After enjoying Part I of our interview with Anna, you will love reading through Part II. Here, Anna reveals more of her personal likes and dislikes; and even commentary on the recent movie, Julie and Julia!
YouCook: In your new cookbook, you mention how our “culinary identities are ever evolving”. At this moment, how would you describe your culinary identity? And what sort of influences helped you to shape it?
Anna: I am at a very fun place in my culinary identity. Kind of like your life experiences, I don’t know how strictly you can plot where it’s going to go, but what you can do is look back on who you are in the culinary world & take lessons from that. What a lot of people don’t realize that I became a chef first before I became a pastry chef.
In terms of the “ever evolving”, just this week, I am about to register for a nutrition class through Niagara college. Because as I started the show “Fresh” and the cookbook, it has opened up a lot of conversation with my viewers and readers as to nutritional considerations and food allergies and sensitivities; and feeding a family when you have a variety of tastes. And I realized that, as a chef, I know how to put the food together, but I worked recently on a project with a dietician and I learned SO much! …about how our bodies absorb vitamins & minerals through food. And I realized I need to do some learning. And that’s what’s great about our industry: you can never learn everything. So I’m looking forward to learning how to not just create dishes that taste good and make us feel good, but physically will actually make us feel good. Just learning and educating myself will help me do my job better.
The other thing is that I just love finding new treasures. Yesterday, I was in Toronto, and we went to Miga in Mississauga for Korean food, which is a fantastic barbecue place. Just after the dinner hour, we were driving along Dundas West and we see Starsky. Friends of ours with European backgrounds always go to this European deli before Christmas time to load up on their holiday staples. We had never been before, and we walked through this super-deli with all these beautiful meats. I didn’t know there were so many ways you can cure and smoke pork. We were completely blown away, and we bought so much stuff just to taste and try!
So there’s always something new to learn. I always want to follow the philosophy that Opportunity Does Not Wait For Convenience. You have to have your eyes open because something may come along… And if you’re so focused on Task X, you’ll turn down an opportunity that could lead to something exciting. I’d rather try and fail than not have tried at all.
YouCook: What is your favourite dish to make?
Anna: I can’t say that I can pick one thing because I am so craving motivated! You ask me that question now, I’ll tell you one thing; ask me next week, it’s another; you ask me in July, it’ll be completely different.
I’m going to make a spicy seafood gumbo for dinner tonight, I’ve decided. The other night, we were craving Swedish meatballs in that mushroom-y sauce that we built from scratch. It’s having the time to make the dishes that I like.
I actually crave, in the wintertime, a lot of Asian flavours. Quite often, my husband and I make things like Vietnamese pho at home; we’ll make Japanese soup, sushi; miso soup for lunch for the protein, but the comfort at the same time.
YouCook: Do you think that Canadian chefs are recognized outside of Canada? What do you think we can do to promote Canada as a nation of great food and chefs?
Anna: I think media is definitely one means to do so, and with the support of people like yourself and the blogs.
There’s been this sense of a quest for a national dish, and what is our culinary identity… I think what we have to do is step back and relax, because you can’t force something like that. Let it evolve and we’ll find our way. I think if we try to force our way into the international market with something that’s not naturally authentic, no one will believe it.
Though I have heard, there were news segments right after New Year’s, how poutine has become a hot thing in New York. There are a few Quebecois who have opened poutine shops down there and they’re really doing very well.
Anna: How did you respond to the movie Julie and Julia?
YouCook: I loved it! I love Julia Child… She has such a flair for things. And, like what you just said in your interview about how you should forgive yourself for mistakes… I saw that throughout the entire movie. Something wrong happens, but you try to get past it and you save your dish as best as you can. Just watching [the movie] made you want to be in the kitchen and made you want to cook. It actually made me want to go to France!
Anna: I find that everyone who liked the movie connects with a certain moment – a food moment, and it’s different for everyone. I can tell you MY moment was when, on Julia Child’s side of the story, finally after years and years of trying to get her book published, she has that New York City editor making her Beef Bourguignon in her own apartment… She’s looking at the paper and she’s got her pot on the stove, and she pours in the wine from the bottle… There’s just a close-up shot of the page of the recipe and the wine splatters just splashing across it. I went to go see the movie with my recipe tester, and at the same time, we both yelped, and that was our moment… Because I have boxes (I keep all my testing notes) of stained, wrinkled, scratched-on notes of the recipes. And we both related to that because that’s what we do. I have these pages all over the kitchen and they’re just everywhere.
And I love to see cookbooks that are used and battered, and well-loved. I have people that come to me at book signings and they’ll bring me, almost ashamedly, their copies of “Sugar” and they’ve got post-it notes in them and they’re sloppy. They think it’s shameful… Meanwhile, that’s the best compliment you could pay me! It means you’re using it and you’re loving it – you’re connected to it.
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Tags: Anna Olson, Chef, Fresh, interview, julie & julia, Sugar
