Introduction

Dan and I have been reporting on the Canadian culinary scene for longer than Twitter has been around, which is quite a while. At the point of this writing, he and I are also two of the few remaining professional food critics in Canada.

We eat at restaurants (a lot!) and get paid to talk about our experiences. Obviously, we love food. We love to eat it, talk about it, and cook it too. With the food media landscape ever evolving, there may not always be a place for us to do our food critic portion of our work, but we’ll be damned if we ever stop celebrating all that the Prairie food scene has to offer. To truly fall in love with where you’re from, we have found that travelling abroad certainly helps! Let us explain . . .

We’re both Saskatchewan transplants living in Alberta who have travelled the world for work and pleasure, separately and together, and what it comes down to is this: food is the focal point of our travels, and no matter where we’ve gone, the food we experience afar always connects us to home, from exquisite Chianina beef in Florence to an array of cheeses made by the owners of Pizza 4P’s in Ho Chi Minh City. Our forays, without fail, remind us of our diverse culinary scene across the Prairies.

Just as the best dishes abroad are made with local, seasonal ingredients, so too are the ones made back home. In 2017, Dan launched the Prairie Grid Dinner Series out of a desire to help unify the Prairie food community and help shine a light on the three provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) as a whole.

We both knew that there were innovative people working tirelessly in the major cities—smaller ones too, as well as towns across the provinces—but it was seldom that these people were ever given the opportunity to interact with each other, let alone cook together. Dan asked if I would come along for the wild ride that would be the inaugural Prairie Grid in 2017 with chefs Adam Donnelly, Lindsay Porter, Christie Peters, and Jamie Harling . . . and I said yes with no hesitation.

That series ran each subsequent year, shifting course through the pandemic, but staying true to the concept of taking seasonal ingredients, putting them in the hands of talented cooks and letting them feed people. Dan decided that the hashtag #proudtobe­prairie was fitting for that first travelling dinner series, and it carried on every year that followed. But it also became a regular tag that we include in many of our social media posts outside of the series. We use it because it’s true.

We’re proud too, of this book. Some of the recipes are from chefs involved in those Prairie Grid dinners, others are from chefs we’ve written about, and a few are from friends we’ve worked with in the food industry on other projects. Dan and I have included our own family recipes and many new ones, too, that help showcase Prairie-grown ingredients in a new light, but regardless of who wrote the recipe, each one is intended for the home cook.

You will notice that some spring recipes call for frozen, dried, or cellared ingredients like root vegetables and dried fruit. That’s because the Prairie provinces have a shorter growing season than most of Canada, and despite the notion of spring being the season of birth and renewal, not much grows here until June—rhubarb and asparagus being the usual mid-May exceptions.

Our parents and grandparents were conscientious consumers, and these crab apples didn’t fall far from those trees, so you’ll see that we include some tips for decreasing food waste and include the use of uncommon parts of the animal, like tongue, flank, and neck, in some recipes. Things that often get thrown away, like stale bread and bones, still have value, and we address that too.

Speaking of value, pulses are not only a significant source of vitamins and minerals, but they also contain a good amount of fibre and protein, which means you don’t have to eat a lot to feel full. They also cost pennies per pound, so if you’re looking to cut your grocery bill and/or your meat consumption, look for our recipes that use dried beans, peas, and lentils.

We hope that using this cookbook will inspire you to embrace the seasons, from a food standpoint. We hope the content within will open conversations around the table about the importance of supporting local producers—the ranchers and beekeepers; the pulse producers and mustard growers; the crop, dairy, fruit, and vegetable farmers—and those committed to working with the fruits of their labour: the grain millers and distillers; the brewers, butchers, and bakers; and the artisan cheese and sausage makers.

We have good reason to be proud of being “Prairie”; there is much to be thankful for. Now, let’s get cooking!