JACKFISH LODGE, Sask. – When Joan Chase was a little girl, she used to love to run into her father’s cheese factory, dip her hand into the whey and grab curds to eat.
Fresh cheese made from raw milk may not be sanitary enough for today’s standards that require pasteurization and strict cleanliness, but it sure tasted good, she told Saskatchewan home economics teachers at their annual convention Sept. 23.
Chase, who runs a cooking school and sells products such as creamed honey from her home in Meota, Sask., said food is her passion. Dinner parties are the best, she added, because they bring people together. In the past she has cooked for theme parties including a Shakespeare meal and a last dinner on the Titanic.
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“Food and talk is something Saskatchewan is good at.”
She said Saskatchewan’s centennial year provided many opportunities for people to use food to celebrate their communities. However, she laughed when talking about neighbours who were particular about what they would bring to a pot luck social, especially with a chef like her in the crowd.
Chase sees disturbing signs that North American cooking has turned into fast food preparation and solo dining rather than families taking the time to make and eat meals together.
“When my grandchildren bake cookies and say, ‘they taste pretty good,’ that’s the joy of cooking.”
She also disparaged the way many North Americans handle wine and beer, choosing to gulp it in a bar rather than pairing it in a sensitive way with different dishes the way Europeans do.
When someone in the crowd asked advice on which wines complement which foods, Chase said she has a few rules. The basic one is that there isn’t a good match if the wine doesn’t make the food taste better. A merlot goes with roast beef and white wine with chicken, especially some of the crisp Canadian ones, while macaroni and cheese can go either way. If there is a strong cheddar in the casserole, go with a red wine.
Chase said food is best when it creates an emotion, such as a certain pie your mother would make when you were a child. She said she lucked out because with three sisters in her family, she still managed to inherit her mother’s cookbook with all the smudgy pages where the favourites were.
She urged home ec teachers to support Canadian cookbook writers who explore culture through meals. She praised the casual hospitality evident in From Saskatchewan Homemakers’ Kitchens, a handwritten project by the Saskatchewan Women’s Institutes in 1955. It has been reprinted for Saskatchewan’s centennial and is available from SWI members or at the four Western Development Museums.
Chase recommended The New Canadian Basics Cookbook by Carol Ferguson of Humboldt, Sask., as a good recipe book for newlyweds. She also liked A Century of Canadian Cooking written by Ferguson and Margaret Fraser, also from Saskatchewan.
“It’s a keeper,” she said of the historical book that explores popular dishes decade by decade.
While she praised the Laura Secord Cookbook, she criticized its poor binding that would not allow the book to sit flat on a countertop.
She rated another cookbook as “too Calgary” because many of its recipe ingredients were not easily available.
“When Mom cooked, her seasonings were salt and pepper.”
However, Chase said herbs have become more important in today’s food.
“We want flavour, not quantity. I see that as a healthy trend. It’s not too hard to grow herbs, even in winter with a grow light.”
