Quentin Glabus brings humbleness and wisdom to prestigious role
In the days leading up to his time as NAIT’s Hokanson Chef in Residence in March, Chef Quentin Glabus (Culinary Arts ’00) had meal prep on his mind.
Partly, he was thinking about what he’d teach his students during the week he’d be in Edmonton; mostly, he was focused on his two sons, one six years old, the other nine months, and his wife, a diplomat with the Canadian Embassy in Japan. Glabus had hired a babysitter to help while he was gone but, even if away, he wanted to handle the food.
“I had suppers made for every day that I was gone, plus extra for lunch the next day,” says Glabus. He also made plenty of purées for his youngest. “Anything I could do to make life as easy as possible.”
Having taken care of that, Glabus felt he’d be able to fully devote himself to a role he was at first anxious about filling – one previously filled by celebrity chefs he’d idolized, such as Susur Lee and Chris Cosentino.
Now, here he was alongside them: once a kid who marvelled at his kokum’s ability to bring people together over food at her home in Frog Lake First Nation, to being a globetrotting chef, to returning to NAIT to share what he’d learned over the past 20 years. If he was a little nervous, at least he knew his family would be fine.
And then: “I get to the [Tokyo] airport and my wife messages me: ‘Is there something I need to know about the oven?’” Glabus called immediately. Despite baking for an hour and a half, the lasagna he’d made for them was lukewarm, thanks to an oven gone on the fritz. “Murphy’s law,” he thought. “Damn you, Murphy!”
Food as culture
Once in Edmonton, however, things worked out, largely because Glabus arrived at NAIT with a unique perspective to share. He wasn't a familiar face from food television like past Hokanson chefs but he knew the global stage well.
After graduating, Glabus’s career led him around the world, cooking at a Disneyland restaurant, the Embassy of Canada to Japan, in Tokyo – where he met his wife – and then at countless high-level functions as he relocated with her to locations such as Taiwan and Brazil before returning to Japan.
Throughout, Glabus highlighted Indigenous cuisine, doing the same at NAIT as the first Indigenous Hokanson Chef in Residence, where he shared a collection of his most successful recipes.
“I basically played my greatest hits – things that I thought were really cool and that I wanted to show [the students],” says Glabus.
Those dishes offered a new take on locally sourced foods that resonated with Ross Quinones, a second-year Culinary Arts student who attended Glabus’s sessions.
Recipes included North American ingredients such as delicata squash (see recipe below), walleye, bison and wild rice.
“We’re privileged and fortunate to have access to these ingredients,” says Glabus. Not only are they nutritious and delicious, they inextricably link people, place and, in this case, precolonial history.
“Food is culture,” he says.
Quinones was particularly intrigued by the wild rice, an ingredient he didn’t know was native to North America. Glabus’s success in incorporating it into pasta was an eye-opener.
“I’m surprised that I haven't had the chance to utilize it [before],” Quinones says.
Quinones was also surprised by its vulnerability. Wild rice grows in wetlands from Alberta to Ontario and is at risk because of habitat loss, Glabus told students. As chefs, they have the opportunity, and perhaps even responsibility, to act as stewards.
“It was a blessing that the chef was able to come here and give us this gift [of these recipes],” says the student. “The ingredients that he's presenting are very versatile.” Now, Quinones is eager to find ways to use them.
The greatest measure of success
That eagerness to create is what Glabus was hoping for. He hopes his story inspires chefs of the next generation to follow their passions like he did. And he takes the success of the lunches and dinners that they prepared together and served during the week as proof that he was able to connect with them.
“Apparently, I’m wiser than I thought,” says Glabus.
Just the same, he isn’t dwelling on that realization. He has as little time for that as inclination. Now back in Japan, Glabus has been approached by the culinary team at the Canadian Pavilion for Expo 2025 in Osaka, which has asked him to guide the respectful inclusion of Indigenous dishes.
It’s the sort of work that saw him invited back to NAIT, and the focus for which he’s come to be known in the same way as Susur Lee is for Asian-French fusion or Chris Cosentino for whole-animal cooking.
Regardless of how well his work continues to be received, however, Glabus expects to stay humble thanks to his roots, and grounded by catering to the small but appreciative audience he sees as his most important.
His “greatest measure of success,” he says, will always come at dinner each day, serving food he cooked for his wife and sons.
“If they don’t like it,” says Glabus, “no one else is going to.”
Roasted squash
Ingredients
- 2-3 delicata squash (454 g each)
- 30-45 ml sunflower oil
- 30-45 ml maple or birch syrup, or honey
- 3.75 ml kosher salt or sea salt, as needed
- 1.25 ml pepper
- 8 sprigs thyme, fresh, leaves removed
Directions
- Preheat oven to 450 F (232 C).
- Line 2 large bake sheets with parchment paper or, if using nonstick bake sheets, lightly spray with cooking oil.
- Rinse squash under cold running water and pat dry.
- Using sharp knife, cut off ends of squash. If you are able to use a soup spoon at this point to remove seeds, do so. Save seeds. If you cannot remove seeds, wait until the next step. Cut the squash into rings 1.5 cm thick.
- If you waited to remove the seeds, use a cookie cutter big enough to cut out any seeds and membrane.
- Place rings on a baking sheet, lightly brush with oil and season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with thyme.
- Bake in center of oven for 12-18 min until just knife tender but not soft or over cooked. The rings should still hold their shape.
Great Northern White Bean Purée
Ingredients
- 88 ml sunflower oil
- 210 g onion, rough chopped
- 3 g garlic clove, crushed
- 850 g cannellini beans, cooked
- 125 ml stock, chicken or vegetable
- salt and pepper to taste
- 15 ml lemon juice
Directions
- Heat 30 ml sunflower oil in a saucepan over medium heat and gently cook the onion until soft but not coloured. Add beans, garlic, stock, salt and pepper and cook for 4 min.
- Process the beans and their cooking liquid in a blender or food processor with the remaining olive oil and lemon juice.
- Process to the desired consistency. Adjust seasoning.
Red cherry or cranberry mostarda
Ingredients
- 450 g red cherries, pitted, or cranberries, quartered
- 70 g sugar
- 80 ml balsamic vinegar
- 60 ml red wine (Zin or Malbec)
- Pinch of sea salt
- Pinch of black pepper
- 30 ml dijon mustard
- 1 g yellow mustard seed
Directions
- Combine everything EXCEPT Dijon in a small heavy saucepan. Bring to a simmer then lower heat and cook until reduced to a consistency of ketchup, roughly 1 hour over low heat. Remove from heat.
- Stir in Dijon and adjust seasoning. Take off the heat.
Seeds
Ingredients
- 200 grams pepitas (squash seeds)
- 15 ml canola oil
- 10 ml maple syrup
- 2.5 ml smoked paprika
- salt to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).
- Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well to ensure an equal distribution of spices.
- Place on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and bake for 8 minutes. Remove, mix and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until desired golden-brown colour.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
- Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks at room temperature.