All in the Family

The 1970s were not known as a decade of great culinary sophistication in Canada – particularly not in Inuvik, where we lived – but I do remember one dish my mother made that I’ve kept in my repertoire. Some recognize its culinary potential immediately, others are more sceptical, if not downright horrified, but everyone who’s tasted it agrees it is an inspired combination. It is called frozen-pea salad, and this is how it’s made: Iceberg lettuce is chopped and set in a bowl. Sliced green onions go on top; then there’s a layer of sweetened mayo spackled over that. Next comes a layer of peas, right out of the bag and still frozen, then a layer of grated cheddar cheese and, finally, a topping of chopped cooked bacon. The salad is left in the fridge overnight, and as the peas melt, the mayo gets runny and dresses the salad. Molecular gastronomy at its finest.

Maybe this is why I instinctively tune out food that comes with more instructions than a computer manual. More and more restaurants are losing the foam and realizing that Mom knows best when it comes to good food. Vancouver’s new Pied-à-Terre restaurant has a whole section of the menu dedicated to casseroles. Pichet Ong, owner of P*ONG and Batch restaurants in New York, still has his mother come in every day to prepare the staff meal. And whenever I visit a restaurant with a menu item billed as being from Mom’s recipe (like the carrot cake at Atlantica in Newfoundland) or even made by Mom (like the maple syrup and pecan pie at Montreal’s Garde-Manger), I’m ordering it.

“You’re having a family tradition right now,” cookbook author Stefano Faita tells me as I dig into the piquant tomato sauce that will dress the meatball lasagne he and his mother are making. We’re at Mezza Luna Cooking School, which is run by Stefano’s mom, Elena, and is next door to the family’s legendary kitchen-supply/gun shop Quincaillerie Dante. (The store is probably one of the only places in the world where you can buy both a Mario Batali spatula and a hunting rifle.) I’m throwing a dinner party and inviting a few of Montreal’s best chefs to cook heirloom recipes inspired by their family dinners – and, of course, I’m inviting their families too. Think of it as a potluck, only with Martin Picard, host of The Wild Chef, owner of Au Pied de Cochon and a man famous for his duck in a can, bringing the starters.

“This is the lasagne I’ve been making since I was a girl,” Elena explains. “My mom used to make it when I was little; my job was to make the meatballs.”

“Then I had to make them,” Stefano adds.

Marie-Fleur St-Pierre, the chef at one of Montreal’s best Spanish restaurants, Tapeo, and her sister are hard at work on an interpretation of a dish they ate growing up: gratin of cauliflower with ham and Gruyère. “I was thinking of ways I could take this very traditional dish my mother used to make and serve it at the restaurant,” Marie-Fleur says. “I added smoked paprika in the béchamel; the ham I roasted myself with a little Andalusian spicing and maple syrup.”

Martin Picard arrives looking like some kind of burly log driver. Instead of a pick pole, however, he’s carrying giant bowls of freshly picked purslane and fiddleheads and a Styrofoam container with the tail end of a large halibut and a dozen large snow crabs inside.

“How will you treat the halibut?” I ask him.

“With love,” he says. “Always with love.”

My mother, Suzanne, flew in from the Okanagan for the party and spent the past few days shopping furiously for an outfit, but she’s outdone by Martin’s kids, Émile and Charlotte, who show up decked out in their Sunday best.

A powerful portable burner gets hooked up to a propane tank in the alley beside an old bike, some planters and a recycling bin. A massive stockpot is filled with water and placed on top of the flames, drawing people to it like a campfire. Martin begins dropping wriggling snow crabs into the roiling water and Émile starts yelling,

“They’re alive, they’re alive!”

“I’ll drop you in next,” his father teases.

Marilu Gunji, the pastry chef at Brontë, has found some space in the kitchen and is mixing rice flour into dough to achieve “the consistency of my earlobe.” Her dessert is called ichigo daifuku. “The way I make it, it’s half traditional and half modern, with a strawberry inside.”

Stefano, meanwhile, is busy searing lardons for the purslane salad. Martin comes in when they’re done and adds a splash of red-wine vinegar and some olive oil to the saucepan, seasons it and pours the whole thing over the greens. As dusk settles in, the rest of us polish off the party-starting magnums of Pommery champagne that sommelier Ryan Gray, of Liverpool House, has been generously pouring.