This story was originally published in Coast Reporter's winter edition of Coast Life magazine.
Olga Chnara paints, sings and styles hair. But if you ask her about her favourite art, she will answer “food.” “Everyone loves to have a good meal,” she says.
If you have Eastlink cable, you might have seen her practising her art on Coast Cable’s cooking show, titled Olga’s Greek Kitchen. Filmed in her own kitchen in Gibsons, she invites guest chefs who share recipes and mix drinks during the half-hour show.
One of them has been Dave Saunders of the Sunshine Coast Olive Oil store. A man of much knowledge about oils and balsamics, he can be seen mixing up cocktails on the show using products that are for sale in the store.
Olga is taking on a new and exciting challenge when she videos an online show titled Olga’s Greek Kouzina with Dave at the bar. It will reach a wider audience, she hopes, and will feature authentic, traditional dishes from her original home on Crete, one of the larger Greek islands.
“These are very special, older, tasty recipes,” she says. As a proud Cretan (though she has lived on the Sunshine Coast for 11 years), she believes that food from Crete is the best. Growing up there, she was taught at a young age to attend to the family and their meals. Of course it helped that her parents ran a restaurant and she learned much by working in the kitchen.
When she came to Canada she focused on cooking—it made her active and became her joy. She discovered that people loved to watch her cook, and since she began the TV show four years ago, the cable company has told her it’s one of their most popular shows in western Canada.
It’s important for her to show how to make these traditional dishes. “Everywhere it’s the same story in every Greek restaurant,” she says. “They serve souvlaki, Greek salad, roast lamb… I want to show what is really Greek food.”
She has no favourites among the recipes. “There are dishes for everyone: vegan, meat and fish.”
Dave Saunders is a professional, she notes, and he has been a sponsor and a guest cook on the Eastlink show for past seasons where they became friends.
“We ‘vibed’,” Dave says. He will assist in the episodes they will film this winter. His specialty is mixing up the balsamic cocktails to go with the Greek dishes.
Originally made from the leftovers of winemaking, these balsamics are the real thing, aged and direct from Italy. Sampling is encouraged: just try tasting a sweet tart white balsamic on its own or on a fruit salad.
Besides the original Gibsons shop, Dave and his wife, co-owner Georgina Saunders, recently opened a second olive oil store in Sechelt.
At the grand opening of the store (taken over from Tasters), Dave mixed up two cocktails from a variety of balsamics for guests, one with rum and one without. I tried a non-alcoholic pomegranate and honey ginger balsamic with sparkling water. Very refreshing.
Dave has hopes of making the show more accessible to viewers by airing it on YouTube or a similar platform. It will be more fun, he says, with episodes such as he and Olga going shopping for the ingredients—she with her characteristic advice to her co-shopper and he with his smart banter.
Olga answered one of my burning questions: what do the cooks do while filming on the set when the host says: “Now we’ll just pop this into the oven for 30 minutes.” What happens next? Do they sit and wait, editing that out of the video?
“No,” Olga says, “we film some of the next show in those thirty minutes, then go back to the original show.” It’s a busy schedule.
“We’re two busy people,” Dave says, agreeing— he with the two shops and she with her Gibsons hairdressing salon—“trying to create something that two busy people would usually hire someone to do.”
Once the shows are aired, you can find the link to view them, as well as recipes using oils and balsamics at sunshinecoastoliveoil.com.
Dave Saunders’ Balsamic Old Fashioned
2 oz (60 mL) Bourbon
.75 oz (22 mL) Cranberry-Pear White Balsamic
5 dashes Angostura Bitters
2–3 inches Orange peel
Mix bourbon, balsamic and bitters with a handful of ice and stir well.
Pour mixture through a strainer into an oldfashioned glass, over a large ice cube.
Cut a two-to-three-inch orange peel, avoiding the pith.
Twist the peel to expel orange oil over the drink and finish by putting peel in the glass.
Enjoy!
