The Courvoisier Collective: Culinary Masterpieces Program by Ama Scriver

The Courvoisier Collective officially launched their new program back in July taking on food and entitling their program the Culinary Masterpieces. The new program was designed to ignite revolutionary food creations while sparking the interesting and inspiring those in the culinary industry to use cognac more in their recipes.

The Culinary Masterpieces program invited Ontario culinary students and at-home chefs are asked to submit original recipe creations infused with Courvoisier cognac. Throughout the summer months, a panel of Toronto judges from the esteemed culinary community (including Ici Bistro's JP Challet, The Grove's Ben Heaton and TURF Lounge's Michael Kirkwood) put forward their finalists under the categories:  soup, salad, hors d'oeuvres or entrée.

On October 17, 2012 at Maison Mercer, the finalists were selected and some of Toronto's top food bloggers and finest in the culinary industry were invited to come out and try the dishes put together. Some of these dishes included:

Korean Inspired Short Ribs by Jenn Lim: These were delicious with the cognac added a nice glaze to it.

Lobster Corn Chowder by Doug Burke: Bite sized and beautifully prepared, one of my favourite dishes of the evening. Lobster is something I have seen used in a lot of dishes recently but not done as well as this.

Red Miso Beef Ribs with Mushroom Cognac Sauce by Don Chow: These ribs were perfect and tender. The mushroom cognac sauce I probably could have eaten all by itself, to be honest.

Duck Breast with Duxelle Ravioli by Steve Cylka: This fusion dish was incredible. It had all the right mixes of Asian and Italian and left you wanting seconds and thirds.

Marinated Duck Breast by Holly Bruce: Tender and juicy, almost melting in your mouth as soon as you ate it. 

However, their could only be one winner in each category (Student and At-Home chef) for the prize of $1,000. The winners were Doug Burke (Student Chef) for his Lobster Corn Chowder preparation and Steve Cylka (At-Home Chef) for his Duck Breast with Duxelle Ravioli.

Congratulations to all the winners. If you would like to find out more about the winners and download these recipes, please visit: http://www.courvoisiercollective.com

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Photos by Yuli Scheidt.

Amanda (Ama) Scriver is a foodie and music fiend. She is a food writer for Pink Mafia with her 'Eats' column and works as an event planner full-time. She enjoys random adventures that you can follow each and everyday through Twitter (@amapod) or follow through Instagram (username: amapod).