The Saltbox Challenge added a bit of excitement to this year’s contest
To say I was impressed with the response to this year’s recipe contest would be an understatement. We decide to change things up a bit and developed an “East Coast Saltbox 3-Ingredient Challenge”; this was a play on what’s known as a black box challenge in the culinary world, where chefs are asked to create a recipe from a box of mystery ingredients.
We gave readers a list of five ingredients to choose from and a minimum of three had to be included in the recipe submission. The five items were wild blueberries, smoked or fresh salmon, craft beer, cheese and maple. The response was overwhelming! We had many entries to choose from and the imagination and creativity in every recipe was wonderful.
After testing, we turned the finalists over to our amazing judges who spent the day tasting and talking. All were very enthusiastic and left with full stomachs and a huge appreciation for all the entrants’ hard work.
Our heartfelt thanks to our judges:
- Lynda Stewart, Local Business Development Manager at Sobeys
- Susan Purdy, home cook & foodie (Formally with Saltscapes Print Account for 20 years)
- Troy Greencorn, Executive Director, deCoste Performing
Arts Centre.
We will be launching our contest for this year very shortly with a lineup of awesome Atlantic Canadian ingredients for you to pick from, so stay tuned!
And now to our winners!
We asked each winner the same questions: what inspired your recipe? Who inspired you as a cook? While many of the inspirations were similar in the who—a parent or grandparent—the backstories were always refreshing and fascinating.
Grand Prize Winner: Pecan Crusted Salmon with Wild Blueberry Sauce
1st Place: Mustikkapaistos (Finnish Blueberry Bake)
2nd Place: Wild Blueberry Brownies with Maple Mousse Cream
3rd Place: Hot Smoked Salmon Dip
4th place: Grilled mac n cheese sliders with bacon beer tomato jam
5th Place: Blueberry Beer Bread and Spread with Smoked Salmon