’s reissued classic What’s Cookin’ in Whistler is a sweet jaunt down memory lane to a Whistler full of ski cabin hominess, white turtlenecks and fondue pots. Of the scores of gems and guest appearances from long-time locals, I choose the Rim Rock’s Sticky Date Pudding as the piece de resistance of my test kitchen’s dinner.
Although the lusciously illustrated Araxi cookbook is the finest-looking bit of gastroporn I’ve ever seen, cookbooks aren’t for coffee tables and the fairest way to review them is to test-drive them. So I did. Nervous diners, familiar with my typical dinner regime of cereal or frozen pizza, volunteered to act as crash dinner dummies.
The verdict? “Wow.” “Oh my God.” “Delicious.” “Is there much sugar in this?”
Conclusion: if a girl with limited knife skills can go gourmet for an investment of $22 in groceries, $15 in wine and the careful reading of several cookbooks, anyone can. At least until the next guest who offers to take you out, their treat.
