Cooking with the Wolfman

Page 9

To thousands of Canadians, he is the star of the successful Aboriginal Peoples Television Network program Cooking with the Wolfman. When Windspeaker caught up with him recently, the Wolfman was just recovering from an emergency appendectomy before heading out from Toronto to fly to Edmonton to do a show at the famous Rising Sun Cafe.

How did the man from Lillooet get started?

"I took a liking to it when I was young," he said, then chuckled. "If you helped in the kitchen with the cooking then you didn't have to do the clean-up. To get into hospitality as a serious career, you definitely need persistence, determination. It requires you to work long days, long hours, and you have to be consistent. If you are serious, you don't get into this business for the money, but because you love it. It's something you have to have a passion for."

David Wolfman has made a very successful career for himself in the field of professional cooking, something for which he has a definite passion.

"It's like an artist," he said, "like when an artist looks at painting something. He doesn't say that it is going to take two gallons of paint to do the job. He already has a basic idea of what he's going to do and then he lets his creative side take over from there. So, I take a basic recipe and making it tantalizing. Like: 'What's on the menu? Dead chicken.' That's not going to get the taste buds salivating. But if I tell them something more palatable and present it in a very simplistic, haute cuisine sort-of-way, then they'll get enthused about it. It is instead, 'free-range chicken dressed with garden herbs in a red wine and rosemary-thyme sauce, accompanied by dill-buttered potatoes and fresh frenched baby carrots.' Then they can almost smell it cooking."

Now 40 years old, David planned his professional life in a series of steps up a path that he very deliberately set out on when he started his culinary training years at George Brown College, followed by years sharpening his skills in the kitchens of some of Toronto's elite restaurants.

"I enjoyed the opportunity to share my recipes with my clients," he said. "I was flown to England and Germany to cook, and I won awards."

Seven international culinary gold medals, in fact, and his return to Canada offered up more challenges.

His next step was catering, creating his own company and dealing with all the headaches that go with it.

"When you're doing a conference for, say, a thousand people, it is not only the cooking you are responsible for. You have to find the right venue, arrange the right menu, ensure you have the right decor and table settings, floral arrangements, sometimes you even arrange for serving personnel. It's a major production! The success is found after the food is served and you can go into the dining room to listen. I like that part the best. When you see 800 people sitting and eating in silence, no talk, no banter, just the serious business of shoveling food into their mouths, then that is part of the reward of all your labors, the proverbial peak of how people are enjoying the food."

David then wanted to give something back and opted to take his knowledge to the classroom as the first professor of Aboriginal cuisine to be appointed at George Brown College, Toronto. He said it was the next logical step after establishing himself as a culinary arts leader.

After a time, though, he realized there was a much larger audience hungry for Aboriginal cuisine that was waiting to receive the benefit of his knowledge.

"I needed a bigger classroom."

Where was that classroom? Television and the Cooking with the Wolfman show on APTN. The show airs new episodes each Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and the original series can be seen weekdays at 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

The Wolfman is married with no children. But a dog named "Nymkii, which means thunder in Ojibway, keeps the couple company.

He offered a piece of advice to those wondering if they have what it takes to pursue careers inprofessional cooking.

"I believe that if you're truly committed to your career in hospitality, then there is only going to be one limit to hold you back, and that's yourself."

And, oh yes, the next step in his life?

"International television."