Cuisine Canada Scene

Julia Aitken has been a food writer and editor for more than 30 years. Her latest book is 125 Best Entertaining Recipes (Robert Rose). Julia lives in Toronto with her husband.

What’s your weakness? Dessert or mains?
Mains… Unless the dessert is the finest quality homemade ice cream.

Who or what got you interested in food?
My mother. Despite having no formal culinary training she was a great cook and adventurous as all get out. She was forever bringing home bargains (conger eel and lambs’ testicles are two I remember) that she’d never cooked before and she always turned first for advice to her culinary bible, a dog-eared, food-spattered copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

What inspires you?
Traveling. Nothing tastes finer than an ingredient enjoyed in its own home town.

What was your favourite dinner when you were a kid? Do you like it now?
This is too, too embarrassing. As a VERY small child I absolutely loved fried Spam and Heinz baked beans. I hasten to say I grew out of that preference very quickly.

What’s the first dish you remember making?
Treacle toffee, a traditional English candy. I was just a kid although of an age, I guess, to be deemed responsible enough to handle boiling sugar. I failed to realize the importance of keeping watch over the pot. You can imagine the result. My mother and I were scrubbing the stove for days.

Proudest food-related moment?
Receiving my first freelance cheque a thousand years ago and realizing that perhaps I could, indeed, make a living eating.

Strangest food you’ve ever eaten?
Muktuk, an Inuit “delicacy” (I use the term loosely) which is whale blubber. The version I tried was from a beluga and was served at a dinner some years ago to launch the annual conference of circumpolar nations. It was – and remains – the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten.

Favourite sound in the kitchen?
My husband’s voice as he chats about his day while I cook dinner.

Favourite cooking smell?
Bacon frying.

Quintessential Canadian dish?
Don’t laugh but it has to be poutine. It’s a dish found nowhere else in the world and its description alone makes most non-Canadians shudder. However, it has to be said that a good poutine can be a thing of beauty.

Molecular gastronomy, best thing ever or the unwearable haute couture of food?
I’ve eaten at Ferran Adria’s El Bulli, the so-called temple of molecular cuisine in Spain, and, while some of his dishes were sublime, others were frankly execrable. The real problem with MG is that in a lesser chef’s hands it just becomes a foamy joke. Enough already.

Cilantro — can’t get enough or tastes like soap?
In the appropriate dish—something Thai or Indian—it’s delish.

What local foods can’t you live without?
Ontario asparagus in the spring through autumn’s Ontario pears, and everything in between.

What’s your greatest culinary extravagance?
Nothing’s an extravagance if it tastes good but I do confess to having a weakness for expensive coffee.

Most over-rated kitchen gadget?
A juicer. Don’t have one, don’t want one.

What’s the most treasured possession in your kitchen? Why?
The ancient, battered solid silver spoons my mother used for all her day-to-day cooking. I think of her while I stir.

Fill in the blank. If I never cooked / ate / heard about  ______ again, I’d be happy.
Bad food.

If you could cook for anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Laurie Lee, the late, great English author and poet. His book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning made me first fall in love with Spain.

What would you prepare for him/her?
It would have to be something Spanish. Perhaps olives and some good almonds with a nice dry sherry, followed by pollo al ajillo (chicken cooked in garlic and sherry), some saffron rice and probably the ubiquitous flan for dessert.

What was the last thing you ate?
Leftover chicken and Swiss chard risotto.

If you had to work outside the culinary field, what would you do?
I’d love to be able to paint but, for sure, I’d starve doing it.