By Barbara Simpson www.theobserver.ca The Observer
Purdy Fisheries have made the catch of the day.
The Point Edward-based business and its Lake Huron pickerel will be featured on an upcoming episode of the Food Network’s Pitchin’ In.
On the show, celebrity chef Lynn Crawford visits food producers across the country, learning the ropes of their operations and eventually preparing gourmet meals based on a single local ingredient.
Crawford spent four days at Purdy’s in May. The former chef at the Four Seasons’ New York City hotel wasn’t given a free pass at the family-run operation. She shovelled ice, wrangled sturgeon and even worked in the processing plant.
Don’t worry, there was some fun allowed.
“She ended up having a gut fight with one of our employees,” recalled Stephanie Purdy, vice-president of Purdy Fisheries.
Crawford also tried to “wrangle our coleslaw recipe out of our chef,” noted Purdy, who described the celebrity chef as a genuine and hard-working woman.
“So many people have asked me since the shoot, ‘Well, what’s she like?’ because a lot of times their persona on TV isn’t who they really are,” she said. “She is 100% who she is on TV.”
Crawford wrapped up her visit by preparing a meal around pickerel. She crafted a fiddlehead soup with a pickerel quenelle and asparagus slaw, a mushroom-crested pickerel with a sweet pea risotto, and a lemon tart with gingered rhubarb and white chocolate shavings.
“It was spectacular,” Purdy said. “Absolutely spectacular.”
Crawford also attended a family barbecue during her visit, Purdy noted.
“To look out my parents’ front door and to see her standing on the boulevard — that was the house I grew up in — it was kind of bizarre,” she said. “It was like there’s Lynn Crawford standing on my parents’ boulevard in Point Edward.”
Purdy’s grandfather W.J. Purdy founded the business in 1900, and the operation now includes several retail locations.
Purdy’s Pitchin’ In episode airs Jan. 16 at 11:30 p.m. Repeats of the episode will air throughout the week and the rest of the season. The show can also be viewed on the Food Network website.
“Yes, it’s great for Purdy’s, but I hope it’s great for Sarnia-Lambton as well,” Purdy said.
“I moved back to Sarnia nine years and one of my goals was to get Purdy’s fish on the Food Network,” she added.
“I didn’t expect our whole business — us as a group — to get on there.”
Observer Article ID# 3422329
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