• Robin Kort, owner of Swallow Tail Culinary Events, picks elderflower for a cocktail to be made fresh.

  • Elderflower, picked from the huge tree outside Robin Kort’s front yard in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

  • Robin Kort prepares a fresh elderflower cocktail.

  • Fresh elderflower cocktail recipe: 1 shot (1.5 oz.) Glenmorangie 12 year whisky, 1 shot (1.5 oz.) yerba mate, one half of a lemon (juice), ice, ½ tbsp honey (to taste), and an elderflower blossom straight from the tree.

  • A Jamaican drum smoker in Robin Kort’s backyard, used for fish, meat, and grilled vegetables. “You are dealing with wood-fire smoke, so you deal with different wood flavours. Sablefish is a really good one to do on it.”

  • Birch leaf tea. “You pick the leaves fresh in the spring right off the Birch tree, the younger the better. Lots of vitamin C. Crushing them in your hands a bit before you pour the water releases the oils.”

  • Ingredients for a quick and easy-to-make spring salad with edible greens found in the backyard: olive oil, lemon, mustard powder, garlic, and a few shreds of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is all the dressing you need (add anchovy paste for the non-vegetarians).

  • A wild greens simple spring salad.

  • Robin Kort sniffing one of her current favourites, Nichol Pinot Gris from Naramata Bench in the Okanagan Valley. “Fruity, dry and mid-priced. It goes with anything, fish, especially halibut, or on its own.”

Swallow Tail

Robin Kort's culinary events.

Imagine rummaging around in a beautiful forest with an intelligent, kind guide, one who is not only knowledgeable, but who also creates a fantastic meal from your foraged finds. This is an average day with Swallow Tail Culinary Event’s owner, sommelier, and chef Robin Kort.

For over four years, Kort has been committed to finding new ways to combine and share two of her loves, cooking and nature. She has sought, discovered, created, and founded a number of events offered in and around Vancouver like mushroom-, crab-, and Fraser Valley wine-themed tours, secret supper clubs, and other unique events in unlikely places (including the Vancouver Police Museum during the annual Dine Out Vancouver Festival). Many outings are small in number, so there is a communal, family-style energy always present.

Currently, Kort is passionate about wild ingredients and has created an upcoming event titled “Eat Your Weeds” for Mother’s Day. During the outdoor field trip, Kort will coach attendees about easily-found edible plants and how to cook with them.

When asked why she chose this career, Kort says: “I get to meet lots of interesting people and go outside into nature. It lets me teach people about nature’s bounty. I am super exited about fall’s mushroom tours, I mean, I could stay out in the forest all week, it’s like hunting for little aliens and some of them you can eat.” Of course, I had to follow that with the question: “Can I really quote you on that?” To which she answered with a big grin, “Sure.”

Photos by Angela Fama.

See more from Angela Fama.
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For information on the Mother’s Day “Eat Your Weeds” event visit: www.swallowtail.ca

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May 1, 2014