Peter George.
Peter George's kitchen is more than 1,000 feet above yours but you won't find his head in the clouds. Despite cooking up a gourmet meal recently at the last St. Lawrence Market Executive Chef Series, the executive chef at 360 Restaurant at the CN Tower is from the school of thought that simplicity (and a glass of wine within reach) is key when it comes to whipping up a healthy, delicious meal for the family.
Despite an office stocked with more than 500 cookbooks - all of which he has read - George prefers to cook on the fly, planning his dinner menus around his daily grocery haul. Recently, George opened up about his cooking style at home with OurFaves.com, and offered up some of his favourite tips for home cooks. Here's what he had to say...
What general advice would you have for home cooks?
I think if you’re going to cook at home for your family, what you need to do is shop and shop often. That’s the most important thing. Shopping once a week is not necessarily going to give you the freshest, most perfect ingredients you can get, so if you can afford to go to the market daily or every couple of days, go through and see what’s interesting and what inspires you and take that home. Be simple with it, don’t be complicated with it. Pair it simply, healthfully. Use the right fats in the right places and I think you’ll find your family will start to enjoy it and they’ll get involved and come shopping with you and they’ll be excited about going to markets on Saturday morning.
How do you do it at home?
We shop every day. Every single day.
Where do you shop and what do you look for when you go out?
I love to come to the markets downtown, I love to come to St. Lawrence Market and Kensington. I live out in Mississauga, so we have a couple of farmers’ markets out there that I’ll go to. There’s one at Sherway and one at Square One that we stop by. And we have a number of different markets, from Asian markets to Indian markets to regular Loblaws. Depending on what we want, we’ll go to different areas.
The summer season is coming to an end where fresh fruits and vegetables were always readily available. Now that winter’s coming, how can we still eat well?
Winter’s really exciting. For me, I love dried fruits, so I use a lot of dried fruits from raisins to apricots to prunes to plums. I cook with them, I make desserts with them, I use a lot of nuts in the winter. Apples are available all winter long. And of course root vegetables are coming in, so I’m getting turnips and squash and pumpkins and carrots. They’re all wonderful to work with throughout the winter season.
What are some of the dishes that your family loves for you to make at home?
We eat sort of differently at home. We don’t do plated food as you would in a restaurant. We eat more in an al fresco style, so I put platters of food out and we help ourselves to different things. So one day, we might come to the market and find some great smoked fish, so we’ll do that, buy some nice bread and away we go. Some pickles, some relishes that we make. The next day, we could find a piece of pork and we’ll do a roast pork loin stuffed with apples and some roasted squash. The other night, we got some great spinach so we did a brown rice, we cooked some spinach, we roasted a Hubbard squash and that was dinner, it was all vegetarian. And it was great, flavourful, everything was fun. We change it up a lot. Some days, we just barbecue a piece of meat and serve it with a big platter of tomatoes and some olive oil and good balsamic vinegar and that’s dinner.
What is one dish that you know is a sure winner with your family?
I do a version of a tangine that’s with rice and chicken and some sausage and I actually cook it in a tangine. That seems to get a lot of rave reviews and there doesn’t seem to be much left over when I cook it.
What’s a recent meal you made at home that really stands out in your mind?
I did a roast rack of pork on the barbecue – so I took a whole rack and I butterflied it all out and I stuffed it with spinach and mushrooms and apples and I rolled it all up. I cooked it on my Weber very slowly for two-and-a-half hours, almost smoked. It was a local farmer who makes the really incredible pork and that meal was outstanding. Everyone enjoyed it and there was nothing left at the end of the meal.
These sound like really involved dishes. What would you tell chefs who may be intimidated by cooking with so many ingredients?
The only way to get good at something is with practice and not to be afraid. I make mistakes every day. The idea is not to be afraid of them, learn from them and move on. If something isn’t great, then figure out why it wasn’t great and next time you do it, make it great. If you’re afraid to try something, then you’re never going to get good at it. Let’s face it, like anything, it takes practice and it takes time.
Do you cook with recipes or do you cook with whatever you’ve got?
Well, that’s a good question. My office has about 500 to 600 cookbooks. I’ve read them all. So do I read recipes, do I understand recipes? Yes, I do. Do I use them when I cook? Rarely, if ever. When I bake, I do, but when I cook, I don’t. And that’s because I have a fairly good knowledge of when I put things together, what the results are going to be. And it’s because I’ve read so much that I don’t need to use a recipe when I cook.
That said, there’s a lot of great recipes out there and they’re fun to follow. But that doesn’t mean you have to follow them to the letter. If you go through a recipe and you don’t like something, don’t use it. Put something else there. It’ll probably turn out better for you.
So in essence, don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Lastly, what is your one essential kitchen tip that you’d offer a cook at home?
There’s two things. First one is to have patience. Don’t get frustrated in the kitchen. It’s about pleasure, it’s about fun. Have a glass of wine, take your time. You’ve got all day. What are you in a rush for?
The other thing is have a good sharp knife. Nothing slows you down more than a dull knife. A sharp knife makes great cuts, makes your job easy, makes it a pleasure to cook. So buy a good knife, keep it sharp, enjoy yourself and you’ll actually have a great time in the kitchen.