Ant, Andrew and I make waves on radio food show

Yes­ter­day, Andrew Cop­polino, host of The Food Show that airs on Sun­days from noon to 1 pm on Kitch­ener radio sta­tion 570 News, warned lis­ten­ers that things were about to get wild, wacky and weird when he intro­duced me and Antony John.

(Lis­ten or down­load here. Warn­ing: there is about 20 sec­onds of dead air at the begin­ning of the recording.)

The lat­ter is a buddy of mine and one of the rea­sons I moved to Strat­ford five years ago (oth­ers are his lovely wife Tina and the fact that my neigh­bours in Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket were ter­ror­iz­ing me for rea­sons too dark to men­tion). I recently returned to live in Toronto because: Strat­ford has too many ducks, not enough peo­ple of colour etc. etc. (see pre­vi­ous blogs). But I digress.

Ant, as I like to call him, is a gan­gly, tanned, spiky-haired farmer known for his TV show The Manic Organic (the name speaks vol­umes) that aired on  Food Net­work TV some years ago (he isn’t bit­ter it wasn’t renewed but has can­celled his sub­scrip­tion to that chan­nel). His organic farm Soiled Rep­u­ta­tion is in Sebringville on the out­skirts of Strat­ford and is well known mainly as a sup­plier of restau­rants and for his impec­ca­ble organic veggies.

Any­hoo, witty, capa­ble and charm­ing Cop­polino, whose succinctly-named show is sophis­ti­cated, infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing, was right. Things did get quite lively once the mikes were turned on (okay, they were even more unhinged when they weren’t) and the free-ranging dis­cus­sion began to sizzle.

Wit and bad­i­nage were names of the day as we chewed over such top­ics as roast­ing veg­eta­bles in the nude (a favourite though haz­ardous pas­time of Ant’s); potty-mouthed British chef Gor­don Ram­say and the sui­cides of two peo­ple fea­tured on his real­ity shows Kitchen Night­mares and Hell’s Kitchen (I might be tempted to jump in a river as a New Jer­sey restau­ra­teur did recently if abused by Ram­say on inter­na­tional TV); a four-way phone inter­view with Toronto celebrity chef Mark McE­wan about his new cook­book (inter­spersed with munch­ing noises by me and Ant as we sam­pled Coppolino’s tangy Ceviche made from that book — excel­lent, by the way); how to cook turkey for Thanks­giv­ing (see my recipe for Ulti­mate Roast Turkey on this site), and why buy­ing local is so impor­tant when it comes to food (the only semi-serious part of the show) — all this pep­pered with Ant doing ani­mal imper­son­ations, attempt­ing to make me “lose it” (unsuc­cess­ful, in my opin­ion) and me laughing.

I will post an edited ver­sion of that show as soon as I get back from a week in New York to attend the Food Net­work Wine & Food Fes­ti­val. Mean­while, take note: This is an excel­lent food radio show that you should try to catch. Con­grats Mr. Cop­polino — good on you.

As for Ant, you can enjoy his antics (yes, pun intended) as he chan­nels his inner stand-up comic, by check­ing a short YouTube video of Antony John pre­tend­ing to milk a horse. And you thought the coun­try­side was peace­ful and bucolic!