‘Great Canadian Cookbook’ a TV and online snapshot of nation’s cuisine

By Lois Abraham, The Canadian Press

TORONTO – Canadians will be able to sink their teeth into the iconic flavours at the heart of this country’s cuisine with the launch of “The Great Canadian Cookbook.”

It’s both an online and broadcast project of Food Network Canada. The website launched Tuesday with an evolving roster of recipes along with videos, photo galleries and wine pairing suggestions.

The docu-series hosted by chef Lynn Crawford and comedian Noah Cappe, who ate their way across the country, airs Monday, with four back-to-back episodes kicking off at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT.

“We had the most incredible opportunity to go across Canada, to just go out into the kitchens of everyday Canadians and collect recipes and stories that make up what it is to be Canadian — what defines us as Canadians, what is Canadian cuisine and what are those important recipes that we hold near and dear to our hearts,” Crawford said in an interview ahead of the launch.

The duo sourced recipes running the gamut from preserves and perogies to roti, bacon-kimchi fried rice and butter tarts.

In St. John’s, N.L., Crawford visited chef Todd Perrin at Mallard Cottage, a 19th-century property at Quidi Vidi Harbour. “There’s a lot of history there. He’s working with ingredients that are indigenous to Newfoundland.”

On the opposite coast in tiny Tofino on Vancouver Island — “one of my most favourite places of all time” — she visited chefs Lisa Ahier at SoBo and Nick Nutting at Wolf in the Fog and learned how the terrain affects the ingredients for which they forage.

Of chef Dale MacKay, winner of the first season of “Top Chef Canada” whose Saskatoon restaurant is Ayden Kitchen and Bar, Crawford notes: “Here’s a world-renowned Canadian chef that has worked all across the world but has decided to come back home” and showcase ingredients grown by Prairie farmers.

Crawford, chef-owner of Ruby Watchco in Toronto and a judge on “Chopped Canada,” also visited the Kitchener-Waterloo area and Woodstock in southwestern Ontario.

Cappe, meanwhile, went to Lunenburg and Dartmouth in Nova Scotia, the Toronto area, Winnipeg, and Victoria and Nanaimo in British Columbia.

“We’re lucky to have wonderful ingredients, different ingredients that really influence recipes, different cultural backgrounds,” says Crawford.

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Online: http://www.GreatCanadianCookbook.ca

Follow @lois_abraham on Twitter.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version listed the show’s start time as 3:30 pm ET/12:30 pm PT instead of 3 pm ET/12 pm PT.

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