How and why Jonathan Chovancek first became a chef is worth another story on its own.
He’d much rather talk about why he has stayed with cooking: the people; the people he has worked with and the people he has cooked for.
“Can you imagine all the stories?” he asks, reciting a long list of the types of events and variety of people he has engaged with during his 22 years as a professional chef.
“It’s incredible,” he notes. “You can’t even encapsulate it in a story.”
Chovancek has cooked in many countries around the world, and is a speaker and an instructor. He is also co-founder of Bittered Sling Bitters, a retail line of small-batch cocktail and culinary bitters. Recently, Chovancek joined with Cook Culture to spearhead its cooking program, and is set to host two upcoming classes in North Vancouver: Knife Skills and Levant: Food of the Middle East. The latter will focus on the “beautiful flavours of the southeast Levant,” which is a large area in the eastern Mediterranean, including North Africa and Turkey. Chovancek says he is drawn to the “beautiful, vibrant spice tones of that area.”
Middle Eastern cooking is his forte and what he likes to eat, notes Chovancek, adding the class will present recipes through the filter of a Canadian chef.
“The warm, rich tones of the region really appeal to me. It’s an area of utter deliciousness,” he explains. “These are all regions that are about deep, robust flavours and building complexity in taste.”
Chovancek says the world cuisines that appeal to him most are the ones that are full of the most flavour, and notes that many popular cooking regions also contain microdiversity in their cuisines.
For example, when referring to Chinese cooking, there are 40 different styles of specific cooking that can be explored.
Teaching how to prepare food from a specific region involves talking about concepts and theory, and pairing it with practical preparation, including spices and sauces of the region, then making dishes that students can translate into something they can shop for at their local supermarket and make at home for their family and friends.
When asked if it’s easy to teach people how to cook, Chovancek answers quickly: “Yea, it really is because if somebody signs up for a cooking class they’ve obviously got a passion and an interest. You need to engage people when you’re teaching them something, so if they’re already interested then that’s half of the battle.”
Learning to cook or to be a better cook is much easier now too, notes Chovancek, explaining that when he started in the industry cell phones and the Internet were not around, and the only ways to learn about cooking were through books and in person. There is so much content available online now, including how-to videos, that learning has become a lot more accessible. However,
Chovancek suggests that the best way to learn is to create taste memories from first-hand experiences in a kitchen.
“You can’t replace that aspect of actually getting into a kitchen, cooking with other people, and sharing ideas and heritage and culture, and laughing and sharing a meal,” he says.
