Trish Magwood launches dish entertains. Photo: Brandon Barré

Trish Magwood treated me to a chicken club sandwich, made with tomatoes from her dad's organic farm, in the airy cafe that's part of the Dish Cooking Studio. I knew I was likely to enjoy the sandwich (I did) when I saw a customer of hers scarfing one down in their car in the parking lot: clearly way too good to wait until she got back to the office. The studio/school/cafe/deli on Dupont Street, which she opened seven years ago as a home for her catering business and cooking school, is the nerve centre of the 30-something's epicurean empire. Magwood recently expanded it to include a second story gallery for private parties and large classes. The occasion of our lunch was the publication of the Party Dish TV-star's first cookbook, Dish Entertains, easily one of the most beautifully produced Canadian cookbooks ever.

The Interview:

Gremolata: So when we last interviewed you, it was October 2005 and you had just started writing this book.

Trish Magwood: It's a long process. Let's see, October 2005... That wasn't too long after my editor Kirsten Hanson sat me down and said "You're ready to do a cookbook," and I said, "Yes, I am." But two years is a long time.

G: Well, it's not like you weren't doing anything else: running a business, doing a TV show, raising small children...

TM: And this book was part of an ongoing process. We were drawing from everything else we were doing, so some things came from the show. And we're always generating new catering menus and doing new things for the classes. It's all interconnected.

G: So you're keeping a file of recipes as you go?

TM: Yes. Although, the book is full of my favourite recipes from my life. From my family, my grandmother.

G: It's your greatest hits?

TM: What? Like ABBA's Greatest Hits? I guess so, at least until up to a little while ago.

G: Trish's Hits Volume 1. What's the most recent recipe?

TM: Elena Embrioni's Caldo Verde soup. It's big messy, all-in-one, meaty, so good for you soup that she serves at the Dish Cafe. At one point it was my favourite lunch. How could it not be in the book?

G: That's not exactly a "new" recipe.

TM: It was for me about a year ago. I mean, what is new? At one point in New York Jean-George Vongerichten was calling his flourless cake "new", but if you crack open a couple of old French cookbooks... So this book is more about how I like to eat and how to adapt that to a busy life. Take the Tomato Bread Salad. On TV we did a more Middle Eastern version, like a fatouche, but for the book we thought who's got time to find the ingredients? I mean I don't usually have sumac or zatar at home! So we paired it down to the traditional Italian. There are no wacky or experimental variations. Things are done in a classic preparation because that's the way I eat.

G: This is what you're serving at home?

TM: Absolutely. I mean there are special occasion recipes, but that's weekend cooking where I'm going to go to the market.

G: You men you don't make canapés on Tuesday nights?

TM: Yes, I do. I rush home so I'm not late for my nanny and whip up a couple stuffed mushrooms! [Laughs]. In writing the book we sort of had these two things happeninG: special occasions and everyday. And we couldn't decide which way to go, so we decided to do both. You know: special occasion entertaining has to be planned, but the everyday is what I eat. Like chicken curry made with a can of coconut milk and green curry paste from the fridge door.

G: This book seems to draw from the Dish cooking school. Literally, like Joshna Maharaj's mum's chicken curry recipe, but also just because there's that kind of breadth, there's all kinds of things to cook. The party stuff is pretty cool though. I can see reaching for the book every time you have people over to try and wow them.

TM: Yeah,  whenever I have a party at home I use the same tricks and they're all in the book, like the Chinese take-out boxes. They're easy things to do.

G: What about shopping? You have classes here where you actually take people to stores, right?

TM: That started with Greg Couillard, who knows every supplier in Chinatown. I've been a fan of his for years, so he used to take me to his favourite shops and I loved it so I thought it would be a great tour concept. We do St. Lawrence Market, Chinatown, Kensington, Little India. They're tasting tours and we always give variations on the ingredients. Like green pepper corns: what do you do with the rest of the jar of green pepper corns left in the fridge after you've made steak au poivre? I mean that's the sort of thing I want to know.

G: OK, what do you do with green peppercorns?

TM: I love them with any kind of meat, not just steak. But I love steak au poivre; at home I call it “steak in a pan”. Matthew Sutherland [Chef at Fat Cat Bistro in Toronto] gave me some great tips on how to make it taste like it’s from a restaurant.

G: Like what?

TM: Use good, not crap, wine to deglaze the pan, mount the sauce with cold butter, that sort of thing.

G: The original business, your cooking school, is seven years old. Are you teaching people different things after seven years?

TM: The team that teaches and cooks here are so tapped into what's happening that we're constantly learning and growing and doing new things. That really comes from working together and keeping each other on our toes. But we've also seen a change in the students or clients that keep coming back. At the beginning we had two groups: good home cooks looking for inspiration and to expand their repertoire and then people who literally didn't know how to boil water. So that group has gone from junior kindergarten to senior kindergarten, and the first group has gone from their Masters to their PhD. But I don't think people, generally, are spending more time cooking now, they're just spending better time. With websites and blogs and TV shows, there's much more of a demand for quality. There's a general rise in education. People are reading the label, which is good.

G: This is a really pretty book. How much of its design were you involved in?

TM: Every single step. I told HarperCollins I had a clear vision of what it had to look like and I said that if it couldn't be as beautiful as Donna Hays' books I wasn't interested. We pushed the envelope on what we could do in this country. I mean Canadian cookbooks primarily just don't have the budget. So we all took a leap of faith with a big budget book. It's really a big deal for all of us.

G: So how did you do it?

TM: They gave me a budget and I did the photography myself.

G: You mean you shot it?

TM: No, no! I worked with Brandon Barré, the most talented photographer: a total perfectionist, every detail above and beyond what I imagined. And Sacha Douglas, one our chefs here, did the food styling. I just danced around the two of them. But we really cowboyed it: Sacha really cooked every dish in the book.

G: So there are no tricks? No fake food?

TM: Nope. Each one is the recipe. I mean we may have poked our fingers into it, but there were no studio tricks. We didn't use a studio. We did it here and in my backyard. What you see is what you get.

Read Gremolata's 2005 interview with Trish Magwood here.

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