"The kitchen is a lot of fun, if you let it be," says Michael Smith who I met recently at George Brown College's cooking school where he taught a class and talked about his new book, The Best of Chef at Home: Essential Recipes for Today's Kitchen. Ever busy, Smith continues to prepare for a cooking gig at the athlete's village at February's Vancouver Olympics. He also had taped his episode of Iron Chef America. He couldn't say anything about the Iron Chef contests; under strict censure from the TV network gods, except that he was proud of his team.

Smith, who is planning to build a food interpretation centre on his adopted island home of Prince Edward Island, launched The Best of Chef At Home by cooking a banquet for hundreds this September that featured every single recipe in the book. The Food Network star currently has two shows on air, Chef Abroad, which chronicles his culianry travels (see GFR0102) and Chef At Home, the show "without recipes" from which his latest book is based. I caught up with him last week in one of George Brown's test kitchens for the interview below.

THE INTERVIEW

Malcolm Jolley: What makes this book any different from your others? Why do a greatest hits?

Michael Smith: We've had six years [of the show] under our belt. We've got this undercurrent of Canadiana going on. And we have this need to inspire - to get people fired-up, revved-up and into the kitchen, excited about cooking. I'm at a point where I can put out a book like this, call it "The Best of Chef At home", call it "The Essential Recipes" and stand by that. I'm really proud of it.

You know I've never had to answer that question before! I mean you I think you can see it. [Lifts book off of counter.] The book itself is beautiful, and I'm proud that it's not one of these froufrou chef's books. There's no foie gras in here. There's no foam. There's no fluff. It's stew. It's cookies and cakes and apple pie. It's opinion soup. It's stuff we cook today.

But it's not just the recipes, it's also how they are presented. This comes down to that idea of "freestyling" that defines Chef At home today.

MJ: Okay, let's talk about that. You offer alternatives to each recipe. Hints on how to ad lib that you call "freestye variations" right?

MS: How do you write a cookbook about a cooking show that doesn't have recipes?

Since we've lost so many of our traditions, I think it's really important that we give home cooks permission to go into the kitchen and just relax. I didn't realise that when I set out at the beginning of Chef At Home, but after six years of meeting countless people and hearing the same thing over and over again, "you changed my life", I realised how stressed out people were.

You know me well enough that credit goes to my team. This isn't just me; I'm the front man of a big team of people that I respect very much. So it began to sink in for all of us that the theme of the show, the undercurrent, was "get me excited and show me that I can go into my kitchen and just relax." You know, people come up to me and say things like "nobody ever showed me that I could do that - that the kitchen could be fun". It's the antidote to stress! Not the cause of stress. So, all of that is part of this freestyling approach, which is to say, "hey, relax, be in the moment and put recipes in perspective."

MJ: There's a point in the book where you tell the reader not to worry too much about measurements.

MS: Yeah, exactly. In many cases measurements don't matter. It comes down to a couple of things that define my recipe writing style. One is that I don't believe that the goal is for you to precisely duplicate the dish the way I would make it. I think that's boring. Where the personality there? It should be your dish, not mine and I believe that if you make it once, then it's yours. What I mean by that is too often recipes are all about "do this, do this and do this" and an opportunity is missed to actually back-up the idea with some insight. So it could be "do this, because when you do, this will happen and here are some good, solid reasons why." When you start writing recipes that way, and you share the insights, it helps cooks relax.

MJ: Did they teach you that at cooking school, at the CIA? I'm thinking of the whole mother sauce sort of thing.

MS: Well, actually that analogy might work. The whole mother sauce thing is - I think it's fair to say - ancient history, that's not how we cook anymore. Anyway, I'm glad you challenged me on that because I guess I would wind a path back to my days at cooking school when we learned Escoffier's classic technique that you can make one of the five classic mother sauces and each one, then, has its derivatives. There's a direct link to that and freestyle cooking. Again, I think it comes down to I'm okay with anything that gives you confidence in the kitchen. I am not anti-recipe. Sometimes, I think people think I am because Chef At Home is a "show without recipes". I am for anything that makes people feel comfortable in the kitchen, but let's put recipes in perspective. And that's what this book is all about.

Every recipe in [The Best of Chef At Home] has a freestyle suggestion: try this, try that. And every recipe is full of these insights so you know what it is you're doing. And all of that adds up to a position where you can be comfortable and part of your process, not just my process. That's the goal.

MJ: Last time we talked you had about a million things on your palate. I'm sure you still do, if not more. You have the sort of hectic life that cookbook marketers talk about. Do you draw on that experience?

MS: Yeah, sure. Let me answer your question this way: I think there are many, many good and positive things about The Food Network. But I also think there's a downside to it. Because of the pop culture celebrity status that we know accord many of our chefs, and certainly a lot of the ones that cook on Food Network, many of us put them up on a pedestal and that distances us from them. It sets up a disconnect and we start to believe that you can do it because you're up on the pedestal and you're a perfect person but I can't do that.

I guess what I mean by that is, without question, the biggest challenge I have in my life is entitlements. I live in this odd universe where sometimes I'm so busy thinking and talking and writing about food that I don't actually have time to prepare food.

MJ: Well, that's sort of what I wondered.

MS: I'm being very honest with you, because that does often happen to me. At the same time, I'm a real person with real challenges. I make mistakes. I argue with my wife and sometimes I yell at my kid. And I burn things. And I muck up things in the kitchen. And I hope that people think of me that way. Don't put me on the pedestal. Think of me as just another home cook - we're all in this together.

MJ: You have recipes for a lot of basics in the book, but also some rather adventurous things.

MS: Well, that's how we cook today. It's fair to say that about 50% of this book is the essentials that you need: cookies, brownies, how to cook grains, how to gill meats, a few good soups - all the basics. But it's also fair to say (and I'm generalising) that the other 50% is drawn from around the world. But, then again that reflects who we are as Canadians today. There are quite a few Asian flavours and lots of Indian.

I think Alu Gobi is a mainstream dish now. You may never have heard of it, but when you cook it once you realise that it's pretty familiar and you may have it before. It's just potatoes and cauliflower and curry. That's a simplistic way of summarising it, there can be lots of detail to it, but it comes from a pretty straight forward and basic way to cook and eat.

MJ: And delicious.

MS It's full of flavour. I'm fascinated by that link between nutrition and flavour. The more flavour in your food, the healthier it is for you. Bland food is, generally, no frickin' good for you. I am a strong advocate for flavour.

MJ: You pack a lot of advice and advocacy in the introduction of your book, which is a few pages long. You're talking about the tents of the good food movement, whether it's sustainability or searching for local ingredients. How does that all fit in?

MS: I think a lot of us are beginning to re-engage with our food. Big picture: I think we all recognise that as a society we do have some challenges with our food. There are a lot things that are wrong with our food system and that people are getting hurt by their food choices. I think we all understand that in general terms. But I strongly believe that it's not all doom and glom, that things are actually getting better. There are too many of us in influential media positions who want to buy into that sort of Fox News bullshit that it's all bad news. There are so many good, positive things happening. I want to be very careful that all of my message falls into that realm.

I also believe that all the solutions to the challenges we have begin with engaging with our food, not taking it for granted and thinking about it. Where does it come from? Who's cooking it? How are they cooking it? How's it being served? Who are we serving it to? Who produced it? Engaging with it on any level you care to - there are no rules to this. It starts with that, and I think that's reflected in my philosophy, if you will. That's a hoity-toity term to apply to food, but we all have our motivation and mine is first, engage with your food.

MJ: Just getting people to think about it?

MS: Once you start engaging with your food, then all these issues come up: sustainability, local food, what does organic mean today? As a society, we're in this interesting place where, for many of us, it's more important that we have two cars in the driveway of the big house with the five rooms that we never go in and a kitchen stove that cost more than the car but no time to sit down and cook for ourselves and sit down with our families at the end of the day. That is a skewed value system. We need to think about that.

You know, I'm honoured to be part of the solution, to be in a position where I get to do good things. I'm not getting up every day and making guns or something. It's food, it's simple and cooking is something we all ought to do every day. Anyway, it's humbling to be part of something, and it feels good. Maybe that's selfish: it makes me feel good. But maybe it's also valuable.

Find out more about Chef Michael Smith here and at his website chefmichaelsmith.ca.

Malcolm Jolley is the editor of Good Food Revelation.