Canada's insider blog

Don’t know a geoduck from a haddock? Then try a three-day hands-on seafood culinary workshop at Trout Point Lodge, a luxury Relais & Chateaux retreat tucked into the wilderness near Yarmouth, NS. The crash course is taught by owner/chefs Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret, also authors of The Trout Point Lodge Cookbook: Creole Cuisine from New Orleans to Nova Scotia. They specialize in seafood cookery and wild foods in the French New World food traditions like Creole, Acadian and Cajun cooking. And that’s what they’ll be teaching Sept. 16-18, 2011. 

For more than a decade, the Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School has taught seafood basics each May and September, demonstrating everything from identifying fresh fish and shellfish to what kitchen equipment you’ll need for grilling, salt-baking, tea-smoking and more. Field trips take you to lobster pounds and oyster farms, then it’s back to the kitchen where you create stuffed mussels, ceviche, paella, soups and desserts using fresh ingredients from the inn’s garden.

New for the 2011 season, which runs from May through October, are hour-long classes on smoking & curing seafood (the lodge smokes all its own pork and salmon), wine & food pairing, Creole/Cajun cookery and even cheese making since the owners once ran their own creamery. Guests simply request a class in advance, and then tie on an apron.