Great food, great cause

Spicy BouilliaBlais, a heart-healthy dish created by Richard Blais for Campbell's AdDress Your Heart Cooking Challenge. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

When chefs talk about teaching young people how to cook professionally, they get serious. And when they hold a scholarship dinner to help send young cooks to culinary school, they turn out some seriously good food.

In other words, if you happen to encounter an oven-roasted Idaho rainbow trout with shrimp and crabmeat stuffing and roasted red pepper cream, with wild mushroom risotto, and haricots verts on April 22, you'll probably be at the 34th Annual American Culinary Federation Maumee Valley Chefs' Association's Scholarship and Awards Dinner.

And that is almost certainly where you will be if, on the same day, you run into walnut and mushroom-stuffed chicken roulades with ginger and honey-glazed baby carrots, along with gorgonzola panna cotta and a currant gastrique. It is even where you will be, most likely, should you find yourself among some Ohio beer-braised boneless short ribs with reduced stout demi-glace, with purple Brussels sprouts with fiddlehead ferns and fennel, and roasted potatoes.

And if it is a vegetarian feast of spring vegetable rolls with mushroom duxelles, roasted red pepper, zucchini, carrots, radicchio, fresh mozzarella, and fennel puree? Same thing -- it's the scholarship dinner.

All of these entrees come with a salad made from seasonal ingredients and a selection of desserts.

Tickets to the dinner run $55 apiece, with a table for 8 -- the chefs would call it an eight-top -- selling for $400.

For more information, call Chef Ed Gozdowski at 419-297-0660.

Souped up

You don't need us to tell you that February is American Heart Health Month -- you have probably already been celebrating all month long.

The people at Campbell's Soup are also celebrating with a clever bit of marketing: pitting two chefs against each other to create heart-healthy recipes that (no surprise here) happen to make use of Campbell's Soup products. Customers and consumers can vote on their favorites through the end of March, and Campbell's will donate $1 to the American Heart Association for every vote, up to a total of $625,000.

The chefs who developed the recipes are Richard Blais, the popular Top Chef contestant with the weird hair and the penchant for freeze-drying his food, and Campbell's Soup Master Chef Thomas Griffiths. Chef Blais created a spicy bouillabaisse which he cleverly calls Spicy BouillaBlais, while Chef Griffiths made Spiced Chicken with Balsamic-Blueberry Green Bean Salad.

Unfortunately, we only have room here to run one of the recipes, so we sort of randomly decided to go with the bouillabaisse. To see the chicken-and-salad recipe and to vote, you'll have to go to the Facebook page for Campbell's Kitchen.

2 lemons, medium

2 tablespoons PLUS 2 teaspoons olive oil

1 medium carrot, peeled and diced

1/4 cup celery, sliced

1/2 cup fennel, diced

20 cloves garlic, peeled

1 small onion, diced

4 teaspoons fennel seed

2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves, crushed

2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves, crushed

4 cups tomato-based vegetable juice, such as V8

4 cups spicy-hot tomato-based vegetable juice, such as V8

8 clams (see cook's note)

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped

4 fresh halibut fillets (about 12 ounces total)

4 fresh scallops

4 fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup

1 slice whole wheat bread, toasted and cut in quarters

Cook's note: Before cooking, discard any clams that remain open when tapped. After cooking, discard any clams that remain closed.

Grate and zest lemon and squeeze the juice from the lemons into separate containers, set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a 12-inch skillet over low heat. Add carrot, celery, fennel, 12 cloves garlic, sliced, onion, fennel seed, oregano, and thyme and cook until the vegetables are soft but not browned, stirring occasionally.

Add vegetable juices and clams to the skillet. Increase the heat to medium and cook until clams open. Remove clams from skillet, cover and keep warm. Cook the remaining vegetable juice mixture until reduced by one-third. Stir in basil and half the lemon zest.

Season fish, scallops, and shrimp with the black pepper. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in separate 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add fish, shrimp, and scallops and cook until browned on both sides and cooked through. Sprinkle with the remaining lemon zest, lemon juice, and parsley.

Mince remaining garlic and stir in remaining oil in a medium bowl. Stir in 1/2 cup soup. Spread the soup mixture on the bread quarters. Reserve the remaining soup for another use.

Divide the fish, scallops, shrimp and vegetable juice mixture among 4 shallow bowls. Place 1 bread quarter on each fish fillet. Top each with 2 clams.

NaCl

Doctors tell you that salt is bad for you. Scientists tell you that you can't live without it.

What's a poor cook to do? For that matter, what's a poor eater to do?

Nutritionist Kris Johnson, who leads the Toledo chapter of the non-mainstream Weston A. Price Foundation, will lead a discussion about natural salts and related minerals on Feb. 28 from 6-8 p.m. at Grace Lutheran Church, 4441 Monroe St. The class is free, though donations are accepted, and a selection of healthy and flavorful soups will be served.

To register, call 419-836-7637.

Music, maestro, please!

Surely it is the height of elegance, eating fine food and drinking fine wine while classical musicians play music especially chosen to go with the meal.

Actually, that’s not quite right. At the Toledo Symphony Orchestra’s Dinner Music Encore! event, the music was chosen first — by the performers who will be playing it. Then the chef picked foods and wine that thematically go with the music.

Sounds great, right? But here is where it gets, frankly, insane: It all takes place eight times over, but at the same time.

A little explanation is probably in order. Like last year’s premiere Dinner Music event, this one will be at the Toledo Club, 235 14th St. Members of the orchestra will be in eight different rooms there. Each room has its own type of music, and each room has its own menu that was inspired by the musical selections and its own set of wines that was specifically chosen to go with both the food and the musical theme.

And all the food will be simultaneously coming out of a single, hard-working kitchen.

It all takes place Saturday, beginning at 6 p.m. Some of the rooms are already sold out, but places still remain in four:

• The Corinthian Room — A violinist and pianist will play selections from Beethoven’s First Violin Sonata while diners enjoy pork loin stuffed with apple and dried cherry, with mustard-roasted red skin potatoes, asparagus, and black pepper-infused veal reduction, and a salad of goat cheese, pear, and mustard vinaigrette.

• Main Dining Room — Eight string players will perform Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet. The entree will be horseradish roasted beef medallions with asparagus, peas, roasted fingerling potatoes and lemon-ginger béchamel; the salad will be spinach and berries with a sparkling vinaigrette.

• Sports Grill and Tavern — In this elegantly clubby new room, the Toledo Symphony String Quartet will play a selection of tangos while diners feast on Latin American foods and wines: Chimichurri beef medallions, crushed sweet potato, and sautéed Swiss chard and sweet corn coulis, and a sweet corn salad with creamy vinaigrette and jicama.

• The Belvedere — The orchestra’s brass quintet will play French music, and the food will also be French: salmon stuffed with brie and dried cranberries, roasted beets, watercress, hazelnut butter, and a frisée salad with poached egg, tarragon vinaigrette, and braised pork belly.

Tickets are $150 apiece, with the proceeds going to the orchestra. To reserve a place, call 419-241-1272.

Items for Morsels may be submitted up to two weeks before an event to food@theblade.com.