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For this chef, food is love. It’s how she expresses love to friends and family, and watching guests enjoy her cooking is how she gets fed emotionally, she says. Hearing positive feedback from her clients is pure joy.
Evelyn and her catering team are currently working out of the very pretty Barn at Wind’s Edge — just a hop, skip and jump from the new Costco in Saskatoon. Evelyn is the in-house chef for the Barn, but also caters to off-site locations. She thrives on feeding people innovative and yet accessible meals.
Working the bride and groom’s personalities into menu items is something she and her team are proud of and have a lot of fun doing, she says.
Food waste is at top of mind for this chef. She’s careful to not purchase more ingredients than needed for an event, and she’s even teamed up with a local farmer who gets the table scrapings and kitchen scraps in exchange for farm fresh eggs.
As with other chefs we met this year, COVID-19 certainly threw a loop into Evelyn’s business, causing cancellations of many weddings and other major events. Like all great chefs, Evelyn has had to pivot her business to doing pop-up dinners, teaching cooking classes, and catering smaller events where social distancing can take place.
She managed to keep one full-time employee working during the pandemic, but has had to lay off others. She hopes they can come back soon.
The day we visited, Evelyn was preparing pasta al puttanesca, with fire roasted tomatoes. She charred the fresh tomatoes over an open flame burner, chopped them up and added them to a pot with a good glug of olive oil, a little garlic and onion, chopped kalamata olives, some capers, a little anchovy and red pepper flakes. Served over fresh pasta and garnished with Parmesan cheese, it was a feast for the senses. As Evelyn created her fresh dish, we chatted a little about this and that.
