Amede Lamarche Shines at the Church Restaurant in Stratford, Ontario

Stratford chef uses innovations to work magic
TORONTO STAR
Marion Kane
Food Columnist

STRATFORD–Amédé Lamarche is holding a smoking gun.

But this talented, fast-talking young man is not embroiled in criminal activity. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He's using this nifty culinary device to infuse a dish with the delectable taste and aroma of smoke.

Lamarche, 32, is executive chef at The Church in downtown Stratford, one of this city's most elegant, established and finest restaurants.

Born and raised in Welland to a French father and Italian mother, this sometimes intense fellow with the easy laugh and a passion for food doesn't have formal chef's training and calls himself "mentored."

That may explain his innovative cooking style and eagerness to embrace new ideas.

In fact, it's a hot new idea called molecular gastronomy that brings me to The Church kitchen where Lamarche is wielding that smoking gun.

He's aiming the hand-held, vacuum-driven smoker filled with applewood chips at a "sausage" made of two rabbit loins encrusted with chopped cashews, shallots and chanterelles, all bound together with transglutaminase, a substance popular with chefs who like a little science with their slicing and dicing.

Ancho chili droplets, garnish for this dish, are made from a liquid mixture of ancho chilies, juiced red pepper and sodium alginate.

Our dark-eyed, spiky-haired chef explains the latter: "It's a gelling agent derived from seaweed. It will react with the calcium chloride in this water bath."

Sure enough, the drops he's releasing into the bath magically turn into tiny, tear-shaped, jelly-like pearls. They soon pepper a delicate consommé laced with cocoa that bathes the rabbit.

Now to that gun – the ideal device for capturing smoke under a white china cloche that Lamarche quickly places over the creation he matter-of-factly calls rabbit stew. "When lifted tableside – voila! – out comes a puff of smoke."

Surgical tubing, a couple of siphons and a large syringe are other tools of this chef's trade. He shoots green pea noodles made of pea "water" thickened with a vegan gel called agar-agar out of a long plastic surgical tube using a siphon, then warms and plates them with a creamy sauce of smoked coconut and dainty shreds of basil. Spaghetti carbonara, eat your heart out!

There are no words to describe Lamarche's brilliant foie gras consommé topped with foie gras foam that I sip from a shooter glass through a sweet vanilla pod.

He calls the use of technology and chemicals in cooking "just a more open dialogue between haute cuisine, manufacturing and science."

His enthusiasm for it is contagious.

"I'm in a position now to do cool things for customers – it makes me very happy."